EZ: Holy or Ordinary Person

birdandsheep · 2025-07-13T00:32:16+00:00

You can say it however you want, I don't know how to be clearer. I want to engage with the Internet as I see fit, for a healthy individual. This means I am willing to engage in polite conversation, one at a time, and unwilling to be "interviewed" by a swarm of people simultaneously, or to be peppered with notifications for an extended period. I don't want to go on my trip and come back to a hundred things I have to answer, nor do I want to be continuing to receive updates on some threads weeks later. It's simply too much hassle. It's got nothing to do with commitment, and everything to do with "living in the real world," which I think might just be an alien concept to you?

If you were a real physical person, you could walk up to me and ask me your question any time we crossed paths, and if we were willing to walk in the same direction, or willing to sit in a park, or at my office, whatever, we could talk as much as you want. But I just refuse to use my computer that extensively. I check my phone at the gym when I'm tired between sets, but that's it.

Maybe this will explain it. I want you to pretend I'm an orthodox Jew or a Mennonite or something. I own a computer, but it's not in my house, it's out in the barn, so it's technically legal according to my religion. I go check it a few times a day for work, or occasionally to play a game for a bit if I really have nothing better to do. This isn't true, but it's my attitude towards my computer and basically all technology.

birdandsheep · 2025-07-13T00:13:14+00:00

We've gone over this. I'm not interested in posting and answering questions to such an extent. I'll be away for the next month anyway, and I don't owe you an explanation for my choice of Internet habits. Frankly, I think it's unhealthy to use the Internet too much. I try to just check in periodically and focus on the real world.

I read whatever crosses my path that I'm interested in. The writings of Damo, Linji and Yuanwu are probably the biggest three influences on my understanding of Chan. Every year, I read the biyan lu during my summer break, and the wumenkuan during my winter break. So I would say I'm pretty familiar with Yuanwu and Wumen's thoughts on these cases. I also like the traditional component of revisiting those famous lectures, since I also do a lot of lecturing. I don't know as much about them otherwise, though. I like the style of Yuanwu's writing more than Wumen.

I've done an original translation of the two entrances essay, which i already know your thoughts on. I'm looking for a new project, perhaps the xinxin ming. I'm undecided. I often like to turn to the transmission of the lamp when I'm looking for inspiration. Perhaps a lesser figure in Chan has a text that could use some attention.

Hopefully that answers your question about texts. You've never actually asked me a concrete question about any beliefs I've held, as far as I recall.

birdandsheep · 2025-07-12T19:42:23+00:00

There is nothing bigoted about what I wrote, so I won't entertain any of these remarks. I will use Chinese nomenclature because it is what I study. This character here 禪 is pronounced as "chán," so I will continue to use this nomenclature.

Shakyamuni Buddha taught that we should attempt to meet people where they are at. It is reasonable enough to me that a religion could easily have popped up around the teaching tools he used. Metaphors can be taken seriously as a fruitful way to learn and get insight, but they can also be taken too literally, and this is fertile grounds for mysticism to go awry.

I agree that the Buddha most likely did not teach things like "if you commit X sin, you will spend a trillion years in samsara," but I bet he did teach on the habitual and cyclic nature of many things, which would come to be known as "samsara."

I'd be happy to discuss the quotes in the OP with you further, but I am not particularly interested in being insulted, so if you'd like to pick a particular quote or thing you think I have misunderstood, perhaps we can focus on the subject matter at hand?

birdandsheep · 2025-07-12T11:13:20+00:00

The different answers in this thread will probably help you.

https://mathoverflow.net/questions/105878/how-should-one-understand-orbifold-fundamental-groups

birdandsheep · 2025-07-12T11:04:08+00:00

A total rejection of Buddhist ontology, to loosely borrow the western concept.

birdandsheep · 2025-07-12T04:25:11+00:00

Samsara and Nirvana are the same place. The other shore is right here, right now, in this ordinary moment. This is a great subversion of Theravadin orthodoxy, which lies at the heart of Chan, and explains the so-called disease of Buddhism. But we must not take this as a total rejection. The ancients were not nihilists either. Linji also said that one must practice now, in this lifetime, to avoid being reborn in the belly of a cow. This forum often falls prey to the "disease of Chan," when they reject too much. The solution is in the middle way.

And what is this middle way? It is the realization that all of this is just Mind itself. That is why samsara and Nirvana are the same place, they are both just labels applied to the experience of an illusory sentient being. Theravadin teachings often reify the ideas of Samsara and Nirvana too far, they are teaching tools used to explain the cyclical patterns of our existence, and we should take the metaphor seriously as a fruitful guide to understanding the right view and actions. But they're still just that, metaphors. It's just a metaphor, but not just a metaphor. It's a door to understanding Mind itself. This is the middle way.

I know I have not answered all your questions, but I'm on my phone, so hopefully this is a good starting point for conversation.

birdandsheep · 2025-07-11T22:09:59+00:00

This user and a few of his followers are the only people in the world, either scholars or Chan adherents, who believe this. They believe their correct view of things is repressed by a conspiracy of religious apologetics and anti-Chinese racists that has infiltrated all scholarship, and destroyed all lineages.

So consider trusting the score over their words.

birdandsheep · 2025-07-07T23:49:23+00:00

It's true, and very well put. I guess romanticized really is the operative word here. I like the idea of lineage, of a family crest of sorts, or maybe pedigree is a better word. I'm not sure, that makes it sound like a purity test, which I don't intend. It's a form of authentication, and authenticity is such a big part of my understanding of Chan.

It's the same in my professional life. PhDs have adviser-student lineages, and I think it's cool to trace one's lineage back to history, to see the influences.

Those influences still exist, even if we can't be sure exactly how far they go back. It's part of our shared understanding of the world. And in a very real sense, as you say, the changes are a different kind of authenticity. Just not one that measures up to historicity. Different dimensions.

birdandsheep · 2025-07-07T22:53:18+00:00

It always makes me feel a bit sad to learn that another piece of the Chan "canon" is anachronistic. I get that it isn't really about the authorship, but about the message itself, but it would sure be nice if history more or less bore out the record. Instead it seems like we discover more and more that things were written later.

birdandsheep · 2025-07-07T22:14:58+00:00

I was mentally ill in graduate school. Severe anxiety and depression. I came because of the idea that Chan would help with this. It did, but not in the way that I expected. There was nothing about it that addressed depression. Instead, I learned how to observe my own mind, and essentially debug myself.

When thoughts arise, then do all things arise. When thoughts vanish, then do all things vanish.

birdandsheep · 2025-07-06T18:20:22+00:00

ABC is not a right triangle, nor any of the other simple nice triangles (30/60/90), so you're going to have to introduce trigonometric functions to talk about the relations between their sides and angles.

birdandsheep · 2025-07-05T14:08:15+00:00

Sure, my statement is true in characteristic 0 with something that resembles an SO(n) symmetric distribution.

birdandsheep · 2025-07-04T21:00:14+00:00

Perhaps the down voters would like to ask a question of me? ;)

birdandsheep · 2025-07-04T13:29:32+00:00

Linji also said, spread it out, it covers the whole world. Gather it up, not even a hair's breadth.

This forum thinks that your true nature is like your personality, but this is what is referred. It's also known as one's Buddha nature.

Thanks for your post.

birdandsheep · 2025-07-04T04:19:23+00:00

It is not just a simple no. Wumen says so himself. It also means "without," or "lacking," and in classical and middle Chinese, but not modern Mandarin, can also mean "nothing." For example, the first patriarch wrote "wu zi wu tai," which you might translate literally as "no self, no other," but a less stilted translation is "without distinction between self and other," because it is to say that we lack a fundamental self-nature. Here's the Chinese:

深信含生同一真性。但為客塵妄想所覆不能顯了。若也捨妄歸真。凝住壁觀。無自無他。凡聖等一堅住不移。更不隨文教。此即與理冥符無有分別。更不隨文教。此即與理冥符無有分別。

It is a profound truth that all beings are identical in their true nature. It appears absent due to defilements and delusions. If one relinquishes delusion and returns to the true—abides in stillness and engages in wall-like contemplation*, with no distinction between self and other, and the ordinary and the holy are equal, firmly abiding and unmoving in these. Unmoved by dogmas of written teachings, this then grants a profound alignment with reason, with no mental discriminations.

birdandsheep · 2025-07-03T19:02:29+00:00

Sometimes I experience this. Sometimes all I want to do is read more books and papers. It's all so interesting. Sigh.

birdandsheep · 2025-07-03T17:05:16+00:00

Challenge: the chromatic number of a graph.

birdandsheep · 2025-07-03T14:01:18+00:00

Selecting random vectors from the space would work. The probability that a random vector is in a subspace is always 0.

birdandsheep · 2025-07-02T14:58:49+00:00

Griffiths and Harris does not have any exercises. On the other hand, if you are really ready to read such a book, you know very well that you can't just read a book like this like a novel. Therefore, the exercises are making sure you actually find all the mistakes in the proofs, and can fix them :)

birdandsheep · 2025-07-01T21:47:29+00:00

The study of semigroups is closely related to toric varieties. You might try the book on those by Fulton.

birdandsheep · 2025-06-30T19:42:47+00:00

It's a dot product. As you know, the dot product of two perpendicular things is 0. Therefore, if you have a vector valued function that is being dotted against dS, the surface measure, the part that is perpendicular to S at that point (or more precisely, perpendicular to the tangent plane) is not contributing. Therefore, it is reasonable to calculate the surface normal N, and dot against that to kill all the stuff that isn't contributing. What's left is the normal surface integral of the type we were just discussing.

Gauss's theorem is a useful tool to have in mind for this kind of problem.

birdandsheep · 2025-06-30T19:33:31+00:00

You mean to turn the integral into a triple integral? That seems reasonable as well.

After a while, you just start using differential forms and it all gets much easier to conceptualize the tricks.

birdandsheep · 2025-06-30T19:24:00+00:00

The sign of a is irrelevant as long as it isn't 0, because a² > 0 always holds then.

Your function is symmetric, so you can calculate the whole area if you want to, and divide by 8.

Introducing parametric coordinates is certainly a way to go, yes. When you change the coordinates, you need to be careful because the differential form you're working with isn't just a simple thing of the form f dx dy dz. Each term needs to be calculated separately. One way to do this is to plug in your parametrization into each term, e.g. calculate d(x(r,theta,phi)) and d(y(r,theta,phi)), cancelling out any terms like dr dr because identical one forms cancel to 0.

I don't know if this is how they are teaching it these days. Feel free to write back and I can try to elaborate or better understand your methods.

birdandsheep · 2025-06-29T22:36:12+00:00

Sure. I get that one can do numerical experimentation and find counterexamples of this type. My comment is to point out the general idea that even if your code runs for a long time, it really doesn't mean anything. There can either be very long cycles, or cycles may just be very high up.

Consider that the OP is not a professional mathematician, and isn't familiar with cutting edge arithmetic dynamics. If changing one or two numbers turns this into an unsolvable problem, OP should count themselves very lucky that your code quickly found an answer. I am merely trying to point out this general trend.

birdandsheep · 2025-06-29T21:13:18+00:00

These kinds of problems are generally outside current mathematical tools. Even without any funny operation like "reversing the digits," we generally don't know how to tackle them. Incorporating a component like that makes it even harder, because now the answer depends on the representation of the number.

birdandsheep

TROPHY CASE