Zen.Buddha.Tao

(Free book download) Adult spirituality in plain English, so an easy read. (Free download here): petereastman.substack.com/p/advanced-bud… And you can always buy a copy from Amazon: amazon.com/dp/B08VYLP3NY

@algekalipso Avatamsaka aside, all sutras (except for Diamond, in small bits) are like Shakespeare - apparently worthy but desperately boring. The task for us Buddhists is a decisive answer to the mystery of the totality of existence (sutras included.) More than enough to be getting on with.

What the Avatamsaka Sutra wants you to understand...

@cosmosarcive Open-ended experiencing always runs the risk of either turning dreadful or becoming terrifyingly boring; if there a decisive answer to the mystery of existence, it can't be anything to do with optimal engineering. Physicists are often oddly small-minded.

Prof Brian Cox completely flips the script on our cosmic insignificance. We’re so used to the trope of being "meaningless specks of dust." But if life survives and scales its knowledge, there’s no physical reason we couldn't eventually engineer solar systems and galaxies. We could literally be the universe’s mechanism to manipulate itself into immortality. An incredibly beautiful, staggering shift in perspective. We might just be the cosmos' architects in training. Credit: bigthink

@Duckonquacck94 @AmodaMaa Will do.

@indybuddhist @AmodaMaa And please share your findings. :)

We are accustomed to being aware of things—thoughts, sensations, perceptions. But what about awareness itself? Is it located in the body? Does it begin or end anywhere? Look carefully. Does awareness stop at the edge of the body, or at the limits of perception? Or is every perceived boundary simply another appearance in awareness? No boundary can be found. And if no boundary can be found, awareness cannot be said to be inside or outside. It simply is.

@Duckonquacck94 @AmodaMaa Let's do that.

@indybuddhist @AmodaMaa Seek and you will find ❤️

@Duckonquacck94 @AmodaMaa Probably not; 'pure awareness' is a human experience - we're looking for an insight into the experiential totality, not just a rarefied form of what we already have.

@indybuddhist @AmodaMaa Experiences of pure awareness outside the part of the mind that thinks it's a body I suppose. What do you think?

@Duckonquacck94 @AmodaMaa Okay - what sort of 'experiences' would they be?

@indybuddhist @AmodaMaa Yes

@drpaulomaciel @BuddhaBeings Genuinely only one way to find out: pursue (to the exclusion of all diversions) a final & decisive answer to the mystery of existence; in the process, all schools & sects & teachings & practices will of necessity fall away, as they are irrelevant to the goal itself.

@indybuddhist @BuddhaBeings There are many Buddhist schools and thousands of churches! Each one believes itself to be "the true one," or that it possesses the original knowledge of Buddha... They are all creations of human vanity and ego. If everyone thinks they are right, who is ultimately correct?

Myth: Meditation Means No Thoughts ☸️ Meditation is Not the stopping of thoughts. In Shakyamuni Buddha's teachings, thoughts are understood as conditioned phenomena - arising and passing according to causes. The mind moves. This is its nature. Meditation is not a battle against thinking. It is the quiet cultivation of mindfulness - seeing thoughts arise… seeing them pass… without grasping, without resistance. When awareness is steady, thoughts lose their power to bind. They are no longer "mine," but simply movements within the field of mind. This can be compared to the sky. Clouds may gather, drift, and dissolve, yet the sky itself remains vast and untouched. So the aim is not an empty mind, but a free mind - one that knows thoughts without becoming entangled in them. 🙏 #Buddhism #Buddha #Buddhist #Meditation #Meditate #Dhyana #Mindfulness #Mindful #Dharma #DharmaTalk #Zen #InnerPeace #Awareness #NonAttachment #SpiritualAwakening #BuddhistWisdom #PresentMoment #Stillness #SpiritualGrowth #PeaceWithin #PathToFreedom #Sunday

God + SatChitAnanda, Love + Divinity &c are human predilections & human aspirations; to resolve the impossible mystery of existence (as the Buddha urged us to do) we need to put aside the idea that our human angle on existence is supreme; it is only one perspective of many, & a long way from a final answer.

Paramahansa Yogananda from Autobiography of a Yogi “‘The stream of knowledge,’ Sir James Jeans writes in The Mysterious Universe, ‘is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine.’... From science, then, if it must be so, let man learn the philosophic truth that there is no material universe; its warp and woof is maya, illusion. …nofloveandconsciousnessdivinityis.com/2026/04/parama…

@Duckonquacck94 @AmodaMaa But it won't be a 'human experience' as human beinghood (start to finish) is part of the totality in question. (Are there other types of 'experience'?)

@indybuddhist @AmodaMaa I don't think those questions can be answered, only experienced.

Let's suppose - for discussion - there is an omniscient + 'everything else' God. Would this omniscient being seriously care about all these stupid categories, ie consciousness, energy, spiritual, separation, energy etc? Even as a dumb human, this sort of 'I know more than you about what's important' is disturbingly pathetic - how much more so for a 'God'?

Nothing can exist before its existence in consciousness, ie in 'being a something' in conscious consciousness/awareness. Difficult to believe, but try it yourself: try & think of non-existence, a non-consciousness - eg a non-grasping of a total 'nothingness'? Try to imagine not being aware of anything, including your non-awareness-of anything: managed it? Don't be silly: our minds are not capable of it.

*CONSCIOUSNESS BEFORE LIFE? What if awareness existed before anything was alive? Some experts suggest consciousness might be a basic part of the universe—not something that started with humans or even life itself. This idea means the building blocks of awareness could have been present millions of years before the first living cells appeared. Still, most scientists believe consciousness developed much later, as brains evolved. So is this a breakthrough… or just a fascinating mystery? Maybe consciousness didn’t begin with life… maybe it was always there. Source: Popular Mechanics Editors. *Consciousness may have existed before life: Evidence from asteroid samples.*

@JasonWilde108 @TesseractDelta Yes to all that, but the key mystery is not about me or about anyone else, but what the ultimate meaning & purpose of existence itself might be, whatever its content in the moment.

@indybuddhist @TesseractDelta Nothing that happened to you gets cancelled or dismissed; but the deeper point is that even those experiences arose within awareness, and what you are now isn’t defined or limited by any of them.

Ever notice how once you really see it, it feels like you’ve been running a con your whole life. Not on other people. On yourself. You were fully invested in this character. The name. The backstory. The opinions. The past. The future. Defending it like it was the most real thing in the universe. Then something changes. Suddenly you realize none of it was actually you. It wasn’t even a lie in the normal sense. You genuinely believed every word of it. That’s the wild part. It wasn’t fake on purpose. It was complete identification with something that was never solid to begin with. And when that happens, everything changes, but also nothing changes. You’re still here. Still talking. Still doing life. The character is still on stage doing its thing. But now there’s no weight behind it. No pressure to maintain the role or prove it to anyone. It’s like you’ve been acting in a play for decades and then suddenly remembered you’re the one watching the whole performance from the audience. Not a better version of you. Not a shiny new identity. Just pure awareness without all the extra noise. And once you see that, you genuinely can’t go back to taking the performance that seriously again. Who else woke up mid play and realized they were the audience the whole time?

Don't remember my birth right now (could easily come back to me one day) but I do remember (from earliest) not wanting to be with my family & - reciprocally - my family not wanting me. No amount of metaphysical/karmic/theological override is going to be able to cancel any of that. But no longer a problem in the least, because believe me, I'm a big boy now.

@indybuddhist @TesseractDelta We did chose to be here ... do you remember your birth?

@JasonWilde108 @TesseractDelta Sure; will keep everyone posted.

@indybuddhist @TesseractDelta Exactly! Test it directly, because the one looking for results is the same awareness the insight is pointing to, and that’s the only place the “proof” ever shows up.

@TesseractDelta @JasonWilde108 Yes good (though none of us chose to be here to begin with!) but now that we're here, what's the game? As a friend of mine said 'I'm more than happy to play the game, but I can't work out what it is?'

@indybuddhist @JasonWilde108 What next? Simply choose to keep on playing for one reason or another. Or, cease to do so.

@JasonWilde108 @TesseractDelta Intriguing but needs quite a bit of thought & observation; thanks for that. Meister Eckhart said that the same eye that I use to see God is the same eye that God uses to see me: that's give that one a reality test. Results forthcoming; cheque in the post?

@TesseractDelta @indybuddhist It's basically "God" playing hide and go seek with itself.

Try this: 'profoundly significant' v 'profoundly insignificant' why do we attach the labels to some things & not to others? Both labels are unmoored & free floating; so what's pushing us in one direction & not the other? Predilections obviously but what does that tell us about the kind of creatures we ultimately are?

Of all our universe’s creations, life is the most profoundly significant because it is what allows our universe to create