Namaste samabudhi,
thank you for the response.
i hold the view of karma that i do based on the Lankavatara Sutra, the Shurangama Sutra, the Perfection of Wisdom in 25,000 Lines, the Diamond Sutra and others including the Dhammapada.
the Dhammapada being the only one of these listed that belong to both the Hinyana and Mahayana schools, the other sutras listed are all Mahayana sutras, as such, a practiconer of the Hinyana may not agree.
now... it seems like you are saying that you don't believe that an aspect of your consciousness is either the repository for the karmic seeds, or you don't believe in your consciousness as is described in the Buddhist Abidharma, i'm not sure which.
in any event.. the formation of consciousness and how it's constituted is also addressed in the Lankavatara Sutra. it is more conscisely found in the actual Abidharma itself, which is found in the Tripitaka of all three canons (Pali, Chinese and Tibetan). you may consider the Trimsika (Sanskrit) to be a more accessible text as it's a conflation of 30 shastras about the nature of consciousness and so forth.
we're approaching the problem from opposite sides of the river
the method that you are espousing would be quite commonly found in the Hinyana tenet system, however, the approach from the opposite shore is commonly found in the Mahayana tenet system.
as an adherent of the Vajrayana (which is essentially, Mahayana) i do not feel that i can properly represent the Hinyana veiw on this subject, though i shall endeavor to try.
Vipassana meditation is a method, a technique, that one employs to see things as they really are. however, this is not the sole meditational technique that one must employ on the Buddhist path. the other meditational technique that one must utilize (from our point of view) is Samatha meditation, which allows one to rest with calm abiding in the natural state of the mind when it is correctly perceiving such-ness. the "point" of meditation, if you will, is the experience of Samadi.
in any event... when we practice with a goal in mind, such as ceasing suffering and creating happiness, we are practicing with a mind that is still attached. not a mind that sees things as they are... a mind free of conceptions of practice and of merit or benefit.
in the Diamond Sutra, Subhuti is asking the Buddha questions on how one enters the path of the Bodhisattva. Venerable Subhuti was the foremost monk in terms of understanding emptiness:
Ch 3.
" The Buddha said to him "Subhuti, those who would now set forth on the bodhisattva path should thus give birth to this thought: 'However many beings there are in whatever realms of being might exist, whether they have form or no form, whether they have perception or no perception or neither perception nor no perception, in whatever conceivable realm of being one might conceive of beings, in the realm of complete nirvana I shall liberate them all. And though I thus liberate countless beings, not a single being is liberated.'"
"And why not? Subhuti, a bodhisattva who creates the perception of a being cannot be called a 'bodhisattva.' And why not? Subhuti, no one can be called a bodhisattva who creates the perception of a self or who creates the perception of a being, a life, or a soul."
i've started this last bit over several times now as i'm not sure where to go from here...
perhaps.. it would be of benefit to disucss the nature of consciousness as understood in Buddhism?
oh.. i think that it's very easy to agree on the basics of Buddhism.. as all three vehicles uphold the 4 Noble Truths and the Noble 8 Fold Path, the 5 Precepts and so forth. naturally, people vary in their capacity to understand these things, but these things are the same.
i think that, at least for me, it would be of some benefit were i to know which school of Buddhism that you practice. as that way i will have plenty of understanding of the philosophical positions that you hold, Sutras that your school upholds and so forth.
