Buddhism is Just Realism 

What your experience is (to you) - is your reality. The only remaining question is, are we talking about your "Big self' (your Buddha Nature) or your egotistical small self. - And the answer is: "This is our true self, jiko. This is the real or universal self, or the reality of life, as I prefer to call it. Whatever way you put it, I am here only because my world is here. When I took my first breath, my world was born with me. When I die, my world dies with me." - Uchiyama, Kōshō . Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice (p. 14). Wisdom Publications. Everybody seems to ignore this point. Maybe because they like to talk about quantum physics?

@@JimTempleman What is the point? The world that dissapears with me is my world? It is only the small self that experiences, has adventures? the big self is unknown, unknowing, beyond experience?

@@macdougdoug It's just the Dharmakaya. The one you have access to. The one that lets you see the unity of all things (you have, or ever will experience).. But you want more. You get a Holy Ghost, but you don't get to be God. Sorry about that.

@@JimTempleman Sometimes I think that Mies was right, in architecture as in emptiness : less is more 😀

@@macdougdoug I prefer Louis H. Sullivan. That aside: Emptiness is the All in All. (more or less)

@@Jadedhedgehog Cool!

a. In the Heideggerian sense of "truth as un-concealment", the separation of Samsara from Nirvana is the only means by which Nirvana could possibly be realized, as only Samara could possibly conceal Nirvana among its ever present midst from the only sort of beings whatsoever to which Nirvana could possibly be "unconcealed", namely karmic, volitionally "free willed" persons. Only this line of rational induction requires and thereby gives meaning to life and the cosmos. To the extent anyone realizes the physical term "primordial singularity" as synonymous with Nirvana, the "meaning of life" is no mystery, simply the means of a "primordial singularity" realizing itself, as only it must. b. "As mathematician David Berlinski writes regarding the material and informational aspects of DNA: “We quite know what DNA is: it is a macromolecule and so a material object. We quite know what it achieves: apparently everything. Are the two sides of this equation in balance?” More generally, Berlinski observes that since the information embodied in a string of DNA or protein cannot affect the material dynamic of reality without being read by a material transducer, information is meaningless without matter." CTMU To me the very notion of material (and information) is just how "infinity" must appear to itself in order to conceal its own essence, such that its essence can be revealed. The material/spiritual (informational) dichotomy is only mysterious in lieu of comprehending "infinity". There's no simpler or more generic means possible by which "information" can be transduced (as it must to conceal/reveal Nirvana) than by what science regards as the "physical world" of time & space, in particular quantum mechanics (virtually the universe as a cosmic computer in its own right). c. As for the "basic matrix", it's not overly complex reasoning: where "primordial singularity" equals "infinite mass" and hence "infinite potential", it must by hook or crook resolve its own inherent potential for self-realization (Nirvana), regardless even where "it" predominantly "fails" to (fully) self-realize (Samsara). By logical inversion of an "expanding" universe, simply modeling the "primordial singularity" OVER time and space, as per a Venn diagram composed of internally nested and rescaled "states", Nirvana is simply the "parallel processing" in totality, of the implied "singularity & space-time matrix" ensemble (conspansive manifold, per CTMU). "Extended superposition “atemporally” distributes antecedent events over consequent events, thus putting spacetime in temporally-extended self-contact. In light of the Telic Principle ...., this scenario involves a new interpretation of quantum theory, sum over futures. Sum over futures involves an atemporal generalization of “process”, telic recursion, through which the universe effects on-the-fly maximization of a global self-selection parameter, generalized utility." CTMU

Interesting topics, indeed! Some additional remarks from my side may be in order, I suppose: a) As I understand Martin Heidegger´s "thinking-ways" (Ger.: ´Denkwege´, ´Gedankengänge´), he really tried to follow Eduard Husserl´s maxim of "Back to the things themselves!". And he called his methodology "de(con)struction", building on Husserl´s triade of "epoché, reduction, purification". Part of this approach was and is, to move - in short - from "deduced" (´abkünftigen´) concepts (e.g., specific Buddhist "universals": Nirwana, Samsara, and Karma; and more "universally universal universals": psyche and cosmos, person and free will, etc.) towards the "primordial" (´urtümlichen´, ´ureigentlichen´) ground. According to Husserl, human beings (resp. Heidegger´s "being-there", Ger.: ´Dasein´) find themselves in the basic antinomian position of simultaneously being-towards-the-world (primarily by way of "knowingly grasping") and being-in-the-world (primarily by way of "bodily experiencing"). Heidegger seems to approach the reflexive understanding (i.e., Zen-interpreter Katsuki Sekida might here speak of the "three NEN") of our basic "knowing-being" from the "ur-arena" of having (partly intuitive) insight into the "horizonal structure of consciousness" as one of his key starting-points. Accordingly, the "veritas essendi" may refer, firstly, to "all items apperaring on the (´Lichtung des Seins´)", in the narrower sense, as well as, secondly, to the "overall Gestalt" of light/dark consciousness, plus the hunch of "something" beyond the ever receeding "general horizon", of which we, at best, can get some glimpses of. - However, the "hunching" usually already implies doing some "heavy metaphsics", which seems problematic in several ways, but that´s another story). (Ref.: If I remember right, Evan Thompson gives some similar, "neuro-phenomenological" explanations in, e.g.: YT-channel Mind & Life Institute, "Expanding Our View..") b) Re: The relation between "matter" and "energy". The early sociologist Emile Durkheim already keenly oberved/proposed that societies (as systems, to use current terminology) manifest themselves to their members primarily via the pressures it affects on them. Their "forcefullness" makes these "systems" feel "real" to us... Well, to put things short - and paraphrasing an idea of Schelling´s -: We use to establish the "vital space-time" after the basic subject-object-division has taken place. And this "mental map" seems even to be, grosso modo, cross-culturally convertible. c) There exist many concepts of "Nirvana" inside the House-of-the-Buddha. And, if I may say so, it is one of the real worthy tasks for scholars, to systematically work out a valid, reliable synopsis. There have already been quite a few "szenarios" presented, like the relatively short and concise one by the Russian buddhologist Theodore Stcherbatsky - in the 1920ies, if I remember right. Phenomenologically speaking, grosso modo, all Nirwana-"szenarios" are basically rooted in everyday life-world experiences and succinctly reach ever higher levels of higher-predicative, symbolic abstraction. One of the more recent "syncretistic" approaches that comes spontaneously to my mind, is the one presented by Tarthang Tulku (1977) in his booklet "Time, Space and Knowledge". In it, so my interpretation, he tries - in a somehow simple way: no formulas, no great philological apparatus, etc. - to harmonize the average modern physcial world-view with the tradtionional (Vajrayana-)Buddhist one. He offers, as I see it, at least some glimpses of "our world and all the rest" - what other human thinkers seemingly also already did and do ever in their ways since "Ur-Zeiten" (´primordial times´), that is, they did this maybe already even long before historical times, and especiall before the "axial era" (Karl Jaspers), which was seemingly very formative for "us". The understanding and mastering of the "big affair [... while] regrettably [...] time flies [...]" - as a relatively famous Zen-saying goes - ... well, it is, so to speak, a vast field, that opens up before our eyes, indeed. -Regards @@xxxYYZxxx

consciousness is just the knowing faculty of mind, the source of the “self”, but mind also includes the unconscious creative principle, will, unconscious perceptions, and probably a whole lot of other stuff.

OH!

read Fukanbookshelvi on that matter

@@Sand_Bank_ 😂

There are definitely a lot of "Marxists" out there that ignore a lot of what Marx himself said about what materialism means in favor of bringing their own baggage along.

So don't slap me!

@@HardcoreZen auch that hurt !