[Buddha-l] Non-Arising

[Dee]

Dan wrote:

> Oh? Depends what you think "unmediated experience" means.
> Buddhism promises 
> direct access, but not to the Transcendent. That's across
> the hall, in the 
> Hindu room...
> 
> Tathata is everything just as it is. Zen mind is everyday
> mind.

Unmediated experience is experience that is unmediated by dualistic thoughts, especially of subject and object, experiencer and experienced. What else could it be unmediated by? That is not a rhetorical question. It is fascinating how many interpretations there can be for things that initially seem quite simple. It may not be possible for unmediated experience not to be unmediated by interpretations as to its nature.

Buddhism does also offer a number of explanations of the significance of this kind of experience. Some schools do say a mind that has experienced the inseparability of subject and object is a mind that has attained some form of transcendence. It is a mental experience after all, and by all reports, a very transformative one. Things may objectively be just as they are, but when we have a direct unmediated perception of reality just as it is, we are experiencing the world totally differently to the way we normally see it. I justify that statement on the basis that we only ever experience our own interpretation of how things are, and usually in quite deluded ways. 

So Zen mind is not everyday mind in the sense of our usual everyday discursive thoughts and emotional conflicts, the term ‘everyday mind’ means something quite different to that. I may be wrong, but I think it means a mind that is not characterized by conceptual proliferations and projected fantasies. From that perspective, it is only the yadda, yadda, yadda of our mental events that stands between us and enlightenment. A mind that sees things as they are could therefore be said to transcend all that crap. What that kind of mind is like has been argued by people with far greater intelligence than I, but I would be interested in hearing your point of view on the matter.

Dee