What you see here in this blog are my musings based on the by my understanding of the teachings, many hours of practice, experiences and realizations.
the i-concept
Who you are is not about your name or what you do or where you live or who your family is. It is the "ego self" in you, the "I", the "me", the "myself", the "being" that you are.
There are in fact two of us in us. One is the ego self that is born out of clinging to a self and as a self that asserts its views, delights in the sensuous and is averse to all that is inimical, the self that always thinks, hears and talks to us. This is the "I" in you. The other is the primordial self, that is the fundamental you existing from time immemorial which is the "Buddha" nature in you that rarely shows itself. It is the ego self that plays out that continuous record in your mind, its mentation.
It is the "I" in you that makes you who you are. It is a forceful factor, an influence that contributes to everything that results. The "I" is what makes everything possible for you. It is also what makes everything impossible for you. It possesses you completely and can be inseparable. This is what I would call the "I-concept".
It is an illusion, one that deludes you into believing that you are you, an independent permanent entity. It is what gives you the egocentric spatial perception, that you are the center of the universe, your universe. It pervades you completely so very seamlessly attaching you to your self and to every illusion you perceive; it is what determines every thought, every action that you take.
It is the attachment power of these illusions that makes you the indestructible entity that you take yourself to be, that makes you mistakenly believe that you possess a soul that perpetuates over time. It is this ignorance that causes all of your suffering, birth, illness, aging and death, pain, sorrow, sadness, despair, desires and greed, dislikes and hatred, and anger.
Can we recognize this "I", find this "I", treat it or neutralize it?
To be free of “I” is to be free of it all. Now that is enlightenment, nirvana; the ultimate liberation. There are several ways one can try to reach this goal. It is the very essence of the Buddha's teaching.
This blog results from my quest to find and treat the influence of the "i" factor in the self. In doing so I have examined many religions and teachings. I have found the answers in Buddhist teachings. What you see here in this blog are my musings based on the by my understanding of the teachings, many hours of practice, experiences and realizations.
Concept
We live within a concept and in the concepts that we create therefrom.
The concept we live in is the concept of "I", an ego, a self, and what we perceive as an indestructible soul that we have created.
The concepts that we create and live amongst are all of the physical and mental phenomena we have created for us, each of us our own creation, ascribing to each a description that is based on our knowledge and understanding, our views, our beliefs, our personality and of who we are.
Birth, death and fear of death, old age and fear of old age, illness, pain, sorrow, sadness, despair, likes, dislikes in what this concept of self undergoes.
There are in fact two of us, one in the shadow of the other, almost inseparable and indistinguishable except when we are brought to a place of realization when our true self emerges through the cloak of our conceptualized manifestation. These situations are many such as..
Herein lies the root cause of our suffering both mental and physical.
Concept Examined
The word concept denotes something formed in the mind, thought or general idea.
Buddhism examines Concept in states of
- Static
- Dynamic : linguistic, logical , psychological
Both the static and dynamic aspects of concept can be expressed thus:
Visual consciousness arises because of eye and material shapes;
The meeting of the 3 is sensory impingement;
Because of sensory impingement arises feeling,
What one feels one perceives;
What one perceive one reasons about;
What one reasons about one proliferates conceptually (papanca), at which stage the subject becomes a hapless object, where concepts and linguistic convention overwhelms the person who evolved them - like the tiger who devours the magician who restored it to life from its skeletal bones.
Thereafter one delights in, asserts and clings to that which makes one subject to concepts characterized by the prolific tendency. In other words due to the conceptual proliferation papanca sanka sankha assails him in regard to material shapes cognizable by the eye belonging to the past, the future, the present.
Likewise, evolves the rest of the 5-sense consciousness.
Definitions-
Papanca = the final step in the process of sense-cognition : an expansion, spreading out, diffuseness, manifoldness - a tendency towards the proliferation in the realm of concepts.
Papanca Sanka Sankha = concepts, reckoning, description or linguistic conventions characterized by prolific conceptualizing tendency of the mind.
Bound with the notion of "I",
Delighting correspond to ------------- Craving (tanha),
Asserting corresponds to ------------- Conceit (mana),
Clinging corresponds to ----------- Views (dith),
The latent illusion of ego awakens at the feelings (vedana) stage after sensory impingement and thereafter the vicious duality is maintained.
Craving
If one does not entertain craving, conceit and views with regard to conditioned phenomena involved in the process of cognition by resorting to the function of an ego, one is free from the yoke of proliferating concepts and has thereby eradicated the proclivities to all evil mental states which breeds conflicts both in the individual and in society.
When the mental continuum is imbued with ignorance volitional activity generates karma with the potency to produce results in the future. Ignorance is predominant in unwholesome activities, latent in mundane wholesome activities, hence both mundane wholesome and unwholesome karmic formations are said to be conditioned by ignorance.
We live within a concept and in the concepts that we create therefrom.
The concept we live in is the concept of "I", an ego, a self, and what we perceive as an indestructible soul that we have created.
The concepts that we create and live amongst are all of the physical and mental phenomena we have created for us, each of us our own creation, ascribing to each a description that is based on our knowledge and understanding, our views, our beliefs, our personality and of who we are.
Birth, death and fear of death, old age and fear of old age, illness, pain, sorrow, sadness, despair, likes, dislikes in what this concept of self undergoes.
There are in fact two of us, one in the shadow of the other, almost inseparable and indistinguishable except when we are brought to a place of realization when our true self emerges through the cloak of our conceptualized manifestation. These situations are many such as..
Herein lies the root cause of our suffering both mental and physical.
The concept we live in is the concept of "I", an ego, a self, and what we perceive as an indestructible soul that we have created.
The concepts that we create and live amongst are all of the physical and mental phenomena we have created for us, each of us our own creation, ascribing to each a description that is based on our knowledge and understanding, our views, our beliefs, our personality and of who we are.
Birth, death and fear of death, old age and fear of old age, illness, pain, sorrow, sadness, despair, likes, dislikes in what this concept of self undergoes.
There are in fact two of us, one in the shadow of the other, almost inseparable and indistinguishable except when we are brought to a place of realization when our true self emerges through the cloak of our conceptualized manifestation. These situations are many such as..
Herein lies the root cause of our suffering both mental and physical.
Concept Examined
The word concept denotes something formed in the mind, thought or general idea.
Buddhism examines Concept in states of
- Static
- Dynamic : linguistic, logical , psychological
Both the static and dynamic aspects of concept can be expressed thus:
Visual consciousness arises because of eye and material shapes;
The meeting of the 3 is sensory impingement;
Because of sensory impingement arises feeling,
What one feels one perceives;
What one perceive one reasons about;
What one reasons about one proliferates conceptually (papanca), at which stage the subject becomes a hapless object, where concepts and linguistic convention overwhelms the person who evolved them - like the tiger who devours the magician who restored it to life from its skeletal bones.
Thereafter one delights in, asserts and clings to that which makes one subject to concepts characterized by the prolific tendency. In other words due to the conceptual proliferation papanca sanka sankha assails him in regard to material shapes cognizable by the eye belonging to the past, the future, the present.
Likewise, evolves the rest of the 5-sense consciousness.
Definitions-
Papanca = the final step in the process of sense-cognition : an expansion, spreading out, diffuseness, manifoldness - a tendency towards the proliferation in the realm of concepts.
Papanca Sanka Sankha = concepts, reckoning, description or linguistic conventions characterized by prolific conceptualizing tendency of the mind.
Bound with the notion of "I",
Delighting correspond to ------------- Craving (tanha),
Asserting corresponds to ------------- Conceit (mana),
Clinging corresponds to ----------- Views (dith),
The latent illusion of ego awakens at the feelings (vedana) stage after sensory impingement and thereafter the vicious duality is maintained.
The word concept denotes something formed in the mind, thought or general idea.
Buddhism examines Concept in states of
- Static
- Dynamic : linguistic, logical , psychological
Both the static and dynamic aspects of concept can be expressed thus:
Visual consciousness arises because of eye and material shapes;
The meeting of the 3 is sensory impingement;
Because of sensory impingement arises feeling,
What one feels one perceives;
What one perceive one reasons about;
What one reasons about one proliferates conceptually (papanca), at which stage the subject becomes a hapless object, where concepts and linguistic convention overwhelms the person who evolved them - like the tiger who devours the magician who restored it to life from its skeletal bones.
Thereafter one delights in, asserts and clings to that which makes one subject to concepts characterized by the prolific tendency. In other words due to the conceptual proliferation papanca sanka sankha assails him in regard to material shapes cognizable by the eye belonging to the past, the future, the present.
Likewise, evolves the rest of the 5-sense consciousness.
Definitions-
Papanca = the final step in the process of sense-cognition : an expansion, spreading out, diffuseness, manifoldness - a tendency towards the proliferation in the realm of concepts.
Papanca Sanka Sankha = concepts, reckoning, description or linguistic conventions characterized by prolific conceptualizing tendency of the mind.
Bound with the notion of "I",
Delighting correspond to ------------- Craving (tanha),
Asserting corresponds to ------------- Conceit (mana),
Clinging corresponds to ----------- Views (dith),
The latent illusion of ego awakens at the feelings (vedana) stage after sensory impingement and thereafter the vicious duality is maintained.
Craving
If one does not entertain craving, conceit and views with regard to conditioned phenomena involved in the process of cognition by resorting to the function of an ego, one is free from the yoke of proliferating concepts and has thereby eradicated the proclivities to all evil mental states which breeds conflicts both in the individual and in society.
When the mental continuum is imbued with ignorance volitional activity generates karma with the potency to produce results in the future. Ignorance is predominant in unwholesome activities, latent in mundane wholesome activities, hence both mundane wholesome and unwholesome karmic formations are said to be conditioned by ignorance.
Ignorance
What gives us mental and physical suffering?
The causes of suffering are routed in ignorance as Buddhist teachings tell us.
Ignorance of what?
It is the ignorance of all things, the inability to distinguish concept from reality, the delusion that obscures the true nature of things.
I am sure you have heard this before and perhaps many times over. Have you ever really addressed your mind to it?
Let's see. If we examine the notion or concept of "self" in relation to suffering one has to agree that suffering is undergone by a self or a person and without a self or person there cannot any suffering as there is no one who suffers.
Where is you self in you? Can you find it? Have you ever tried to find it? Explaining this requires a lengthy examination of the subject. However, simply put, the idea of a soul can be traced to a fundamental error in understanding the facts of experience.
So, we have
1. Ignorance of the fact that there exists no self nature in self or others, no ego or "I, Mine, Myself" or no soul.
And, based on the concept of self or soul or a person who suffers we have
2. Ignorance of the Prenatal past
3. Ignorance of the Postmortem future
4. Ignorance of the Past & Future together
5. Ignorance of dependent arising - that is what causes arising of the various stages in the mental thought continuum
6. Ignorance of what Suffering is
7. Ignorance of what cause of suffering
8. Ignorance of what cease suffering
9. Ignorance of the way to cease suffering
What we were, what we are and what we will be have its basis on the above, not only physically but includes our state of mind at every moment
The consciousness is continuously conditioned or subject to volitional activities with the ignorance of the deluded notion of a self.
Examining it even more closely at a deeper level, it can be said that it is the ignorance or the lack of clear understanding of the voidness (Sunnata) of all things and of the non-clinging mind. We can also express it as a non-attachment to concepts.
What gives us mental and physical suffering?
The causes of suffering are routed in ignorance as Buddhist teachings tell us.
Ignorance of what?
It is the ignorance of all things, the inability to distinguish concept from reality, the delusion that obscures the true nature of things.
I am sure you have heard this before and perhaps many times over. Have you ever really addressed your mind to it?
Let's see. If we examine the notion or concept of "self" in relation to suffering one has to agree that suffering is undergone by a self or a person and without a self or person there cannot any suffering as there is no one who suffers.
Where is you self in you? Can you find it? Have you ever tried to find it? Explaining this requires a lengthy examination of the subject. However, simply put, the idea of a soul can be traced to a fundamental error in understanding the facts of experience.
So, we have
1. Ignorance of the fact that there exists no self nature in self or others, no ego or "I, Mine, Myself" or no soul.
And, based on the concept of self or soul or a person who suffers we have
2. Ignorance of the Prenatal past
3. Ignorance of the Postmortem future
4. Ignorance of the Past & Future together
5. Ignorance of dependent arising - that is what causes arising of the various stages in the mental thought continuum
6. Ignorance of what Suffering is
7. Ignorance of what cause of suffering
8. Ignorance of what cease suffering
9. Ignorance of the way to cease suffering
What we were, what we are and what we will be have its basis on the above, not only physically but includes our state of mind at every moment
The consciousness is continuously conditioned or subject to volitional activities with the ignorance of the deluded notion of a self.
Examining it even more closely at a deeper level, it can be said that it is the ignorance or the lack of clear understanding of the voidness (Sunnata) of all things and of the non-clinging mind. We can also express it as a non-attachment to concepts.
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