[MD] an authentic teacher?

[Dallas Van Winkle]

*"If one is great enough in their relationships, they live on in the minds
which knew them. Thoughts are experience. In this way they exist.
If they are known nationally they may become a cultural symbol.

I can still talk to my brother as if he's sitting right there.
In this way, he still exists.

He exists as much as universities church and the government.

Somehow you only really feel life through death chewing on your ass..

It makes the sweet sweeter, it allows you to take each moment and savor
it
It makes you aware that we burn in the present. Being a student of
experience I will experience.  Be it death or life..  painful or not."

*I wouldn't say you're wrong... But even so we would probably cry at the
funeral of our loved ones... Because, like it or not impermanence is the way
of existence. In fighting against impermanence we bring ourselves incredible
frustration and unending problems. We cry wen we are forced to accept this
sad truth of existence, the truths of suffering and impermanence.

Many of our struggles are wrought by waywardly seeking some kind of absolute
existence, or some kind of permanent reference point.

*"What "thing" of the death and emptiness are you
referring to?"*

The thought object which was referred to in a previous post.

*
"How does this fit in with death and emptiness or
are you referring to something else?"

*It fits in to the overall pattern. Death as opposed to life, passivity as
opposed to activity, the feminine as opposed to the masculine, gay as
opposed to straight, emptiness as opposed to fullness, space as opposed to
material, these are all negative aspects from a relative point of view (as
opposed to a view of ultimate truth, or dynamic quality). These clinging to
positive traits seem to be a sort of denial of emptiness in general. We
really want to prove that we truly exist.

  *"Where did you get that from?  I thought burying
corpses was a way to keep animals away from the
decaying mother and father, also, I thought to keep
disease from coming from the decaying body into the
village.  What about the smell too?"*

That's partially true. Is the reaction to the smell a cultural trait? Even
so, there can be no doubt that there is a taboo on the subject of death in
popular American culture in almost exactly the way that there is a taboo on
sexuality. It is considered sacrilege to exhume a corpse in most cultures
that have a tradition of corpse burial. Images of bodies or corpses are
hidden from public view on television and other public avenues. If there is
a car wreck on the freeway, everyone will want to slow down and get a peek.
Despite the fact that everyone dies, we have very little personal connection
with this fact. Many of us have never seen anyone die, nor do we see bodies
except in their cleaned up, proper form.

This taboo probably originates from our own self dishonesty. We like to tell
ourselves things to bolster our ego, we don't want to admit that this "me"
we so tenaciously cling to is composed of an ever changing collection of
aggregates which have no absolute reality themselves. We even invest in
spiritual training that tells us that actually we do exist in an absolute
fashion, a common form of spiritual materialism, even when it seems obvious
that just giving up is a common spiritual message.



On Nov 7, 2007 8:48 AM, Ron Kulp <RKulp at ebwalshinc.com> wrote:

> SA
>
> P.S. Ron, did you see any snow yet?  I saw some for
> the first time this cold season yesterday.  Today some
> fell also.
> [Ron]
> Nothing yet, I noticed on the weather channel that your area received a
> dusting, Erie got quite a bit I see.
>
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