Quote:

Not-Self teaching is not a bald denial of Self, but a persistent
undermining of any attempt to take anything as “Self,” and thus be
attached to it. It is a contemplative strategy to induce, in the end, a letting
go of everything. To reduce it to a bald “there is no Self” would be to shortcircuit
this process. Indeed, the Buddha was once directly asked “Is there a
s/Self?” to which he responded with silence, as he did to “Is there no s/Self?”
(S. IV.400–401). After the questioner had left, he explained that if he had said
“There is a s/Self,” this would have been to side with the eternalists, and
contradicted his knowledge that “all dhammas are not-Self.” To have said
“There is no s/Self,” would have been to side with the annihilationists, and
make the confused questioner think that he had lost a s/Self he previously
had.

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Quote:

The following selection from the Sam· yutta-nika¯ya shows that rather than
deny metaphysics, the Dhamma urges one to understand how things are. It
instructs one to avoid wrong views (dit·t·hi), particularly the two extremes
of existence and non-existence that are oftentimes referred to as eternalism
and annihilationism.4 Instead, one should contemplate through meditative
practice the middle way between these two extremes, and the middle way is
articulated in terms of dependent origination and not-self.:

“ ‘All exists’: Kacca¯na, this is one extreme. ‘All does not exist’: this is
the second extreme. Without veering towards either of these extremes, the
Tatha¯gata teaches the Dhamma by the middle: ‘With ignorance as condition,
volitional formations [come to be]; with volitional formations as condition,
consciousness [comes to be] . . . name-and-form . . . the six sense-bases . . . contact
. . . feeling . . . craving . . . clinging . . . existence . . . birth . . . aging-and-death
[come to be]. Such is the origin of this whole mass of suffering. But with
the remainderless fading away and cessation of ignorance comes cessation
of volitional formations; with the cessation of volitional formations,
cessation of consciousness . . . ’ Such is the cessation of this whole mass of
suffering.”

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rebus_minus said:

Icelander said:

...getting into flow states brings one into the present and distracting moment.

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the distracting moment?

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Quote:

Anxiety is a generalized mood condition that occurs without an identifiable triggering stimulus

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rebus_minus said:

Good post, daytripper. This is what I tried to get at earlier, but it was overlooked (maybe I didn't explain myself well enough).

Why use the Buddha in this thread if one thinks his teachings are unrealistic in  the first place?

Ice even included a quote saying "seek final peace."

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rebus_minus said:

i am interested in 'selfing' as a verb. how we make a self around any and everything, and how this can be gradually let go of by repeated effort.

can't hurt to try. i saw a documentary on leonard cohen yesterday night where he talked about what he learnt from staying with his teacher, a japanese roshi. he said the less he became the better he felt.

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