Forwarded from Gnostic Intel
“In the absence of The King the Warrior becomes a mercenary, the Magician becomes a sophist (able to argue any position and believing in none), and the Lover becomes an addict.”
― Robert L. Moore, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
Image: King Leoric by Richi Marella
― Robert L. Moore, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
Image: King Leoric by Richi Marella
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Forwarded from Esoteric Dixie Dharma
Misunderstanding of Buddhism is extremely common amongst people I come into contact with.
First of all language itself is a problem and will always be limited. Language is symbolism and symbolism is for communicating deeper meanings that cannot be conveyed explicitly. Symbols implicitly convey meanings. Symbols are the finger pointing at the moon. The finger is not the moon.
👉🏻 🌚
Things must be directly experienced. Real spirituality is about direct experience, not intellectualization - which does operate within the bounds of language. Reality itself cannot be limited to language or the mind's ability to conceptualize. Imagine thinking you could "think about" or intellectually pin down Dharmakaya. Is the Ineffable effable?
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
There's a reason this is literally the first verse of the Tao Te Ching.
So besides just the inherent limitation of language, a lot of Buddhist terms really get fucked in translation.
Once I had a chick tell me I was a psychopath when I was explaining detachment because she thought the word means to be cold hearted or callous. Others think it means aloof, life denying, or removed from the world - space cadet, absent minded professor or zoned out druggie. People just have all sorts of negative associations with the word detachment that are not what is meant by the term in Buddhism.
Detachment is a means towards transcendence. It is to go beyond attachment and aversion, beyond grasping and shoving. So you can see it's not actually about the word itself; the word is just to point you to where you should be going.
Everything in Buddhism is in relation to aiding an individual towards enlightenment. This is what the system is designed for. The Bodhisattvas are trying to extract you from samsara and you're geeking out over the word nothingness because it sounds fucked up to you.
Nothingness is not nothing in the sense that we think of it in the West. Really when we think of nothingness we are already messing up because nothingness is supposed to be an aid in getting beyond thinking and conceptualizations so that we experience reality directly. Instead, being the spiritual plebs that we are, we decide to keep thinking about that which is supposed to help us get beyond the limitation of thinking.
Nothingness is Dharmakaya which is the seed of all manifestation, the infinite, inconceivable reservoir of pure potentiality. Words cannot actually describe Dharmakaya though and any idea of it is wrong. So the point of me characterizing it how I just did was to break out the ole 👉🏻 and see if we can possibly get just a bit closer to "it".
Nothingness is meant to be used like - empty your mind because all of your conceptual frameworks trap you. Nothingness is supposed to help navigate the labyrinth of the mind.
Another way to think of it is like no-thingness. Interdependence and the lack of distinction between "things". Understanding this, again, helps us to go beyond the mind. The mind likes to break everything down into tidy, neat little boxes - but remember folks, boxes are gay and keep you stuck in samsara. Boxes are fabrications because reality is NOT actually broken down like this - (later I will write about the doctrine of 2 truths and the relative truth of the distinctions between things). It is our minds that break things down and make distinctions and form attachments to the distinctions and identify with the distinctions and... fuck... forget about our innate Buddhanature.
But the moral of the story is always remember Buddhism is fundamentally about liberating us from samsara and making us aware of our innate Buddhanature - so terms are tools to strike down obscurations, attachments, identifications that hold us in ignorance and that lock us out of nirvana. The moment terms become something other than that we have missed the whole point and fallen into the trap of language and ultimately the trap of our own minds.
First of all language itself is a problem and will always be limited. Language is symbolism and symbolism is for communicating deeper meanings that cannot be conveyed explicitly. Symbols implicitly convey meanings. Symbols are the finger pointing at the moon. The finger is not the moon.
👉🏻 🌚
Things must be directly experienced. Real spirituality is about direct experience, not intellectualization - which does operate within the bounds of language. Reality itself cannot be limited to language or the mind's ability to conceptualize. Imagine thinking you could "think about" or intellectually pin down Dharmakaya. Is the Ineffable effable?
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
There's a reason this is literally the first verse of the Tao Te Ching.
So besides just the inherent limitation of language, a lot of Buddhist terms really get fucked in translation.
Once I had a chick tell me I was a psychopath when I was explaining detachment because she thought the word means to be cold hearted or callous. Others think it means aloof, life denying, or removed from the world - space cadet, absent minded professor or zoned out druggie. People just have all sorts of negative associations with the word detachment that are not what is meant by the term in Buddhism.
Detachment is a means towards transcendence. It is to go beyond attachment and aversion, beyond grasping and shoving. So you can see it's not actually about the word itself; the word is just to point you to where you should be going.
Everything in Buddhism is in relation to aiding an individual towards enlightenment. This is what the system is designed for. The Bodhisattvas are trying to extract you from samsara and you're geeking out over the word nothingness because it sounds fucked up to you.
Nothingness is not nothing in the sense that we think of it in the West. Really when we think of nothingness we are already messing up because nothingness is supposed to be an aid in getting beyond thinking and conceptualizations so that we experience reality directly. Instead, being the spiritual plebs that we are, we decide to keep thinking about that which is supposed to help us get beyond the limitation of thinking.
Nothingness is Dharmakaya which is the seed of all manifestation, the infinite, inconceivable reservoir of pure potentiality. Words cannot actually describe Dharmakaya though and any idea of it is wrong. So the point of me characterizing it how I just did was to break out the ole 👉🏻 and see if we can possibly get just a bit closer to "it".
Nothingness is meant to be used like - empty your mind because all of your conceptual frameworks trap you. Nothingness is supposed to help navigate the labyrinth of the mind.
Another way to think of it is like no-thingness. Interdependence and the lack of distinction between "things". Understanding this, again, helps us to go beyond the mind. The mind likes to break everything down into tidy, neat little boxes - but remember folks, boxes are gay and keep you stuck in samsara. Boxes are fabrications because reality is NOT actually broken down like this - (later I will write about the doctrine of 2 truths and the relative truth of the distinctions between things). It is our minds that break things down and make distinctions and form attachments to the distinctions and identify with the distinctions and... fuck... forget about our innate Buddhanature.
But the moral of the story is always remember Buddhism is fundamentally about liberating us from samsara and making us aware of our innate Buddhanature - so terms are tools to strike down obscurations, attachments, identifications that hold us in ignorance and that lock us out of nirvana. The moment terms become something other than that we have missed the whole point and fallen into the trap of language and ultimately the trap of our own minds.
❤🔥12