The Dual Mandala

This is a thread to discuss the strength and weaknesses of teaching “both sides of the street,” as Ken Wilber puts it, the relative truth and the absolute truth.

Should teachers just teach students how to realize the absolute, the nondual, the ultimate “state,” or should they also teach stage development, how their students will behave in the world?

Does teaching on the relative side of the street harm a person's ability to realize the absolute? Or could teaching on the relative side of the street actually help a person realize the absolute?
 
Which is more important, realizing the absolute or realizing the highest in-time stage (orange, green, teal, etc.)?

Does the significance of a person's “enlightenment” (state or horizontal development) depend on what in-time stage or structure (vertical development) the person has realized?

Could someone realizing the absolute actually be a negative event for the world in some cases?
 
Do parents, schools, society teach higher stage development? If the Zen halls and ashrams don't teach higher stage development, who will? Since a realization of the absolute gives a person more power, isn't it important that they have as high a stage realization as possible? Etc.

I get the phrase “dual mandala” from Hokai. I believe it originates from his Zen tradition and that it basically means both sides of the street. Might not be entirely right about that, but it's a nice phrase.

Re: The Dual Mandala

 The conversation began on the Integral Gender Issues thread. Here's a recap:

 

I echo what David has been exploring in regards to relative and absolute truths. I also echo what Ewan says about agency, positioning and integral. Zen is explicitly NOT about rendering all relative truth equal. It also does not call relative truth a “chain around the neck”. Those thoughts suggest confusion regarding the dharma.

In Gassho,
Colin

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“I think the point here is that this is the inevitable outcome of a dualistic mind. To put ourselves and see ourselves in categorical boxes interconnected in stable taxonomies. This is the illusion of a delusioned mind…”


love

e

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Colin: “Zen is explicitly NOT about rendering all relative truth equal. It also does not call relative truth a “chain around the neck”. Those thoughts suggest confusion regarding the dharma.”

It depends on whether your talking about the relative or absolute. In a relative sense, relative truths are not equal. In an ultimate sense, all relative truth is equally empty of any self.
Nagarjuna said that those who do not truly understand these two truths, do not understand the message of the Buddha.
Everyone is getting hung up on the first truth and ignoring the second, harder to grasp, Reality of all things, thoughts, feelings and being. It is because this is the truth that is absent from the ordinary mind, and not the first, that masters should probably only use relative truth when pointing at the second truth.
KW has choosen to focus on the second one being superimposed upon the first in a kind of Boomeritis Buddhism, and we have to understand that he is talking to his audience, and we have to consider who his audience is. In fact that first truth being superimposed upon the second, is probably a lot more common, even integral circles past green.
Knowledge isn't neutral. When a teacher teaches a relative truth without this caveat, they are putting another chain around a student's neck. Because, that relative truth taught, will be just one more thing that the student has to let go of to understand the Way. It will literally impede enlightenment. You have to get past the rational mind, which is the mind of relative truth, in order to understand Truth in the absolute sense.

When a teacher tells a student something relative, they will often blindly believe them, and incorporate that truth into their concept of absolute Truth. We cannot and must not ignore the human dynamic involved in all of this.

Rick

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Rick:
“Because, that relative truth taught, will be just one more thing that the student has to let go of to understand the Way.”

I'm not so sure.
It's not my experience that it's harder to break into new states (subtle, causal) just because I keep on learning more relative truths. And it's not really that I'm learning more relative truths either, I'm learning better and more inclusive truths, hence replacing less inclusive and less accurate truths.

The whole integral model rests on the fact the vertical and horizontal development are two different things, and this insight is not always built into the old traditions that focus on horizontal development (or if they focus on vertical development they're not very… developed).

I'm sure I've hurt some buddhist feelings here, but this is an integral forum and it needs to be said.

Pelle

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David,

Thanks for the redirect.  This subject is of great interest to me and I want to be a part of it.  I have learned some very interesting things about the Buddhist view as a result of following this conversation.  I am here at present to listen. 

One question:  how can relative truth exist without some connection to the Ultimate?  I am puzzled by the notion that the relative cannot be found in the Ultimate.  “Logic,” per se fails me at this juncture (a state with which I am ok) and my “visualizer” takes over.  I can see the Ultimate as both nothing and all implications at once - literally, I can see it, however much it confounds my relatively advanced logical faculty.

yer pal,
Michael

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Isn't it silly, and a distortion of language, to talk about absolute truth as tho such a thing could be known?

The things we know and experience, we know and experience thru a brain and mind that is compound and relative.

If we have an experience of “absolute truth”, that experience is mediated thru our living bodies, making the experience relative.
  

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Rick: It depends on whether your talking about the relative or absolute.

Everything we are talking about is on the relative plane; though all is encompassed in the absolute. Words are all relative. They cannot express the absolute. The absolute is not written or talked; it is experienced. Well, “experienced” isn't the best word, either.

Rick: In an ultimate sense, all relative truth is equally empty of any self.

Empty of any permanent self. Since the absolute includes the relative, we can talk about selves. Your self and my self. Without selves, there is no realization. Who is there to realize?

Do you see how this absolute vs relative talk really gets us nowhere? It's not useful, IMHO

Rick: Everyone is getting hung up on the first truth and ignoring the second, harder to grasp, Reality of all things, thoughts, feelings and being.

Reality cannot be grasped; it is realized. Semantics, perhaps, yet here we are.

Rick: masters should probably only use relative truth when pointing at the second truth.

Again, we have nothing but relative truth to use when communicating. Absolute truth can only be experienced within, and no amount of teaching can make you get it. Unless you want to get into talking about “everything is equal from an absolute perspective”. That's using relative terms to talk about the absolute.

Rick: Knowledge isn't neutral. When a teacher teaches a relative truth without this caveat, they are putting another chain around a student's neck. Because, that relative truth taught, will be just one more thing that the student has to let go of to understand the Way. It will literally impede enlightenment.

I agree absolutely with the statement that knowledge isn't neutral. I disagree that relative truth impedes enlightenment. This is not necessarily true. Clinging to relative truth as The Truth impedes enlightenment.

That's all I have time for now. And, I do not claim to be an expert in Zen Buddhism. I've read Buddhist books off and on for over a decade; I've been actively practicing soto zen for over a year.

Edit: And Bill states my point as well: Isn't it silly, and a distortion of language, to talk about absolute truth as tho such a thing could be known?

Re: The Dual Mandala

This is carried over from the Integral Gender Issues link. I'm gonna go rock climbing, and I'll get back to this later.

Pelle: “It’s not my experience that it’s harder to break into new states (subtle, causal) just because I keep on learning more relative truths. And it’s not really that I’m learning more relative truths either, I’m learning better and more inclusive truths, hence replacing less inclusive and less accurate truths.”

Yeah, I can see that. I guess I just got a lot of that elsewhere, not in the Zen hall per say.
It would be good if teachers helped students in the process more, and explained things better maybe. This is a complex issue. You and David aren't wrong, and I can't say that what your saying also doesn't fit to my experiences. I guess I was just lucky in picking up the right book or hearing the right thing when I needed to. That's probably not the same for everyone, and so there maybe should be more of an emphasis upon a more standardized framework.

It's just that in the back of my head, I have this nagging feeling about unintended consequences. Within Buddhism there are unbroken lineages of masters and students, teaching mind to mind directly. This has been happening for well over a thousand years, and it is a proven method. It seems like all the shit that weighs down the practice are concepts, myths, and methods that seemed like a good idea to someone a few centuries ago, that became the archaic doctrine that we now have to over come. Should we replace it with something else that people will be arguing about in a few hundred years from now?
I mean what passes before the mirror is flux. The basic methods of forging the mind of a mirror are there. Otherwise it seems that Buddhism just becomes another ism  in our society. It isn't just another relative truth, which I'm afraid it is becoming in the West.
It is a means whereby one can understand Truth in the absolute sense directly. That simply doesn't change with the relative world.
The point of the whole thing is to get to the point to throw away the whole thing.
Otherwise, as e was saying in a PM to me, we are just viewing integral as ego evolving, and not the ultimate emptiness of ego itself.

Do you see where I'm comming from? I can respect your views and agree with you in a sense. Can you understand my apprehension.

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Rick, rock climbing? Awesome.

Rick wrote: Otherwise, as e was saying in a PM to me, we are just viewing integral as ego evolving, and not the ultimate emptiness of ego itself.

Integral is explicitly about ego evolving (development), and it's about transcending ego. One cannot permanently transcend ego, though. We act in the world through ego (or self; call it whatever). We live in a relative world. Ego counts in the relative world. I want the most developed ego that I can possibly have. And I want to check it at the zendo door. Then I pick it back up so that I can act in the world.

Or something like that…I'm sure something's a bit off there, I just don't have time to fine tune it. Get the gist?

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Hi Rick,

I like your last post; did you ever get into Jiddu Krishnamurti? I t sounds to me you’d like what he has to say and that this may be a very good time to read some of his writings.

Frans

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In most Buddhist practices with which I am familiar, training in relative and absolute “development” are given side by side.  My primary training has been in the Tibetan tradition (Mother Tantra, Dzogchen), though I started out for the first year or two doing Theravadin vipassana practices (Burmese, Javanese, Malaysian).

I would agree with Rick that we should not expect meditation teachers to be masters of all the various relative perspectives out there (sociology, developmental psychology, psychotherapy, evolution, neuroscience, etc), but I don't agree that relative development and training interferes, per se, with the project of awakening.

One distinction that is drawn is between the development of relative and absolute bodhicitta.  Absolute bodhicitta aims at the direct experience of shunyata through the practice of shamatha and vipashyana, whereas relative bodhicitta aims at the development of compassion, usually in two stages:  1) through cultivating the four immeasurables of lovingkindness, compassion, equanimity, and joy; through the practice of tonglen; through the development of non-attachment and the dedication of merit, etc.; and 2) through practicing the six paramitas of generosity, discipline, patience, exertion, meditation, and wisdom.  This latter stage helps us to unify, and recognize the inseparability, of emptiness and compassion.

I have heard some describe the relative practices also as forms of “state training,” but this doesn't seem entirely accurate to me, since they involve learning to take on others' perspectives; learning (through lojong and other practices) to work skillfully with thought and feeling; developing a positive attitude (which is rooted, in part, in the cognitive development of View); and so on.

I think that a number of the elements that Integral brings to the table (Shadow work, relationship work, etc.) can be seen as complementary to the above practices of developing relative bodhicitta, and if practiced alongside with (and integrated with) the development of absolute bodhicitta, they need pose no obstacle to awakening.  In fact, just the opposite.

Warm wishes,

Balder

P.S.  I posted this in the wrong spot, so I'm moving it here.  In the meantime, I see this thread is filling up with posts, which I'll go back and read.  Interesting that you bring up K, Frans, because I was going to write about him next – his schools represent a way of working with the “relative” and “absolute” at once, in my opinion….

Re: The Dual Mandala

Thanks, Balder. That helped me.

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I really respect the nature of this inquiry, and the impressive minds involved, so please don't take this the wrong way and think I'm dismissing all of you. I am simply asking, as I don't spend a lot of time getting into nitty gritty discussions like this. Perhaps there is a significant reason why it's important that I'm not seeing.

But-

Isn't the nature of duality that all of this sort of discussion about the nature of Truth is just some sort of big mental circle jerk? I feel comfortable talking Integral and stuff, and I am of the opinion that the relative world is, as divine manifestation, quite important, actually, while still allowing for the Mystery and that it's all a dream at the same time. A very important game, or a life and death farce or something like that.

So, what's with all the mentalizing?

I guess Michael came closest to what I'm saying, but I would sincerely like an answer to that. In the relative world, I'm new at this.

Liz

P.S. Oh, in answer to David, it seems like asking Zen or Christianity or any religion to teach in an integral worldview is a mistake. Integrally informed, sure, but religion isn't psychology or business (ok, that's arguable, but you get my point.)

Re: The Dual Mandala

Liz wrote: Isn't the nature of duality that all of this sort of discussion about the nature of Truth is just some sort of big mental circle jerk?

Yes, but it feeeels soooo goooood.

This is actually the point I was implicitly trying to make. Talking about relative versus absolute, especially when saying that discussion of relative truths is irrelevent, is not useful.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Liz:
“Isn't the nature of duality that all of this sort of discussion about
the nature of Truth is just some sort of big mental circle jerk?”

Basically I agree, but I think a few important points can be made, such as: vertical relative development doesn't impede realization of the absolute, only attachment to the relative impedes realization. This is similar to the fact that intellectual development does not hinder emotional growth, only if we use our intellectual realm as a hide-out from our emotions.

Ken and Integral has helped us see how things that used to be considered mutually exclusive don't have to be, and that bears repeating.

I also feel that it can be useful to discuss how teachers and practices need to change with the times, and how they need to stay the same - like Rick and Bruce have commented on.

Pelle

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Bruce:

” Interesting that you bring up K, Frans, because I was going to write about him next – his schools represent a way of working with the “relative” and “absolute” at once, in my opinion….”

Yes, and that’s what i feel is central to Rick’s question, which is why I recommended as i did. For me, K’s words came at just the right point in my “fragility of mind” and had a very important influence as such - in fact, they still do.

Liz, for you too - Krishnamurti touches on what you say; I would highly recommend his work.

Frans

Re: The Dual Mandala

Here are a few Krishnamurti quotes on his vision of education and the “right kind of educator,” and then I'll follow them up with some comments of my own.

~*~

The right kind of education begins with the educator, who must understand himself and be free from established patterns of thought; for what he is, that he imparts. If he has not been rightly educated, what can he teach except the same mechanical knowledge on which he himself has been brought up? The problem, therefore, is not the child, but the parent and the teacher; the problem is to educate the educator.
    
    If we who are the educators do not understand ourselves, if we do not understand our relationship with the child but merely stuff him with information and make him pass examinations, how can we possibly bring about a new kind of education? The pupil is there to be guided and helped; but if the guide, the helper is himself confused and narrow, nationalistic and theory-ridden, then naturally his pupil will be what he is, and education becomes a source of further confusion and strife.
    
    If we see the truth of this, we will realize how important it is that we begin to educate ourselves rightly. To be concerned with our own re-education is far more necessary than to worry about the future well-being and security of the child.
    
    To educate the educator - that is, to have him understand himself - is one of the most difficult undertakings, because most of us are already crystallized within a system of thought or a pattern of action; we have already given ourselves over to some ideology, to a religion, or to a particular standard of conduct. That is why we teach the child what to think and not how to think.

~*~

The first thing a teacher must ask himself, when he decides that he wants to teach, is what exactly he means by teaching. Is he going to teach the usual subjects in the habitual way? Does he want to condition the child to become a cog in the social machine, or help him to be an integrated, creative human being, a threat to false values? And if the educator is to help the student to examine and understand the values and influences that surround him and of which he is a part, must he not be aware of them himself? If one is blind, can one help others to cross to the other shore?

     Surely, the teacher himself must first begin to see. He must be constantly alert, intensely aware of his own thoughts and feelings, aware of the ways in which he is conditioned, aware of his activities and his responses; for out of this watchfulness comes intelligence, and with it a radical transformation in his relationship to people and to things.

~*~

How can we teach children not to seek personal security if we ourselves are pursuing it? What hope is there for the child if we who are parents and teachers are not entirely vulnerable to life, if we erect protective walls around ourselves? To discover the true significance of this struggle for security*, which is causing such chaos in the world, we must begin to awaken our own intelligence by being aware of our psychological processes; we must begin to question all the values which now enclose us.

* In Krishnamurti's understanding, this struggle for security is rooted in our misunderstanding of the nature of the self, taking it to be permanent and self-existent and the “outside” controller of thought, when it is none of the above. 

So, he is advocating an educational system in which individuals inquire simultaneously into beliefs about the self and other forms of psychological and social conditioning, actively with the children as well as in the private lives of individual educators, while at the same time teaching the “relative” subjects and skills that are the objects of focus in most other schools. 

Having taught at a Krishnamurti school, I can say a few things about the institutions he established:  They are pre-Integral in a number of ways (many teachers are Green and some of the “policies” are as well), but they nevertheless represent an educational approach which seeks to cultivate both timeless realization of the absolute (through self- and group-inquiry, silence, meditation) and relative development (in the areas of compassion, social action, environmental awareness and stewardship, and of course cognitive growth and skills development).

In the schools, the issues that come up in class and in residential school life in general – the disagreements, conflicts, prejudices, confusions, and so on – are actually taken up actively as part of the overall “curriculum,” as subjects for inquiry.  Inquiry itself is rooted in an understanding and experience, at least on the teachers' parts, of choiceless awareness, and the teachers seek to guide students to various levels of insight through exploration of these issues:  one, seeing how these issues connect to dynamics that fuel the world (in all its fragmentation); but two, when the students are a bit older and are ready, to deeply question the fundamental structures that shape our self-concepts and our relationships, and perhaps through the negating of all that is “constructed” and partial, to arrive at the “benediction of silence,” the light of the causal.  This isn't the end, either; but teachers and students together consider what it means to rest in nonconceptual awareness as the creative ground of all relative-level thinking.

Best wishes,

Bruce

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Bruce, when we're talking about students, what age are we discussing? Children need the illusion of security as a base from which to explore, no?

And thanks for your explanations, everyone else.

Pondering,

Liz

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Hi, Liz,

In the K schools I've visited, some of the deeper questions of conditioning, psychological images, self, etc, are not really explored till high school.  But simpler methods of “paying attention” to nature, feeling, thought, others' needs and wants, etc, are also encouraged in children, starting even at 1st or 2nd grade. 

“And thanks for your explanations, everyone else.”

Hmmph.  I guess you didn't like mine??

*Sniff*,

B.

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Here are some things the Buddha had to say about right view;

Bhikkhus, just as the dawn is the forerunner and first indication of the rising of the sun, so is right view the forerunner and first indication of wholesome states.

For one of right view, bhikkhus, right intention springs up. For one of right intention, right speech springs up. For one of right speech, right action springs up. For one of right action, right livelihood springs up. For one of right livelihood, right effort springs up. For one of right effort, right mindfulness springs up. For one of right mindfulness, right concentration springs up. For one of right concentration, right knowledge springs up. For one of right knowledge, right deliverance springs up. -Anguttara Nikaya 10:121

Here is a link to the Discourse of Right View according to the Pali scriptures.

From the foreword:

As its title suggests, the subject of the Sammaditthi Sutta is right view. The analysis of right view undertaken in the sutta brings us to the very core of the Dhamma, since right view constitutes the correct understanding of the central teachings of the Buddha, the teachings which confer upon the Buddha's doctrine its own unique and distinctive stamp. Though the practice of right mindfulness has rightly been extolled as the crest jewel of the Buddha's teaching, it cannot be stressed strongly enough that the practice of mindfulness, or any other approach to meditation, only becomes an effective instrument of liberation to the extent that it is founded upon and guided by right view. Hence, to confirm the importance of right view, the Buddha places it at the very beginning of the Noble Eightfold Path. Elsewhere in the Suttas the Buddha calls right view the forerunner of the path (pubbangama), which gives direction and efficacy to the other seven path factors.

Right view, as explained in the commentary to the Sammaditthi Sutta, has a variety of aspects, but it might best be considered as twofold: conceptual right view, which is the intellectual grasp of the principles enunciated in the Buddha's teaching, and experiential right view, which is the wisdom that arises by direct penetration of the teaching. Conceptual right view, also called the right view in conformity with the truths (saccanulomika-sammaditthi), is a correct conceptual understanding of the Dhamma arrived at by study of the Buddha's teachings and deep examination of their meaning. Such understanding, though conceptual rather than experiential, is not dry and sterile. When rooted in faith in the Triple Gem and driven by a keen aspiration to realize the truth embedded in the formulated principles of the Dhamma, it serves as a critical phase in the development of wisdom (pañña), for it provides the germ out of which experiential right view gradually evolves.

Experiential right view is the penetration of the truth of the teaching in one's own immediate experience. Thus it is also called right view that penetrates the truths (saccapativedha-sammaditthi). This type of right view is aroused by the practice of insight meditation guided by a correct conceptual understanding of the Dhamma. To arrive at direct penetration, one must begin with a correct conceptual grasp of the teaching and transform that grasp from intellectual comprehension to direct perception by cultivating the threefold training in morality, concentration and wisdom. If conceptual right view van be compared to a hand, a hand that grasps the truth by way of concepts, then experiential right view can be compared to an eye - the eye of wisdom that sees directly into the true nature of existence ordinarily hidden from us by our greed, aversion and delusion.

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That was the one of the best posts I've seen on the subject for a while Bjorn, thank you. It was succinct and clear.

I think everyone is kind of talking around the same thing here, and everyone is agreeing as well. My point however is kind of getting lost in what people think I'm saying, over the more subtle point I'm trying to get across. I just got back from work and I'm gonna get some sleep, so I'll explain what I'm trying to say in more detail tomorrow. Suffice to say, the methods and type of relative truths I'm talking about are of a fundamentally different nature in a conventional sense.
I'm not talking about somehow doing the impossible and not utilizing relative truth. Again I'll explain myself again later.

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I think much of the controversy stemming from this topic is because some “Absolutists” will not “compromise” their highly esteemed absolute view. They will not swim in the same pond as one who has no dislike or fear for murky or turbulent waters. They do not realize that the water is the same, in the sea and in the pond alike. They are not quick enough to adjust to the ever changing circumstances. Not able to freely float between the Absolute and the relative, and never able to see their ultimate non-difference. Too proud to listen to what is being said and conform to it, but need to insist to turn things their way. They do not realize that a person can be fully aquainted with the Absolute and yet speak as normal, every day relative as you and me.

The Zen stories of Masters ripping in to their students was to wake them up. Once awake there was just chopping wood carrying water in the relative world.

Are they just contrarian for the sake of argument? I don't think so. It is easy to go on an Absolute crusade and feel superior to all other lost souls. When in fact they haven't even taken their Absolute understanding very far at all. Study a bit more please. Dialoges will become much more productive and less one view opposed to another. Such a waste of time. Each encounter is new, every interaction starts afresh. We must listen and blend with what is coming our way. Then you can insert, direct, blend, and enlighten, and learn, all at the same time.

For those of us that have had no direct insight into an Absolute view these people that advocate an Absolute stance might confuse you or inspire you. Let them inspire you to reach for your own direct insight, but never loose touch with the crucial understanding that it is from that view we can see all relative aspects in a true, objective light and then be able to distinguish between arrogance and humility. Even though most peiople do a pretty good job of doing that regardless of insight.

The true beauty of life is when, thanks to an Absolute insight, we begin to see the perfect order and love inherent in all things relative. Now all things make sense and we honor this world and its variety.

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Oh, Bruce! Such a sensitive guy. (This is one of those times I wish we had emoticons here. I know, we can link, but it's not the same.)

Liz

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Bjorn wrote: I think much of the controversy stemming from this topic is because some “Absolutists” will not “compromise” their highly esteemed absolute view. They will not swim in the same pond as one who has no dislike or fear for murky or turbulent waters. They do not realize that the water is the same, in the sea and in the pond alike. They are not quick enough to adjust to the ever changing circumstances. Not able to freely float between the Absolute and the relative, and never able to see their ultimate non-difference. Too proud to listen to what is being said and conform to it, but need to insist to turn things their way. They do not realize that a person can be fully aquainted with the Absolute and yet speak as normal, every day relative as you and me.

Bjorn, I appreciate what you've added to this conversation; however, since it isn't specified in the quote above whether you are speaking in general terms or directing your comments to people who have commented in this thread, I'll just add one note. I can't speak for anyone else. I don't see much “controversy” here. I also don't see ”“Absolutists” [who] will not “compromise” their highly esteemed absolute view” or ”one who has no dislike or fear for murky or turbulent waters”. Given the restating of this “view” over and over again in the quoted paragraph, perhaps we're seeing what is more projection material than a reflection of what is actually occurring in this thread?

I see an interesting conversation in which people are questioning views in a mutual exploration and digging into semantic clarification, perhaps. Perhaps Rick means something other than what his words have explicitly stated thus far in this and other threads. Perhaps the same applies to others as well. Perhaps we're dealing with a constraint of virtual communication attempts. Rick seems to agree that there may be a miscommunication happening. If so, it's useful to have a conversation to get clarity, yes?

The entire point of my engagement in this dialog is in the hopes that ”[d]ialoges will become much more productive”.

Perhaps I'm not seeing something that others are, though? Anyone else see “absolutist” or “superior” views actually occurring within this thread?

Edit: I've read one of my posts again above, and I can see how it might come off as “absolutist”. That certainly wasn't my intent. I hold very little with an absolutist death grip. Again, does anyone else read it that way?

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Hey David,
 

The Two Truths are alluded to in the original canon as conventional worldly understanding and ultimate understanding (Dharma as Truth). Nagarjuna used this to further clarify the teachings (dharma as the teachings, not Dharma as Truth) themselves. It is this reference that we are talking about here. We are not talking about relative knowledge of say physics, biology, psychology, etc in the relative aspect of the two truths. The context is the Buddha's teaching. So with that in mind, I will answer your questions.

Should teachers just teach students how to realize the absolute, the nondual, the ultimate “state,” or should they also teach stage development, how their students will behave in the world?

When the Buddha first taught, he did not have to teach his monks how to behave. The first sermon given to the 5 ascetics was enough for one of them (Kondanna) to get a glimpse of nirvana. It was only later when 'lesser' grade aspirants joined the sangha that behavior issues created the necessity of rules (vinaya) to govern behavior.

Does teaching on the relative side of the street harm a person's ability to realize the absolute? Or could teaching on the relative side of the street actually help a person realize the absolute?
 
Within the context of the teachings…relative is all we have and so is indespensible till you get to the other shore. Only then is the relative truth of the teaching dispensed with.

Which is more important, realizing the absolute or realizing the highest in-time stage (orange, green, teal, etc.)?

The Buddha said that spending 1 day trying to perfect the 4 foundations of mindfullness had more merit than 100 years of doing good deeds.

Does the significance of a person's “enlightenment” (state or horizontal development) depend on what in-time stage or structure (vertical development) the person has realized?

You would have to ask a Buddha that for a definitive answer. IMHO any being at anytime can realize the absolute. It is always right here, right now. We are like fish in water, we just don't see it.

Could someone realizing the absolute actually be a negative event for the world in some cases?
 
Doubt it, unless you mean it would be bad for the economy i.e. people would feel less compelled to buy stuff they don't really need.


Do parents, schools, society teach higher stage development? If the Zen halls and ashrams don't teach higher stage development, who will? Since a realization of the absolute gives a person more power, isn't it important that they have as high a stage realization as possible? Etc.

Again, from the context of the two-truths, mundane or worldly knowledge is not within this context. Within the context, there is plenty of stage-state development.

Bill: If we have an experience of “absolute truth”, that experience is mediated thru our living bodies, making the experience relative.

While the “experience” is “happening”, there is no mediation going on. It is only post experience that this can be claimed. This is a very difficult thing to talk about as all we have is relative means of expression. Maybe poetry is best in this regard.

Hey Bjorn…thanks for bringing in Right View, I was going to mention it but your quote covers the germane points. The only issue I have with it is “the practice of insight meditation”. You cannot practice insight, insight is the result of practice done correctly. The real practice is satipatthana. If we could practice insight directly then everyone would easily be awakened and that is not the case.

Liz & Colin >> See Bjorn's post on right view. Establishing the first half of right view involves mentation. The second half of right view is experiential i.e. you have to meditate.

Bringing this over from the Integral Gender Issues thread…

Pelle:

The whole integral model rests on the fact the vertical and horizontal development are two different things, and this insight is not always built into the old traditions that focus on horizontal development (or if they focus on vertical development they're not very… developed).

Pelle what old traditions have you studied and practiced with enough depth and detail to make this assertion? And dancing does not count! :-)


love


e

Re: The Dual Mandala

e wrote: Pelle what old traditions have you studied and practiced with enough depth and detail to make this assertion?

e, would you answer your own question as well, please? Rick, would you disclose your background here also?

Re: The Dual Mandala

e: “The Two Truths are alluded to in the original canon as conventional worldly understanding and ultimate understanding (Dharma as Truth). Nagarjuna used this to further clarify the teachings (dharma as the teachings, not Dharma as Truth) themselves. It is this reference that we are talking about here. We are not talking about relative knowledge of say physics, biology, psychology, etc in the relative aspect of the two truths.”

Thanx e, I would have probably taken about 3 paragraphs with charts, graphs and examples to say what you just did. I think if I ever meet you in person, I'm just gonna go up to you and start humping your leg. ;^)

This is my point. It is a far different thing to teach Absolute Truth, i.e. this direct moment, via relative truth, than to teach relative truth as Absolute Truth. One can be taught, one can't.
As KW says, evolution happens and it is a mistake to automatically follow your grasping mind to fill in the blanks. When a teacher fills in the blanks of ungraspable Truth, then they are teaching just another 1st tier religion, and not Integral religion. Religion, after all, comes from the Latin religio which means to “bind back,” or to bind back to Truth.
Zen and other Buddhism masters, as well as understanding Rabbis, Yogis and others, have utilized relative truth, along with methods like meditation for direct experience, to help students awaken from the beginning.
It would be stupid for me to be against this. The goal, however, is and has always been to get the student to See all relative truth with a certain quality of mind, i.e., that it is all equally empty of any permanence or inherent nature.
This is the only way someone can see the relative for what it is directly, and not via conditioned concepts that came about before a person was even born.

To answer Colin.
My back ground is strange as far as backgrounds go I guess, but I assume your only talking about formal training. I think a complete background would be necessary, because everything that I've done or been through has defined anything that I think that I presently understand. I didn't want to duck this question out of a matter of principle, although it is rather an unfair question of single two people out with. Since your only asking to see if you can discount what we are saying.
I don't feel like doing that, so I'll stick to just the formal.
I've been studying Buddhism since I was about 16; I'm 31 now. I started to do so after becoming a disillusioned Christian. I also studied Kabbala with a Rabbi, the occult, and various New Age things during this time, but nothing past the surface like with Buddhist studies. Since then I've studied dozens of local and global religions, but only as an outside academic and not an inside pracitioner.
I picked up a copy of KW's, A Brief History of Everything, when I was about 17 and reread it a couple of times later on as I began to understand it more. Also, A Theory of Everything, and a few other books, along with Gibran, Rumi, Gergief (sp?), etc… Also started to read all the Anarchist classics around 19, after working as a migrant worker in Louisiana over a summer, and spending a few month in a south Chicago ghetto after that.
I'm fast forwarding here.
I come back from Japan after being forward deployed with the U.S. Navy in Yokosuka at 27.
Move to Houston where I became a member of the Sanghas of both the Jade Buddha Temple (Mahayana), and the Chung Tai Chan (Zen) meditation center; both Chinese.
To save money for my wedding and honeymoon in Japan, I worked at oil and chemical refineries for a company along the Gulf Coast.
Became as ordained as a lay member can get after the two ceremonies we go through, and received my Buddhist name in Chinese, which I don't remember, because we never actually use them as lay members.
I also completed the beginning, moderate and advanced courses for meditation and Buddhist studies at the Chung Tai center, run by the former vice abbot of the world's largest Buddhist Temple in Taiwan. I don't live in Houston anymore, but I'm still in contact, so I guess I've been a member there for about 4 years now, and am currently a member of a lay Japanese Sangha in San Antonio. Myself and about 3 other guys basically lived there for a few year, spending all our free time.


Really my formal training is probably not any more impressive than anyone else here. David has a Master's in Psychology I believe, and this is a very formally educated bunch.
I don't claim to know anymore than I do, and any insight I might have is probably due more to my varied backgound in so many subjects, cultures and lifestyles. After a while it all starts to click together.

Re: The Dual Mandala

I've gone round and round and round again on the duality of absolute and relative, which is supposed to be nondual. If interested one can see this insanity at the OI threads ”The two truths of Nagarjuna” or ”Performative contradiction.” For now I'll leave you with this, from  

“Nagarjuna and the limits of thought” by Garfield and Priest, Philosophy East & West Volume 53, Number 1, January 2003, 1-21.

For Western philosophers it is very tempting to adopt a Kantian understanding of Nagarjuna (as is offered, e.g., in Murti 1955). Identify conventional reality with the phenomenal realm, and ultimate reality with the noumenal, and there you have it. But this is not Nagarjuna's view. The emptiness of emptiness means that ultimate reality cannot be thought of as a Kantian noumenal realm. For ultimate reality is just as empty as conventional reality. Ultimate reality is hence only conventionally real! The distinct realities are therefore identical.

If Nagarjuna is correct in his critique of essence, and if it thus turns out that all things lack fundamental natures, it turns out that they all have the same nature, that is, emptiness, and hence both have and lack that very nature. This is a direct consequence of the purely negative character of the property of emptiness, a property Nagarjuna first fully characterizes, and the centrality of which to philosophy he first demonstrates. Most dramatically, Nagarjuna demonstrates that the emptiness of emptiness permits the ‘‘collapse'' of the distinction between the two truths, revealing the empty to be simply the everyday, and so saves his ontology from a simple-minded dualism. Nagarjuna demonstrates that the profound-limit contradiction he discovers sits harmlessly at the heart of all things. In traversing the limits of the conventional world, there is a twist, like that in a Mobius strip, and we find ourselves to have returned to it, now fully aware of the contradiction on which it rests.

Re: The Dual Mandala

theurj quoted: Ultimate reality is hence only conventionally real!

Excellent point! Thanks!

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Rick, not sure why you're inclined to make assumptions about what my intentions are. I just want to point out that you're making not-very-generous assumptions when you make such statements:
I didn't want to duck this question out of a matter of principle, although it is rather an unfair question of single two people out with. Since your only asking to see if you can discount what we are saying. I don't feel like doing that, so I'll stick to just the formal.

e asked this same question of Pelle:
Pelle what old traditions have you studied and practiced with enough depth and detail to make this assertion? And dancing does not count! :-)
 
Was he singling Pelle out then? Was he perhaps discounting what Pelle had to offer? Did you notice that? Did you notice that I actually answered that very question in one of my previous posts? Who is clique-ing? Buddhists wouldn't do that, now would they? See your quote with reference to who “we” is.

You certainly have more formal buddhist practice under your robe than I do. That said, I don't believe that my experience is best discounted either. For the record, my question's purpose was to gain insight into the foundation for that of which you speak. I do not seek to discredit anything anyone says. I may take statements with “a grain of salt”; however, I am very rigorously engaged in self inquiry in relation to everything around me and within “me”. To assume otherwise is….well, your issue not mine.

Business aside, thanks for sharing your experience. Truly.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Yeah, I like Garfield. I read his translation of Nagarjuna's, Perfection of the Middle Way, with commentary.
Both e and I have made the same point and I think it was done rather clearly, so I'll just drop it, 'cause it ain't gettin picked up.

Colin, if e asked Pelle then ask away at e, but I never questioned anyone's authority directly here. You brought me into the question for a reason.

One of the most prevalent self-delusions that humans seem to all agree with, along with paper money having value, are the nuanced power struggles that take place within every relationship.
Foucault helped to shine a light on this aspect, and I don't see any other reasonable explination for someone breaking with the tradition of the forum, as I can't remember anyone ever asking anyone for a run down of their back ground to prove some authority on a subject, other than to call them out. Pelle made a statement and e called him out for it. You called e out for his statement, but you included me in it and you did so for a reason.
Don't get hypersensitive here on me, I answered the question and I didn't make a big deal about it.

“For the record, my question's purpose was to gain insight into the foundation for that of which you speak.”

Exactly, and if I didn't come correct with the proper credentials, then what? Otherwise what does my background have to do with it?
There's not one person on the forum that read your question that honestly thought to themselves that you were honestly after a completely innocent, neutral piece of information to help you understand something.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Hi Colin,

I did not necesarily mean anyone specific in this thread, but more generally an attitude that we all can adere to at one point or another. I know I have done plenty of it. But sometimes we talk across eachother pushing our agenda, well intended and enlightening but slightly not hearing the other or not willing to understand the “relative” truths being discussed.

I find it wonderful when we can address all things with both views in mind, and see how they relate, how they inform eachother.

There is for sure an Absolute view inherent in our very being, just always here and now. It is not dependant on us. It is there, right in front of our faces. No need to call it anything. You do not need a name tagged onto you in order to know that you're alive. And then, so, we engage eachother always with this reality ever present in our experience, whether we like it or not, whether we understand or not, whether we “see” it or not.

I enjoy our investigation and have no problem with any posts, but enjoy some more than others, some making me sit up, some making me want to engage. We all fill in where there is need. That's whats so great with so many voices, we all can cover so much ground together.

I have no need to argue a point, or justify myself (even though I'd like to think I'd owe up any shortcomings in my rantings if pointed out), no need to defend a position.

Live and learn

Re: The Dual Mandala

I don't think that I got what I was trying to say across in that last post. So I'll sum it up.

“Was he singling Pelle out then? Was he perhaps discounting what Pelle had to offer? ”

Yeah, that was exactly what he was doing, and it was pretty obvious. Pelle has written that basic idea, which is a paraphrase from some KW or Andrew Cohen once said, I forget the author from the first time he quoted it a while back, and e was questioning whether he could back up the statement with at least an example so something. I know I've thought the same thing everytime Pelle restates that thought. I don't think anyone read that exchange that thought it was anything different than that.
What this has to do with me, I don't know.  Everytime anyone here disagrees with someone they are basically challenging the authority and knowledge of that person in a subtle way. That is the nature of rhetoric and debate.

And, if anyone didn't know this already, I love to debate. It's like crack.
No, its like crack sprinkled on a krispy cream eaten off a hookers ass!  I'm trying to say it's good.

Re: The Dual Mandala

You wrote: Don't get hypersensitive here on me, I answered the question and I didn't make a big deal about it. 

That's not my read, sir, for you did not merely answer the question. You made erroneous assumptions about my intentions (which I seriously doubt everyone in the pod agrees with), and that is what I was responding to. I started out merely questioning ideas to get clarity and then sought to highlight foundational positions, which I myself disclosed earlier. No hypersensitivity is involved on my part. Sensitivity, yes; hypersensitivity, no.

Why did I ask the question about history originally? My reads on some of your posts recently (I don't have time for direct quotes) is that you sometimes make comments as if you know more about the “absolute truth” than others here in this pod do. So I was simply trying to get a sense of your position and its foundation; no more, no less.

I like debate just as much as the next guy or gal. Why is it deemed controversial or insulting to get a sense of people's histories when they are making claims to having specific knowledge? Both you and e seem to make claims about having buddhist insight; that's why I directed the question to both of you after e directed the same question to Pelle. I didn't know either of your histories like I do some others, so I was interested. Sorry it rubbed you the wrong way.

I'm off to eat some krispy kreme crack; I'll skip the hooker's ass, though.  8P

Re: The Dual Mandala

Pelle:

The whole integral model rests on the fact the vertical and horizontal development are two different things, and this insight is not always built into the old traditions that focus on horizontal development (or if they focus on vertical development they're not very… developed).

Re: The Dual Mandala

Pelle wrote:  The whole integral model rests on the fact the vertical and horizontal development are two different things, and this insight is not always built into the old traditions that focus on horizontal development (or if they focus on vertical development they're not very… developed).

When someone makes a remark about the level of development of a tradition, I do think it is legitimate to ask how that person has come to that conclusion, and to what degree the individual is familiar with the tradition they are critiquing.

In assessing how “developed” a tradition is, I think we should be fairly discriminating – noting that some lines may be more developed than others, for instance.  As an example, if you haven't noticed, all of the higher levels of moral development in Wilber's model, and a number of the higher stages in Cook-Greuter's model, are based (in part) on stages of development in traditional Buddhism.  It's not simply a case of Buddhism shooting into the stratosphere on the “states” plane, and staying at Amber in terms of vertical development.  Historically, you can see that there have been individuals who have gone well beyond Amber, and while culturally (as a whole) Buddhism has tended to remain at an Amber level, some of its teachers and primary texts embody levels in second and even third tier. 

So, it's not fair to say that the old traditions are, as a whole, “vertically challenged.”   Have they tended to remain vertically undeveloped in some areas?  Yes.  But certainly not in all.  Even Integral relies on some of their highest vertical stages (moral development, self-identity, etc) for its own, even in Wilber-5.

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: The Dual Mandala

Bruce and e and everyone,

I was talking about the general CoG of spiritual teachers, and that is as Bruce says often around amber.

It is beyond me how anyone could think that I was claiming to have knowledge of all the great spiritual traditions and their texts! Sure, I wrote a brief and sweeping statement, but come on - at least try to interpret it realistically. It is very interesting to note that in a  discussion such as this one it is always implicitly assumed that one is talking about Buddhism, and had it not been for that fact everyone would have understood that I couldn't possibly be claiming full access to all spiritual texts ever.

To be honest this discussion isn't even very interesting to me (personally) as it is not my current focus, I was simply trying to bring in current AQAL views into the mix (that's what I do sometimes as a mod). I will therefore bow out and leave it to the Buddhists to battle it out amongst themselves.



Pelle

Re: The Dual Mandala

Hi, Pelle,

I intended no offense; I hope none was taken.  I certainly don't expect you to have exhaustive knowledge of all spiritual texts in all traditions.  But I do think if you want to make a blanket statement about “old traditions,” you should at least have some working knowledge of them.  We should not let each other get away with sweepingly dismissing any perspective as undeveloped, at least not without being able to back that up.  I understand that you, personally, are not a big fan of Buddhism – but I think we do a disservice to the many rich traditions if we simply assume that, because they are pre-Integral, in some respects at least, that they are therefore undeveloped vertically in all areas.  There may be – and I believe there are – treasures present which should not be neglected or downplayed, and which in fact may represent horizons of development beyond which any of us here have personally attained.

Best wishes,

Bruce

Re: The Dual Mandala

Hey, great posts everybody. I suddenly got busy so I haven't been able to participate as I would like.

Just to clarify what the basic issue is because a few posters have wondered about it: Some teachers will just teach the absolute truth (all is one) and to every question they get about the relative domain they will answer  something like “It is all an illusion”, “The Self will take care of it”, “All you need to do is Be,” etc. Some teachers do this because they don't see any value in the relative world or think that absolute realization will cure everything or perhaps just don't appreciate some of the issues in the relative world well enough; some, like Adyashanti, will be at least to some extent aware of the shortcomings of just teaching the absolute but will do it anyway because they think getting a student to a realization of Oneness will then help with development in the relative sphere. It may, but as Hokai recently told me, it will not always have that effect because realization of Oneness can worsen any dysfunction in the personal self:

 

Hokai: “Dysfunction definitely gets worse, because the relative personality may (1) get “left to its own devices” which in itself is a “transcendist/ascendist” pathology, (2) get overwhelmed by energies liberated at any stage in realization, especially with some subtle openings, or (3) the shadow aspects may appopriate some of the newly acquired impersonal grandeur/authenticity and establish effectively their own strategies. Surely there are combinations of these, as well as other types of problems. Please consult ”Integral Spirituality” for details, and you will find great stuff on both your questions. Daniel Ingram also gives some great examples in his hardcore dharma approach, though more practice oriented with much less theoretical detail. You can download his whole book here, or read it online as a “blook”.”

But there are other issues as well.

e said:  

”(David:) Which is more important, realizing the absolute or realizing the highest in-time stage (orange, green, teal, etc.)?

The Buddha said that spending 1 day trying to perfect the 4 foundations of mindfullness had more merit than 100 years of doing good deeds.”

You'll have to give an arguement for why 1 day of practicing mindfulness is better than 100 years of doing good deeds. Just because the Buddha said it doesn't make it so. I have an awfully hard time agreeing with that one.

e said:
 

”(David:) Does the significance of a person's “enlightenment” (state or horizontal development) depend on what in-time stage or structure (vertical development) the person has realized?

You would have to ask a Buddha that for a definitive answer. IMHO any being at anytime can realize the absolute. It is always right here, right now. We are like fish in water, we just don't see it.”

Which would have more significance, a Buddha who can rationalize or a Buddha that can't rationalize? Who has more significance today, Neem Karoli Baba, who didn't leave much of a written or recorded record, or Nisargadatta whose many teachings are still read by thousands around the world? Nisargadatta had skills on the relative side of the street that Neem Karoli Baba, as great as he was, didn't develop, so the significance of anyone's enlightenment depends on what sort of skills they can develop on the relative side of the street.

To put it another way, imagine a rational Buddha with a bunch of pre-rational students. Would it be better for the Buddha just to teach the absolute and spawn a bunch of irrational Buddhas, or would it be a good idea also to teach them how to rationalize? Remember, in some Tibetan Buddhist schools they will spend up to 4 hours a day in debate not meditation in order to refine people's ability in critical thinking. That is a dual mandala or part of it (they also teach compassion, yoga, etc.). Those teachers who do not help their students discriminate in the relative realm–usually it's because they don't discriminate very well themselves–are just teaching with one mandala so to speak.
 

e said:

”(David:) Could someone realizing the absolute actually be a negative event for the world in some cases?
 
Doubt it, unless you mean it would be bad for the economy i.e. people would feel less compelled to buy stuff they don't really need.”

We've all heard stories of gurus abusing their students in various ways, right? Could some have done more harm than good or perhaps as much harm as good? The great insight–one of many–that Ken Wilber brings to us is the insight that people evolve along different lines. So, a person can go all the way along the meditative/inquiry line and become “enlightened” in the traditional sense but not develop along the ethical line or the cognitive line. What we have then is an unethical Buddha who can't think straight. So it's best if teachers can teach both the absolute truth and relative truth, things like ethics, affect, and cognition, so that their student-Buddhas will not harm people with their great Buddha power and might even help. Not all their students will come to them ethically developed and discriminating well in the relative realm; in fact, nearly all of them will not.

Will it hurt our ability to realize the absolute if we also devote ourselves to relative issues? I don't see how it could. The alternative is to simply stay in whatever conditioning we have at the time we start our meditative training, and I don't see how that would help. For one thing, we can straighten our our karma and have less “stuff” to deal with in our lives. Also, we can bring a lot of our identity out of the physical and emotional bodies with karma or evolutionary yoga and become more transparent beings. The less a person is embedded in the fears and desires of the personal self the easier it will be for radiance to break through, and this can be accomplished–that is, we can “disembed”–as much in our discrimination throughout the day as in meditation.

edit: Yes, I do see how dwelling on the relative could hurt with state training (realizing oneness). It all has to be done very skillfully, of course, to work. If there's fear in the teacher who is teaching the relative as well that could hurt, for example, if he or she is transmitting that fear. Eckhart Tolle did a pretty good job on this aspect of it in this video. 



 

Re: The Dual Mandala

Pelle! Don't go! I at first had intended to include one of your quotes because it summed it all up so well:
 

The whole integral model rests on the fact the vertical and horizontal development are two different things, and this insight is not always built into the old traditions that focus on horizontal development (or if they focus on vertical development they're not very… developed).

And I for one knew that you weren't talking about the dual-mandala Buddhist traditions. Maybe it's because I don't identify as a Buddhist. Anyway, I know it's not what you need to work on right now yourself, but if we could get the whole pod understanding this point it would be so much better. So many discussions get hung up on this point and the difference between states and stages. If you don't get that, please give that link a try. It takes time. It did for me and everyone else.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Also, I should add, lest I leave the wrong impression, that Adyashanti often refers people to get counseling and whatnot before taking on his work, so he's definitely not a teacher who chooses to focus on the absolute (he does hit both sides of the street to some extent) out of ignorance.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Hey Pelle!

I just have to call you on this one.

I was musing earlier how IMO you'd given quite a good politician's answer to e's question …. which needs to be re-stated now, I think, for purposes of clarity:

”Pelle what old traditions have you studied and practiced with enough depth and detail to make this assertion?”

The assertion of yours e was referring to was:

”The whole integral model rests on the fact the vertical and horizontal development are two different things, and this insight is not always built into the old traditions that focus on horizontal development (or if they focus on vertical development they're not very… developed).”

Both you and e referenced the 'old traditions', so I think it's a little disingenuous of you to claim that e or anyone else is assuming 'one' was talking only of Buddhism – as it is to suggest that anyone might have been mislead by “.. that fact .. [sic]” into thinking you might have had “… full access to all spiritual texts ever”. Avoiding the question and laying a smoke-screen, seems to me :)

IMHO if you had a depth of study and practice of any of the 'old traditions' (and I'm not assuming here that you haven't), and from within this context you were able to uphold the thrust of your assertion, then you shouldn't have needed to side-step e's question.

Because as I see it e's question implies something …. that within at least one (and he may have an understanding of more than one) of the 'old traditions' there is a wealth and depth of View and realised experience that simply won't lie down, roll over and play dead when the W-C lattice theoretical model is pointed at it and KW or anyone else says bang bang you're … only partial, or  ….  ”not very… developed”.

You wrote: ”I was talking about the general CoG of spiritual teachers, and that is as Bruce says often around amber.”

First of all, Bruce didn't say this. He said, clearly distinguishing between the culture within which the teachers taught, and (some of) the teachers themselves:

“Historically, you can see that there have been individuals who have gone well beyond Amber, and while culturally (as a whole) Buddhism has tended to remain at an Amber level, some of its teachers and primary texts embody levels in second and even third tier.”

Second, you're simply no more qualified than I am to to adjudge what any major spiritual teacher's CoG is/was …. and neither is KW. The notion that integral theory doesn't seem to allow (please correct me if I'm wrong here) a spiritual teacher from humanity's Amber period to have a higher than an Amber CoG because it doesn't fit in with the model, doesn't by itself prove what level of development that teacher had. Of course, one can always theorise.

Finally, I think you're again being a little disingenuous with your parting remarks:

”To be honest this discussion isn't even very interesting to me (personally) as it is not my current focus, I was simply trying to bring in current AQAL views into the mix (that's what I do sometimes as a mod). I will therefore bow out and leave it to the Buddhists to battle it out amongst themselves.”

It seems to me that you can hold and express “.. current AQAL views ..” as religiously and as dogmatically as anyone here may hold and express the views of their spiritual tradition — and you have referenced Buddhism in the past rather than another -ism when expressing “.. current AQAL views ..”

And yes, this is the I-I pod, but to my mind it still remains to be convincingly demonstrated that, for example, Buddhism isn't essentially, within its vast reach and range, already always super-integral, never mind integral.

And IMHO I don't think you should “hide behind your badge” …. or leave if it appears to be getting a little warm.

Your friend Lol

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Wow Lol, I don't think even I could be that blunt, but I'm glad you wrote this post, because it helps to explain what I was trying to get at. That is, the original point of this whole thread.

It is this. When I say that a teacher shouldn't teach relative truth as Truth itself, is is because that is just more delusion for the student, and you pointed right at why.

If we integrate the dogma of AQAL into the tool back for Buddhist teachers, while we're presently in the process of purging dogma from this new American Buddhism, then we are just replacing one religious dogma for another.
To say that is the purpose of religoun or of the Dharma is to misunderstand the Dharma IMO.
It simply isn't just another framework or cosmological mythology, or belief system. Belief is what must be abandoned. To quote Shunryu Suzuki, Zen master:

“I have discovered that it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color -something which exists before all forms and colors appear.”

Integral theory, Chaos theory, anthropology, psychology, physics, etc… are all very important and necessary in many ways, but we have to see this knowledge for what it is. We must not confuse an awakened mind with the thoughts that pass before it.

Integral theory itself points to the fact that one cannot truly understand the higher stages or the relative knowledge understood therein, until one inhabits that stage, whatever inhabiting that stage means.
This makes the most integral and important practice that which develops one's own consciousness. I don't think that pushing relative knowledge into one's brain will get someone to a higher stage better or faster, or whatever, than practices like watching one's own mind (meditation). KW has stated this many times, yet this important message is being left out.
The Dharma is like a raft to carry you to the other shore. Loading down the raft won't make it float better or faster. Let the raft be the raft, and let one understanding be one's understanding.

To quote a 9th century Zen teacher Linji or Rinzai in Japanese:

“There are Zen students who are in chains when they go to a teacher, and the teacher adds another chain. The students are delighted, unable to discern one thing from another. This is called a guest looking at a guest.”

In our delusion, we think that awakening to this moment  is just another item to complete and knock off our list of things to do. And so we try to get a better idea of what Reality is like –instead of stepping away from intellection altogether. If you feel that your getting something from your practice, this is just ordinary stuff. It's bondage, not freedom. There's nothing to get.

Intellect and relative truth is very important in a conventional sense, so don't confuse what I'm saying here. I'm saying that you will never See or know Truth itself, with intellect, a model or a framework. In fact this is the very kind of thing that will keep you from seeing what's actually going on, moment to moment.
Once you understand the true nature of things, then you can manipulate the relative nature of things all day long. The former doesn't hamper the ability of the other, it just limits the seriousness of it.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Lol, Bruce, Rick, e, everyone


No, I will not start citing credentials, nor do I feel that the burden of proof in this discussion is on me.

If you feel that the buddhist framework (or any other framework for that matter) is of equal standing to the Integral Framework as presented by Ken Wilber, then it is up to you to prove that. Until that happens, I will consider it/them to be very valuable but at the end of the day still partial. i have never negated that certain lines of development or certain authors could have been very developed and way ahead of the times - in fact, that is the consensus as far as I know and KW also states this repeatedly.

As far as I'm concerned, the main idea of the Integral Framework is that you can take your own spiritual path (Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, or what have you) and plug it into AQAL, hence getting the best of two worlds and two frameworks.


e:
The Buddha said that spending 1 day trying to perfect the 4 foundations of mindfullness had more merit than 100 years of doing good deeds.

Well, I will prefer the 100 years of doing good deeds every time.
I have no idea if this truly was a statement from the Buddha, but if it is then I must say that I prefer Christianity and its message of love, compassion and stressing good deeds.
(I'm thinking that e's quote is probably not the stance of most Buddhists, but even having such quotes circulating within a tradition is problematic IMO).



Pelle

p.s. You guys should be recognizing that I'm doing y'all a service. By attacking your revered Buddhist framework I'm lessening your attachment to it, hence bringing you all closer to permanent horizontal enlightenment :)

Re: The Dual Mandala

Lol,

As you can see in my response above I disagree with pretty much your whole post, as far as the opinions expressed.

But I appreciate your last part and took it to heart:
And IMHO I don't think you should “hide behind your badge” …. or leave if it appears to be getting a little warm.


I'm not hiding behind any badge, but you're certainly right that it was too early for me to bow out at that point, and thank you for being direct about it.


in friendship,
Pelle

Re: The Dual Mandala

David,

Thanks for your support, I appreciate it. I know that you know what I mean because we have been teasing out the differences between structures and states together in the past.

It surprises me that the buddhist framework is such a holy cow, it's contradictory concerning how much Buddhism talks about the Absolute and Truth.


Pelle

Re: The Dual Mandala

Hi, Pelle,

While welcoming the attachment cutting swipes of your sword :-) , I want to point out that I would make the same remarks if you asserted that Christianity or other religions were similarly developmentally challenged (in terms of vertical development).  I have made similar arguments, in fact, when addressing Julian and the (similarly) dismissive blanket statements he also makes about “old traditions.”  The fact is, the territory is quite rich and we do it injustice if we automatically assume a position of superiority because we use the Integral framework.

I think it is important here to stress that, while Wilber's writings and models present a useful and fairly comprehensive framework, we do ourselves a disservice if we rely on them as our primary sources of information about particular traditions or paradigms.  I'm not saying you're doing this, but whether or not you are, I think this merits saying.  I have been regularly frustrated by Julian and Sam Harris and others for summarily dismissing “old traditions” based on generalizations that just do not hold water or line up with the facts, which are in fact quite complex.

I have not said that Buddhism (or other “old traditions”) are as comprehensive and “integral” as AQAL, but I do believe I have “backed up” my assertion that Buddhism cannot be dismissed as “vertically challenged” by pointing out that the highest reaches of at least several lines of AQAL and Cook-Greuter's model are based on Buddhist exemplars.  Do you agree with that?

About holy cows:  I think critiques of Buddhism are totally valid.  They should just be informed critiques, not generalizations which cannot be backed up, or which are based on a rather vague understanding of the tradition or perspective in question.  That's why I think it's fair to ask you how much you've studied the subject you are criticizing, and I think that question should be asked of anybody – including those who would criticize AQAL.

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: The Dual Mandala

Hi Pelle

It seems we're talking more than a little at cross purposes here.

”If you feel that the buddhist framework (or any other framework for that matter) is of equal standing to the Integral Framework as presented by Ken Wilber, then it is up to you to prove that.”

I for one don't think the two frameworks fall in the same category, so simply don't / wouldn't compare them in the way you're (gently) challenging : )

If it's my opinion that Buddhism is  “… essentially, within its vast reach and range, already always super-integral, never mind integral.”, I'm not implying it's more integral than AQAL, or that it has a better framework than AQAL. I think it is a different kind of integral, and in some ways it's a bit like chalk and cheese.

I absolutely concur with Ken when he says (after recommending ”Supplement!” as answer to the question “What should I do if I am on a spiritual path”) in IS p.115 : ”You can continue to practice [sic] Buddhism, just as you are. A few things can be added, but nothing is going to be subtracted ” This is very much congruent with my own teacher's advice that, as Dzogchen is beyond any limitation, we should develop our capacities as much as we can … in all areas that would help us to know and develop ourselves more fully …. whilst 'governing' this with instant presence.

”p.s. You guys should be recognizing that I'm doing y'all a service. By attacking your revered Buddhist framework I'm lessening your attachment to it, hence bringing you all closer to permanent horizontal enlightenment :)”

LOL !!  …. and I do like the warmth. Though you must appreciate by now I'm not a believer in horizontal enlightenment. I prefer the Total Holon kind.

Btw, I read Frans' comments re ”The Buddha said that spending 1 day trying to perfect the 4
foundations of mindfullness had more merit than 100 years of doing good deeds.” and I like and can easily agree with what he said.

But e's statement of what the Buddha said needs to be understood in context. In the Buddhist teaching there is a fundamental consideration given to the “Two Accumulations”, namely of merit and wisdom, in order to realise (in this context) the Two Kayas: Rupakaya (in relation to the accumulation of merit) and Dharmakaya (in relation to the accumulation of wisdom). The different Ways of Buddhist practice (the Way of Renunciation [Sutrayana], the Way of Transformation [Vajrayana] and the Way of Self-Liberation [Dzogchen] each have their own contexts for practising the Two Accumulations. Doing good deeds is seen to generate merit. So is practising samadhi. In the context of the purpose of generating and accumulating merit, practising samadhi is “better” than doing good deeds, in as much as more merit is accumulated more quickly. It is not implying that doing good deeds isn't worthwhile in itself.

The Buddha made a similar statement, that practising samadhi for the time it takes for an ant to walk from the tip to the bridge of ones nose generates / accumulates more merit than however many years (I can't remember how many!) of doing good deeds.

With love,

Lol

Re: The Dual Mandala

Pelle, everyone,

Don’t mean to butt into your discussion (but I will anyway, so what i said is bascially nonsense) -

Pelle, “The Buddha said that spending 1 day trying to perfect the 4 foundations of mindfullness had more merit than 100 years of doing good deeds.”

I interpret that as meaning that nothing will change if we act on symptoms (doing good deeds in the outer world), only going after the cause - which is our own interiority - can make a change that will have a lasting impact.

In the end, there is no reason not to do both, but I do believe the emphasis should very much be on the internal - doing good deeds should be the ILP that supports the internal development.

Frans

Re: The Dual Mandala

Frans:
In the end, there is no reason not to do both, but I do believe the emphasis should very much be on the internal - doing good deeds should be the ILP that supports the internal development.

Exactly! That is the Integral approach, and you automatically re-interpreted the quote from your own integral level of consciousness.


Pelle

Re: The Dual Mandala

e:
The Buddha said that spending 1 day trying to perfect the 4 foundations of mindfullness had more merit than 100 years of doing good deeds.

Pelle: Well, I will prefer the 100 years of doing good deeds every time.
I have no idea if this truly was a statement from the Buddha, but if it is then I must say that I prefer Christianity and its message of love, compassion and stressing good deeds.
(I'm thinking that e's quote is probably not the stance of most Buddhists, but even having such quotes circulating within a tradition is problematic IMO).

Me: No the Buddha did say that, and he said it for a reason. After spending a fortune on building new monasteries a Chinese Emperor asked Bodhidharma how much good karma he had built with his deeds, and Bodhidharma told him none.
The reason is twofold. First he hadn't actually done anything himself, he paid other people to do the work and they were doing the work for the money. Second, he was doing it out of the desire for good karma. He wanted something from it, and was feeding his own ego.
This is why true insight is infinity more important than outer “good works.” When you understand the truth, or have Right View, you will automatically act from the whole. See

Bjorn's quote about Right View above.

Otherwise, any compassion, charity, etc.. will be hallow and only done out of the need for future blessings or heaven or out of a desire to gain worldly favor or avoid astigmatism. People suffer a billionaire, only if he charitable.
This is why compassion, charity, etc.. are integral to every Buddhist practice, see the 8 fold path

Re: The Dual Mandala

Holden: This is why true insight is infinity more important than outer “good works.” When you understand the truth, or have Right View, you will automatically act from the whole.

Well, I wouldn't say automatically because we are creatures of habit, and even though we have penetrated right view we still have a lot of work to do. Therefore the BIG emphases on Mindfulness in the Buddhist tradition. This is what is called spiritual purification in all traditions. Whether we do it before or after Realization it has to be taken care of, otherwise we will slip up. And really, there seems to be plenty of work to do for the rest of my life.
Humility maybe is the correct attitude? We're all part of the sinful nature, the results of ages of ignorance. Waking up is growing up. instant enlightenment? Yes for sure but realizing that purity in ourselves, embodying the truth, takes a bit of time, no?

But, right view is essential in order not to get lost in endless talking back and forth.

At once, step up on to the platform

Below, vain discrimination never ends
Above, communication can begin

Re: The Dual Mandala

Yeah, I have to agree with most of that Bjorn, and that is expressed very well in the Poison Arrow Sutra. Here the Buddha expresses that it is like pulling out a poisoned arrow and sucking out the poison, but traces of poison residue remain.  Hence the importance of the 8 fold path.
My description of the process was overly simplistic, thanx for balancing it out Bjorn.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Bruce, Lol, Rick, everyone (e seems to have left)


I will try to summarize my views as clearly as possible in this post. I cannot keep reponding individually as it takes too much time, hence the group reply.

As far as I'm concerned Buddhism has a lot to offer. In terms of state training the practices appear to be very sound and as such can be adopted as is, by a person wanting to enter a spiritual path. The framework also has a lot of interesting material (based on me knowing a lot more that your average Joe, but a lot less than long-time students of Buddhist texts), and I'm happy to take Bruce's word for it that certain individuals within Buddhism have written texts that display high structure development in certain lines of development (I would appreciate a link to where I could learn more about it, but I'm not demanding it).

However, there are several problems with the buddhist framework:
- it has not yet passed through the fire of post-modernism and been rid of all aspects of the myth of the given
- It can potentially fool people that it has passed through post-modernism, but letting go of concepts in the relative realm does not mean that those concepts have been deconstructed (this is a horizontal-vertical fallacy, and to me it is clear that you Rick have displayed this confusion several times)
- For some reason Buddhism is sometimes seen as having higher intrinsic value than other frameworks/religions/practices (such as Lol appears to be claiming, when stating that Buddhism and its framework is qualitatively different from AQAL), but as far as I'm concerned this is simply not true. Every Buddhist interpretation of state experiences is still an interpretation, every “right view” or such still needs to pass through post-modernism, either to remain, be rephrased, be viewed differently or discarded
- Buddhism remains partial and incomplete if people try to use it as an overall framework. It does not include western psychology for example, meaning that people who are not at all ready for sophisticated state training can be exposed to it (I have treated patients myself who have become psychotic from meditation camps). Even individuals who aren't prone to psychosis will have a very unbalanced practice if they overlook Western psychology.
- The attachment to Buddhism seems to be rampant even in Integral circles, as an outsider it really jumps out at me and to be honest that has surprised me quite a bit. Personally I'm quite fond of Christian mythology and symbols, and I can see immense value in that large groups of people collectively focus their love and attention on these symbols and concepts, but I would never fight an impossible battle and try to get them to bypass Integral Post-Metaphysics. I trust that these symbols will reemerge from a different perspective, even stronger than before, after being exposed to post-modernism.


My 2 cents, and while I will hang around to check out the posts and respond as well as I can, I doubt that I will have anything more of value to offer. I simply do not have the time to write a 20 page essay with references to back up my claims. OTOH I'm not seeing any 20 page essays with references being produced by anyone else to back up their claims…


Pelle

Re: The Dual Mandala

Hi, Pelle,

Thanks for explaining your position.  I actually resonate too with Christian imagery and teachings (at least some of them), as well as the teachings of other traditions as well, so my arguments here are not coming from the position of a “defender of the faith.”  I just think it's important that our criticisms and integral critiques are well-grounded and accurate.

Wilber himself claims that some texts and teachings in Buddhism are well above Amber.  Read the following, for example:

“Many American Buddhists of this generation were, as Boomers, pioneers in the green-pluralistic stage or wave of development, which, in intself, is a rather extraordinary achievement.  Some of them also took up meditative practices, and could indeed attain very genuine and profound meditative states (because all of the states are available at pretty much every stage).  But, as always, these meditative states would be interpreted according to the stage one was at.  And thus, meditative states were quickly used to support the green-level pluralistic worldview…  This is bad enough – in fact, something of a catastrophe – but there are two further, potential problems.  The first is that many of the great contemplative texts, sutras, and tantras were written in the cognitive line from at least the turquoise and often indigo or violet levels.  So indigo texts were being translated downward into green texts simply because both of them could be supported by similar meditative states and attainments.”  ~ Wilber, Integral Spirituality, pp. 105-106 (Italics and bold in the original)

I haven't seen him mention which texts these were, but my guess is that his list might include texts like the following:  The Mulamadhyamakakarika, the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Vimalakirtinirdesha Sutra, the Guhyasamaja Tantra, the Kun-byed rgyal po, the works of Longchenpa and Dogen, etc.

About moral span, if you look at the charts in Wilber's Integral Psychology, you will see that his highest three stages (shamanic, bodhisattvic/panentheistic, and Buddhic) are based on the exemplars of “old traditions,” with the terms from the highest levels coming from Buddhism.

I don't plan on posting on this subject much more, because I'm afraid of contributing to too much of a tangent on David's thread, but at least I hope I've made the point I wanted to make:  saying that the old traditions, when they concentrate on vertical development at all, aren't very developed, is not accurate.  It's too much of a generalization and it misses real “accomplishments” and treasures that exist in these old “ways.”

Best wishes,

Bruce

P.S.  An interesting point is that individuals can develop to very high levels of cognitive sophistication while retaining what appears to be a mythological symbol system and a scientifically inaccurate (or, at least, incomplete) cosmology.  So, we can't simply look at what appears to be “obviously mythic language” and lump them in an Amber box.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Bruce,

Some of your points above reflect my own questions about fitting people, texts, whatever into models (stages, states, whatever). This includes the integral took kit. Granted it has expanded boxes but they are boxes nonetheless and 1) at times inaccurate and 2) not capable of fully explaining the phenomenon. Even the notion that a “text” would completely display “a” level, line, etc. is part of that inherent misconception. The person(s) and the text he/they create will be all over the map, so to speak. It appears we can make broad, general statements but often the details slip through such wide strokes and do not conform to the “placement” or “kosmic address.” So it behooves us to not only find the generalities but to admit to the specifics that do not fit and challenge our very assumptions.

To relate it to this thread, we often want to find a “whole(on)” that incorporates the parts seamlessly and defines the parts via their functionality within the greater whole. But what if it is the parts that define the whole? What if the whole is manifested in the parts AS the parts? It seems the latter is more in line with the “emptiness of emptiness” or “ultimate AS relative” that Nagarjuna was getting at. Maybe.

Re: The Dual Mandala

As I've said before, some Buddhist interpretations appear to be among the most integral systems out there, but another really big thing that nearly all Buddhist interpretations could do better on is the idea of evolution, as Ken discusses a little bit here.

Please nobody say that Buddhism was super integral and evolutionary from the very beginning again. That actually demonstrates a lack of understanding of both, and it's surprising to hear statements like that on an integral forum. I once heard a guy argue that it would be “childs play” for the Buddha to take apart a computer and put it back together again, and the claim that the Buddha and the other old masters were super integral and evolutionary by today's standards is a little bit in that direction. They may well have been super integral and evolutionary for their time, as Ken discusses in the next video I will link you to, but not by the standards of 2007.


. e:
“The Buddha said that spending 1 day trying to perfect the 4 foundations of mindfullness had more merit than 100 years of doing good deeds.”

Rick :”Me: No the Buddha did say that, and he said it for a reason. After spending a fortune on building new monasteries a Chinese Emperor asked Bodhidharma how much good karma he had built with his deeds, and Bodhidharma told him none.
The reason is twofold. First he hadn't actually done anything himself, he paid other people to do the work and they were doing the work for the money. Second, he was doing it out of the desire for good karma. He wanted something from it, and was feeding his own ego.
 

This is why true insight is infinity more important than outer “good works.” When you understand the truth, or have Right View, you will automatically act from the whole. ”

It's a good point that “good deeds” as a means of getting something for oneself is not ultimately a good idea, so that may have been good advice for the Chinese Emperor (The monastaries still got built, right? Without the emperor's help the monastaries wouldn't have gotten built, so it's an awfully good thing that he didn't talk to Boddidharma before he built the monasteries, right? In addition, it may be very difficult or impossible for people at certain stages to do good deeds without the idea of personal gain, so if you take away that idea, you take away their good behavior. Also, I don't think that enlightened self-interest ever really goes out of style, so to speak. I think it's the structure on which true, selfless giving is built.)  But you should have said “When you understand the truth and have right view you will act from the whole.” “Understanding the truth” alone won't be enough for a person to act from the whole, as many unethical “masters” have shown. And “right view” and “understanding the truth” are two different works, the dual mandala. Ken talks about this and more in this essential video (“Realizing Rigpa is easy, living Rigpa is hard” 12:59).


A couple of people, perhaps on another thread, same subject, have called learning relative knowledge the work of the “ego” and implied that it was a part of samsara. This isn't necessarly so. That view leaves out the deeper psychic, which is one more thing that Buddhism might want to integrate (according to Ken it has not, at least not fully). The deeper psychic/authentic self/psychic being (sometimes known as the second face of God) is the link between the absolute and the relative world–it's not the ego, not samsara. So not all our learning in the relative realm can be termed “ego.”



 

Pelle said: “- The attachment to Buddhism seems to be rampant even in Integral circles, as an outsider it really jumps out at me and to be honest that has surprised me quite a bit.”

This has surprised me too. They're so serene until you start pointing out shortcomings in their particular interpretation of the dharma (and just to be clear: it's not that I find the very best of Buddhism falling short; it's just that there are so many schools and interpretations, and some of them reach a lot higher and wider than the rest). One bizarre example was when Pelle was challenged on the idea that the “old schools” emphasized horizontal development over vertical development. I thought this idea was pretty much accepted here (you can skip down to where Ken starts talking if you like).
 

Ma Rig Pa said: “I'm not implying it's more integral than AQAL, or that it has a better framework than AQAL. I think it is a different kind of integral, and in some ways it's a bit like chalk and cheese.”

Could you explain this? This kinda sounds like one of those disciplines that wants to wriggle out of the AQAL web somehow.

Re: The Dual Mandala

David wrote: “Ma Rig Pa said: 'I'm not implying it's more integral than AQAL, or that it has a better framework than AQAL. I think it is a different kind of integral, and in some ways it's a bit like chalk and cheese.'

Could you explain this? This kinda sounds like one of those disciplines that wants to wriggle out of the AQAL web somehow.”

View refers to something more basic and more nuanced. Newton, Einstein and Bohr argued from a common perspective: third person, objective. But Classical Physics, Special Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics each have a different view of reality. Likewise, just as a structural approach can cross over into different perspectives, so too can a process approach: there can be process-based dialogue on interior experiences as well as scientific observations (1p x 1-p x 2p; 1p x 3-p x 2p) as well as process-based third-person points of view on interior consciousness, cultural values and the like. Structural approaches and process approaches can cover the same territory, through all the various perspectives, yet a process approach will have a completely different view of reality.

Re: The Dual Mandala

David: ”Please nobody say that Buddhism was super integral and evolutionary from the very beginning again. That actually demonstrates a lack of understanding of both, and it's surprising to hear statements like that on an integral forum.”

I thought all kinds of wacky stuff regularly appeared on this forum : )

To be honest I've not read anyone say Buddhism is “… evolutionary from the very beginning .. ”, maybe I just missed it.

Evolution occurs at the relative level within time. As to the why and how of evolution's unfolding, there are different notions.

One is the notion of Kosmic grooves being laid down. I think this notion is really cool.

Another notion concerns itself with the unfolding of collective karmic vision arising out of the ungraspable, complexity of beginningless cause and effect relationships. I think this notion is cool, also …. although rather sobering. For karmic vision read samsara and suffering.

If both notions were reflections, neither would condition, distort or otherwise influence a mirror's capacity to display them.

Buddhas say that the inseparability of the ground of being and pristine awareness is beyond time …. they refer to this as the Fourth Time. Analogous to a mirror, it contains & manifests infinite potentiality …. including the next evolutionary unfolding.

Yes, I know this is a metaphysical concept …. but something has to be said during the oral aspect of a pointing-out instruction …. which, I hasten to add, I'm not attempting here.

David: ”Ma Rig Pa said: “I'm not implying it's more integral than AQAL, or that it has a better framework than AQAL. I think it is a different kind of integral, and in some ways it's a bit like chalk and cheese.”

Could you explain this? This kinda sounds like one of those disciplines that wants to wriggle out of the AQAL web somehow.”

I don't have the cognitive capacity to really explain this. I say it's integral, or even super-integral, because all is integrated in it. I think we've talked about this before on another thread. But it's not a map, or web as you call it, like the AQAL framework.

Do I know this, or am I just parroting my teachers? I admired Pelle's straight-forward confidence when he stated that at stable integral cognition the W-C Lattice is self-evident. In 'instant presence' with all sense consciousnesses wide open and their 'objects' merely arising and self-liberating, for me there is a glimmering of a knowing, it is almost elusive, yet still self-evident that this arising that I've referred to as karmic vision is as if the surface veneer of an infinite depth of potentiality.

I don't know if this adequately answers your question.

All best,

Lol

Re: The Dual Mandala

Thank you, Bruce. That's interesting. I've glanced at the article and mean to look into it more deeply, but my initital impression is not that the “view” they are describing will not fit into the AQAL model but rather that AQAL hasn't yet fully articulated that sort of view. She seems to decide that Ken has a limited definition of the word perspective and then proceeds to show that the Dzogchen “view” is bigger than that, but I think Ken means perspective in the broadest possible sense, one that includes process perspectives, structural perspectives, perspectives that go beyond concepts, perspectives noone has ever heard of–everything under the sun past, present, and future that's short of absolute nature. So the Dzogchen view does seem to be more highly refined and subtle than the perspectives Ken generally discusses, but so far I think we can still call that a perspective and put it up there in Ultraviolet or Clear Light or perhaps even something beyond that, but no matter how high we go it would still seem to fall within the AQAL map.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Hey Pelle,

I brought over your whole post.

——-

Rick:
“Because, that relative truth taught, will be just one more thing that the student has to let go of to understand the Way.”

Pelle:

I'm not so sure.
It's not my experience that it's harder to break into new states (subtle, causal) just because I keep on learning more relative truths. And it's not really that I'm learning more relative truths either, I'm learning better and more inclusive truths, hence replacing less inclusive and less accurate truths.

The whole integral model rests on the fact the vertical and horizontal development are two different things, and this insight is not always built into the old traditions that focus on horizontal development (or if they focus on vertical development they're not very… developed).

I'm sure I've hurt some buddhist feelings here, but this is an integral forum and it needs to be said.

Pelle

——–

I am not interested in your credentials. I have a very simple question for you. Are you here talking from your experience from within a tradition or are you merely parroting Wilber?

p&l,

e

Re: The Dual Mandala

e:
I am not interested in your credentials. I have a very simple question for you. Are you here talking from your experience from within a tradition or are you merely parroting Wilber?

I am talking from the experience of having a serious meditation practice for several years, complemented by other spiritual practices such as qi gong and yoga.

I never parrot Wilber, the only reason I use his teminology is because it describes a worldspace I was already seeing before finding out about Ken. This should be self-evident, and I'm disappointed that you do not feel the authenticity behind my words.

When needed, I always step up and criticize I-I and Ken, to the point that some people think I am a critic of KW (which I am not, I love what Ken has done for the world and he is my most important teacher).

Pelle

Re: The Dual Mandala

Hey David,


”(David:) Which is more important, realizing the absolute or realizing the highest in-time stage (orange, green, teal, etc.)?

e: The Buddha said that spending 1 day trying to perfect the 4 foundations of mindfullness had more merit than 100 years of doing good deeds.”

D:You'll have to give an arguement for why 1 day of practicing mindfulness is better than 100 years of doing good deeds. Just because the Buddha said it doesn't make it so. I have an awfully hard time agreeing with that one.

Frans did a good job of explaining the thrust of the quote and Lol further clarified quite nicely from within the Tibetan Nyingma School POV.

—

”(David:) Does the significance of a person's “enlightenment” (state or horizontal development) depend on what in-time stage or structure (vertical development) the person has realized?

e: You would have to ask a Buddha that for a definitive answer. IMHO any being at anytime can realize the absolute. It is always right here, right now. We are like fish in water, we just don't see it.”

D: Which would have more significance, a Buddha who can rationalize or a Buddha that can't rationalize?

The only Buddha's I am familiar with are ones that can rationalize.

—-

”(David:) Could someone realizing the absolute actually be a negative event for the world in some cases?
 
e: Doubt it, unless you mean it would be bad for the economy i.e. people would feel less compelled to buy stuff they don't really need.”

D:Will it hurt our ability to realize the absolute if we also devote ourselves to relative issues?
We don't have much time David.

love,


e

Re: The Dual Mandala

Pelle:
However, there are several problems with the buddhist framework:
- it has not yet passed through the fire of post-modernism and been rid of all aspects of the myth of the given


I posted about this before but I guess you missed it.
The myth of the given is predicated on the digansich (thing in itself).

Buddhism as proffered by the Buddha avoids this from the very beginning
by the characteristic of impermanence, dependent origination and
the non-self teachings. (If you need me to connect some dots, just ask.)

So, if you understand what I just said, all your other criticisms dissolve quite
nicely.

love

e

PS I would go into a lot more detail but like you used to tell Gifford,
you have to put some time in before anyone is going to take your
criticisms seriously.

Re: The Dual Mandala

e said:  

“e: The Buddha said that spending 1 day trying to perfect the 4 foundations of mindfullness had more merit than 100 years of doing good deeds.”

D:You'll have to give an arguement for why 1 day of practicing mindfulness is better than 100 years of doing good deeds. Just because the Buddha said it doesn't make it so. I have an awfully hard time agreeing with that one.

Frans did a good job of explaining the thrust of the quote and Lol further clarified quite nicely from within the Tibetan Nyingma School POV.”

I agree that a person's time will often be better spent in practicing mindfulness, but it's the intention and motivation behind it that I'm really gettting at, and perhaps Lol spoke to that a bit. In Boomeritis Buddhism–and I'm not accusing anyone of this– the motivation is to fulfill the desires of the personal self, avoid the fears, feel better,  etc. There might be the idea in there somewhere to be a Boddhisattva, and they will probably say so if you ask, but the intention to serve won't be there in any great percentage, and this will be reflected in the things they do along the way (as they're “practicing samadhi”). I think the Boddhisattva vow or something like it really has to be driven down the throats of most postmodern seekers and really insisted upon before they really begin practicing with the right intention. The cultural and personal conditioning most of us have is quite opposed to the idea of service (even though this service is really in the interest of our own happiness, joy, and freedom).

 

-

e said: “(David:) Does the significance of a person's “enlightenment” (state or horizontal development) depend on what in-time stage or structure (vertical development) the person has realized?

e: You would have to ask a Buddha that for a definitive answer. IMHO any being at anytime can realize the absolute. It is always right here, right now. We are like fish in water, we just don't see it.”

D: Which would have more significance, a Buddha who can rationalize or a Buddha that can't rationalize?

The only Buddha's I am familiar with are ones that can rationalize.”

That may be true, but the point is that there are many different structures, including post-rational, post-post rational, and the best Buddhas have the highest structures.

e said: 
 

”(David:) Could someone realizing the absolute actually be a negative event for the world in some cases?
 
e: Doubt it, unless you mean it would be bad for the economy i.e. people would feel less compelled to buy stuff they don't really need.”

D:Will it hurt our ability to realize the absolute if we also devote ourselves to relative issues?
We don't have much time David.”
 

Yes, I like your sense of urgency. I wouldn't want anyone's work in the relative side of the street to detract from their work on the absolute side. But for most of us it probably won't be authentic to practice samadhi all the time. At times it will become grasping, seeking. A totally non-seeking approach would usually include work on the relative side of the street. See, that's nondual.


–

Re: The Dual Mandala

Yeah, I agree with this David. I think we're finding middle ground.

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Yeah, Rick. I had a premonition just before reading your post that we were coming to agreement, finding middle ground, as you say. That's really cool.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Hey Michael,

I wanted to address your inquiry below…


Michael:
Thanks for the redirect. This subject is of great interest to me and I want to be a part of it. I have learned some very interesting things about the Buddhist view as a result of following this conversation. I am here at present to listen.

One question: how can relative truth exist without some connection to the Ultimate? I am puzzled by the notion that the relative cannot be found in the Ultimate. “Logic,” per se fails me at this juncture (a state with which I am ok) and my “visualizer” takes over. I can see the Ultimate as both nothing and all implications at once - literally, I can see it, however much it confounds my relatively advanced logical faculty.

Pretend the monitor screen is your mind. Thoughts arise that elicit varying emotions  coloring the screen. Look at the emotions that arise with these two sentences…

Michael, you are superbly intelligent & quite handsome.

Michael, you are a dumb asshole.

So, even before the sentences are attached to and a sense of *me* (“me”  being you Michael) arises, there is a sense of liking and disliking the content of the two sentences.

So, lets say you are pretty chill and no sense of like or dislike arises but instead the words arise one at a time on the screen, register briefly and then dissolve on the screen. When this dissolution of all the content of all the words is paramount and there is no liking or disliking arising leading to attachment, leading to a reification of thoughts and emotions leading to an identity that judges and appropriates those thoughts and emotions as me and mine, then this is emptiness.

Nothing is being established long enough on the screen in which to posit anything existing or non-existing, both or neither. The relative being Michael has exited stage left and there is nothing to which the screen is affixed as reference point 'A' as opposed to reference point 'B'. There is no in here or out there. As there is no here to be found to posit a there against or next too. The screen becomes empty of anything relative that was previously felt and thought to be here and there.

And so we get all the no's in the teachings. No mind, no form, no feeling, no perception, no thought, no emotion, no, no, no. Now this 'No' is not opposed or opposite to yes. This is not a state of 'negativity'. You can't even say it is a state because there is nothing seen to be in homeostasis or dynamically changing. You can't even say it is a mystery, because there is nothing there that is mysterious, confounding or stupefying. Maybe ultimate peace comes closest…or supreme lucidity…or supreme wakefulness.


love


e

Re: The Dual Mandala

That's really cool, e. More experiments like that would be welcome.

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Bruce:
P.S.  An interesting point is that individuals can develop to very high levels of cognitive sophistication while retaining what appears to be a mythological symbol system and a scientifically inaccurate (or, at least, incomplete) cosmology.  So, we can't simply look at what appears to be “obviously mythic language” and lump them in an Amber box.

This is my point exactly! Buddhism is a mixture of a lot of amber, but also amazing peaks of turquoise and indigo. But just because some authors back then, not to mention authors nowadays, have integral cognition or above that is no guarantee that they value-wise and scholar-wise have integrated the insights of postmodernism. So when I say that buddhism still has to pass through the fires of post-modernism I don't mean that it's all amber and orange, I mean that the turquoise and indigo stuff also has to be “cleaned” by that fire before we can really consider it a spiritual framework worthy of Integral practitioners.


————————-

Regarding the article you quote above Bruce, I feel that it's quite green in it's line of reasoning. The way “view” is described is either as content or a value within a certain structure of consciousness. It also makes sense that Buddhism has emphasized view so much, considering that the great teachers were integral/indigo, but most of the student were probably amber. This would then have been a method for getting the students to adopt the right value/view, even if they couldn't see the level that had realized the value/view. A great example of skilful means if you ask me, where the teacher translates higher insights downwards into a language and practice that the students can understand. But if we turn the view/value into something absolute, and outside of AQAL, then we are guilty of perpetrating the myth of the given.

my 2 cents,


Pelle

Re: The Dual Mandala

Hi, Pelle,

I can see what you're saying about the article.  What Roy is saying, though, is that AQAL itself – the way it is conceived and presented – already privileges a particular view, which she argues is essentially structuralist.  She argues that AQAL is a structuralist map; that such an approach informs how it is put together at all.  AQAL is intended to be “without content,” but she argues that it is not, and that the “content” that informs its construction limits it in an important way.

You're right that this is a rather Green, or at least postmodern approach (which may, as Gary argues on another thread, surpass Green in some instances), but I'm not sure if it's a challenge that I've heard Wilber meet anywhere.  I think Roy poses an interesting question, at least.  I will have more to say once I finish the article (now, talking about it, I'm interested in it again!), so I may start a new thread when I'm done.

Best wishes,

Bruce

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Yes Bruce, please do start another thread on Bonnie's article. I'll try to get her to participate. She'll enjoy that one, being called “green.”

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I don't get it Pelle, your one of the smartest people here and your not “connecting the dots” as e suggested. I know Buddhist concepts really well, and I know post-modernism really well too.
I have been formally trained in both.
In it's ultimate sense, post-modern thought questions our ability to know anything. This almost destroyed anthropology in the 80's and 90's, but we have actually moved past it with a mix of post-modernism and processualism. So my academic discipline has just recently been through the “fire of post-modernism,” and has benefited for the most part.
Buddhism has no belief structure beyond direct experience, and never defines or labels that direct experience. This means that the fire of post-modernism has nothing to burn.
Do you not understand that now?
The entire foundation of Buddhist thought, starting with impermanence based on dependence origination (both available via direct awareness and not belief), is pretty post-modern. If you read Nagarjuna's, The Perfection of the Middle Way, you'll probably be reading the world's first post-modern document written in 2nd century India.
Buddhism is not a person, it is no-thing. What is to pass through a fire that is and has no-thing? Get it? When I first learned about the details of post-modern thought oever-and-over in a university classroom, I had already gone past it. It seemed like commone sense to me. I thought that it wasn't entire representative of any truth in general, but a reaction against all previous attempts at dualistic thought. The thought in any accomplished Buddhist mind when learning about post-modernism is, “well…no shit.”
This may not fit the AQAL model very well, but dismissing it only puts the model at risk of being dismissed as just another dogmatic religious model. If it is to represent the truth in a conceptual way, then it must be flexible. I've already shown many examples of the inaccuracy of the lower two quadrants in detail in many other posts. It is a work in progress, and that's cool. That's partly why we are here.
Sure, not all or even a majority, or even a large minority,  of people who label themselves Buddhist are the 3rd tier that the practice starts out at and is pointing too, but neither are most Integralise. Even if you go to Asia and actually talk to even poor Hindu locals, you'd be amazed at some of the post-modern insight that they might express. I'll give you examples if you like, but the separation of monks and lay in Asia has been a cause of lower integral development of many lay followers. This separation is one of the first things to go in the US Buddhism developing.  The acceptance and welcoming of this process by Asian monks transplanted here, is a sign of the strength and flexablity of the dicipline to fill any space like water.
In the US there's a rather strong green atmosphere within many Sanghas, but in the US that's pretty good. There is an acceptance of meeting people where they are at within the practice, on a whole, so there are mythical parts, rational parts, trans-rational parts, etc…

So, as e has been saying and questioning you and been trying to get out of you, and you haven't budged, you stubborn sob, is that they, as I do, understand both Buddhist thought on a whole and post-modernism and see your argument as a straw man.
At this point I am, and I'm sure e is as well,  thinking that you don't understand at least one of these things as well as you think you do, and I don't think it's post-modernism. You probably have a better grasp on that than I do.  That leaves Buddhism.

Your history both on Zaadz and IN, is to kind of parrot KW on this matter, and in the same way, quoting and then paraphrasing the same statement over-and-over. This isn't good, because the mark of true understanding in a field is flexibility. That is, the ability to rephrase, use in examples, and apply a particular knowledge.
Both e and I have done this many times and in many different ways, and every time you come back with basically the same post. Your teacup is too full, it will hold no more.

Re: The Dual Mandala

See also my reply above.


e:
I posted about this before but I guess you missed it.
The myth of the given is predicated on the digansich (thing in itself).

Buddhism as proffered by the Buddha avoids this from the very beginning
by the characteristic of impermanence, dependent origination and
the non-self teachings. (If you need me to connect some dots, just ask.)

So, if you understand what I just said, all your other criticisms dissolve quite
nicely.

love

e

PS I would go into a lot more detail but like you used to tell Gifford,
you have to put some time in before anyone is going to take your
criticisms seriously.



I don't know how many times I have to state this, but horizontal development does not mean you have transcended and included post-modernism. It simply doesn't! Impermanence, non-self and what have you does not mean that you have necessarily evolved vertically.

So no, it is not I who has to put in more time before anyone takes me seriously, it is you e.
You do not understand one of the most basic distinctions of AQAL (vertical vs horizontal) and therefore I have to assume that you are not ready to have a dialogue from an integral level of consciousness, no matter how many how many years you've meditated or how far you have developed horizontally.


Pelle

Re: The Dual Mandala

David,

You are being quite the balancing force in this thread and finding some common ground.

Thank you.


Pelle

Re: The Dual Mandala

Bruce: “I can see what you're saying about the article.  What Roy is saying, though, is that AQAL itself – the way it is conceived and presented – already privileges a particular view, which she argues is essentially structuralist.  She argues that AQAL is a structuralist map; that such an approach informs how it is put together at all.  AQAL is intended to be “without content,” but she argues that it is not, and that the “content” that informs its construction limits it in an important way.”

Yes, I've also said this a many times before as well, and been ignored. When AQAL is focused upon by the post-modern lens, many issues arise, and so I quesiton whether AQAL, because it has not cultural concepts as well, has really been through the fire of post-modernism.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Holden,

Actually many “integral” pomoers are questioning Ken's depiction of it. As one example in this pod see the “Is Ken right on Derrida” thread, where another article in Integral Review is being discussed with the author, Gary Hampson. (He's made several recent posts.) Plus I've gone into this extensively at Open Integral, most particularly in Postmetaphysical Thinking Part IV.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Holden, Pelle, and e,

I want to weigh in briefly on the topic of postmodernism and Buddhism.  I actually believe I see errors on both sides of the argument so far, so I will explain what I see – accepting, of course, that my perspective will be limited too.

I do believe that Buddhism, at least by the second turning of the wheel of the dharma, does exhibit insights which appear distinctly postmodern and which challenge the myth of the given in a number of ways.  However, to say that Buddhism has no beliefs and that it relies only on direct experience, and further to say that this therefore makes it postmodern, is not accurate, in my opinion.  For one thing, postmodernism challenges the notion of the possibility of unmediated, unadulterated “direct experience.”  Further, Buddhism does represent a very particular way of viewing the world – a view which privileges direct experience, and which also involves “interpretation” of contemplative experience (Right View involves both conceptual and experiential components). 

Buddhism teaches that all phenomena lack inherent self-existence; they “arise” or “appear” through the complex, internested process of dependent origination.  The existence of objects is “imputed existence” – meaning, they cannot be taken as “given,” but derive their being in part through the imputation of meaning by sentient subjects.  This is similar, in some respects, to postmodern insights into contextuality and constructivism. 

In my understanding at present, however, postmodernism has applied these insights in ways, and in particular domains, which Buddhists have either overlooked or at least not afforded the same attention:  the sociocultural “emptiness” of phenomena, the power imbalances that result from not recognizing the “dependent origination” of cultural values or perspectives (including Buddhism and imbedded sociocultural patterns within Buddhist tradition), the critique of the phenomenology of presence and “direct experience,” and so on.  (Buddhism recognizes that different sentient beings will perceive phenomena differently based on their respective karmic propensities, but does not appear to have recognized that some of its archetypal visions, while “empty of inherent self-existence,” are also culturally mediated and will not appear to all humans irrespective of culture or conditioning.)

In my view, many postmodern insights are quite compatible with the basic Buddhist understanding of the emptiness and non-self of phenomena, but postmodernism adds new dimensions to this understanding, and may impact Buddhism on a number of levels once it fully digests these insights.

On a similar note, as Holden points out, AQAL itself may yet need to be further conditioned by the postmodern fire.  The claim that it is a “contentless frame” is susceptible, also, to the myth of the given – to encouraging a certain opacity of perspective which obscures the fact that the frame itself embeds content and does not arise in a vacuum or stand in a privileged position outside of perspectives.  Wilber does acknowledge this in places, of course, but as I said above, there may be ways that AQAL itself privileges a particular “view” which has not yet been fully unpacked or acknowledged by the Integral community at large.

Best wishes,

Balder

P.S.  Theurj, I'll be happy to start such a thread, once I finish her article.  I'll invite other Dzogchen practitioners too!

Re: The Dual Mandala

Pelle: ”I will try to summarize my views as clearly as possible in this post.”

Pelle, great post, I really appreciate it. Your frame of reference, and the areas of concern (for you) that you've listed, facilitates my response.

”As far as I'm concerned Buddhism has a lot to offer. In terms of state training the practices appear to be very sound and as such can be adopted as is, by a person wanting to enter a spiritual path. The framework also has a lot of interesting material …”

This for me demonstrates the very real limitations of evaluating (whether that evaluation be cursory or detailed), or making an assessment of & giving an opinion of, the complexity, richness, depth and scope of the various Vehicles or Ways that make up the Buddhist teaching, simply using ones cognitive 'line' (whether that cognition be stable integral or otherwise). Me reading about Bordeaux wine, having an awareness of what's a good vintage from reading KW's tasting notes, then picking up a bottle, having a look at the label and declaring something like “this appears to be a very sound bottle of wine” is no substitute for experiencing the wine's nose, the explosion of tastes and textures in the mouth … and then developing over the years a nose and palette for the complexity, depth of structure, and beauty of wine.

”However, there are several problems with the buddhist framework:
- it has not yet passed through the fire of post-modernism and been rid of all aspects of the myth of the given”

We have all read how post-modernism has “trashed” the old traditions (I'm cowering behind the sofa as I write this ;- p ). Looking at Buddhism through an “integral lens” (and I'm not talking about so-called Boomeritis Buddhism here) does reveal amber, maybe even orange, and quite clearly wholesome-green aspects …. and of course many metaphysical assertions, views etc. …. but from my POV these are already transcended and included within the essence of the Buddhist teaching, metaphysically alluded to as 'Total Tigle' (or Total Holon in our parlance). I would dearly love to hear a real master (m or f) expound on the dharma in post-metaphysical terms. Maybe Tarthang Tulku is already (although KW clearly has reservations) … or at least maybe he could. But it is very clear to me that the fact that the “buddhist framework” hasn't yet “… passed through the fire of post-modernism and been rid of all aspects of the myth of the given” isn't preventing masters such as Chogyal Namkhai Norbu from continuing to introduce people to their “real condition”, whilst at the same time using skillful means to meet and teach them according to their capacities and propensities.

What you're really saying above is that from an AQAL point of view, in relation to its 'goal' and the strategies it's pursuing in order to implement this …. one of which clearly is becoming acceptable in pomo's eyes …. the buddhist framework has “problems”. And btw, to my mind “Spirit's post-modern turn” is elegantly … metaphysical.

”- It can potentially fool people that it has passed through post-modernism, but letting go of concepts in the relative realm does not mean that those concepts have been deconstructed”

I am here in this forum more than anything else to learn and to develop. I do not understand why concepts (which?) need to be deconstructed …. to what end, for whose benefit. Could you please explain?

”Every Buddhist interpretation of state experiences is still an interpretation, every “right view” or such still needs to pass through post-modernism, either to remain, be rephrased, be viewed differently or discarded”

First let me say that the notion that ” .. [a] Buddhist interpretation of state experiences is still an interpretation ..” is itself an interpretation, and in my eyes an incorrect one. And yes, I know it's not unique to you. I'm not qualified to debate the niceties of this, but I know someone who is. I'd be extremely interested to hear a three-way discussion and/or debate between KW, Traleg Rinpoche and Namkhai Norbu on this topic. In the meantime I guess we have to agree to disagree : )

”- Buddhism remains partial and incomplete if people try to use it as an overall framework.”

I agree … from the perspective that its overt framework as viewed from 50,000 feet does not tick all the AQAL boxes. However, my teacher, for example, does say that the Dzogchen teaching, and the path it offers, is complete in itself …. if practised in the way it is meant to be practised, that is. As for psychosis, one of Norbu's uncles was to all intents and purposes “mad”. Who knows how he would have been diagnosed by a Western psychologist, but by all accounts (Norbu's) he had a significant behavioural / personality disorder. He was brought to the Gar (nomadic encampment) where the Dzogchen master Adzom Drugpa was living and teaching. Adzom Drugpa instructed one of his main students to take Norbu's uncle under his wing, and give him instruction in various Dzogchen preliminary practices as well as the main practice of 'contemplation'. Norbu's uncle came out of his “psychosis” over a period of time, becoming himself a great practitioner who spent a lot of time in solitary practice, and who according to Norbu was officially witnessed as manifesting the rainbow body (ja.lus) when he died ( … and no, I can't produce documentary evidence : ) )

”It does not include western psychology for example, meaning that people who are not at all ready for sophisticated state training can be exposed to it (I have treated patients myself who have become psychotic from meditation camps). Even individuals who aren't prone to psychosis will have a very unbalanced practice if they overlook Western psychology.”

People who are not ready for ”.. sophisticated state training.. ” don't tend to take things very far, and if they experience problems it's more than likely because they're not following the instructions properly and/or practising properly. A qualified teacher will always caution against trying to force anything, and in the process charge oneself up. There are real dangers in inappropriately forcing vital winds into channels they're not meant to go in, for example. Unfortunately these days anyone can access methods and instructions on the internet, and “practising” these without the necessary transmission and qualified instruction / advice, can lead to problems.

As I have stated elsewhere, Namkhai Norbu (as an example) is explicit in teaching the very real importance of observing oneself, with clarity and awareness ….  and encouraging people to adopt whatever means are deemed appropriate, according to circumstances, to improve their situation, develop their capacities, develop self-understanding at deeper and wider relative levels. If, for example, psychotherapy were to be useful, he would encourage people to take it up.

”Even individuals who aren't prone to psychosis will have a very unbalanced practice if they overlook Western psychology.”

I have to say that here you do seem to be overlooking the huge wealth and diversity of Buddhist psychology, mind training etc.

“The attachment to Buddhism seems to be rampant even in Integral circles …”

…. but not quite as rampant as the attachment to integral, eh? : ) But in any case, maybe there's something to it … : p

”I trust that these symbols will reemerge from a different perspective, even stronger than before, after being exposed to post-modernism.”

I admire your faith!!

With love,

Lol

P.S. David, if you're reading this, I'm sorry if it's in any way off topic …. and I'll respond to your question(s) as soon as I have another block of time.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Hey David,

e said:  

“e: The Buddha said that spending 1 day trying to perfect the 4 foundations of mindfullness had more merit than 100 years of doing good deeds.”

D:You'll have to give an arguement for why 1 day of practicing mindfulness is better than 100 years of doing good deeds. Just because the Buddha said it doesn't make it so. I have an awfully hard time agreeing with that one.

e: Frans did a good job of explaining the thrust of the quote and Lol further clarified quite nicely from within the Tibetan Nyingma School POV.”

D: I agree that a person's time will often be better spent in practicing mindfulness, but it's the intention and motivation behind it that I'm really gettting at, and perhaps Lol spoke to that a bit. In Boomeritis Buddhism-and I'm not accusing anyone of this- the motivation is to fulfill the desires of the personal self, avoid the fears, feel better,  etc. There might be the idea in there somewhere to be a Boddhisattva, and they will probably say so if you ask, but the intention to serve won't be there in any great percentage, and this will be reflected in the things they do along the way (as they're “practicing samadhi”). I think the Boddhisattva vow or something like it really has to be driven down the throats of most postmodern seekers and really insisted upon before they really begin practicing with the right intention. The cultural and personal conditioning most of us have is quite opposed to the idea of service (even though this service is really in the interest of our own happiness, joy, and freedom).

I don't think anything needs to be driven down anyone's throat. Folks will go towards the medicine they need when they understand the sickness they have. Regarding Right Intention and/or Right View. We don't just one day find ourselves on the path. In one way, the only people that are on the path are those that are very close to realization. They have done alot of preliminary work and now like a bull rider can stay on the bull and move forward with the bull. So, for most of us, we are trying to get closer and closer to that ability. So we must always be questioning our view and intention and refining etc. till the bull appears and we can ride it.

—

e said: “(David:) Does the significance of a person's “enlightenment” (state or horizontal development) depend on what in-time stage or structure (vertical development) the person has realized?

e: You would have to ask a Buddha that for a definitive answer. IMHO any being at anytime can realize the absolute. It is always right here, right now. We are like fish in water, we just don't see it.”

D: Which would have more significance, a Buddha who can rationalize or a Buddha that can't rationalize?

e: The only Buddha's I am familiar with are ones that can rationalize.”

D:That may be true, but the point is that there are many different structures, including post-rational, post-post rational, and the best Buddhas have the highest structures.

The 'best' Buddhas are the ones that teach. The ones that help to pacify sentient beings awareness fixated within the epistemological structures mentioned above. Proceeding to cure the worlds hunger for ontology.

—
 

”(David:) Could someone realizing the absolute actually be a negative event for the world in some cases?
 
e: Doubt it, unless you mean it would be bad for the economy i.e. people would feel less compelled to buy stuff they don't really need.”

D:Will it hurt our ability to realize the absolute if we also devote ourselves to relative issues?
e: We don't have much time David.”
 

D: Yes, I like your sense of urgency. I wouldn't want anyone's work in the relative side of the street to detract from their work on the absolute side. But for most of us it probably won't be authentic to practice samadhi all the time. At times it will become grasping, seeking. A totally non-seeking approach would usually include work on the relative side of the street. See, that's nondual.

We have no choice to be choiceless. We have to have aspiration (seek). Like I mentioned in the first dialog above, our seeking becomes more clear, more refined as we hone in on what is pertinent to our situation. Non-duality dawns only after emptiness is attained.

love

e

PS thanks for the kind words on my response to Michael's inquiry. I feel what is most important is the question. If we really have a burning question then others will be able to share and hopefully the entire community will grow in understanding. Thanks for starting this thread David and allowing Michael's question to arise! Lastly, I am glad you talked directly to the give and take above. Many times you will respond by posting some dialogue from Ken or Andrew, not that I mind, but it is difficult to carry on a conversation with people who are not presently here.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Hey Pelle,

I combined two of your posts to me into this one post here..

Pelle
I am talking from the experience of having a serious meditation practice for several years, complemented by other spiritual practices such as qi gong and yoga.

Thanks for finally addressing my question. Seeking further clarification… were these practices above within a sangha? Or did you get instruction and go off on your own for the most part? That is, how invloved were you with the communites that taught you those practices?


P: I never parrot Wilber, the only reason I use his teminology is because it describes a worldspace I was already seeing before finding out about Ken. This should be self-evident, and I'm disappointed that you do not feel the authenticity behind my words.

I am sorry about that, but you kept not addressing a simple question, so I turned up the heat a bit. Please forgive me!


P: When needed, I always step up and criticize I-I and Ken, to the point that some people think I am a critic of KW (which I am not, I love what Ken has done for the world and he is my most important teacher).

I don't know how many times I have to state this, but horizontal development does not mean you have transcended and included post-modernism. It simply doesn't! Impermanence, non-self and what have you does not mean that you have necessarily evolved vertically.

So no, it is not I who has to put in more time before anyone takes me seriously, it is you e.
You do not understand one of the most basic distinctions of AQAL (vertical vs horizontal) and therefore I have to assume that you are not ready to have a dialogue from an integral level of consciousness, no matter how many how many years you've meditated or how far you have developed horizontally.

I first found No-boundary around 1988. I have read everything by Ken except maybe Up From Eden. I have tried to keep pace with his thought as the books are released. So, from what incantation do you wish to talk from, Wilber 1-5? But let's start slow (if you wish). Let's find a common understanding and take it from there. All I ask is that you please answer the questions I pose to you and I promise to do the same.

Here it goes…

What do you understand this phrase to mean?

The myth of the given is predicated on the dingansich (thing in itself).

love

e

PS Rick wrote a real heartfelt post to you today. You would do well to consider it. Maybe after a calm meditation session. ;-)

Re: The Dual Mandala

Balder, thanx for shinning a spot light on my semantic and communcative flaws. I think with your imput I can adjust what I am trying to get across with more perspectives in mind.
Your right that the way I was speaking of the Dharma wasn't hitting the mark as well as I thought it had.
I'll address your points and adjust accordingly in another post.

Again, thanx.

Re: The Dual Mandala

For those of you that are members of Integral Naked, please go to this page and have a look at the second video. It is only 8 minutes long, and Patrick Dunn (Co-director, Integral Buddhism Center at Integral Spiritual Center. Buddhist Studies Scholar) makes the exact distinction I have been trying to make, between vertical and horizontal relativity.

If you don't trust me, then please trust a Buddhist Studies Scholar :)


Pelle

Re: The Dual Mandala

Bruce: thank you for your post, you gave several examples to illustrate my points, and with your deeper knowledge of Buddhism you can do that skilfully.

Lol: I'm fine with agreeing to disagree, we will simply have to continue our respective studies of spirituality and see where they lead us. I too would appreciate a couple of fresh dialogues between Ken and Buddhist masters and/or scholars.

e: I don't see our dialogue leading anywhere so I respectfully bow out of it.

Rick: I hope Bruce's post in combination with the video I link to above will clear up any confusion about what I mean about vertical and horizontal relativity.


all best to everyone,


Pelle

Re: The Dual Mandala

I'll check it out and study up. Although, what I meant was that Balder showed me where the misunderstand lied and where I was not communicating well, not in the ultimate point of my post. You really should continue the dialogue with e. They are trying to meet you in a communicative middle ground, because it seems that our symbols of language aren't being interpreted as intended from both sides, so e just wants to clear up the language issues, before any meaningful dialogue can happen. Its sad that it took so long to realize this, but that is the crux or online debate.
Anyway, I'll repsond later after watching the video. I think I'm seeing your point Pelle and I'm seeing where the confusion is arising. Your not really wrong in what your saying per say, but you and e are talking about different things.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Ma Rig Pa, thank you for your response, which I found very kind and authentic.

Evolution is a really interesting thing to contemplate. You might be interested in looking into this thread. There's an article there that discusses 12 different evolutionary theories and a discussion that so far is just between Rick and I (there's a response for you there, Rick; I didn't see your post there right away).

e said: “The 'best' Buddhas are the ones that teach. The ones that help to pacify sentient beings awareness fixated within the epistemological structures mentioned above. Proceeding to cure the worlds hunger for ontology.”

Everyone, no matter how enlightened, is expressing hirself through a structure. There are no exceptions. The Buddha was expressing himself through a structure.

Ken:

“But we are also raising an alarm. Somebody who has an experience of an enlightened state of nonduality can point to the world at large and say, “Ah, you do not have this state of enlightenment; you are caught in an illusion,” and they would be right, because they're seeing a deeper state than the average person is seeing, and therefore they're critical of the average person. Well, in the same way, we can be critical of them if they are using that enlightenment but don't have an understanding of these structures. We can say, “You're caught in lower structures, and you're interpreting your reality through those structures. So you are caught in an illusion.” Even somebody who has an enlightenment experience can still be preaching the myth of the given. And preaching myths is not generally thought to be a good way to teach enlightenment. But understanding this allows both enlightenments to emerge–vertical and horizontal, a gauge of one's Fullness and one's Freedom.”
 

From this interview.

Hey, e. I didn't know you were a second-face-of God person (like me). That's very heartening. All I ever heard from you was the first face, God as I am Not.

e said: “We have no choice to be choiceless. We have to have aspiration (seek). Like I mentioned in the first dialog above, our seeking becomes more clear, more refined as we hone in on what is pertinent to our situation. Non-duality dawns only after emptiness is attained.”

I agree that a non-seeking mind is founded upon a seeking mind, a continuously seeking mind. A seeking mind is the structure on which a non-seeking mind is built. I also agree that discrimination is essential, which you imply when you say “hone in on what is pertinent to our situation”–and that, to keep with the basic theme of the thread (I don't care if it meanders other places) is on the relative side of the street.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Hey David, I still want to take some time out before getting back to this discussion, as my mind needs to be calm in order to discern higher and lower relative truths to express and to choose from when expressing Mind.
But, I like what your just wrote so I wanted to support it with a quote from one of my favorite enlightened Zen masters, Hagen:

“We can devise a theory of everything and say, “This is Reality,” “This is Truth.” Or we may even say, “Mind is moving [from a Zen story]–that's the Truth, believe it.” But our explanations don't cut it. It's only consciousness itself which cuts Reality – literally, as we shall see.”

Re: The Dual Mandala

I like that quote, Rick. If we don't keep that in mind we can reify some relative truth, right? That's when we start making a mess of things.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Pelle: - It can potentially fool people that it has passed through post-modernism, but letting go of concepts in the relative realm does not mean that those concepts have been deconstructed.

ma rig pa: I am here in this forum more than anything else to learn and to develop. I do not understand why concepts (which [concepts ed.]?) need to be deconstructed …. to what end, for whose benefit. Could you please explain?

Pelle, I appreciate you've been extremely occupied elsewhere in the pod of late, and I also appreciate Bruce has, with customary clarity, enlarged on deficiencies Buddhism exhibits from the p.o.v. of post-modernism in his post above. However, his post doesn't directly answer the question I put to you (quoted above), and for me raises other questions which I will put to him further on in this post.

You and I and others have been in dialogue, one of the purposes of which for me (and I would imagine for everyone else) is to learn, through trying on or deepening into new or different perspectives. You've made certain statements, and my enquiring into them isn't to test your understanding or ask you to demonstrate it, but to get clarity on the different perspectives being presented, as much as anything else to determine how and why they might be incompatible.

For that reason I put it to you again: ”Could you please explain?” If you were to ask me about aspects of Buddhist Sutra, Tantra or Dzogchen that I was able to give a meaningful answer to, I wouldn't hesitate to do so.

I also echo Rick's proposal that you “… really should continue the dialogue with e. They are trying to meet you in a communicative middle ground, because it seems that our symbols of language aren't being interpreted as intended from both sides, so e just wants to clear up the language issues, before any meaningful dialogue can happen.” …. for the reasons stated above.

Bruce, thank you hugely for your post, it helps me enormously … and also raises questions. I want to preface my remarks and questions by acknowledging that I'm certain I'm not expressing anything you're not already familiar with, and that I'm hoping to 'air' the subject for a wider audience as much as I'm hoping to have further light shed on it for myself.

”For one thing, postmodernism challenges the notion of the possibility of unmediated, unadulterated “direct experience.””

Within Buddhism there is posited a level of realisation where a specific 'wisdom mind' directly apprehends the emptiness / lack of inherent self-existence of self and phenomena, to the extent that there is no further grasping at their self-existence, and following from this, no mind of attachment or aversion towards them.

(a) Is it the case that post-modernism would challenge this “wisdom mind of emptiness” as it's often called, on the basis that it couldn't be, as you say ,”unadulterated”, free from embedded sociocultural patterns, values, perspectives?

(b) If the above is the case, would such a challenge be valid, if the necessary injunctions required to arrive at such a 'wisdom mind' hadn't been carried out / tested by one or more 'adherents' of post-modernism, to the extent that one or more had 'realised' this direct apprehension?

[ Edit: when I first submitted this the above para read ” .. his direct apprehension, and I didn't want to confuse the issue : ) ]

”Further, Buddhism does represent a very particular way of viewing the world – a view which privileges direct experience, and which also involves “interpretation” of contemplative experience (Right View involves both conceptual and experiential components).”

By “.. “interpretation” of contemplative experience ..”, are you referring to the notion expressed in IS and elsewhere that, for example, a “non-dual state experience” as it's called is automatically and invariably “interpreted” by/from/within the worldview or altitude that the experiencer is inhabiting or embedded in? Or are you merely referring to the “conceptual component” aspect of Right View?

If the former, do you not consider that when relaxing and deepening into non-dual awareness, that all apparent “objects” that co-emerge or tetra-arise along with their respective sense consciousnesses (and already accepting that they are not “givens” even if they ordinarily may compellingly appear to be “givens”) – that they don't condition, affect, distort or influence said non-dual awareness in any way, analogous to the way that the reflections in a mirror don't condition, taint or colour the mirror itself? If so, is there anything in or of non-dual awareness “itself” (not the reflections / arisings) that can be interpreted? And would you not agree with me that even if  “out of non-dual awareness” the ordinary mind were to develop attachment to an experience (nyams) of emptiness or clarity or sensation that arose within a period of non-dual 'contemplation', and then were to try to interpret it, bearing in mind the advice given in the teaching to avoid doing precisely this, that such a thought/association/interpretation would itself self-liberate if one allowed oneself in that moment to re-discover ones “natural state” and relax into it again?

If the latter, and accepting, for example, that the “Five Madhyamaka Lines of Reasoning” used to establish emptiness / shunyata in Gelugpa Prasangika, being conceptual components of Right View, are open to be interpreted, debated etc., as is the conceptual idea of what the direct apprehension of emptiness is, wouldn't you say that the “wisdom-mind of emptiness” itself is non-conceptual and therefore beyond interpretation?

”In my understanding at present, however, postmodernism has applied these insights in ways, and in particular domains, which Buddhists have either overlooked or at least not afforded the same attention: the sociocultural “emptiness” of phenomena, the power imbalances that result from not recognizing the “dependent origination” of cultural values or perspectives (including Buddhism and imbedded sociocultural patterns within Buddhist tradition), the critique of the phenomenology of presence and “direct experience,” and so on.”

I'm all in favour of this being highlighted so, and would be reassured if modern Buddhist masters, such as the Dalai Lama, were to address this if they haven't already begun to, that is. ( – I'm not up with the DL's recent publications.) Btw, what do you mean by ”.. the sociocultural “emptiness” of phenomena ..”?  — do you mean this, for example, in the way that an expresso coffee cup is dependent on the cultural associations of expresso, coffee etc.? And I would be extremely interested to read about or hear Buddhist masters reflect on the usefulness or otherwise of “.. the critique of the phenomenology of presence and “direct experience,” and so on.” …. more than that … imho this should be addressed by Buddhism in the 21st century.

”Buddhism recognizes that different sentient beings will perceive phenomena differently based on their respective karmic propensities, but does not appear to have recognized that some of its archetypal visions, while “empty of inherent self-existence,” are also culturally mediated and will not appear to all humans irrespective of culture or conditioning.”

I beg to differ, because what you're alluding to in “.. but does not appear to have recognized etc. ..” certainly isn't the view of my teacher, and I'd be surprised if this is the case for him only. As he describes it, the yidam Yamantaka for example first manifested directly out of the Dharmakaya to beings belonging to the (non-human) Yama “class of beings” who had the capacity to perceive and receive the wisdom and transmission from the Sambhoghakaya “dimension”. In our historical time mahasiddhas had access to the dimension where this tantra originated and transmitted it and taught its practice to humans. Sure, any sceptical person could declare this to be a load of mythico-magical thinking, but this example does at least demonstrate that Yamantaka was culturally mediated in relation to the 'class' of Yama! Likewise, my teacher says that the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities that are said to appear in ones internal vision in the Bardo will only appear as such if one has the transmission of the practices relating to them, and has familiarity and experience of those practices in ones lifetime …. so again, there is not a consideration here that they will “.. appear to all humans irrespective of culture or conditioning.”

”In my view, many postmodern insights are quite compatible with the basic Buddhist understanding of the emptiness and non-self of phenomena, but postmodernism adds new dimensions to this understanding, and may impact Buddhism on a number of levels once it fully digests these insights.”

From what little I know of post-modernism, I have to agree with you, and imho Buddhism should be open to receiving, exploring, digesting and integrating pomo's insights in whatever way might benefit the way it is taught in today's world. (My tuppence worth!)

All best,

Lol

Re: The Dual Mandala

Pelle: - It can potentially fool people that it has passed through post-modernism, but letting go of concepts in the relative realm does not mean that those concepts have been deconstructed.

ma rig pa: I am here in this forum more than anything else to learn and to develop. I do not understand why concepts (which [concepts ed.]?) need to be deconstructed …. to what end, for whose benefit. Could you please explain?


Lol,

I've simply been extremely busy in various Zaadz pods, that's why I forgot about your question. So, nothing personal at all. Let me try to explain by using an example.

Let's assume that I'm a person who has reached an orange level of cognition (a k a formal operational or 3-p) and that I also have orange values. One day I decide to take up Buddhist meditation (pick a branch), and go to a well-respected teacher. Being diligent, I commit myself fully to my teacher and to my process. Time passes, and one day I've reached a point where I can rest in causal awareness. Things may arise in my consciousness, but I'm not at all attached to them, I don't identify with them and I experientially know that they are not real. Eventually I even break through into non-dual realization.

However, stage-wise I'm still orange. Late orange, but still not green cognitively. This means that I cannot see how the structure of my language shapes my belief system, the very belief system that meant that I was open to trying on meditation in the first place. I know that my beliefs are not real per se, that they simply arise as fleeting objects in my consciousness - but I still cannot see how subtle cultural patterns are part of every sentence I construct, sentences that motivate me to do various things in my life. I also cannot fully grasp that objects that were arising in my consciousness as I was passing through the subtle realm, objects I know not to be real and that I'm no longer attached to, were specific to my cultural background and my upbringing. If somebody sat down to explain it to me I might get it, but I will never spontaneously realize that before I hit green cognition.

Therefore we need green cognition to do a lot of things that non-dual realization per se does not grok. Causal and non-dual allow me to let go of my attachment to every concept there is, but when my relative self accesses those concepts in order to function in my daily life, I still cannot see the the extent to which my concepts co-create my experience of the gross realm. Because no matter how fleeting, non-real and trivial the concepts are from my causal/non-dual realization, those are the very concept I enter when I want to get something done or decide what to do in my everyday life.


I hope that example answers your question.

all best,
Pelle

Re: The Dual Mandala

Hi, Lol,

I really love the questions you've asked.  I had been intending to come back to my letter to add a postscript about the postmodern “challenge to the phenomenology of presence,” because I am not convinced the postmodern challenge really surpasses high Buddhist teachings; in fact, I think that the Buddhist perspective may already have “met” this challenge (which is something I suggested to Theurj in another thread).  Anyway, I'm just writing this quick note here to say that I think your questions deserve their own thread, so I am going to open a new thread soon and will copy your letter over there.

Best wishes,

Bruce

Re: The Dual Mandala

Pelle:

“Let’s assume that I’m a person who has reached an orange level of cognition (a k a formal operational or 3-p) and that I also have orange values. One day I decide to take up Buddhist meditation (pick a branch), and go to a well-respected teacher. Being diligent, I commit myself fully to my teacher and to my process. Time passes, and one day I’ve reached a point where I can rest in causal awareness. Things may arise in my consciousness, but I’m not at all attached to them, I don’t identify with them and I experientially know that they are not real. Eventually I even break through into non-dual realization.

However, stage-wise I’m still orange. Late orange, but still not green cognitively. This means that I cannot see how the structure of my language shapes my belief system, the very belief system that meant that I was open to trying on meditation in the first place. I know that my beliefs are not real per se, that they simply arise as fleeting objects in my consciousness - but I still cannot see how subtle cultural patterns are part of every sentence I construct, sentences that motivate me to do various things in my life. I also cannot fully grasp that objects that were arising in my consciousness as I was passing through the subtle realm, objects I know not to be real and that I’m no longer attached to, were specific to my cultural background and my upbringing. If somebody sat down to explain it to me I might get it, but I will never spontaneously realize that before I hit green cognition.

Therefore we need green cognition to do a lot of things that non-dual realization per se does not grok. Causal and non-dual allow me to let go of my attachment to every concept there is, but when my relative self accesses those concepts in order to function in my daily life, I still cannot see the the extent to which my concepts co-create my experience of the gross realm. Because no matter how fleeting, non-real and trivial the concepts are from my causal/non-dual realization, those are the very concept I enter when I want to get something done or decide what to do in my everyday life.”

Now, I am by no means a Buddhist and I have not even close to the amount of theory behind me that Rick, e and LOL do, but isn’t it the case that when you have non-dual awareness you are aware of the fact that anything that your belief system depends on, including your belief system itself, isn’t real, that the AQAL structure itself is part of Samsara, is a dual construct. Reaching non-dual awareness means you see through the falseness of all that - of course you still have to interact in the physical world but you do that with that awareness - meaning that you have surpassed anything that AQAL has to offer - say ultra-violet level?

I know AQAL is THE THING on this pod, but ultimately it is something we will incorporate as partial and dual in a non-dual awareness.

Please correct me if I’m wrong - this is very close to my heart.

Frans

Re: The Dual Mandala

Yeah, you've pretty much got it Frans. I'll come back eventually and go through everyone's statements and questions, because to me it really is simple, and I can't believe that people aren't getting certain things because they can't understand. I'm sure it is all various misunderstandings in a few areas that are clouding everything else.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Frans:
…but isn’t it the case that when you have non-dual awareness you are aware of the fact that anything that your belief system depends on, including your belief system itself, isn’t real, that the AQAL structure itself is part of Samsara, is a dual construct. Reaching non-dual awareness means you see through the falseness of all that - of course you still have to interact in the physical world but you do that with that awareness - meaning that you have surpassed anything that AQAL has to offer - say ultra-violet level?


Frans, did you truly read my post? Because the very thing you wrote now tells me that I wrote my whole last post in vain, my message still didn't come across…

Can you not see how a person can be amber and non-dual at the same time, or orange and non-dual as in my example?

Do you accept that horizontal and vertical growth is different and not necessarily related?


Pelle

Re: The Dual Mandala

I read it Pelle, but it doesn't seem like an argument based upon anything but words. A non-dual awareness, in any sense of the word, is beyond a brief state that is interpreted via orange, or green, or any particular non-dual stage. As a person practices they come face-to-face with what the masters are pointing at when we say non-dual, but interpretation from stage CoG is inevitable. I think this may be one of the reasons why a Dharma practice has been shown to me the more effective thing to get people up the spiral. Every explanation you give for this moment if doomed to failure, to paradox.
A paradox is created when one tries to interpret a non-dual experience, with a reified “this means that” which defines the rationality of  Orange. This creates stress and cognitive dissonance, which may be what stimulates psychic growth and greater inclusion.
What e and myself are talking about is the point at which interpretations and explanations are no longer an option. Then one simply sees, and not from an ego centered view point, but with pure and original mind.
One cannot do this at Orange or Green, etc…
It is a process of degrees if you will, and it can only be understood by “completing the experiment” as KW says. It can't be learned or understood. I don't just mean from a book, but by thought itself.

A students asked Yun Men, “What is the teaching that goes beyond, beyond Buddhas and monks?” Yun Men replied, “A piece of cake.”

If you can understand that, then you know but cannot say, get it? If you know what Yun Men was talking about then you aren't operating from Orange, or amber or green, etc…

So while I can see you example beginning at maybe turquoise or higher, I don't think your correct when you say from amber or orange.

But if teachers placate students in their delusion at any particular stage and alleviate some of that cognitive dissonance, by introducing relativistic concepts for the sake of themselves, then the practice may not do what it has been designed to do of the past couple of thousand years. Do you see that an incomplete understanding of the Dharma, that a cutting of the Whole into parts leads only to unintended consequences. Just as a river only seen as a river can cause disaster when damned, because the river is not just a river. This is what we mean by non-dual awareness. This isn't just mind space stuff, this is the most practical way of seeing things to do the least harm in the world. As my teacher says, “If it isn't practical in daily life, then it's useless.” I honestly don't know if that is actually what happens cognitively, but it holds true for my experience. I would welcome a more objective, psychiatry based study of the process.

I still need to watch that video though, and then I can get to the heart of the post-modern argument.

Re: The Dual Mandala

e said: “The 'best' Buddhas are the ones that teach. The ones that help to pacify sentient beings awareness fixated within the epistemological structures mentioned above. Proceeding to cure the worlds hunger for ontology.”

David:
Everyone, no matter how enlightened, is expressing hirself through a structure. There are no exceptions. The Buddha was expressing himself through a structure.

e: Right but they are not “his” structures. The first person the Buddha came across on his way to the 5 ascetics before the first sermon asked the Buddha some questions. He asked (after noticing something ‘different' about him), “Are you a god? ” No. “Are you a devil” No. “Are you a human?” No “Then what are you?” Awake. The man then said, “indeed you are” and walked away. You see, the relative identities the man tried to stick onto the Buddha slid off like he was Teflon. The Buddha's first inclination was not to teach because he felt the truth was too sublime for people to fathom. So, he met the people where they were at. He did not create nor was he imbedded in structures for them to meet him. The same sort of thing happened when Trungpa came to the US to teach (not saying he was a Buddha). His first teaching was, ‘It is just This' (i.e. non-dual suchness…maybe he thought everyone in the west was so advanced cause they had so much modern stuff and went right to the heart of the matter). And no one understood him. He then had to create all these crazy wisdom teachings so folks could first gain a foothold into their own condition and then the teachings.

Here is a cool sutta showing the ‘structureless' nature of a Buddha. (As an aside, notice the skilled use of the tetralemma 700 years before Nagarjuna!) Highlighting…”A 'position,' Vaccha, is something that a Tathagata has done away with.” Is this super integral? Off the chart? I mean he is here saying he does not take a perspective! Also, tathagata was how the Buddha referred to himself. Some translate it as “thus come/thus gone” or “come and gone”. Riddle me this Integralites, where did he go on the AQAL map and lattice? :-)

So, why do we need more structures? To create more structures? Where is the structure going when there is no longer a stairway to heaven (i.e. unmanifest Spirit is no longer ‘on top' in the waking state..see the lattice)? Is there safety in structures? Are you safer on the 50^th floor or the 55^th floor of the World Trade Center? Will we ever be content from within any structure? I mean, how many have you had, are you happier now then you were when you had less? How much so? OK so I will bring it down a bit. Yes, great, valid and excellent points. Try and get your relative structural expression increased so you can relate better and to more people. 100% agreed! But what are we relating? You see, the structure is there to help support what passes within it. What passes within it and to what end? Is there a seeing that sees that a structure has the consistency of a sand castle…a flowing river…a mirage at an oasis found in a dream?

David posting a dialogue…
Ken:

“But we are also raising an alarm. Somebody who has an experience of an enlightened state of nonduality can point to the world at large and say, “Ah, you do not have this state of enlightenment; you are caught in an illusion,” and they would be right, because they're seeing a deeper state than the average person is seeing, and therefore they're critical of the average person. Well, in the same way, we can be critical of them if they are using that enlightenment but don't have an understanding of these structures. We can say, “You're caught in lower structures, and you're interpreting your reality through those structures. So you are caught in an illusion.” Even somebody who has an enlightenment experience can still be preaching the myth of the given. And preaching myths is not generally thought to be a good way to teach enlightenment. But understanding this allows both enlightenments to emerge-vertical and horizontal, a gauge of one's Fullness and one's Freedom.”

Right so there is a difference between an experience of non-duality & a realization (to make real) of non-duality. Like Frans was alluding to, if the experience is ‘permanent' then you are off the charts as you no longer are interpreting your experience within dualistic frameworks i.e. the raft has done it's job and you leave it at the shoreline. The subject/object structure has been seen thru and rendered superfluous. You can still walk and talk etc. but you see there are no longer any referents to the relative placeholders “I” “me” “you” “it” etc….there really never ever was.
 
—-

D:
Hey, e. I didn't know you were a second-face-of God person (like me). That's very heartening. All I ever heard from you was the first face, God as I am Not.

Yeah well it is kind of like the oldest mode of being God that I know. And so like a well worn pair of jeans, it does not get my attention but it sure feels well worn and so easy and comfy.


—

e said: “We have no choice to be choiceless. We have to have aspiration (seek). Like I mentioned in the first dialog above, our seeking becomes more clear, more refined as we hone in on what is pertinent to our situation. Non-duality dawns only after emptiness is attained.”

David:

I agree that a non-seeking mind is founded upon a seeking mind, a continuously seeking mind. A seeking mind is the structure on which a non-seeking mind is built. I also agree that discrimination is essential, which you imply when you say “hone in on what is pertinent to our situation”-and that, to keep with the basic theme of the thread (I don't care if it meanders other places) is on the relative side of the street.

Invert what you say above and see if it makes any sense to you i.e. The structure of a seeking mind is (unknowingly) built upon the non-seeking mind (empty-mind).  
“And so castles made of sand fall into the sea, eventually.”

love

e

Re: The Dual Mandala

Well said e.

Re: The Dual Mandala

He Pelle,

I’m not sure where we’re not getting each other. What I mean to say is that if you have non-dual awareness AQAL is meaningless - whatever colour. I agree with Rick and e that this simply won’t happen at any level below turquoise or indigo, but that’s irrelevant. Whether your growth is vertical or horizontal has stopped to have any meaning - growth itself is meaningless.

As e says:

“Like Frans was alluding to, if the experience is ‘permanent’ then you are off the charts as you no longer are interpreting your experience within dualistic frameworks i.e. the raft has done it’s job and you leave it at the shoreline. The subject/object structure has been seen thru and rendered superfluous.”

I think a lot of people here hold onto AQAL as the answer to everything, but it’s just a structure in the end (yes, the very best one out there, but still…) I’m pretty sure KW would be the first to agree…

Frans

Re: The Dual Mandala

e:

“Invert what you say above and see if it makes any sense to you i.e. The structure of a seeking mind is (unknowingly) built upon the non-seeking mind (empty-mind).
“And so castles made of sand fall into the sea, eventually.””

And that’s the end of ego - built upon non duality

Frans

Re: The Dual Mandala

“A little Indian brave who before he was ten,
 Played war games in the woods with his indian friends … ”

Yeah, e, a lot of great stuff in there. It does seem like we're getting closer together as well. I'm even seeing value in the no-self doctrine, even if it isn't ultimately true (if there were truly no self at all I think it would just be lights out at some point, without any memory of the “experience” if it were just temporary).

Anyway …
 

Tathagata said: “A 'position,' Vaccha, is something that a Tathagata has done away with.”

Not so fast, Tathagata. Let's put away nondual teachings, pointers to the nondual, for a moment. Let's say instead Tathagata's son came up to him and said, “Dad, we had a lesson today in school that I don't understand. I mean, I don't know how to answer it. The teacher said, 'Do you think girls should go to school as well as boys? I want you to think about it tonight and have an answer for me in the morning.' Dad, this is very confusing. I've never even considered the idea of girls going to school with us. It sounds very strange. But perhaps they want to go to school. What do you think? How should I answer?”

At that point Tathagata will have to take a position. Of course he could simply reply, as he did to Vaccha, “doesn't apply,” but that would still be position of sorts, and at any rate it wouldn't be very helpful, would it? Tathagata has to take some kind of position there, even if it's “maybe.” And the position will depend on what sort of in-time structure he has developed (generally, Amber: “no”; above amber: “yes”) as well as his cultural conditioning.

Apparently the Buddha said: “Those who eat the five pungent plants [garlic, onions, leeks, scallions, and chives] … will not be protected by the Good Spirits of the Ten Directions; immensely powerful demons will disguise themselves as Buddhas and speak false dharma to them, resulting in lust, rage and delusion [Guatama Buddha. Shurungama Sutra Volume 7].” I get it from this book.

Be that as it may, that is a position, isn't it? And we can call it “heartwood” if we like, but it's an answer that was influenced by his structure and cultural conditioning.
 

e said: “So, why do we need more structures?”

So we can evolve beyond positions like “girls should not go to school” and ease suffering.

e said: “Invert what you say above and see if it makes any sense to you i.e. The structure of a seeking mind is (unknowingly) built upon the non-seeking mind (empty-mind).”

That's cool too.

My favorite Jimi song.  

Re: The Dual Mandala

David: “Yeah, e, a lot of great stuff in there. It does seem like we're getting closer together as well. I'm even seeing value in the no-self doctrine, even if it isn't ultimately true (if there were truly no self at all I think it would just be lights out at some point, without any memory of the “experience” if it were just temporary).”

Absolutely David, but we much come back to the moment and remind ourselves of what it is, every moment. Last night I got some bad news, and it kind of shocked me out of the moment, and I was letting it paralyse me from working, but I was thinking also about the reality of my situation at that moment. It was a struggle, but I was able to get over it eventually.
Samsara doesn't end with enlightenment, I've been told, but you just see it for what it is. I say I've been told, because I don't actually encompass a non-dual awareness consciously every moment. I'm not there yet, and don't know if it is possible.  That is why I think Pelle is right to a point, but he goes too far back. I remember well a period when I had a rather strong Green CoG, and I didn't come close to understanding what I do now.  Yet there are still aspects of my psyche that are 1st tier, most likely because of trama I suffered then. So this is a complex thing. This is something that we really need to be flexible about.

There actually is a story about the Buddha originally saying that women shouldn't be let into the order, but his cousin, Ananda, reasoned with him and he accepted women, including his mother, into the order.
You can check it out, and see if it means anything to you. What I get is not that the Buddha took a personal position, but a position that was pragmatic in the time and place he found himself in at the moment. If he really felt any way about it personally, then he wouldn't have been flexible and changed his 'position'. After all in 500 BC, Northern India, it probably hurt the Sangha politically a lot more by allowing women, then by rejecting them.

Re: The Dual Mandala

David: “Apparently the Buddha said: “Those who eat the five pungent plants [garlic, onions, leeks, scallions, and chives] … will not be protected by the Good Spirits of the Ten Directions; immensely powerful demons will disguise themselves as Buddhas and speak false dharma to them, resulting in lust, rage and delusion [Guatama Buddha. Shurungama Sutra Volume 7].” I get it from this book.

Be that as it may, that is a position, isn't it?”

This is a small part from a sermon from Bodhidharma, from a book I was given when I took an into. to meditation at my Zen hall. I think it can help clear up the above quote, and there are many other sutras that the Bodhidharma deconstructs in the sermon as well, so this is just a small part.

Q: …But when Sbakyamuni was a bodhisattva, he consumed three bowls of milk and six ladles of gruel prior to attaining enlightenment. If he bad to drink milk before be could taste the fruit of buddhahood, how can merely beholding the mind result in liberation?

A: What you say is true. That is how he attained enlightenment. He had to drink milk before he could become a Buddha. But there are two kinds of milk. That which Shakyamuni drank wasn’t ordinary impure milk but Pure Dharma-talk. The three bowls were the three sets of precepts. And the six ladies were the six paramitas. When Sbakyamuni attained enlightenment, it was because he drank this pure dharma-rnilk that he tasted the fruit of Buddhahood. To say that the Tathagata drank the worldly concoction of impure, rank-smelling cow’s milk is the height of slander. That which is truly so, the indestructible, passionless Dharma-self, remains forever free of the world’s afflictions. Why would it need impure milk to satisfy its hunger or thirst?

The sutras say, “This ox doesn’t live in the highlands or the lowlands. It doesn’t eat grain or chaff. And it doesn’t graze with cows. The body of this ox is the color of burnished gold.” The ox refers to Vairocana. Owing to his great compassion for all beings, he produces from within his pure Dharma-body the sublime Dharma-milk of the three sets of precepts and six paramitas to nourish all those who seek liberation. The pure milk of such a truly pure ox not only enabled the ‘tathagata to achieve buddhahood but also enables any being who drinks it to attain unexcelled, complete enlightenment.

Q: Throughout the sutras the Buddha tells mortals they can achieve enlightenment by performing such meritorious works as building monasteries, casting statues, burning incense, scattering flowers, lighting eternal lamps, practicing all six periods” of the day and night, walking around stupas, observing fasts, and worshipping. But if beholding the mind includes all other practices, then such works as these would appear redundant.

The sutras of the Buddha contain countless metaphors. Because mortals have shallow minds and don’t understand anything deep, the Buddha used the tangible to represent the sublime. People who seek blessings by concentrating on external works instead of internal cultivation are attempting the impossible, What you call a monastery we call a sangbarama, a place of purity. But whoever denies entry to the three poisons and keeps the gates of his senses pure, his body and mind still, inside and outside clean, builds a monastery.

Re: The Dual Mandala

I think there is a lot of metaphor in the dharma, but I think the Buddha meant it literally when he asked the monks to abstain from onions and garlic (he may have made exceptions for using them as medicine).

The idea that onions and garlic are not good for spiritual aspirants goes way back to the Vedas. In this article about the “Buddhist diet” it says that the Buddha said not to eat garlic or onions because they can cause lust and anger. This is just what they say in ayurveda (which offers a pretty good typology, by the way). In China they apparently believe garlic is generally beneficial with the exception of the Buddhists, according to this article.

 Onions and garlic are not sattvic. Garilc is considered to be rajasic (stimulating) or tamasic (dulling), depending on who you ask, and onions tamasic, though they can still be good medicine perhaps. There is definitely something to all this, and it's an idea that's still very much alive today. The tulku who leads a Tibetan yoga class I've been going to asks people not to eat garlic or onions before coming to class; you'll find the same prohibition in ashrams, restaurants in India, other yoga classes.

It's just about impossible to avoid those things completely, however, and I personally don't believe small amounts as seasonings would be harmful. But spicy food can be harmful if someone has too much pitta.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Hey, some sattvic barbecue sauce.

Re: The Dual Mandala

David:
Yeah, e, a lot of great stuff in there. It does seem like we're getting closer together as well. I'm even seeing value in the no-self doctrine, even if it isn't ultimately true (if there were truly no self at all I think it would just be lights out at some point, without any memory of the “experience” if it were just temporary).


Yeah, that ontology is a very old hard habit to kick!!
It is probably the most difficult thing to do.


D:
Anyway …
 

Tathagata said: “A 'position,' Vaccha, is something that a Tathagata has done away with.”

Not so fast, Tathagata. Let's put away nondual teachings, pointers to the nondual, for a moment. Let's say instead Tathagata's son came up to him and said, “Dad, we had a lesson today in school that I don't understand. I mean, I don't know how to answer it. The teacher said, 'Do you think girls should go to school as well as boys? I want you to think about it tonight and have an answer for me in the morning.' Dad, this is very confusing. I've never even considered the idea of girls going to school with us. It sounds very strange. But perhaps they want to go to school. What do you think? How should I answer?”

At that point Tathagata will have to take a position. Of course he could simply reply, as he did to Vaccha, “doesn't apply,” but that would still be position of sorts, and at any rate it wouldn't be very helpful, would it? Tathagata has to take some kind of position there, even if it's “maybe.” And the position will depend on what sort of in-time structure he has developed (generally, Amber: “no”; above amber: “yes”) as well as his cultural conditioning.


Right, Ananda had to ask the Buddha 3 times before he let women into the ordained sangha. Expanding a bit on the political aspect Rick already mentioned. Women during that time were considered property, a bit like livestock. So, it was no easy thing to let women become nuns. I am sure it was quite risky for the monks and the followers, especially in the more RED kingdoms, where people shot first and asked questions later. Also, Ananda was the one that taught the nuns so the Buddha was basically making sure this is what he wanted to do by making him ask 3 times. Think of what Lincoln had to do to free the slaves. This would have been comparable 2500 years ago. Only the Buddha was armed with only a bowl and metta. :-)


D:
Be that as it may, that is a position, isn't it? And we can call it “heartwood” if we like, but it's an answer that was influenced by his structure and cultural conditioning.

It has been real helpful for me to always remember the 2 languages the Buddha spoke in. Dhamma language and people language. The one about abandoning positions was spoken in Dhamma language, the one about ordaining women was spoken in people language.
 

D:
My favorite Jimi song.  

Sweet…thanks!

love

e

Re: The Dual Mandala

Glad you liked the Jimi Hendrix song. Here's another

e said: “Yeah, that ontology is a very old hard habit to kick!!
It is probably the most difficult thing to do.”

We're not saying ontology stops with enlightenment, are we?

e said: “Also, Ananda was the one that taught the nuns so the Buddha was basically making sure this is what he wanted to do by making him ask 3 times.”
 
How do we know this is what happened? Maybe the Buddha just didn't think women should be allowed in, and Ananda had to work on him a bit.

Re: The Dual Mandala

David: “I think there is a lot of metaphor in the dharma, but I think the Buddha meant it literally when he asked the monks to abstain from onions and garlic (he may have made exceptions for using them as medicine). ”

That's possible, the Buddha would also tell young men how to save money and investing profit back into a business, etc…
It's just when you read a suttra and you see a laudry list of things in exact numbers, they almost always refer to something else. Buddhism has sooo many lists, just read the Abhidharma.
All sutras were written after the Buddha died, and all were written by monks to monks, who could read or would listen to countless dharma talks. They had these lists memorized, and knew the metaphors because of the numbers.
I once watched a Sri Lankan monk from a Theravadan order do a daily ceremony, that lasted a couple of hours. It was done to the 4 directions the 10 this, the 5 that, etc… He could also do it in Pali and a few other languages.

I can't comment on the exact nature of that quote about the food, because I've never read it, but that would be my first thought about it from past experience. Most suttras require guided study. One of the differences between Buddhism and most other religions is that it is known and accepted from the beginning of study that these are metaphors and should never be taken literally.

Re: The Dual Mandala

Frans:
What I mean to say is that if you have non-dual awareness AQAL is
meaningless - whatever colour. I agree with Rick and e that this simply
won’t happen at any level below turquoise or indigo, but that’s
irrelevant.


Non-dual enlightment can happen at amber or orange levels, turquoise or indigo are not needed.

Non-dual awareness does not make AQAL levels meaningless, since the very moment you open your mouth you speak through your own level of consciousness, regardless of whether you have a non-dual state plateau or not. If you try to explain your non-dual plateau to a friend your choice of words and your interpretation will be greatly affected by your level/structure of consciousness, as will your cultural influences (eg your country, your buddhist training, etc)

I agree that meditation and state breakthroughs are great catalysts for vertical growth, in that sense meditation is the best tool both for horizontal and vertical growth. That has been my personal experience as well.

I also agree that when in a causal or non-dual state, AQAL is simply a structure that you look at and feel non-attached to. For me this also applies when dancing or creating other art: AQAL is then an almost repressive structure and in the moment I discard it without hesitation and instead follow the creative impulse.


Warmly
Pelle

Re: The Dual Mandala

Hi Pelle,

You said: “when in a causal or non-dual state, AQAL is simply a structure that you look at and feel non-attached to. For me this also applies when dancing or creating other art: AQAL is then an almost repressive structure and in the moment I discard it without hesitation and instead follow the creative impulse.”

That is a state experience; I get in that “zone” all the time when I’m working - and when I do, my work becomes creative expression, no doubt about that in my mind at all.

I believe we have a lot in common in that we both gave up “promising, high status, high paying careers” in order to pursue more enlightening activities. That in itself says a lot about the power of now - pun intendend - doesn’t it..?

The way I like to see the lattice (or any structure, really) is that it is built on the ground of being; it’s like the lattice is placed in a circle, that represents non-duality. No matter what direction you take, horizontal, vertical or diagonal - when you reach the outer limit the realization of the ground is there. There is no longer a “you” who realizes this, there is just realization that everything in and out of the circle is just as much part of that ground as the circle itself. Whatever stage you were at when realizing (and I do believe to be able to keep that realization you need to be very highly developed; maybe not so for a very temporary state realization) may then inform your way of relating to the world - but is meaningless to that which used to be “you”, if not for the world.

Anyway, I think once again we’ve cut through the layers of misunderstanding and understood.

Frans

Re: The Dual Mandala

David: “How do we know this is what happened? Maybe the Buddha just didn't think women should be allowed in, and Ananda had to work on him a bit.”

We don't even “know” if the historical Buddha existed, so the answer to you question is that we don't. Whoever wrote the story was most likely trying to get that point across, because the storys of the Buddha's life are really metaphorical lessons in themselves. This includes the stories of his past lives.
Scholars are able to date his timeline mainly through the fact that a written language wasn't introduced to northern India until about 300 years after he would have died, and he supposedly never traveled farther than 100 miles from where he was born.
The story about how he had two palaces, one for the summer and one for the winter are obviously not true as well, because there were no great kings in that area during this time, so his father was a chieftan or big man at best. But again, the story is a lesson.

The actual Buddha is nothing more than this very Mind.

Re: The Dual Mandala

David:
Glad you liked the Jimi Hendrix song. Here's another

Another sweet one. Here is SRV doing Little Wing (my favorite) live.
He riff's off into Third Stone From the Sun at the end…

———

e said: “Yeah, that ontology is a very old hard habit to kick!!
It is probably the most difficult thing to do.”

D: We're not saying ontology stops with enlightenment, are we?

“Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly, I awoke, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming that I am now a man.”

—

e said: “Also, Ananda was the one that taught the nuns so the Buddha was basically making sure this is what he wanted to do by making him ask 3 times.”
 
D: How do we know this is what happened? Maybe the Buddha just didn't think women should be allowed in, and Ananda had to work on him a bit.

 

OK lets pretend you are the Buddha and I am Ananda and we live out in the boonies in present day Afghanistan where there are various warlords controlling different territories. The warlords and their men tolerate us hanging out in the woods and caves because we pose them no threat and we only bug their wives for food now and then. They wanted to kill us before as they saw us fraternizing with their wives but their wives told their husbands that we are celibate and we are good guys and it is actually quite meritorious if we are supported. Plus we tell good stories in exchange for the food, the kids really like us and we don't stay in one place too long and wear out our welcome. The warlords know a few of our members (they grew up with a few of them) and so trust us…sort off…as far as a warlord can trust. Plus they have visited us a few times and have seen that we are really chill and pose no threat to them. So one day, I come back to you all excited and say, “We need to let all the wives of the warlords and the wives of their men come and stay with us. They all want to leave their overbearing husbands and come live with us in the woods!” Get the picture? Now, what are you going to say to me? You would probably want to hit me over the head with your bowl! But I am your cousin so instead you make me be damn sure this is what I want to do as I am going to be the one to teach the ex-wives of the warlords because it was my bright idea to begin with.

———

 Rick:

The actual Buddha is nothing more than this very Mind.

Anyway, I think once again we've cut through the layers of misunderstanding and understood.

:-)))


love

e