Theos-Talk Archives (July 2004 Message tt00237)

Hello Pedro & Katinka
I don't have your in depth knowledge on this subject, still I'll have a tentitive go at 
joining in abit at least lol.
I can't really comment with any competency on these different schools of thought
but as far as what is illusion, is it not only in the sence that it is a reflection and 
limited representation of what we see, taste, touch, smell, feel, think.
The words illusion and maya to me mean that we only see things partially or not in 
there totality.
Feelings for example while they can be misleading also are the way we become 
sensitized to our environment and those around us so they are essential in that 
process, if we didn't have feelings or kama we'd be robots that only processed data 
as kama becomes more sensitized it leads to more awareness of compassion or love.
By trying to feel how someone else might be feeling we start to look beyond our own 
interests and try and communicate.
That to me is no illusion but is direct and from the heart looking beyond cold data 
and into the realm of truth or Love. 

I agree with you Pedro I to feel Krishnamurti tried to enable people towards the same 
mindset HPB and the Mahatmas were trying to.
He could be a little arrogent you know saying "you don't know what you've missed"
maybe they had tasted Universal Love as well!
But I can forgive him his little traits we all have them, he offered some very wonderful 
possibilites for people to consider his message is hard to ignore.

Regards
Perry




--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "prmoliveira" <prmoliveira@y...> wrote:
> --- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Katinka Hesselink" <mail@k...> 
> wrote:
> 
> 
> > Your explanation of sunnyata brings it close to Nihilism, which is 
> one
> > of the extremes Nagarjuna tried to avoid, as I understand it. But it
> > is why I relate emptiness to maya: the idea that everything we see,
> > feel, think and can imagine is illusionary in nature and temporary 
> as
> > well. Still, sunnyata itself is the one constant. 
> 
> 
> According to common usage Nihilism implies rejection and/or denial of 
> the views of a certain philosophical school or position. From my 
> limited understanding of the doctrine of Sunyata, it is a clear 
> perception of the relativity, conditionedness and non-ultimacy of all 
> views, which include all "dharmas". The source for this teaching 
> seems to be in the Buddha's dialogue with Vacchagotta as recorded in 
> the Majjima-nikaya: "The Tathagata, O Vaccha, is free from all 
> theories."
> 
> 
> > The mahatmas weren't classical buddhists - I think that much is 
> clear
> > from the Mahatma Letters. They revered Buddha, but that doesn't mean
> > they were main-stream Tibetan Buddhists. On the other hand, atma as 
> it
> > is taught in the Mahatma Letters isn't really the same atma that
> > Buddha denied in the an-atma (= anatta = no soul) doctrine. A useful
> > article on this is, I think:
> > http://www.katinkahesselink.net/tibet/atmsun.htm . Another way of
> > showing this is that in Mahayana Buddhism we all have a Buddha-
> nature
> > and this Buddha-nature is in everything. Sounds like Atma, doesn't 
> it? 
> 
> 
> Not really. There has been interminable debate on this point, 
> Katinka, and I am sure we will not solve it. The link you posted 
> certainly doesn't. The nature of Sunyata, as presented in the works 
> of Nagarjuna and other Buddhist masters, does not harmonize with what 
> the Indian teachers say about Atma. For exemple, in the 
> Vivekachudamani by Sankaracharya, there are quite a number of 
> aphorisms describing the nature of Atma in quite categorical and 
> positive terms. But if Subba Row and HPB could be both chelas of the 
> same Master, even when belonging to different schools, there is hope 
> for other students as well!
> 
> There seems to be, imo, a kind of unspoken consensus among students 
> of HPB's writings that makes them to look down on Krishnamurti's 
> teachings. Well, if Sunyata is a core teaching of Esoteric Buddhism, 
> then Krishnamurti was quite close to it. In his statement "The Core 
> of the Teaching" (1980) he affirms:
> 
> "Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not a choice. It is man's 
> pretense that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure 
> observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. 
> Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution 
> of man but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation 
> one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the 
> choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity. 
> 
> 
> Thought is time. Thought is born of experience and knowledge, which 
> are inseparable from time and the past. Time is the psychological 
> enemy of man. Our action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so 
> man is always a slave to the past. Thought is ever-limited and so we 
> live in constant conflict and struggle. There is no psychological 
> evolution.
> 
> 
> When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts, he will 
> see the division between the thinker and thought, the observer and 
> the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover 
> that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure 
> observation which is insight without any shadow of the past or of 
> time. This timeless insight brings about a deep, radical mutation in 
> the mind.
> 
> 
> Total negation is the essence of the positive. When there is negation 
> of all those things that thought has brought about psychologically, 
> only then is there love, which is compassion and intelligence."
> 
> A few days before he died, in February 1986, he told some of his 
> colleagues and friends: "You don't know what you have missed. That 
> vast emptiness."
> 
> Surprisingly, some traditional Buddhist teachers have declared that 
> Sunyata is universal compassion. 
> 
> 
> Pedro