Samma wrote:I was looking for that passage on putting aside self and not-self:
"Where you don't draw a line to define self, there's no line to define not-self... So strategies of self or not-self are put aside. At this point, the mind no longer has need for any strategies at all because it has found a happiness...
Where, and from whom, does that passage come from? It seeems, rather obviously, non-sensical to me. The author does away with the self by merging it with non-self, so far so good. But then he immediately brings back the self in the form of mind! This seems a very good example of the obfuscations and falsities that occur when trying to talk about mystical experiences.
unconditioned consciousness = special form of consciousness that doesn't need to be experienced though the six senses. Now, I'm not going to pretend to understand this, being outside of time, but I'm also not going to jump to calling it a soul or core mind.
If you don't understand it why do you use it? Why spread confusion? I agree that you shouldn't then make matters even worse by calling this 'thing beyond understanding' a soul.
If that is too metaphysical perhaps:
It's not "too metaphysical", it's nonsense.
Nibbana is asankhata, “unconditioned,” because there is no further conditioning - sankhata - by hatred, greed and ignorance.
That seems fine, although, to my ignorant mind, it perhaps needs unpacking a bit. Are you just using the word Nibbana to point to "what you get at the end of the path, when you have let go of all perceptions?"
There is the Unborn, Uncreated, Unconditioned and Unformed. If there were not, there would be no escape discerned from that which is born, created, conditioned and formed. - Ud 8.3, Iti 43
Isn't Nibbana born when you let go of everything? OK I'm being a bit obtuse here, I guess Unborn means "not born in a chain of dependent origination, but born in the sense of 'coming about'". So Ud 8.3 is (perhaps) correct in meaning, but why use this language? it just obfuscates matters.
some Buddhist scholars (notably Peter Harvey) insist that there
is a different order of being implied: that it points to a reality which transcends the customary bounds of time, space, duality and individuality.
So the above translates to "There is-in-another-reality the born-that-is-Unborn-in-this-reality..." Ouch! Too many dark nights in Sunderland methinks... gotta find some way to pass the time... why not indulge in some *really* obscure metaphysics based on a really obtuse reading of the Buddha. (Thanks Samma, you just saved me £20, I was thinking of buying his book... )