Originally posted by dube
what is meaning?
i mean what does it mean?
Here are some of my own developed meanings about meaning. Some of it is described from a Buddhist viewpoint, which in the main I find helpful and coherent, but my understandings of re-incarnation are markedly different to the standard Buddhist one. But I describe it to show the context of practices.
To me:
All meanings are mind sourced. There are no meanings outside of mind. The Universe outside of some form of mind is meaningless, a physical deadness. But then one must ask what is mind and what boundaries does it have, if any?
We may posit that God is Mind. Or that our mind is a part of a greater mindlike awareness. Mind is first of all awareness, and its first arising is the sense of "I".
And then connections and patterns related to that "I" emerge in awareness and we choose and respond to our own meanings.
Meanings are constructed by ourselves, either singly or together with other minds. They are ultimately chosen and applied, rather than received and followed, or endured. Meanings are an essential and core aspect of living existence however, even though we choose them, and build them.
In Buddhism, three aspects of existence "kayas" are referred to, one of which involves the aspect of meaning. (This description is rough and open to doctrinal questioning, but I find the three aspects "meaningful" to my own thinking).
They are referred to as "forms", aspects or "bodies" of the "transcendental Buddha" (by Buddhists), but they may also be seen as dimensions of existence.
The highest is referred to as the Dharmakaya, the non-dual Source that appears empty of defining characteristics, yet is the fully Potent Ground of all. One could refer to it as the Ground of All Being.
The manifested level we are experiencing bodily and physically in our dualistic existence is referred to by Buddhists as the Nirminakaya. One could refer to it as simply the Physical Manifestation
Between these two "dimensions" or aspects is the Sambhogakaya, the body of meanings and archetypes, of dream-bodies,of powerful and mythic-like symbology and mind built "entities", that are real and powerful at that "level", as powerful as any archetype. Or one could refer to it as the Mind Manifestation.
It is this level that is referred to in the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, and the rites and actions are used to enable the dying "person" to negotiate more easily this level more easily after death. Its essential task is to remind the dying person that these are mind-built entities (awful and beatific) and as ultimately "empty" as the life they have just left. This is connected with re-incarnational understandings.
We as co-creating minds, both together and singly build and dream our meanings, our values, our symbols and our archetypes. They are not ephemeral. They are very powerful and underly our physical existence and our behaviors. Jung, the emminent and somewhat mystical psychologist understood this realm as the Collective Unconscious, seeing in different patients recurring "archetypal" themes in dreams from widely separated cultures.
Meanings that are built can be either beneficial or destructive.
Meanings are like seeds. From our meanings more solid things arise, and types of living become more "embedded", the more we focus on them.
This is what is symbolically demonstrated by the Tibetan Buddhist dream construction of deities and demons, and of tulkas. With such potent "dreaming" powerful seeding occurs, that "change" things, including the practitioner.
Often wars are actually battles of meanings. When fundamentalist terrorists inflict harm and hurt and brutality, how we respond is important. Not just with battles, but also with strong intention to show in whatever way we can, our own positive life-affirming meanings and not copy their destructive ways and meanings.
Thanks dube.
Meaning
03 Jan '11 22:47
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