[Buddha-l] What is direct experience?

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Op 6-2-2011 20:09, lemmett at talk21.com schreef:
> thanks erik! someone mentioned in this old discussion, that they were uncomfortable with the analogy between psychosis and direct experience. can i try to explain a little? not got so much to say but - isn't it possible for psychosis to bring out experiences like the luminosity of awareness or the "environment" ,in which case i did wonder how that can be differentiated from these "True" states of mind associated with Buddhism. hence the question... make sense? should i track down something by korzybski?.
Hi Luke
This is quite a sensitive subject because having this kind of experience 
makes a person a member of the Buddhist upper class. So it depends a lot 
on what you call an experience. In ordinary situations one expects that 
having an experience includes knowing that you have it and what it is. 
This makes it impossible for a Tibetan Buddhist to have an appearance of 
Mother Mary or of the angel Gabriel but equally impossible for a Muslim 
to have an experience of pure awareness. A person with a severe 
psychosis probably has little reflective awareness of what he or she 
experiences. It is like finding a key without knowing what it is for.
Maybe some will insist that some experiences are self revelatory, but 
this probably means an open invitation for a lot of metaphysics.
Another point is if one can have such a special experience and still 
remain the same mean old bastard. Is not personal change a prerequisite 
for the truth of the experience? I think in Buddhism it is, because 
advanced persons are traditionally defined by having less desire, hatred 
and delusion than the average human being.
In Buddhism there is little discussion about the quality of such 
experiences, because one should not boast about it. But this doesn't 
stop the rumours of course.
I leave the question below to the specialists in the field.

erik

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> i did have another query to add while i'm bothering the list.
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> what exactly is the existence of emptiness in Yogacara? i ask because my uneducated guess is that it is the essence of the separate teaching of the two truths for Zhiyi, what differentiates it form Madhyamika or the shared teaching. a pretty basic question maybe but i'm especially concerned with how it might effect a theory of truth or the status of conventional truths.
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> thanks - and i'm glad to see that the list is still running some
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> luke
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