[MD] emptiness

[118]

Yes, exactly.  We are not patterns.

Sent laboriously from an iPhone,
Mark

On Dec 23, 2011, at 10:06 PM, MarshaV <valkyr at att.net> wrote:

> 
> 
> "While I am thinking about it there is a very good book on Buddhism recently out called 'Buddhism, Plain and Simple', by Steve Hagen and published by Tuttle Publishing. I recommend you get it because it shows the similarities, between the MOQ and Zen Buddhism more clearly than any other I have seen."
> 
> Pirsig to McWatt, May 6th 1998.
> 
> 
> 
>   When the Buddha spoke of individuals, he often used a different term “stream.”  Imagine a stream flowing --- constantly moving and changing, always different from one moment to the next.  Most of us see ourselves as corks floating in a stream, persisting things moving along in the stream of time.  But this is yet another frozen view.  According to this view. everything in the stream changes except the cork.  While we generally admit to changes in our body, our mind, our thoughts, our feelings, our understandings, and our beliefs, we still believe, “I myself don’t change.  I’m still me.  I’m an unchanging cork in an ever-changing stream.”  This is precisely what we believe the self to be --- something that doesn’t change. 
> 
>   The fact is, however, that there are no corks in the stream.  There is only stream.  What we conceptualize as “cork” is also stream.  We are like music.  Music, after all, is a type of stream.  Music exists only in constant flow and flux and change.  Once the movement stops, the music is no more.  It exists not as a particular thing, but as pure coming and going with no thing that comes or goes.
> 
>    Look at this carefully.  If this is true --- how a stream exists, how music exists, and how we exist --- see how it is that when we insert the notion of “I” we’re posited some little, solid entity that floats along, not as stream, but like a cork in a stream.  We see ourselves as solid corks, not as the actual stream we are.
> 
>   If we are the stream, what is it that experiences the flux, the flow, the change?  The Buddha saw that there is no particular thing that is having an experience.  There is experience, but no experiencer.  There is perception, but no perceiver.  This is consciousness, but no self that can be located or identified.
> 
> 
>   (Hagen, Steve, ‘Buddhism: Plain and Simple’, p.128)
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Dec 23, 2011, at 11:30 PM, 118 wrote:
> 
>> Hi Marsha,
>> Yes I can dig it.  You are much more than a collection of patterns.  I can't convince you of that, I know.  It will take somebody near and dear to you to do that.  Ever tried a medium?
>> 
>> All the best, you deserve it!
>> 
>> Sent laboriously from an iPhone,
>> Mark
>> 
>> On Dec 22, 2011, at 10:42 PM, MarshaV <valkyr at att.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> Mark,
>>> 
>>> I believe that the “self” is a flow of ever-changing, conditionally co-dependent and impermanent, static patterns of inorganic, biological, social and intellectual value in the infinite field of Dynamic Quality.  And I really dig that DQ.  You can believe that.  
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Marsha 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Dec 23, 2011, at 1:19 AM, 118 wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Marsha, the opposite of a pattern is you.  Believe in yourself.
>>>> 
>>>> Sent laboriously from an iPhone,
>>>> Mark
>>>> 
> 
> 
> 
> ___
> 
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