Comments on “Buddhism shattered”

Your articles are always most interesting sir!

somehow this clip keep sticking in my mind …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KQMONOglDQ

David, I continue to look forward to reading and learning. I find your writing style accessible. Thank you for your time in providing this informative site.

Look at the nice clip on top and see Eckhart Tolle Dalai Lama

Both are not dhama. Emptiness
Is not a concept it is a state. There is nothing to say on this. Void or not void. No debate

Actually what he teaches is NOT Buddhism. He gives his understanding of what many teachers, from different cultures, taught, Jesus, Buddha, Vedic (Krishna) and several others. Its really a “to the point of what they meant”, kinda thing. It supersedes any religious meaning too, since all religions are actually created by followers of a teacher with their interpretation (Always lacking) of the teachers “Message”. Mr Tolle tries to bring the reader or the listener into an Actual Experience of being present. Same like Buddha and Jesus. Beyond a cognitive process, The point is to “find the kingdom” (JC) or end “Samsara” (Buddha)
Would it hurt the world if was a little more peaceful? (a little more Buddhist?). If we look back and see the horrific events that mankind has been subject too because he is lost in concept. Does his message start a war where children are being killed daily? (Israel, Iran, Syria). If you want to change the world to be a better place, you must start with yourself. Control your mind, actions and words so that you always try create a loving, peaceful situation with other earthlings.
I do thank you for your blog however, the more people asking questions and having a say the better, its the only way, on a cognitive level, to come to see (with our minds) what the truth is.

I actually think Tolle’s teachings are more in line with Advaita Vedanta than Buddhism, though I know those two traditions are similar in many ways. I’ve read Tolle say that he feels his teaching is in some way a continuation of the teaching of Ramana Maharshi and Krishnamurti, and, reading through those teachers, that sounds fairly accurate to me - both of those teachers stood kind of apart the more formal traditions they sort of originated in, and don’t seem as formal and particular as many schools of Buddhism are in their teachings and meditations.

Hey David. The Thai forest masters teach a permanent eternal citta (the one who doesn’t die) that seems to be able to exist independently of the five khandas. In fact it is the creator of the five khandas. It is outside of the domain of the three characteristics anicca, dukkha, and anatta. And the idea is once you become enlightened the citta merges with nirvana and returns home. The Thai forest masters like to point at the heart a lot, saying everything is in the heart. There’s some talk of getting the (citta) to drop into the heart center when you are practicing samadhi. Interestingly enough, I read the heart chakra is the physical location where the soul resides. This citta is also said to be the watcher (the one who knows). There’s a quote of Tolle saying this “What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.” So who is the one who see’s that? Perhaps the Citta. It was called (the one who knows) by Ajahn Chah. Thepermanent unchanging watcher in the backround. The one who knows, the one who see’s that? This ( Citta merging with nirvana and returning home) also has an interesting parallel to a Taoist idea of returning spirit to the great void. But anyways there are teachers that teach this true self thing. The lotus sutra speaks of a true self. Dolpopa talks about it. The Thai forest masters speak about some kind of eternal Citta. (Citta is usually translated as mind, Ajahn Pannavaddho says this is a misleading translation). Tong Songchol a Zen teacher.

Why does eternalism necessarily have to be related to a cosmic plan or produce suffering?

Thinking the khandas are permanent can be problematic because they aren’t, but this one who knows isn’t the khandas, it’s not anicca, dukkha, or anatta. And it doesn’t die. So how could it produce suffering by thinking it is what it is. In fact how could it do anything but end suffering? Milarepa said it himself “afraid of death, I took to the mountains, there again and again I meditated on the uncertainty of the hour of my death. Now, having captured the fortress of the deathless unending nature of mind, all fear of death is over and done” When he says mind I imagine this is not a correct translation, the mind as we think of it is just impermanent stuff arising and passing away. The deathless unending nature of the Citta or Atman, now that makes sense. And as for your idea of it going against emptiness, here’s something from the Dolpopa wiki , “the indwelling Buddha (or Nirvana) is genuinely real, yet ‘empty’ in one sense - in that the internal Buddha or Buddha nature is empty of illusion, but replete with wondrous Buddha qualities. For Dölpopa and those who espouse analogous shentong doctrines: “[T]he whole point of establishing the empty nature of illusion (rangtong) is to discover the Reality of the Absolute Buddha Wisdom Mind (Paramarthabuddhajnana) beyond the reaches of the conceptual mind that can only function in terms of grasping its own creations.”

As for the Theravada, some people would say doesn’t the Citta go against the teachings that everything is impermanent? But the idea is that the Buddha taught the five khandas were impermanent, not the deathless Citta. So I don’t think what Tolle says about the true self or eternalism goes against Buddhism, just certain traditions.

Hey David. Thanks for the reply. I’ve spoken with Ajahn Thanissaro, and if my memory serves me correctly, when I spoke with him he referenced me to where the Citta is spoken about in the Canon. I may have been asking him about all the people skeptical of the Citta. To double check you can try giving him a call at his monastery. But if you have better things to do then call Ajahn Thanissaro to double check what someone on the internet is saying, here is a video link for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbqTXx7m9j4.

I will give you some talk from this video below,as well as my own comments, and when I quote scripture I will put —Scripture beside of it to make it easier to distinguish. If you want the direct references to the quotes in the Canon that I give below he says them in the video.

The Citta, translated as mind, actually means spirit. The entire basis of Buddhahood revolves around this one word only.
“The purification of ones own Citta, this is meant the doctrine of the Buddha”—Scripture
“he gathers his citta within the realm of immortality” ----Scripture
“This is immortality, that being the liberated Citta”----Scripture. Here we have a translation of the scriptures bluntly saying the liberated Citta is immortality (eternal) and speaking about an immortal realm. And this immortal realm is perhaps the place Ajahn Pannavaddho is talking about when he says “The Citta merges with nirvana and returns home”
“He Gathers the Citta inside of the immortal realm”----Scripture
“The Citta being so liberated and arisen from defilements one is fixed in the SOUL as liberation, one is quelled in fixation upon the soul,
quelled within the SOUL, one is unshakeable. So being unshakeable at the very soul one is thoroughly unbound.”—Scripture
The liberated Citta which does not cling,means nibanna”—scripture
Keep this part in mind, because the Dharmakaya believes Nibanna is the true self and here we have a passage from the suttas saying the liberated Citta means Nibanna.
“Whatever form there is, feelings, perceptions, experiences, or consciousness (the five aggregates), these he sees to be without permanence,
as suffering, as ill, as a plague, a boil, a sting, a pain, an affliction, as foreign, as otherness, as empty (suññato), as Selfless (anattato), so he
turns the Citta away from these five khandas” So here we have the Citta talked about in a way that can be interpreted as the Citta being something separate from the five khandas, and turning away from them. and then the Sutta goes on to talk about gathering inside the realm of immortality. “therein he gathers the Citta
inside the realm of immortality”

“this Citta goes heaven bound to auspiciousness”—Scripture “The Citta is the only thing that is said to go toward the light, or the heaven realm” Keep in mind Ajahn Panavaddho’s words about the Citta merging with nibanna and “going home”

“For a long time I have been cheated, tricked and hoodwinked by my citta. For when grasping, I have been grasping onto form, for when grasping, I have been grasping onto feelings, , for when grasping, I have been grasping onto perceptions, for when grasping, I have been grasping onto experiences, for when grasping, I have been grasping onto consciousness.”—Scripture. So here we have another Sutta speaking of the Citta in a way that can be interpreted as one and the other. The Citta as one thing and the Khandas as another.

Citta is the only thing which, when perfected by samadhi and panna, is = Soul (attan): “Steadfast-in-the-Soul (thitattoti) means one is supremely-fixed within the mind (citta)” [Silakkhandhavagga-Att. 1.168]. ----Scripture“‘The purification of one’s own mind’, this means the light (joti) within one’s mind (citta) is the very Soul (attano)” [DN2-Att. 2.479].----Scripture [Silakkhandhavagga-Att. 1.168] “Steadfast-in-the-Soul (thitattoti) means one is supremely-fixed within the mind (suppatitthitacitto)”.—Scripture [AN 2.6] “Him who is Lord of the mind (citta) possessed with supernormal faculties and quelled, that One is called ‘fixed-in-the-Soul’ (thitattoti)”.— Scripture [AN 1.196] “With mind (citta) emancipated from ignorance…this designates the Soul has become Brahma”.----Scripture [MN 1.213] “The collected and quelled mind is the Supreme Soul”. —Scripture “Steadfast-in-the-Soul (thitattoti) means steadfast in ones True-nature (thitasabha’vo)” [Tikanipa’ta-Att. 3.4]. —Scripture. So here we have talk of a soul, and interestingly enough we have talk of the soul becoming Brahma. Once again, keep in mind Ajahn Pannaaddho’s words about “Merging with Nirvana and going home” Merging with Nirvana? The soul becoming Brahma? I’m not making this stuff up. Keep in mind in the book Uncommon Wisdom (the life and teachings of Ajaan Pannavaddho) it says the mind is a misleading translation of the citta.

You can find a lot more in the video with Sutta references.

This guy in the video also speaks about the no soul deniers and how they are always on guard when it comes to pali passages on the Atman and how they fudge over it and translate it as yourself, myself, himself, and try to undercut it. So here it seems there could be a potential deliberate, or unintentional, phenomena of mistranslation happening from Pali into English.

Bhante Sujato is one monk. Many monks have different opinions and views. I recall Yuttadhammo Bhikku saying something humorous on youtube which was “monks can’t agree on anything” I think this is a common thing among many schools, religions, science, etc. How many teachers in Hinduism are there that disagree on what the Atman even is? Yet Buddhists deny the Atman? Which Atman? the one thousandth and thirty first definition of the Atman or the 676th definition?

I did a search on the universal atman and found a website talking about the universal Brahman and individual Atman. It says “to them (don’t know if they are refering to Vedanta or not) this suffering is due to people’s ignorance (called avidya) of the essential non-difference between Brahman and atman.” So what does this mean? The individual Atman is not different from the universal Brahman? So if it’s not different, doesn’t this mean it’s the same, in which case the individual Atman would be the universal Brahman and not actually individual aye? I’m not convinced Buddhism and Hinduism are teaching different things. But when I say Hinduism I mean what even is Hinduism? How many different schools of Hinduism with different teachings are there. How many different Buddhist schools with different teachings are there.How many different definitions of the self and soul are there. In the synopsis of Bhattacharya, Kamaleswar’s book, “the Atman-Brahman in ancient buddhism” it says “The thesis of this book is nothing less than epoch-making. While no one doubts that the Buddha denied the atman, the self, the question is: Which atman?” You can find the book here.

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=16968373334&searchurl=sts%3Dt%26tn%3DThe+Atman-Brahman+in+Ancient+Buddhism%26sortby%3D20

The idea that it is Yogacara, Mahayana, Hinduism, etc, seems very scholarly. Ajahn Martin, one of the monks at Ajahn Maha Bua’s monastery when he was alive, simply says something like “if you want to know if it’s the same as the Atman just get into Samadhi” Paraphrasing here, memory is vague. I also recall him saying something about how “nirvana can even be the highest happiness, like the Buddha said, if there is no Citta”. What in the world will continue to exist to experience the highest happiness of nirvana if this Citta isn’t real! :p

There’s a whole chapter on the Citta in the book (Uncommon Wisdom, the life and teachings of Ajaan Pannavaddho) The book is printed for free distribution, and available for free download. It is uploaded for free at forestdhamma.org The link is here http://www.forestdhamma.org/ebooks/english/pdf/Uncommon_Wisdom.pdf

In case you’re interested, It may be one of the best descriptions of the Citta you’ve ever come across. He addresses in the Chapter on the Citta that the way the Thai fores tradition uses the word Citta may be hard for some Buddhists to comprehend. Ajahn Maha Bua was also aware of skeptics and responded. Ajahn Pannavaddho speaks about the non-duality of the Citta in there too. He says “Consciousness is necessary to experience the duality of subject and object, but it is completely extraneous and unnecessary to the original citta” May be of interest to you since you write about Vajrayana. I’ve heard your guru talking about the goal of Vajrayana being non duality.

An important thing to note though is that, while eternalism is to be avoided, so is nihilism. Emptiness does not mean that ‘most things happen for no particular reason, that most experiences have no particular meaning’ as you said. Everything happens because of karma, which is relative cause and effect, and while experiences have no ultimate meaning, they do have a relative meaning. To believe that everything is ‘part of a plan’ is eternalism, and goes against the doctrine of emptiness, but to believe that everything is random is nihilism, which also goes against this. Buddhism is the Middle Way - as Buddhists we reject both extremes.

Also, remember that in samsara, there is no permanence, no self, and suffering, or unsatisfactoriness. But in Nirvana, there is what is sometimes referred to as permanence, true self and bliss. Whether people are willing to call it ‘true self’ (or any other name) or not differs from religion to religion, but also within Buddhism itself, from sect to sect and teacher to teacher.

Gosh! Lots of discussion here! I just wanted to say thank you for such a well thought out and explained blog post.
I have seen a few ‘self-help’ writers who sound very much like some of the teachings of Buddhism. I think your article makes some really great points. While lots of people may read these books, I think that there are probably a number who will find this a gateway to Buddhist teachings.
I particularly liked your points about Eternalism, which I’d really struggled with in these ‘self-help’ books. Anyway, great post that I’‘ll be bookmarking. :-)

Except that it was Eckhart Tolle who led me to Lama Ole Nydahl, who pointed me to Pema Chrodron, who led me to Trungpa Rinposhe, who led me to the Buddha. And there were others who led me to Tolle in the first place including Christian thinkers. I think Tolle is serving a grand purpose. In a dynamic human world, not everything needs to be judged in comparison to all truth, and big everything is merely a get rich quick scheme taking advantage of the lazy people. Or even if it is (which I don’t believe in this case), there is a purpose.

Another way Tolle makes his system attractive is that anyone can practice it and improve their life right now, in their living room, no strings attached. I think Budhism has a much higher perceived entry barrier. It scares people away thinking you have to find a teacher/Guru and practice for 100 hours to even know if this thing is working, and even then you wont know for sure it wasn’t just your bad Guru.

A Budhism Lite that required less input but didn’t distort the teaching could be attractive.

Eckhart Tolle does not teach eternalism. I think your understanding of what he talks about is skewed / mistaken. You did write “His books are not well-written.” and “He comes across as explaining things very clearly and simply, so that they seem obviously right. After a ten-minute video, however, I had only the vaguest recollection of what he had said.” ......things that don’t make it seem like you gave the guy a fair shot.

Anyways, here are the major differences from Buddhism…and really ANY religion/belief system I’m aware of:

• There is no past or future. Why? Because the only thing that can be experienced is “now” and the past is merely memories, which are suspectible to distortion and the future, which is guestimating at best and avoidance of now at worst.

• The “you” you think you are is the ego - the product of thoughts caught up in the lie of past, present and future all being real (only the now is real). He calls the observer of the ego the real you, and the ego/form-based you the false you. The ego-based you relies completely on time to add meaning and substance to itself. The real you – the observer – he refers to as “Being” or the “I Am”

• There is “clock time” which helps separate events in a linear sense, but that is all it is. Even if I know I have a trip in a week, focusing on it now aside from ensuring certain pre-trip things are done is a waste of time. So “clock time” exists, but only for us in this form where focus on time is unavoidable.

• When this form ceases (dies) whatever is not our ego (the observer) is what’s actually us. With the form gone, the ego is gone, which means the focus on past and future is gone. If the Being (real you) once again takes on a form, then the same problems will arise because the form will again be in clock-time-based existence.

• He alludes to but never says that becoming aware/present now will stop the cycle of taking on a form after death. But if one does stop being focused on the past or future, and realizes the ego-self is merely the body and thoughts BUT is not the real you (the observer), I can understand how one would be so at peace with things, there would be no desire to get another form after this.

• He says evil is not actually real, but rather is just the form forgetting its oneness with all others. He also says love is not actually real, because when people think they ‘love’ someone, what they really mean is they are aware of the inerconnectedness between them. As far as I’m aware, he does not speak much or emphasize compassion like Buddhists do. He does not teach to save all others and does not tell others to save others. He simply said he, decades ago, felt the creative urge upon awakening to write the books, and that consciousness shared among all is that caused the books to appear, not him specifically.

• He never explains what happens to consciousness/Being after death. Only that it likely will take on another form. He has never said there is a creator god who made all things, and while he has said ‘God” he just says that is a term some may use to describe the idea of Being, in that all life is a reflection of “God” and he said that helps show interconnectedness. “Being” as described by him is just the awareness that everything is one and the same. But an ego in a form struggles immensely with that notion. He also doesn’t make it seem like eventually all forms will become formless Being and reunite at the source, in a Hindu-like version of God.

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He actually doesn’t say anything really about eternalism. He might say the interconnectedness of “Being” always ‘is,’ but that’s not the same. He also doesn’t speak of heaven or hell either. He makes it clear that ignorance of things is the worst thing possible in this form.

Also, I found his writings to be well-made. You can’t expect modern readers to read hundreds of discourses with highly repetitive passages like in Pali content, nor can you expect modern readers to easily comprehend Tibetan-sourced content being translated into English – especially if mind-being concepts are discussed. His books (he really only wrote 2 major books, the newest one being ~20 years old) are a pretty good read for westerners who are looking for very different approaches to living.