This is tough because I agree with you in principle but not in practice. I want you to be right, but cannot see how you are.SteRo wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 4:43 pmSorry but that "does not ultimately exist" reminds me of "the two truths". But staying in the suttas I cannot recall the Buddha teaching two truths.zan wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 3:56 pm Rules for this thread:
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3.) Stay in the suttas. Using bizarre theories or science fiction are not allowed as they do not exist in the suttas.
4.) Making everything imaginary does not solve the issue as the mind, and therefore imagination, is dependently originated too, and so does not ultimately exist.
This is your fabrication. The Buddha did not teach this. Remember? "Stay in the suttas"zan wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 3:56 pm Further the Buddha didn't teach that all is consciousness, and it is incompatible with dependent origination, even if it only applies in it's minimal function to describe beings. All as consciousness is one hundred percent an Upanishadic teaching, not Buddhist.
That said here we are:
If everything, without exception, is dependently originated, nothing has any independent existence, there is no single thing. Everything depends on something else to exist.
If there is no single thing then obviously there cannot be many things.
So literally nothing whatsoever exists: pure nihilism.
We are not necessarily outside of the suttas. The Buddha taught DO and this is a possible outcome of that teaching.
I didn't mean "stay in the suttas" as in "you can only quote the suttas", but rather "stay in the suttas, discussing only what might be discussed within the suttas". For example someone might ask the Buddha: "Does dependent origination mean nothing exists?"
However no one would ask him: "Does quantum mechanics and the many worlds theory prove such and such?" Because these things weren't discussed back then. So an answer that contained things that are utterly foreign to the suttas is what I was trying to avoid.
Further this is absolutely not my fabrication. I would never come up with such an extreme idea. This is something that was thought up by Buddhist thinkers millennia ago. I practiced and studied Buddhism for twenty years before I came across this idea and really understood it. I wish I was smart enough to come up with something like this! If I was, maybe I could work my way around it without help too lol!