bodhisattva?

OKC user X:

I think any true Bodhisattva would never claim to be one.
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Finluiniel

think whatever you will.
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OKC user X:

do you claim to be one?
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Finluiniel

i don’t think “things” exist.

we believe that words represent inviolable and absolute phenomena but they don’t.

i said exactly what i meant:

“i don’t identify with words…but i might look like a bodhisattva to you.

or i should, if you’re paying attention.”
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OKC user X:

While it’s understood that in monist thought there is a single universal whole, that compartmentalization of thought created by words places a separation on the world that is not there, and that words are inert vessels for holding the meaning which we place on them; it is also understood that words do an okay job of allowing us to share our experience with the world and create meaning.
For this same reason, the Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao, the name that can be named is not the true name. But we can still talk about it. Lao-Tzu talks about it for 81 poems in the Tao te Ching. He uses words but acknowledges that words cannot fully describe the true nature of being, but that this nature can be experienced.

The word “Bodhisattva” is generally accepted to mean something like “a being who has reached Nirvana and returned to teach others the way to enlightenment.”

If one should look like a bodhisattva with the condition that others are paying attention, claims that you have reached enlightened nirvana, and now claim to be capable of teaching others the path to enlightenment, AND that if one does not see your enlightened state, they must not be paying attention.

In the Bagahvad Gita, Artuna is taught that words veil true meaning, that there is one universal whole, but that these illusory separate things are real because of the nature which flows through this veil to prop up the word for the thing and give purpose and delineation to the item, or Dharma. A dog is a dog because of its dog-nature, and is distinguished from a spoon, by it’s not having spoon-nature. Spoon-nature and Dog-nature are real, but the words are not.

To pre-empt your statement with the caveat that one does not believe in words seems to be an attempt to be intellectually dishonest, in dissuading argument that one might NOT be a bodhisattva in a game of intellectual nihilism. This is a problem with words. They do not have to carry meaning if one divorces the meaning from them. But that does not mean that meaning can be divorced from meaning.

This is the nature of Dharma.

So whether or not you identify with words or not, it would seem that you claim to be something which one cannot claim to be, as defined by it’s Dharma.

Nameste,
Asher
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Finluiniel

i have no interest in claiming to be or not to be something. to make such a claim is to acknowledge that a bodhisattva exists absolutely.

again, that is why i use the words “i might look like a bodhisattva to you. or i should if you’re paying attention.”

a “bodhisattva” is a pattern of being that a person (not myself) might recognize in what i am because it is something they have heard of, it is a ready-made image. and for many, like yourself, the existence of the bodhisattva is held up as a koan–that which is inviolably true…

but we need to see truth with our own eyes.

patterns in the seeming natures of “things” exist, but if we are truly honest with ourselves, we must understand these patterns as coincidence.

what i see may or may not be what others have seen before…if i’m worrying about whether or not what i’m seeing “actually is” what others have seen/saw…then i’m not really looking, listening, seeing.

you seem to think the that bhagavad gita, the tao te ching, and all buddhist teachings are descriptions of things, rather than words born in a moment, from vantage points.

these philosophies touch a truth, but a truth only experienced as such in moments.

to live out one’s suchness, at a certain point, one has to stop asking “is this what the buddha saw?” “is this what the story of the reluctant hero in the bhagavad gita was meant to teach me?” “is this *really* the meaning of mu?”

i wholeheartedly embrace the qualitatively new, because only the new is the truth that i have seen. in explaining myself and ways/states of being/ideas, i generally steer away from words like “Enlightenment”, “bodhisattva” etc because i neither refute nor accept them as preexisting states. my words must always shine the newness that i feel-see, rather than mimesis, or performance for someone else.

and as i wholeheartedly embrace the qualitatively new, i embrace contradiction.

i embrace surprise, the unexpected…the sheer hilarity and amazingness of what is NOT performance. what is strictly and undeniably lived and true.

i embrace what has hitherto been not-thought-of, or imagined as impossible.

because impossibility is only named from the outside…never from the inside.

i am so much more likely to trust the “legitimacy” of someone who, out of earnestness and care, argues “with” the bible, or the bhagavad gita, or the upanishads, or the tao te ching, having seen where certain words came from and then, with the proper insight, comes to his or her own words, than i am likely to trust someone who defends them as representing, or absolutely alluding to “what is”.

the word “bodhisattva” is a cue that i give. i don’t imagine anyone will magically know what i mean. which is why i welcome those who say “huh?”

my feelings are these:

one should never do a thing *because* it has been done by others.
and one SHOULD DEFINITELY not do something *because* it hasn’t been done by others.

a person can certainly use the words and thoughts of others to reach his/her own honesty.

it’s fine if honesty leads one down a well-traveled path…but hey, it could easily have been another path altogether.

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i deleted my OKC account so i don’t have the words in front of me…but he replied with:

“your response was mostly obfuscation”

and something about it was too bad i was questioning his “legitimacy”