every awakening could be a false awakening — TheMadFool
...or it could be a true awakening. — Banno
The idea has another, philosophical, meaning - describing a person who believes s/he has grasped true reality but actually hasn't; maybe s/he misunderstands, or s/he has only a partial understanding of, true reality. — TheMadFool
My argument is that because life is consistent, it can be known, as oppose to a dream which is understood shortly after as unreal. — ztaziz
First off when you wake up from dreaming, you get a wider context that includes the dreaming level. IOW you know what that was like and then you place it in a broader context. The dream isn't unreal, it is what is. But it was an experiencing. It would depend on your culture or subculture exactly how you contrasted the two states of dreaming and waking. So even if waking is not the final level, you have still made a gain, AND you don't have to throw away the dreaming.What bothers me at this point is whether any amount of "awakening" is sufficient to permit us to make the claim this, for sure, is true reality.? — TheMadFool
What bothers me at this point is whether any amount of "awakening" is sufficient to permit us to make the claim this, for sure, is true reality? — TheMadFool
So this sentence is not referring true reality, then?There is no understanding true reality. — neonspectraltoast
Nor this one.True reality is experienced. — neonspectraltoast
It seems like this is a claim to understanding reality, including the obvious reasons If there are obvious reasons for something don't we understand it then. And isn't the it in this case a part of reality?It is felt and experienced, but, for reasons that should be obvious, can't be understood. — neonspectraltoast
Read Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven.
ASAP. — unenlightened
...or it could be a true awakening. — Banno
Isn't life consistent whereas a dream is inconsistent? — ztaziz
I wanted to emphasize that even if this is the case one could also be getting very useful knowledge — Coben
]Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment,mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters. — Dogen
I guess the implication of what I wrote is that knowledge of true reality, though possible, can never be known to be as that. There never will be a time when one could be 100% confident that the reality to which one has "awakened" to is the true reality. — TheMadFool
What are these various levels of reality you are talking about? Would be great if you could please refer me to some texts. — Zeus
I'm going to take a non-philosophical type response here and react more intuitively. This seems to me a very heady, hypothetical concern. One that could give anxiety, potentially, to someone. When I say hypothetical, it's very much of the vibe of 'what if my wife has been pretending all these years to love me'. I say heady, because on a lived level we can't get some utterly perfect transcendent viewpoint to relax such anxieties, but really, I think they are about something else. And we can live the in situ experiences of awakening from sleep and awakening in waking life of now having greater perspective than we did.I don't want to be the grinch here but what if "awakening" is circular in nature: I awake to a state y from a dream x and I awake to a state z from the dream y and then, completing the circle, I awake to the state x from the dream z. — TheMadFool
]Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment,mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters. — Dogen
And I quoted your language, where you told us your understanding of reality. It's a cake and eat it too situation. You were describing what was possible what was not based on verbal understandings of reality and giving us verbal understandings of reality. You can't then go on to say, which you actually did simultaneously, that one cannot do this. Your own acts in those parts of the post I quoted indicate that you don't believe what you are saying.It isn't. Understanding implies language. — neonspectraltoast
Then why would you tell me this? I am pointing out that your posts are doing precisely what they say is impossible. I'ts one thing to shush someone talking about the forest, babblling, while they walk through it, in the hope they will focus on it. It's another to you can't have understanding of reality becauase......As often as language helps us understand, it is a distraction from the truth. — neonspectraltoast
Notice the difference? huh?there is no understanding true reality. — neonspectraltoast
It would be hard to explore this in some important ways without actually trying to experience what the thread is focused on.So, can we explore this and see if there is any truth in this? — Zeus
It would be hard to explore this in some important ways without actually trying to experience what the thread is focused on. — Coben
As often as language helps us understand, it is a distraction from the truth. — neonspectraltoast
Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment,mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.
— Dogen
Yeah, but it's not as if that Zen thing is saying one is in the same boat, in that third level as one was in the first. In Zen that second mountains are mountains you are, according to that tradition, much more aware of and consciously connnect to reality than in the first. — Coben
Very true. And yet language is all we have. Anything that is beyond the realm of thought can't be articulated with thought (language) yet people have since ages tried to do just that. Why do think that is?
4h — Zeus
it depends. I see one guy petting and training his dog and I see another guy petting nothing and actively training nothing in the same park. I suspect the latter probably is less connected in those activities. Of course, maybe I'm dreaming, maybe the latter is making a film. But I think it is a meaningful concept Of course I was reacting to his use of Zen as if the third way of seeing was just a return to the first.What does that even mean, being much more aware of and consciously connected to reality? — praxis
I am not sure Illusion is the best opposite, or at least the only one, to reality. I think one can simply be confused, but there is no illusion. Once can have faulty assumptions. I don't consider dreams illusions, for example.I think we simply tend to be less anxious the closer we get to realizing that there’s no difference between illusion and reality. — praxis
I see one guy petting and training his dog and I see another guy petting nothing and actively training nothing in the same park. I suspect the latter probably is less connected in those activities. Of course, maybe I'm dreaming, maybe the latter is making a film. — Coben
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