Interesting articles
Thank you, the first article is good way to justify that only cessation of perception and feeling and parinibbāna and the one realm where there’s only body are the 3 ways that there’s no mind.
So when people ask about parinibbāna is like deep sleep, it’s not. Deep sleep still has conciousness, even anesthesia which is deeper than deep sleep has consciousness from the article above. So it’s much deeper.
Closest to parinibbāna is cessation of perception and feeling, but there’s no mind to record the experience, it’s just a timejump. We don’t experience timejump in sleep, as we somehow is aware of time passing, but those who had undergone anesthesia said it’s like a timejump, only now can I be more confident to say that it’s not yet cessation of mind for those moments. Of course, there’s the in and out experiences, but during it, there’s no mind.
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There is a lot of interesting exploration in these. My sister ran a sleep lab and did research on . sleep apnea Once I went there to be a control subject in a Post graduate research project.
My sister designed a system where they were testing peoples physiology as they woke up and relation to breathing and heart rate. They monitored your vitals, breathing rate, and ECG of brain waves.
To get more data per subject they devised a method of sounds that were of increasing volume but were insufficient to fully wake you up. They could detect the threshold from your brain waves. So in a 4 hour sleep period they stirred up your mind to a point below consciousness a 100 times. Then they really woke you up and sent you home. So the mind hears sounds but you don’t wake up but your brain waves are moving and you can detect it all.
Now in my case with all these wires on my head and chest etc I found it hard to sleep. Was 10 pm to 4 am window. I started doing meditation. Particulary Buddhanussati and Metta etc. It took me an hour to get to sleep. When they woke me up they told me I got to sleep in 10 mins and about 1/3 of people can’t sleep and give up. Then I told the student I wasn’t asleep for at least an hour. She showed me the alpha waves and then she looked at other data and says yes your eyes didn’t roll back. Until after an hour.
So there is a lot that science can detect and it fascinates me that more has not been known and proven. There is so much that should be researched and so much info is ignored.
For me all knowledge is useful and dogma is the least useful. Models are just models reality is really special. Self knowledge is the most beneficial thing I have acquired in this life.
bhavana is about gaining many things that are beneficial. It is an exercise in developing our minds. Buddhism is all hinged on one thing… kamma.. we are the heirs of our own kamma. It is a key point. All the dhamma of the buddha is about kamma. I think that would be a good research subject. So for me I have been running a live experiment on kamma for 46 years now. Seems to work. But time will tell.
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It’s a lot more than just kamma. The noble 8fold path, 4 noble truths, dependent origination, 5 aggregates, rebirth etc.
The noble 8 fold path is kamma by body, speech and mind.
Dependent origination is the description of how kamma works and produces the rounds of rebirth.
5 aggregates are the resultants of kamma. etc . Everything you do in Buddhism is connected to kamma. Paramis is just stored kamma.
"Not to do evil actions (kamma) sila)
To cultivate what is good (kamma, samadhi)
To purify ones own mind (kamma panna)
That is the teaching of all the Buddhas"
Is it not noticed much but kamma is the fundamental unit of buddhism and even abhidhamma. What is kusala? What is akusala? What is neither?
It is not everything but it is the lynchpin. In abhidhamma they have Kamma, Citta, Utu, ahara as causes of everthing. Kamma is the most interesting bit we can have control over as the driving force of our lives. Is is because we don’t truly see that that we think having stuff is going to make us happy. Basis of all our fears is material need but the basis of our happiness is kamma and it protects us on our journey. That is what I am alluding to.