Conversation: Emptiness, The Edge of the Unknown A.H. Almaas, Ph.D. and Robert A.F. Thurman, Ph.D.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ต.ค. 2024
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In this illuminating conversation, Hameed Ali Almaas and Robert Thurman discuss the subject of being and nonbeing, emptiness and presence and how this is a foray into the unknown depths of being. What is meant by emptiness? What is its direct experience? Is there is only one emptiness or different kinds or degrees? And how does this combine with being or presence in manifestation? Learn whether there are differences between the Buddhist perspective and The Diamond Approach.
Hameed Ali (A. H. Almaas) was born in the Middle East, but at age 18 he moved to the USA to study at the University of California in Berkeley. Hameed was working on his Ph.D. in physics, where he was studying Einstein's theory of general relativity and nuclear physics, when he reached a turning point in his life and destiny that led him more and more into inquiring into the psychological and spiritual aspects of human nature. Hameed is the founder of the Diamond Approach® - a spiritual teaching that utilizes a unique kind of inquiry into realization, where the practice is the expression of realization. This inquiry opens up the infinite creativity of our Being, transforming our lives into a runaway realization, moving from realization to further realization. Almaas' books include: The Inner Journey Home, Essence, The Pearl Beyond Price, Luminous Night’s Journey, and The Unfolding Now.
Robert A.F. Thurman is the Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University, President of the Tibet House U.S., a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization, and President of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, a non-profit affiliated with the Center for Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and dedicated to the publication of translations of important artistic and scientific treatises from the Tibetan Tengyur. Time chose Professor Thurman as one of its 25 most influential Americans in 1997, describing him as a “larger than life scholar-activist destined to convey the Dharma, the precious teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, from Asia to America.” The New York Times recently said Thurman “is considered the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism.” Thurman is known as a talented popularizer of the Buddha’s teachings.
This is great, I am fascinated by this topic. Thank you guys.
Notes on Deconstructing Loneliness
I
This ego is not the King
But resists removal from the throne.
And yet this gentle, noble mind
Remembers it’s native home
Beyond the illusions of Space and Time
II
Initially sharp, as I remember to not resist,
The pangs become fewer, the sharpness less.
No longer can say I am a lonely man.
But a man with some lonely thoughts.
They arise but tarry not.
III
How variegated have been the hells I have created
In filling my life with flight
From this simple feeling of loneliness.
IV
But now there is this boundless joy.
Now there is this calm clarity.
Now there is just this One Love
Linking Time and Eternity.
IV
Spirit dances beyond/around/and through
my flesh and bones.Hae Gak (Cary Costner, 2/12/17)
I can't say I know everything that they were saying but I have a feeling they spoke almost tip toeing through language to relate to each other's meditative experience.. that was unbelievable. I have never seen it out in the open like that.. I hope I'm not going crazy
What do you mean by "spoke almost tip toeing"?
@@theonenessoftime330 given that what they are speaking about at the end are ver experiencial things, words dont quite do the job of transmitting what they are saying to the unexperienced so they have to chose there words in a very intersubjective manner.
So wonderful to see Almaas - what a great mind.
theres no end to describe the indescribable . . .
Wonderful conversation and thanks to these two good folks. What a pair. Almaas' questions are right on. Thurman did not mention that the Iron Man's suit can specifically save one from self-absorbed materialist internet Zen teachers ! Whew !
Adi Shankara ( early 8th c. ce ) vastly improved on the Buddha's teaching methods while retaining Neti-Neti / Not This- Not This. With Shankara, there is a near immediate understanding of how "Samsara Is Nirvana". With the Buddhist schools and systems constantly at war with each other then and now some even claiming that Buddha was an atheist, it is no wonder that people cannot understand it. People actually don't need Buddhanannys protecting them from themselves and bickering and huffing about once they understand Shankara's way of teaching. Ths was true in India during Shankara's time when Buddhism lost most credibility and usefulness - not because it was 'bad' but because of the way teachers were forced to teach it and often who didn't understand it themselves. Zen seems to come pretty close and for my money ( ;) ) Bankei taught something that is still unquestionably profound and soon very obvious. His modern contemporary in India seems to have been Ramana Maharshi. Sri Nisargadatta can be a little ambiguous at first but that clears up wonderfully when studying a bit of Shankara.
emptiness vs consciousness....would love to see more discussion of the relationship between these two. This is a great first step!
The human mind knows nothing about pure consciousness/emptiness because in deep sleep the mind is dead. Therefore it does not make any sense for any human mind trying to understand pure consciousness/emptiness. The good thing about the human mind is that when it dies, it can live again. We experience this each day when we go to deep sleep and come back in the waking state
When the 'I-thought' starts to sink into the Heart, a point is reached when the 'I-thought' senses that death is close at hand. The reaction is fear. Usually, this causes the ‘I’-thought to rise again in a kind of blind panic, but allow the extinction process to happen naturally, and then you will see for yourself, nothing really dies.
The mind is not "dead" in deep sleep. The thinking consciousness is asleep. That is what deep sleep means. Mind does not die, nor is it born. Consciousness takes forms, but mind is formless.
Thank you
"When everyone is trying to be something, be nothing. Range with emptiness."
~ Shams Tabrizi
First we might become aware that we are Nothing within and outside us, the Emptiness, the Void. Then we realise, become aware of:
Our Heart.
"To get closer to Truth and Light, we need a beautiful and soft heart."
~ Shams Tabrizi
"Believe in your values and your rules but never lord them over others... Learn the Truth, my friend, but be careful to not make a fetish out of your truths."
~ Shams of Tabrizi.
Then we realise that we need a clear mirror: another person to help us to see what we can't see within us - our subconscious, unconscious - where the suffering (pain, anger, loneliness, not good enough etc) and most of unconscious, fears, worries, doubts are - the walls, the barriers to Love/Joy/Happiness that you are.
"We can't find the truth by listening to our own voices echo. We find ourselves only in someone's mirror."
~ Shams.
Also, we discover that we are the Awareness in our head, that is Aware of the Void, Emptiness, Nothingness within. Awareness that is aware of the Heart. They are not one but two parts of you.
At some stage we find our sexual energy - Kundalini.
Also we discover step by step that we are also our Soul, Soul of the Souls/OverSoul/Spirit/the Moon within.
"Are you searching for your Soul? Then come out of your prison." ~ Rumi
"I have always been a seeker and i still am, but i stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my soul." ~ Rumi
"There is a moon inside every human being. Learn to be companions with it."
~ Rumi
"I am neither Christian nor Jew, neither Magian nor Muslim, I am not from east or west, not from land or sea. My place is placeless, my trace is traceless, no body, no soul, I am from the soul of souls."
~ Rumi
You are you and later you become One with your Soul , other half/Twin Flame and then One with your Soul of the Souls/Spirit/OverSoul. The level of you above the Soul level of the Creation. From where your Soul was born. Home. You return Home.
There is more ... 🙂
You are the soul, the universe, and what animates the universe.
~ Rumi
💙
PS: The above are just pointers to the Moons.
You don’t need to be a Sufi to realise the above. Sufism won’t take there the way it is now.
Insight of Emptiness is negated by the inability to find a non- empty thing
You get the feeling that neither one is truly listening to the other.
Yes, that is the sad part of this discussion.
Awareness indeed. Robert Thurman is annoying.
Yes especially sir Almaas
Каждый человек в своей жизни находится в поиске особых знаний. Рано или поздно он их находит. Мне жаль, что сейчас мир живёт человеческим сознанием, а не в Духе бога совести. Вы душа у которой есть своё сознание. Вы должны развивать свою Душу, как свою руку. Помните, что после вознесения, Вы сможете забрать собой только свои знания и свой опыт, и не чего больше...
Hameed Ali, should also ask his own creator, " How you were born? "
Wonderful Robert sir ...
Buddha is frist quantum physics because heart sutra mention that...Buddhism not believe God and create some scientists say Buddhism is not religion but Buddhism is science of mind I think that true because religion means just Faith but Buddhism change of mind I think something different....
Awesome!
The other gentlemen seems to make a combo from gathering information from all sets of already gathered teaching and make it like coming of own his own. I cringe a bit when he was explaining his Diamond stuff's. He was constantly picking the phrase from Buddha's wisdoms. Anyway not being judgement here but that's my review.
Beginners Mind.... No Mind.....
I like Thurman, "but" his style of communication is not my cup of tea. I have to work at listening to him. He is way too intellectual and philosophical in the academic sense for my tastes.
I strongly disagree with Thurman’s view of mind-only as it comes from his Tibetan Buddhism context.
First, at minute 27:20 Almaas talks about experiencing “everything as pure awareness, pure consciousness or awareness, that everything is a manifestation of awareness.” Here, the error is in equating awareness and consciousness. Consciousness (vijnana) is bifurcated (vi) awareness (jnana), so they are not terms to be used synonymously or interchangably.
Almaas then correctly says “This awareness is empty, it is not something that exists, not something we can reify….it has no weight. Nothing exists on its own, it is all simply the radiance of awareness.”
But at 28;10 Thurman interrupts and uses the logical fallacy of the “straw man” to erroneously restate (twist and spin) what Almaas said (e.g., awareness “is not something that exists” and “has no weight”) into Thurman’s false assertions that the argument was awareness “is the only thing that there is” and awareness is reducing everything to itself, thus awareness “is pulling to itself all the weight. Awareness absorbs all the weight.” (Amazingly, Thurman’s erroneous restatement is so presumptuous that he even confuses Almaas about what Almaas had just said.) This is the way that Tibetan logic works to force all arguments into the cul-de-sac of a logician’s perspective of emptiness and relativity.
Thurman then says, “That is a very valuable view. It is considered the entry level view of the Mahayana, the Universal Vehicle.” Then he reveals his confusion when he says, “Tibetans are thinking of vijnanavada, the mind-only school or consciousness-only school…..” This shows that Thurman is using the terms loosely. “Vijnanavada” means “consciousness school” and is a shortened name for vijnanamatravada or consciousness-only-school. Thurman is equating mind-only or citta-matra with consciousness-only or vijnanamatra as if they are the same teaching, understanding, or realization. This is the Tibetan orientation to Buddha Dharma which seems to have lost the distinction between mind (citta) and consciousness (vijnana) and conflates the two.
Interestingly, Thurman then makes the standard arguments from the perspective of what he calls “the Centrist” school (the Middle Way school) that are to the point of why “consciousness-only” is a limited perspective. But in doing so, he has smothered, avoided, and overlooked the real distinctions between the consciousness-only and the mind-only schools, of which the later was more like the perspective of awareness only that Almaas was presenting.
But next amusingly, Thurman continues to conflate consciousness and mind and says that the hidden truth of the esoteric teaching is that “there is no difference between mind and matter.” So is this mind-only or consciousness-only or matter-only? Then Thurman continues, “So you can say it’s all mind, or you can say its all matter, either reductionism can be relatively useful in certain contexts, but there’s no final, it’s not like finally this or finally that. So you can’t discern a difference.” Here again, he argues into the cul-de-sac, but, well, isn’t that where all argumentation ends up after all?
Gregory Wonderwheel Sudoman
go on confuse yourself more!
Blah blah blah..........