Originally posted by la lapine blanche:
I recently posted the post below but it's quite hard to get answers because everyone keeps getting distracted by CK's arguments ...
Nothing against CK at all, hope I'm not being rude, just hoping someone could answer my query
Thanks
Lapine

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Thank-you all for taking the time to post replies.
To some extent I understand the whole "flow" thing of a mental continuum, how I am a different self every moment, etc. At one level that makes sense.
But at another level it doesn't fit with what I have been telling myself in order to encourage myself to practise the 5 precepts. When I am tempted to do stupid things like speak unkindly I tell myself "That's just my ego or whatever wanting to show off, whereas my mental continuum is the real, important bit, the bit I will carry over into the next life ... so it is more important to avoid accumulating negative karma". I have found this way of thinking helpful ... but am I ultimately wrong to think this way then?
I really still don't think I understand it because surely even if my self is just flow and ever-changing, it is still true that if what I do in one moment affects the subsequent moments/even lives then there is some permanency in that ... like for example if I accumulate some positive karma it is like a permanent investment because it increases the future likelihood of more positive karma/good rebirth/even Enlightenment eventually?
Hi la lapine blanche,
I might not be able to provide you the answer you want but I hope the aspect on the luminosity and the emptiness nature of consciousness can help.
The clear knowingness that creates the deeply rooted sense of ‘Self’, the agent before birth and after death, the sense of permanency will first be experienced. When a practitioner first experienced this ‘Self’, it is not uncommon to get overwhelmed by this/ experience and conclude this ‘Self as the ultimate core of our Beingness. The result of this experience is partly due to the luminous nature of consciousness and partly the habitual tendencies of our current mode of enquiry. First we must understand that Consciousness need not fit in nicely into the structure of “what, who, where, why and how” which is merely one particular system of enquiry that assumes reality is made up of isolated objects. Although this is currently the ruling mode of knowing the phenomenon world; it is by no means the only way or the best way. Imagine what if consciousness is not an object of anything and cannot be bounded within a space-time continuum? Will such mode of enquiry that is strictly based on grouping, categorization, measurement and comparison understand the essence consciousness? If not what other modes of knowing are available? In Buddhism, mindfulness is a preferred mode of experiencing reality as it is. It goes beyond symbols, labels, thoughts and ‘see’ reality in a raw and undefined mode. By going beyond this layer of abstraction, one is able to perceive without any in between intermediary leading to the gradual dissolving of illusionary categorization and division. ‘Self’ dissolves too as it can only lives in symbols. Only then we are equipped with the condition to understand more about our true nature. This is a pre-requisite.
Next, if we merely think that the flow is only a chain of thoughts, emotions, mental states in a series of self1, self2, self3 changing from moment to moment, we still missed something valuable. It is not just so.
When a mind reaches certain level of clarity, thoughts subsides and before perception arises, what happened to the series again? Does it cease to interact and stop becoming a flow, a flux of becoming or a stream of moments? Has each of the moment of the self series (self1, self2Â…selfN) ever appear to us that it is the light of the sun, the blue color of the sky, the taste of the food?
The purpose of all teachings and all sutras are provisional means to bring us to the intuitive insight of the immediate moment. In lightning flash moment, the vividness, the color, the sound, the texture and the fabric of reality are manifested and instantaneously it is gone. All karmic propensities and the entire mystery of life and death are in this instantaneous moment of arising and ceasing. It is not else where, it is the depth of clarity that matters. It takes the perfect mental clarity of the Blessed One to penetrate to the deepest depth of this moment. Do not overlook it.
My 2 cents.
