Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00580)

Dec 17 2002

Dear Friend: J S and all of us:


Reading your QUOTE / COMMENT below


It seems that "you" ( Me ?) have the power to assemble or to
disassemble the aggregates (skandhas), and "personality" and
"individuality ."

What is the Me / you that rules over the skandhas, ego and
atma/buddhi?


Did it (however called) not take on a garment of flesh to assist in
the progress and development of those ? [Theosophically, I refer to
statements made in The SECRET DOCTRINE in Vol. II pp. 167, 246-7,
254-5, 272-3, and others -- as they seem t present a different picture
of the situation. ]

Why would "IT" then abandon them? Is it because they are inadequate
or that they have reached a parity with it? and no longer need its
assistance ?

What is the nature of "conditioned reality?" And is there as a
contrast: "unconditioned reality?"

How is any "Reality" to be defined? What in us or in man can see both
of these ?

My understanding is that the Skandhas and the "Monads" are identical.
The Monads by definition are "eternal Pilgrims" over the ocean of
existence. If so they are of the same essence as the "me" or "you".

They have an existence of their own. Do they have the power to
attract and to repel?

Are we not dealing with a cooperative whole?

Somehow I do not believe that Tsong Kha Pa declares that the Wise who
had sacrificed themselves to incarnate in the "forms" suddenly and
selfishly decide to abandon them, flouting the Laws of Karma and of
united Nature.

I find this puzzling

Dallas

======

-----Original Message-----
From: g s
Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 10:08 AM
To:
Subject: Tzongkhapa on the Self

[QUOTE:]

"Question: Nirvana is the reality one seeks to attain, but what is
nirvana? If
"entry into reality" means a method for attaining I, then how do you
enter?
Reply: The reality that you see to attain - the embodiment of truth -
is the
total extinction of conceptions of both self and that which belongs to
the
self, specially by stopping all the various internal and external
phenomena
from appearing as though they were reality itself - which they are
not - along
with the latent predispositions for such false appearances...the
reifying view
of the perishing aggregates, or ignorance, acts as the root of cyclic
existence...[and] overcoming the reifying view of the perishable
aggregates
depends upon developing the wisdom that knows that the self, as thus
conceived, does not exist." (Tsongkhapa, The Great Treatise on the
Stages of
the Path, Vol III, Snow Lion, 2002, pp 119-120)


[COMMENT:]


Here someone questions Tzongkhapa (or Tsongkhapa) about nirvana and
how to
enter it. His reply is that one must stop reifying the skandhas
(aggregates)
into a self, which does not really exist as such. The skandhas are the
five
components of a being's body and mind. These have conditional reality,
but not
ultimate reality. And our conception of a self is nothing more than a
false
manasic superimposition onto these skandhas. The self does not exist
even
conventionally.

In Theosophical terms, Tzongkhapa is telling us that as long as we
reify a
self, whether ego or atma-buddhi, whether personality or
individuality, we
cannot enter nirvana or ultimate reality.

Jerry S.