Stuffs RedTurtle
What do you think samsara is; a reality or a parable?
Are multi dimensions a reality to you?, Even if they are empty, or likened to a dream?
Is non dual pointing insanity, denial, a waste of time or effective ?
I find a lot of hypocrisy in Religious leaders, does this bother you?
Like · · February 10 at 12:36am
Joel Agee and 3 others like this.
Albert Hong Isn't it interesting how if you see it one way then thats the way it is. And if you see it another way then thats the way it is.
It's like rubbing your index finger with your thumb.
Shifting your attention from the thumb to the index finger.
Which one is touching? Depends on the attention.
February 10 at 12:59am · Like · 5
Fred Eric Samsara is nirvana/nibbana is samsara... The only obstacle between samsara you and nirvana you is the Ego, which gives this impression of separateness, of individuality... Dwelling in an egoless state is blissfull, it's all there, it's instantaneous and spontaneous, it's like not being there but being all that at once, it's right here right now, try it... Watch the ego and you're no longer the ego... But who/what is watching? That ´s the real you, stay with it...It's that simple really... Choose the teachings that ring truth to you, push the boundaries, free yourself, be happy
February 10 at 1:02am · Edited · Like · 1
Albert Hong There are sounds. We say the word samsara.
Then with that sound-symbol we assume that it actually points to a referent.
The replication must actually replicate something.
And that's where the investigation starts. Do these words/symbols/images/sounds actually point to something?
And how does this relate to the obvious appearance of consciousness as the forms and sounds?
And then the real question.
What is the nature of mind? The nature of experience? Is there an essential core? Does it actually arise and cease?
Resolution can only come when we examine. Enjoy.
February 10 at 1:07am · Like · 2
Viorica Doina Neacsu "What do you think samsara is"
You already gave yourself the answer in the question... "thinking" is samsara
February 10 at 1:07am · Like · 4
Stuffs RedTurtle I was more wondering your opinions on the subject
February 10 at 1:08am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Like, what exactly is the nature of this mind we live in
February 10 at 1:09am · Like
Viorica Doina Neacsu "Are multi dimensions a reality to you?"
Yes, many dimensions... depending on the way it is perceived the reality...
February 10 at 1:09am · Like · 1
Fred Eric Women's egos are also weaker than men's egos nowadays, should be easier for women to taste this me thinks
February 10 at 1:09am · Like
Fred Eric Weaker in a good sense of course!
February 10 at 1:10am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle And how do we know it's empty other than theory?
Can we experience emptiness ?
February 10 at 1:10am · Like
Albert Hong My rinpoche says the same thing as well.
Females have more of a chance to attain enlightenment than men.
Because we men are arrogant, prideful and desire so badly to become gurus/teachers. =]
February 10 at 1:11am · Like · 3
Stuffs RedTurtle These are real wondering here, this solipsism stuff is making me feel insane
February 10 at 1:11am · Like
Viorica Doina Neacsu Hi Fred Eric That is an old belief, i had myself that belief until i met 500 people in a school in the same room and i listened them talking about their deep fears... i was so moved to see that men are more sensitive than women...
February 10 at 1:12am · Like · 3
Albert Hong Stephanie Marie
If you're nihilistic then you should focus on dependent origination.
This will help balance out the negation aspect.
If we are too eternalistic then we should focus on the negation aspect.
Eventually these balance out and are seen to be the same.
February 10 at 1:13am · Like · 1
Albert Hong Like for instance if we say the whole world is an illusion.
Then cool.
But we cannot deny karma or causality.
Eating illusory bunk food can cause illusory diarrhea.
February 10 at 1:14am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Dependent origination of sense phenomena or material things?
I'm having a hard time accepting that the outside world doesn't exist; I don't like it
February 10 at 1:15am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Lol!! So true
February 10 at 1:15am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle So Albert Hong, does the outside world exist, or is it in the mind?
February 10 at 1:16am · Like
Albert Hong Well let me give you a clear example.
IF there is the condition of poop with the condition of sense organ nose and mental attention then we can have the effect of smell consciousness.
If we decide not to use our nose.
Then there is no smell consciousness.
This is dependent origination in a crude, obvious form. And this is emptiness.
February 10 at 1:16am · Like · 1
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland 'Exist' doesn't apply. Neither does 'does not exist'.
February 10 at 1:17am · Like · 3
Stuffs RedTurtle I read a sutra where Buddha says smells don't exist from or dependent on a nose, do you agree?
February 10 at 1:17am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Odors I mean
February 10 at 1:18am · Like
Albert Hong Its very clear to note that emptiness isn't nihilism or a state of nothingness.
Emptiness denies a very specific assumption. The assumption of inherent existence.
What is left is a dynamic, interdependent flux/becoming.
An echo display arising and appearing yet never really making anything.
And hence luminous-emptiness.
February 10 at 1:18am · Like · 1
Albert Hong Yes the smell does not exist independently because it requires a nose.
X always requires other than X.
this is how in the heart sutra they say no nose, no smell, no consciousness, etc.
Because it lacks an independent identity, it requires everything else.
February 10 at 1:20am · Like · 1
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland What arises dependently, which is all arising, is ignorance.
There is no dependently arisen phenomenal projection for a buddha.
February 10 at 1:22am · Like · 1
Albert Hong Stian Gudmundsen Høiland
Yes, but the dharma is taught to help sentient beings.
In all spectrums and variables.
May we help all illusory beings and liberate them all into illusory enlightenment .
February 10 at 1:24am · Like · 1
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland Only buddhas can become buddhas.
Liberation is exactly when a sentient being stops being a sentient being. This is exactly when dependently arisen phenomenal projection is realized to be empty.
In other words, liberation is when dependent origination ceases.
Teaching only dependent origination and not its cessation is pure bondage.
February 10 at 1:28am · Like · 1
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland This is absolutely crucial!
February 10 at 1:28am · Like · 1
Fred Eric Viorica for thousands of years we have had societies dominated by men because of their stronger egos, women are "halfway" there already... Stronger egos which have led to patriarchist societies where the father figure holds the authority, where women, their bodies, their bodily functions and their sexuality are repressed and villified (Islam being a prime example but there are so many others), where men fight, kill and enslave other men for earth and possessions, etc, etc. I am not saying that men are not sensitive, they are just as much sensitive as women ultimately since we all come from the same source... But men's sensitivity is by far more clouded by thicker egos than women's, who are softer, lighter beings... But things have been turning around over the last few hundred years or so, with the abolition of slavery, the promotion of human rights, ecological movements (ego is also separate from the earth and nature which is to be dominated and exploited, the folly of men), with women gaining the right to vote, with the promotion of children's health and welfare, with gay rights coming to light, etc! Still a long way to go, but mankind is currently moving into a reconciliation with its true self, beyond the follies of the slavery of the ego... Let's keep pushing
February 10 at 1:34am · Edited · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Does matter exist?
February 10 at 1:30am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Or is it only the senses?
February 10 at 1:31am · Like
Albert Hong Stian Gudmundsen Høiland
Actually there is dependent origination in reverse, from the stand point of wisdom. In the Heart of the buddha's teaching by thich nhat hanh he goes through the buddha's experience of the 12 chain as liberation.
February 10 at 1:32am · Edited · Like · 1
Albert Hong Stephanie Marie
that is an interesting inquiry.
what exactly does it means to exist.
and what is matter?
and are the senses apart from matter?
And if so what exactly are the sense?
February 10 at 1:35am · Like · 1
Albert Hong In some sense if you study dependent origination,
these questions kind of are moot.
because the premise assumes is or isn't. this or that. existence or non-existence.
dependent origination in a way has nothing to do with those polarities.
and hence the buddha stayed silent.
February 10 at 1:36am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Consciousness and then form, that's what I mean... That's the reverse you are speaking of right Albert?
February 10 at 1:38am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle From consciousness comes form, that's it right ?
February 10 at 1:41am · Like
Albert Hong When conditioned by true mind:
1. clear understanding
2. great aspiration
3. four wisdoms: wisdom of wonderful realization, wonderful observation wisdom, wisdom of equality, great mirror wisdom.
4. transformation body
5. result body
6. mindfulness of contact
7. mindfulness of feeling
8. four immeasurable minds
9. freedom
10. wondrous being
11. wisdom of no-birth
12. wisdom of no-death
February 10 at 1:42am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle You may have already answered Albert , but if you did it went over my head
February 10 at 1:42am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Hmmm
February 10 at 1:43am · Like
Albert Hong Dependent origination is a huge topic.
And I see where the confusion is.
Check these out:
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/.../dependent...
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/.../eternalism...
February 10 at 1:46am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Thank you
February 10 at 1:46am · Like
John Tan Every dependent arising is an invocation.
Every dependent arising is an empowerment.
Every dependent arising is a blessing.
Nothing truly arise.
Nothing truly cease.
For all phenomena r ones own self state.
Accept all arisings fully, completely and unreservedly.
Homage to all arisings.
Homage to Boddhichitta.
February 10 at 2:06am · Unlike · 10
Albert Hong
Albert Hong's photo.
February 10 at 2:09am · Like · 3
Kyle Dixon "All phenomena are such that they manifest yet do not cease, do not originate, do not come, do not go, cannot be categorically denied, cannot be naively affirmed, and have never existed as ultimately distinct or ultimately identical. Rather, it should be understood and they are simply illusions based on interdependent connection [dependent origination]."
- Longchenpa
February 10 at 2:24am · Unlike · 7
Stuffs RedTurtle So by this standard , string theory could be correct, we could be vibrating strings in a field of energy
February 10 at 3:00am · Like
Fred Eric I think that this is going too far according to the Buddha's standards (keep it simple) but, it could be that string theory is correct! in other words, recognizing that the Ego is not who we are, and not feeding it/not giving into it/letting go of it, although not an easy task as it has become such a habit for humans to hold it as their true identity for thousands of years, is more accessible and effective for curbing and curing psychological suffering than the string theory... Imo at least
February 10 at 3:24am · Edited · Like
Michael Zaurov No conceptual model will ever accurately describe reality. The brain evolved for survival, not truth. You have to let go of all concepts to see reality, since there is no duality at all between you and the universe. Too many thoughts just get in the way And I do think mixing modern science theories will only lead to confusion. Keep in mind that right view via Buddhism is meant to be a catalyst for direct awakening, rather than serving as a conceptual explanation for how things are. It is a means to an end, not a means to explain and satisfy
February 10 at 3:14am · Edited · Like · 3
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland Great quote, Kyle.
February 10 at 3:52am · Edited · Like
Brian Zey All my efforts to intellectually "understand" reality have led me to poor choices and bad behavior. I have given up that path and am much happier for it. Perhaps others could benefit from the same type of giving up. I remember a Taoist story about a man who becomes afraid because his shadow is following him. He tries to run away from it, but it easily keeps up with him. No matter how fast he runs it makes no difference. He runs, and runs, and eventually falls dead from exhaustion. If he had stopped to rest in the shade of a tree and just enjoyed the moment as it was he would have been free from what was chasing him. Hopefully this comment is not too foolish, though I suspect that I am. Have a lovely Sunday afternoon!
February 10 at 3:52am · Like · 3
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland Dependent origination is the paradigm within which sentient beings arise.
Awakening is the realization of the unstopped non-arisenness of dependently originated phenomena. It is breaking out of the confines of dependent origination into Measureless Mind, Unbinding.
February 10 at 3:52am · Like · 1
Tom Radcliffe I think samsara is an observable reality. It is a very good description of our experience when under the delusion of separation. Multi dimensions are obviously a reality too from the point of view of someone in the dualistic dream. Non dual pointing is an absolute delight, wonder and unavoidable. Try not to talk about this! Hypocrisy in religious leaders is as unpleasant as my own or anyone else's.
February 10 at 4:04am · Like · 1
Robert Dominik Nice picture Albert. It reminded me of halo around the moon that I saw a sometime ago. Actually it was 3 circles of halo - every one of them quite bright, apparent and rainbow-like
February 10 at 4:38am · Edited · Like · 2
Dannon Flynn Does the outside world exist or is it in the mind? Is that any different than the question does the mind exist or is it in the world? I think what is being pointed to is there is no duality between mind/world. To propose one is prior to the other is a chicken/egg fallacy.
Are there other dimensions? This is like asking if there is life on other planets. Seems reasonable to assume so. I have definitely had some crazy experiences but who knows, it could have all been in my mind! lol....
What it all comes down to, for me in my opinion, is all this speculation of out there doesn't help me and my settling in peace right here in the center of my experience at the source of my own life-force-stream. I don't know to what extent all these rivers can flow to, to what worlds, what unfolding dimensions, it is probably infinite. We can get infinitely away from our source. But I have found the source and that is what is important to me.
My ex-wife thought all this stuff was solipsist as well, and in my opinion she misunderstood where I was coming from. When we say that it is all Mind that doesn't mean the intellectual mind, the conceptual mind. It is mind/heart/awareness/living clarity. Citta is the word in sanskrit. It is like saying that the universe is aware. Space is aware. It doesn't mean that it is all in MY imagination.
Perhaps forget about all this intellectual philosophy for a while and enjoy the sensations of your energy. This group is very scholarly and a little obsessive about correct intellectual understanding. If it makes you suffer maybe you are making it more important than it really is for you... there are scholars and there are yogis. The right thing is to balance theory with practice. Confirm the teachings with your own experience.
Maybe even look into other traditions as well, something with some devotion in it.
Be happy, that is what is important! Trust your intuition. Follow your heart, not your head.
February 10 at 5:10am · Like · 2
Dannon Flynn I will tell you a secret: It doesn't need to be so complicated. It is actually putting something so completely simple into words is the complicated part. It is too simple for words. Words are clumsy.
It all comes down to the ONE thing that only you can know for sure. Try putting that into words! lol.
If the words don't make sense or seem too complicated or conceptual or drive you crazy, then forget about the words and be at peace.
February 10 at 5:21am · Like · 3
Stuffs RedTurtle Dannon that makes perfect sense, thank you. I knew that intuitively, thank you!
February 10 at 5:25am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle I know you already went through this with me Viorica Doina Neacsu, and I thank you, just trying to verify I'm not insane
February 10 at 5:30am · Like · 1
Robert Dominik “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” <- Friedrich Nietzsche
February 10 at 5:32am · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Awesome
February 10 at 5:35am · Like
Takeit Easee Stephanie: Nice inquiry. I am not a person of any attainment, so please feel free to disregard my opinion. When such questions come up, trying to figure the answer with the mind, and reading about more concepts really does not seem help, at least in my case. Leaving these questions open and letting them percolate for a long time, sometime for months together, the resolution comes. Sometimes in the form of the question itself making no sense, sometimes in the form of an internal shift in perception that resolves it. When accepting an answer from someone else, it usually feels like buying into someone else experience not one's own.
February 10 at 5:36am · Like · 1
Robert Dominik Insanity is a good example of "something" empty. There are many cultures which have different standards and beliefs of what insanity is. Some even do not have concepts like that at all. Even in the West there was the anty-psychiatry movement (with some psychiatrists - like Thomas Szasz - or philosophers - like Michel Foucalt - leading or attributing to it), which seeked to reevelaute the concept of a mental illness. Looking at the vast array of different, various, dynamic symptons, which largely depend also on the conditions (diet, current mood, people around) of an "insane" person we cannot pinpoint neither one (nor even many) solid thing existing on its own that we can call insanity. Still people can hallucinate, have panic attacks, end up in hospital due to not being able to handle ordinary tasks etc - so even we cannot say that nothing is going on in a nihilistic - we cannot then treat it in a nihilistic way and say that there is nothing.
February 10 at 5:47am · Edited · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle My own experience, since a girl, is that the outside world can be likened to a video game, that reality and dreams are not much different. That "direct experience is all there is" that is a reality for me, since I was ten
February 10 at 5:45am · Like · 1
Tom Radcliffe The senses arise and pass. The objects arise and pass. What does not arise and pass?
February 10 at 7:43am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Awareness right?
February 10 at 7:44am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Because to be aware of nothing, the knowing of it is still there?
February 10 at 7:44am · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle ( meaning even if all senses are absent someone or something is aware of it)?
February 10 at 7:45am · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Or does everything arise and pass ?
February 10 at 7:46am · Like · 2
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland The unconditioned does not arise and pass. 'Wisdom' is unconditioned.
February 10 at 7:47am · Like · 1
Tom Radcliffe At a certain point after 20 years of sitting watching transience i knew without doubt that everything was transient. It was then I was directed to look deliberately for what was not transient. I guess I'd had enough of bloody transience so…….
February 10 at 7:48am · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh! And the clear light is the unconditioned, the mirror right?
But it's always in transience, always reflecting?
February 10 at 7:48am · Like
Tom Radcliffe I am suggesting you look not answer.
February 10 at 7:48am · Like · 5
Robert Dominik Look for the awareness. What do you find? Is there someone recognising the result (or the lack of it) of looking?
February 10 at 7:49am · Like · 3
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh lol
February 10 at 7:49am · Like
Robert Dominik Synchronic Tom I was about to suggest that
February 10 at 7:49am · Like
Tom Radcliffe When the eye sees itself ……...
February 10 at 7:50am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle When I look, the deepest thing I can find is that , I am aware" even though I can't find the I, all I can find is that there are senses and I am aware of them
Am I not going deep enough? I feel stuck
February 10 at 7:51am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle There is seeing
Hearing
Touching
Tasting,
Thoughts
And an awareness of those things...
I don't know what else
February 10 at 7:53am · Like · 1
Robert Dominik The sad thing is that it's good to give up expectations of results and answers. Looking, paying attention, being aware and present to what is are actually what is important xD I heard once a funny statement indicating that it isn't that you meditate and then get somewhere but that you meditate and at some point you meditate all the time without getting distracted Dunno if that helps...
February 10 at 7:53am · Edited · Like · 1
Tom Radcliffe Are you anywhere in the body? Look. Feet, legs, torso, head?
February 10 at 7:53am · Like · 2
Tom Radcliffe Yes I find that I can't not be mindful, dammit!
February 10 at 7:55am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I can't find myself anywhere except in the heart and maybe cognizance behind the eyes, but I don't feel like that's right, I can't find the I anywhere
February 10 at 7:55am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Just those feelings of emotion that are strong in the heart, and consciousness in the head
February 10 at 7:56am · Like · 1
Robert Dominik "And an awareness of those things..." <- Is it additional and standing apart from hearing, touching etc? For example if you "look" at sight. Are there two things like sight and some awareness like next to it, apart from it? Now you might get impression that there is "awareness". What is it? A thought? A trace? A suspection? A belief? Where is it?
February 10 at 7:58am · Edited · Like · 1
Tom Radcliffe If you are aware of the sensation in the heart or behind the eyes then that cannot be you. Are you aware of an edge to the body?
February 10 at 7:57am · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle No the awareness of the senses and thoughts don't seems to be separate from the Senses themselves
February 10 at 7:59am · Like
Tom Radcliffe Robert, there is only one moment at a time. The sense of me arises after the sense impression. What does the sense impression arise in?
February 10 at 7:59am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle What do you mean by edge Tom? I always get confused by that question
February 10 at 8:00am · Like
Tom Radcliffe Can you find where you end?
February 10 at 8:00am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle no, because even the sight is a sense, part of me, so no
February 10 at 8:01am · Like
Tom Radcliffe Can you find where you begin? Look.
February 10 at 8:02am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Stian Gudmundsen Høiland I mean, I feel that the heart area has emotion, drive, maybe in heart and tummy, but I wouldn't be able to pin it down as I
February 10 at 8:02am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I can't find where I begin either, everything is sense... Hmmm
February 10 at 8:03am · Like
Tom Radcliffe If you have no location in the body. If you have no edge. If you have no beginning and no end, what are you?
February 10 at 8:04am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle So outside of the senses I can't verify an outside world
February 10 at 8:04am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Everything? Does that sound nuts? Nothing but the senses
February 10 at 8:04am · Like
Tom Radcliffe Which feels right to you everything or nothing but the senses?
February 10 at 8:05am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Nothing but the senses
February 10 at 8:05am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Would be the same though right?
February 10 at 8:05am · Like
Tom Radcliffe No, the senses arise and pass away. Everything does not.
February 10 at 8:06am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh I see
February 10 at 8:07am · Like
Tom Radcliffe Really?
February 10 at 8:07am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle For it to only be the senses they would have to always be there
February 10 at 8:07am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle But they are transient, the awareness isn't
February 10 at 8:08am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I'm trying, really
February 10 at 8:08am · Like
Robert Dominik "Robert, there is only one moment at a time." <- Funny you should say/write that. Recently I was trying to pay more attention to how thoughts claim future/past and how appearing sensation-moments are mistakenly taken to be whole entities like body, objects etc...
February 10 at 8:13am · Edited · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Am I seeing that correctly?
February 10 at 8:09am · Like
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland There's no awareness.
February 10 at 8:09am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh..
February 10 at 8:09am · Like
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland if you don't believe me, try to find it.
February 10 at 8:10am · Like · 1
Tom Radcliffe Just entertain the idea that everything arises in you rather than the other way around. There is no separation. See if you can find separation. Does space separate? Where is there no space? Just turn off the computer and look.
February 10 at 8:11am · Like · 1
Tom Radcliffe Goodnight.
February 10 at 8:11am · Like · 1
Robert Dominik Goodnight Tom Radcliffe . Glad to have you joined our little group
February 10 at 8:12am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Okay, this is the only thing I can find
Seeing
Hearing
Tasting
Touching
Tasting
So sensing, that's all I can find
And that there is an awareness of those or the absense of those, that's it
February 10 at 8:13am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I will look deeper but I don't know what to look for
February 10 at 8:14am · Like
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland I don't believe you
February 10 at 8:14am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle The above it rising in awareness, no separation, I agree to that
February 10 at 8:14am · Like
Viorica Doina Neacsu "Our little group"???
DC has 600 members Robert! OMG! Our little group! hahahahaha!
February 10 at 8:14am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle What else is there?
February 10 at 8:14am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Thoughts?
February 10 at 8:14am · Like
Robert Dominik Hahaha we're bigger than the Salvation Army... not xD
February 10 at 8:15am · Edited · Like · 1
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland There 'is' nothing
February 10 at 8:15am · Edited · Like · 1
Viorica Doina Neacsu hahahahahahhaha!
Viorica Doina Neacsu's photo.
February 10 at 8:17am · Like · 1
Robert Dominik http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/.../sun-that-never... <- haha here is a good article with (Kyle's?) observations and inquiries. It's pretty lenghty and right now it sort of feels off to encourage you to read more texts rather than advice you to simply keep looking and paying attention... but this article actually has some propositions for experiments, inquries (like the one with the salt) and looking so it's ok I guess.
February 10 at 8:17am · Edited · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Thanks, I just don't know where else to look
February 10 at 8:18am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I can't find awareness anywhere, only the senses, thoughts cognition, I mean, I'm aware when one is missing, thanks though
February 10 at 8:20am · Like
Robert Dominik You're looking in the right direction. Just keep looking and don't expect too much, especially not some flying colours, bright lights and Padmasambhava appearing in front of you after few instances of looking xD
February 10 at 8:20am · Like · 1
Robert Dominik "I'm aware when one is missing, thanks though" <- How? How is that done?
February 10 at 8:22am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Well I had an out of body experience, I was aware that my body was missing, also I can't smell anything right now , I'm aware of that...
February 10 at 8:29am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle So it's why I'm confused
February 10 at 8:29am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh bright flashing lights aren't supposed to happen? Lol
February 10 at 8:31am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle But I guess that doesn't mean that I'm aware of it, just that it's absent...
February 10 at 8:32am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I'll keep looking
February 10 at 8:32am · Like
Robert Dominik Hahaha sometimes there are meditative experiences, nyams These can be used in the context of many practices. Chogyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche says that they are good and may be signs of practice going well. Just that we shouldn't get attached to them and crave them xD If we are looking to have some nice, interesting visions then we can take some LSD xD
February 10 at 8:33am · Edited · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Vio must be so annoyed with me
February 10 at 8:32am · Like
Robert Dominik I asked how was it done (about being aware of the senses not functioning) For example it could be that there were still thoughts (not neccesarily verbal thoughts) claiming "oh! now we lack one sense!". That's not neccesarily how it was. I wouldn't like to force this idea on you - only providing one possibility that can open some options for looking and inquiring.
February 10 at 8:34am · Like · 1
Viorica Doina Neacsu Oh no!!! No sweetheart! I am glad you ask here your questions and so many members care to answer so kind and friendly... i am moved that everybody is trying to help you with an open heart!
You can do it, i know you can do it!
February 10 at 8:37am · Edited · Like · 3
Stuffs RedTurtle For the body thing it was unmistakably, not there, it was very weird
February 10 at 8:36am · Like
Viorica Doina Neacsu Why was very weird?
February 10 at 8:38am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I rolled over on my bed, was very tired thought I was gonna hit the wall, didn't and then I realized something was up, because I was conscious, ended up under my bed, and knew if I didn't go back, I was gonna fall through the floor. At the time I knew my body was gone. This was many years ago, and I wasn't sure if it was a crazy lucid dream, but I know it wasn't
February 10 at 8:54am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Then, meditating on pain, it happened again, everything shut off except that one sensation
February 10 at 8:54am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle If it weren't for those two happenings I would've equated this all to madness, so when I say I can't find anything but a combination of sense impressions, and an awareness of them being there or gone, that's what I mean
When I look, there is;
The seeing
Hearing
Sensation/feeling
Tasting
Thought
That's all I can verify in direct experience
February 10 at 8:57am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle I don't mean those are the only happenings, I've been looking for months, but those are the most profound experiences
February 10 at 8:59am · Like · 1
Viorica Doina Neacsu I know you are in The Direct Path group. Where are you with those experiences? Did them help in a way or another?
February 10 at 9:01am · Edited · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Looking at color everything went 2d, I've done all of the experiments, can't find separation, and I see how like warmth isn't existent from it's own side, like the chair we talked about yesterday, or the weather
February 10 at 9:06am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle So just the senses..
February 10 at 9:07am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle But the extent of consciousness what it is, I have no clue; I had thoughts outside my body, so that's weird
February 10 at 9:07am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Like, I was still able to know stuff even though I wasn't in it in the Body, during the obe
February 10 at 7:31pm · Edited · Like
Viorica Doina Neacsu So you want to understand those experiences...
February 10 at 9:10am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Yes!!! Exactly!!! Badly!!!
February 10 at 9:11am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Like how and why did that happen?
February 10 at 9:15am · Like · 1
Viorica Doina Neacsu Regarding the first experince "I rolled over on my bed...".
I had many times this experience "out of the body", in different situations. The idea is that the mind temporary leaves the body and this can happen because of many reasons. If you want details, i will pms you but not now because i need to sleep, it is 1:18am! hahahaha! Don't worry honey, all it's okay, the mind is leaving the body as a protection... Talk to you tomorrow! nite nite love!
February 10 at 9:22am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Thanks Vio, night!
February 10 at 7:32pm · Like · 1
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson The Ultimate is not explainable and understandable by the human mind. It's contained within it, in pure potential, in full form and neither... Makes no sense to the mind right... That's why it's only something you experience directly if you allow your self It is what you ultimately are.
And yes this world is totally insubstantial. When you fold out of form into the empty it's like a candle being blown out (hence Nirvana = blowout) like your being disperses into your perception and disappears into thin air/no thing. The feeling when it happens is a bit like falling. I have a feeling that it is the root of the feeling one gets often as a kid of falling when you are falling asleep.
After this experience, despite having a degree in Psychology, I see insanity only as what happens when your experience/story goes substantially enough out of sync with other peoples story that it stops being reconcilable. Because, when you have seen through the vial you see that all this are but stories. No, story either true or false but equally true and false. Again makes no sense right? Just has to be experienced directly.
This life is as personal as it gets. The only thing you are responsible for is you, and the only thing you can change is you. I totally disagree with the view that you are just floating with no input. You can participate in the push pull creation of this illusion that is out of your personal control even though you are a full participant in the dance without being aware of it. Or you can let go, fall back. Let go of the illusion of independent control and independent existence and then the realization that you are the entirety of the dance but not just the note and the No Thing that births it and neither
P.S. The No Thing is not nothing. It really is the fullest No Thing you have ever experienced. I know it's a clishé, but it is the best description I've found so far. It is the silence behind everything, the buzzing being-ness.
February 10 at 7:52pm · Edited · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Wow. Thank you so much for all of that Sigurður !! I suspect once I let go this should get easier . I have been grasping to conventional reality like a noose.
This thinking since I played that virtual reality game when I was 10, that the world is not what we think has plaugued my like a dark shadow since. It's crazy for me to find that this whole time, they key to existence is what that little ten year old girl was holding.
Crazy. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Makes it so much easier to know I'm not alone
February 10 at 7:58pm · Like · 1
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson
February 10 at 8:04pm · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Thanks Robert Dominik, that was a great article, Berkeley really helped, I can't believe this is truly it! Wow. I am everything and No-thing, Wow. Just the knowing/known. Wow.
February 10 at 8:13pm · Like
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson Just remember, every time you get defensive, ask your self why am I getting defensive, what do I need to defend, what is the fear that I'm holding onto and trying to defend. When you find it find a way to let go of it. Fear/defense, I find, is the strongest clue to where you are holding on/clinging to your separate identity.
Remember you are only responsible for your self. That is not a cop out, that is allot of responsibility but absolutely the only one you have. And so does everyone else. But that is their responsibility not yours. When you realize this that brings you in, not out. That is where the key is. Within you is the only place you can make the world a better place.
Once you've fully realized who you are you can start helping others find their way... but remember their path is never yours. It is their personal path.... to find out for real that they as anything independent or separate don't exist, let alone as individual persons/fields of perception
February 10 at 8:16pm · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Thank you again!! So much!!
February 10 at 8:43pm · Like
Viorica Doina Neacsu Very nice and hearted comments, Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson
I resonate very deep with what you said... i am coming from the same place...
February 10 at 9:56pm · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Whenever you have time Vio I'm dying to know about the mind and OBE lol
February 10 at 10:01pm · Like · 1
Nicholas Mason Recently I've had the intuition that all of the afflictions of the mind are actually bodhicitta. Some sort of alchemical transformation, hyuck, hyuck.
February 10 at 10:28pm · Edited · Like · 1
Nicholas Mason Tell me, have you seen Soh?
February 10 at 10:25pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle You mean, all of the afflictions are love?
February 10 at 10:28pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Soh just posted
February 10 at 10:29pm · Like
Nicholas Mason No. When one recognizes the nature of the affliction/poison [this is from a vajrayana perspective] they are transformed into the five wisdoms.
February 10 at 10:31pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle 5 wisdoms?
February 10 at 10:33pm · Like
Nicholas Mason Question for those knowledgeable: What is the point of Dzogchen's view of Path?
February 10 at 10:34pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I should know this stuff, but I don't lol
February 10 at 10:34pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I would say no path
February 10 at 10:34pm · Like · 1
Nicholas Mason Maybe someone else can give a basic explanation? I only have a preliminary conceptual understanding.
February 10 at 10:38pm · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle I don't know the lingo, I've always just liked it because it resonated, is my kind of crazy lol
February 10 at 10:40pm · Like
Tom Radcliffe There is a path from the point of view of a concept of self but how can you have a path once self is seen to be a fiction?
February 10 at 10:43pm · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Can't have a path, it's all done for you!
February 10 at 10:44pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Not by a doer though, just is...
February 10 at 10:44pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle But maybe the prelims are important if course, but there is no one path
February 10 at 10:47pm · Like
Tom Radcliffe There is no path but I certainly travelled the illusion of one. When the illusion crashed - there was insight.
February 10 at 10:48pm · Like · 3
Stuffs RedTurtle Cool, the whole, when you meet the Buddha kill him thing right?
February 10 at 10:50pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle That's not so easy lol, left me good and depressed ha ha
February 10 at 10:51pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I don't know if I need to do anything else now but look into direct exp; anything else I fear I'm piling on more concepts
February 10 at 10:54pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Thanks btw Tom Radcliffe
February 10 at 10:56pm · Like
Nicholas Mason I'd suggest breath meditation. Even 20 minutes a day is helpful. Also, finding a teacher and/or joining a group in real life has unimaginable, inconceivable benefits.
February 10 at 10:56pm · Like · 2
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson My path was driving my ego into a wall on full blast.
Using mindfulness and meditation to come to terms with the wreckage.
Discovering that it was easier if I just stayed in meditation all day (observer). Then having that observer collaps on me spontaneously into the No Thing.
February 10 at 11:46pm · Edited · Like · 1
Nicholas Mason What?
February 10 at 11:12pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Cool. Yeah the meditation seems important for this monkey mind lol
February 10 at 11:12pm · Like · 1
Albert Hong Nicholas Mason
"While my view is as high as the sky, my actions regarding cause and effect [karma] are as meticulous as finely ground barley flour," sang the Lotus Master Padmasambhava
My teacher says that even an enlightened being can run out of his or her merit. And hence even though the view is ati, we must work with circumstances and propagate actions are bring good results.
The path is exactly that.
And at the same time its not apart from the view/base and fruit.
February 10 at 11:38pm · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle What is merit??
February 10 at 11:39pm · Like
Albert Hong Say if you murder someone.
That has consequences be it gross or subtle.
Say if you teach and uphold the dharma as your lief.
Well that has consequences gross and subtle.
February 10 at 11:45pm · Edited · Like · 2
Albert Hong To be attracted to Buddhism, yet alone practice and actualize dharma is due to merit.
Good causes and conditions lead to good effects.
As positive thoughts always follow positive actions.
And on the flip side of this:
Merit is empty as well.
But if we take the world to be real, then we must work with circumstances.
and even if we take the world as illusion,
we still must work with circumstances.
And even if we move beyond categories,
we still have to work with circumstances.
February 10 at 11:47pm · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh I see! Consequences for this life and next, subtle body/subtle mind and gross mind and body
February 10 at 11:47pm · Like
Albert Hong If you're a buddha or a sentient being you still have to pay one dollar for 5 chicken nuggets.
February 10 at 11:47pm · Like · 1
Nicholas Mason Merit is realizing Bodhicitta. Realizing Bodhicitta is Buddhahood.
February 10 at 11:50pm · Edited · Like · 1
Nicholas Mason What if you don't go to McDonald's? What if you go to Burger King?
February 10 at 11:49pm · Like · 2
Albert Hong Well then we give because we have nothing to lose or gain. And that in itself is the greatest merit.
February 10 at 11:49pm · Like · 1
Albert Hong If you really forgave yourself then you'd stop giving yourself hell.
February 10 at 11:50pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle So I must have some good merit
Oh I see lol
February 10 at 11:50pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Ha ha.
February 10 at 11:50pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle So you have to let all the bad go...
I'm not a person anyway
Namo Budaya
February 10 at 11:51pm · Like
Nicholas Mason The darkness of a thousand eons cannot dim
The brilliant radiance that is the essence of the sun.
Likewise, eons of samsara cannot dim
The sheer clarity that is the essence of your mind.
-Tilopa's Ganges Mahamudra Pith Instructions
February 10 at 11:52pm · Edited · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Nice
February 10 at 11:52pm · Like
Nicholas Mason Milarepa killed at least 35 people and went on to become one of Tibet's most revered saints.
February 10 at 11:53pm · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh wow
So nothing set in stone, very good
I suppose I should forgive myself, since I am the only one who can, and the good of my life here now and the next depend on it
February 10 at 11:57pm · Like · 1
Nicholas Mason If I had pith instructions to give you they would be to enjoy the ride.
February 10 at 11:58pm · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Thanks Nick
February 10 at 11:59pm · Like · 1
Soh "What do you think samsara is; a reality or a parable?"
Samsara is an illusory experiential reality, the creation of real fictions. How real samsara appears! How real contraction, sense of self, sense of solidity in the world, and so forth appear... Even if they are a dream, they sure seem like a real one... even if a nightmare is merely a dream and a dream is unreal, there is (apparent) suffering in it.
"Are multi dimensions a reality to you?, Even if they are empty, or likened to a dream?"
I don't know what are multi dimensions but all states are empty and like a dream.
"Is non dual pointing insanity, denial, a waste of time or effective ?"
There are many types of non-dual pointing, what are you referring to?
In any case, usually they are effective and brings about certain results.
"I find a lot of hypocrisy in Religious leaders, does this bother you?"
Therefore if one is finding a teacher, find a very good teacher.
February 11 at 12:28am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Great answers Soh! Muti dimensions I mean per Stephen hawking, quantum physics and the six realms of samsara
February 11 at 12:30am · Unlike · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle If atoms, which we are made of take all paths simultaneously, and switch between wave and particle, that opens the doors for the 11 dimensions, dreams, samsara, everything!
February 11 at 12:32am · Like
Soh Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson It seems like you realized the "I AMness". This is an important realization. But in my experience there are certain insights that further arise to bring this 'luminous and empty taste' (do note also the realization of luminosity is not the same as the realization of emptiness) into all aspects of life more effortlessly and naturally, rather than simply abiding as a formless background. As written in http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/.../thusnesss-six... a series of insights unfolded for many of us here.
Awakening to Reality: Thusness/PasserBy's Seven Stages of Enlightenment
awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com
The path that Thusness describes, his insights, are his and his alone.
February 11 at 12:36am · Edited · Like · Remove Preview
Soh Stephanie Marie There's a nice article by Sim Pern Chong few years ago about different realms and emptiness and D.O.:
The non-solidity of existence
This article describes a spiritual insight. It may be quite hard to understand.
The things that we experience are registered by all the sense organs. The eye sight registers vision, the ears register sound, the body registers sensations. These perception, sensations and experiences are not happening in some places. They are the experience of the arising of certain conditions. There is no solidity and physicality in the actual experience.
What we experienced is not universal and common to all. Here's an example to illustrate that: We know that as human beings, we see in term of colours. Some animals are however colour-blind, thus they see differently from us. But none of us, is really seeing the truth nature directly. The senses of different species of sentient beings experience things differently. So who is seeing the real image of an object? None.
Likewise, the various planes of existence are due to different conditions arising. In certain types of meditation, one is said to be able to access these planes of existence. This is because they are not specific locations. They are mental states and are thus non-localised. In these meditations, our consciousness changes and 'aligned' more with these other states or planes of existence.
All the planes of existence are simultaneously manifesting, but because our senses are human-based conditioned arisings, we only see the human world and other beings that shared 'similar' resonating arising conditions. But nevertheless, the other planes of existences are not elsewhere in some other places.
What we think of as places are really just consciousness and there is no solidity whatsoever. Even our touch sense is just that. The touch sense gives an impression of feeling something that is physical and three-dimensional. But there is really no solid self-existing object there. Instead, it is simply the sensation that gives the impression of physical solidity and form.
OK, that all I can think of and write about this topic. I will revise and improve this article where the need arises.
For your necessary ponderance. Thank you for reading.
These articles are parts of a series of spiritual realisation articles .
-------------------------------
Thusness replied:
Hi Longchen,
I can see the synchronization of emptiness view into your non-dual experiences --. Integrating view, practice and experience. This is the essence of our emptiness nature and right understanding of non-dual experience in Buddhism that is different from Advaita Vedanta teaching. This is also the understanding of why Everything is the One Reality incorporating causes, conditions and luminosity of our Empty nature as One and inseparable. Everything as the One Reality should never be understood from a dualistic/inherent standpoint.
"This also explains the nature of 'supernatural power' like clairvoyance and seeing things far away, etc."
Indeed! You can see the how the view, practice and experience leading to the understanding of non-locality in terms of views, practices and experience.
Stage 6. The nature of Presence is Empty
Not only is there no ‘who’ in pristine awareness, there is no ‘where’ and ‘when’. This is its nature.
When there is this, that is.
With the arising of this, that arises.
When this is not, neither is that.
With the cessation of this, that ceases.
-- the principle of conditionality
The self-luminous awareness from beginning-less time has never been separated and cannot be separated from its conditions. They are not two -- This is, That is. Along with the conditions, Luminosity shines without a center and arises without a place. No where to be found. This is the emptiness nature of Presence.
February 11 at 12:42am · Like · 4
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson Soh: Here is something I wrote as a reply in the hall of mirrors. This is my experience what ever it is called
I'm not claiming Enlightenment. I've experienced that state for a day but that is not my every day experience.
The empty is no thing. The empty has been called emptiness, it has been called pure awareness, it has been called I am, the alfa and omega, the abyss, Ginnungagap, Nirvana, the unspeakable etc. It is out of what this virtual reality is drawn and in what it is. It is before anything, it is during anything, it is after anything and where nothing has ever happened. It is where you and I are literally one as there is absolutely nothing else. You are the emptyness in it's entirety! But so am I and so is everything else.
It is the stuff out of which your virtual sense of self, separateness and mind are formed. So those forms are formed out of and in the empty but can never contain what they are contained within and made out of.
From my perspective there is never any Facebook, me and you if you are in total unity. But in a fully enlightened state you can reflect the truth in this reality of separation. So even then there is some form of separation. Otherwise you would be fully able to see Maya from any perspective... and then it's no longer Maya as Maya is created out of the virtual splits/polarities of the empty. So the focus tool that I was talking about in earlier posts, where I felt that the control that I have is to engage and let go... that is also a part of this illusion and disappears when you are fully in unity.
After I fell into the Empty for the first time I get a sheering pain in my body every time I take something personally. When Thought arises and is believed that is in conflict with the truth, the full understanding of the unity of it all.
But there are many habits that are formed in that illusion, many things one thinks one needs to defend. Even though when you fully realize that I am you and you are me... not in a metaphoric sense but literally and absolutely... then how can you get defensive about anything.... But the habits are still there.
This process is obviously breaking them up one by one and can bee very painful. Sometimes the pain arises and I let go of the contraction of separation immediately and then the pain vanishes into thin air. Sometimes the habit is deeper rooted and I have to use more extreme measures to break out of it, like going to the bathroom and use a mantra or something else to break me out of the habit.
February 11 at 12:55am · Edited · Like · 3
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson Sorry that I re-post this here out of context but it was quicker then rewrite most of it. I find the emptiness teaching are helping most with landing this realization in my life.
February 11 at 1:00am · Like
Soh Do you experience that as a 'state' or a 'doubtless realization'?
February 11 at 1:01am · Like · 1
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson Doubtless realisation.
February 11 at 1:01am · Unlike · 1
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson The only doubtless realisation I've had in my life
February 11 at 1:02am · Like
Soh There is the Self-Realization of pure Beingness where there is no trace of doubts left, only complete certainty of Being. This I believe is what you call doubtless realisation. What caused that doubtless realization, how did that doubtlessness came about and also do you have a direct experience where the sense of ego is purged and you experience impersonality where 'you and I are literally one' sensation is directly experienced and if so, when did it occur - did that 'impersonality' experience/insight occur some time after your self-realization and do you know what caused it?
Just curious to find out your development.
February 11 at 1:09am · Edited · Like · 1
Soh p.s. on impersonality I wrote: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/.../experience...
" As impersonality matures one feels like everything including oneself is expressed by a higher source, a higher power, an impersonal living force or intelligence.
p.s. (update) Just one day after writing this chapter, I found a book by the same name as mine, 'Who am I?' by Pandit Shriram Sharma Archaya. He distinguishes the Soul, the Inner Self/the Inner Witness/the 'Nucleus of your World', from the Universal Self or the Omnipresent Supreme Being which is the supreme source of even that Inner Self and everything else in the world. He says that one has to realise the Inner Self first before realizing the unity or oneness of that Inner Self with that Universal Self, Atman=Brahman.
This is precisely what I'm talking about - the difference between the initial experience and realization of I AM (as the inner Self), then the maturation into the Universal I AM, which is the aspect of impersonality. This is the difference between Thusness Stage 1 and 2. In the Universal I AM, it is just this "unified field" in which "everything belongs to everyone", and that in this phase "A Yogi is one whose individuality has been consciously united (merged) with the cosmic Self." Everything and everyone is impersonally expressed and lived by this pervasive source, as stated by him, "particles of universally pervasive intelligence and energy, cosmic consciousness [Chetna] and life, are activating infinite systems, forms and forces of this cosmos.""
Awakening to Reality: Experience, Realization, View, Practice and Fruition
awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com
Found this to be a very true and helpful post. Thanks for writing it.Also thanks...See More
February 11 at 1:08am · Like · 3 · Remove Preview
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson Yes, that is what I was talking about, being able to reflect the Empty in form. Then I can feel how the whole thing is put together at the seems. It is a very quiet, but you can feel the whole dance of the Universe literally.
February 11 at 1:11am · Unlike · 4
Stuffs RedTurtle Wow that sounds amazing!!!
February 11 at 1:12am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Soh, that post made perfect sense thank you.
I think if I let go of doubt and fear of losing sanity I will be fine. For what it's worth, I have seen enough to know it's real and leave me doubt free, though I have never had the experience of being a tree, because of the two above scenarios, deep reflection, signs, intellectual understanding and leaving my body and only being sensation, I should just surrender
February 11 at 1:15am · Like · 1
Soh I think it is important to distinguish the causes for certain experiences and insights. That is, I've seen that the direct realization of Existence/Beingness is not the same as 'impersonality'. For Self-Realization, what led to the sense of 'certainty' is the direct mode of being, the eye of immediacy that allows one to penetrate all conceptual intermediaries and directly realize, taste and apprehend Awareness itself. This manifested when I inquired on 'Before birth, Who am I' for almost two years until I directly realized without a trace of doubt what "I" am. Whatever inquiries/methods one utilizes must be able to lead one to a direct mode of apprehending whatever one is inquiring, and self-inquiry is one such way, thus allowing direct self-realization. However, Impersonality is quite another thing. It is not the same as 'self-realization'. Some people had an experience of 'impersonality' before Self-realization, and some had it after.
I had it after.. some months after self-realization. It is a maturation of my understanding and experience. It is the dissolving of the construct of 'personal self' that led to a purging of ego effect to a state of clean, pure, not-mine sort of "perception shift", accompanied with a sense that everything and everyone is being expressions of the same aliveness/intelligence/consciousness. This can then be easily extrapolated into a sense of a 'universal source' (but this is merely an extrapolation and at a later phase is deconstructed). Even this is not some 'final insight', it is still not insight into non-dual, or anatta, or emptiness.
In any case, in my experience after an initial self-realization, my path progressed when I progressed in terms of four aspects of I Am which I roughly summarize as: 1) impersonality: when the sense of personal self or ego is seen through and dissolved, one feels oneself and everything and everyone being the expression of an impersonal intelligence, one feels that one is being 'lived' by a universal mind/intelligence/consciousness/life. this is not merely nondoership but something more than that 2) intensity of luminosity: one feels the intensity and amazingness of that intensity of luminous awareness in every mundane sense perception and activity 3) seeing through the delusion that there is a need to re-confirm and abide in Self as completely extra and unnecessary 4) effortlessness of Presence.
Then by maturing my experience in terms of these four aspects, plus contemplating on the non-dual, anatta and empty nature of Presence, it allowed for deeper insights to unfold. I wrote recently to someone undergoing those territories:
"I think these should help: 1) sensing Presence to the minutest details in all sense doors by bringing non-dual Presence from being background to being all foreground sensations as non-dual Presence, 2) challenging all dualistic/inherent constructs. Challenge the sense of a subject apart from object, seer apart from seen, seeing apart from seen, hearer apart from hearing/hearing apart from sound, awareness apart from manifestation (where does awareness end and manifestation begin?) 3) keep in mind Bahiya Sutta's pointers (http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/.../ajahn-amaro-on...)"
p.s. I elaborated a lot more in my e-book/e-journal: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/.../my-e-booke...
Awakening to Reality: The Buddha on Non-Duality
awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com
This passage has been most useful to me personally. The challenge is to constant...See More
February 11 at 1:29am · Edited · Like · 3 · Remove Preview
Stuffs RedTurtle Thanks Soh!
February 11 at 1:30am · Like
Viorica Doina Neacsu What a coincidence, Stephanie ! hahahahahaha! Now i see that! Soh posted that article by Sim Pern Chong while we were talking about the same things ! hahahahaha
February 11 at 3:01am · Like · 1
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson Soh At the moment I feel like my ego is being unwound.
I've been trough the impersonal looking at perception from the out side, to being the universe of perception.
Folding out of form into the empty a few times. Being able to reflect the empty in form.... feeling how it is all put together. Being able to feel how this I, Hitler, Britney Spears and Mother Theresa are all the same.
I've had time and space break down on me. Where I could see how this illusion is put together.
Now, it's just kind of an eggshell thin is-ness with the quiet of the empty looming underneath/in it all. When I just totally relax into it it's just like writhing flux of energy. But every time a habit that is in conflict with this realization is expressed a stabbing pain appears in my body and forces me to break out of that habit. And to relax back into it.
February 11 at 3:14am · Unlike · 3
Piotr Ludwiński Soh you are never tired...
February 11 at 4:09am · Like · 3
Viorica Doina Neacsu Welcome back Piotr
February 11 at 4:44am · Like · 1
Viorica Doina Neacsu Yes, Soh is never tired... His generosity is boundless
February 11 at 4:47am · Like · 3
Ram Jayaram It's interesting to note that the word 'samsara' means conversation in some Indian languages...
February 11 at 5:26am · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh
February 11 at 5:27am · Like
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson Soh, Thanks allot for the links to your blogs. It's so refreshing to find something other than the Neo-advitan regurgitation. Finally I have some conceptual frame for this unfolding that makes some sense to me. I come from a Buddhist background and the emptiness/dependent arising view point resonates.
February 11 at 5:34am · Unlike · 2
Ram Jayaram Stephanie Marie, yes! It also means spouse (female spouse mostly)!
February 11 at 5:35am · Like · 1
Ram Jayaram Perhaps this is why men would leave their home (and spouse) and become silent, in order to attain Nirvana!
February 11 at 5:39am · Like
Robert Dominik Good thread xD // Noone expected Spanish In... ehhh I mean hello Piotr
February 11 at 5:49am · Edited · Like · 2
Robert Dominik Ram Jayaram - lol
February 11 at 5:51am · Like
Robert Healion All gone to sleep. interesting comments. Did you understand and agree with the majority. I liked the diversion into gender issues. haha. And Albert wrote some superb stuff, but me thinks he is drunk on emptiness. your questions are like a spread of scattered thoughts, and looking at them I ask, why are you asking them. Soh suggested Iamness, which is something I am not familiar with. To me the only logical suggestion is to practice thought control, which I am no expert at. These and other questions like them will eventually not take root and disappear.
February 11 at 11:28am · Like · 2
Albert Hong definitely drunk.
devoted to emptiness.
it all just comes out, wish i could help it.
February 11 at 11:33am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle They aren't scattered, they had very much to do with sonething
February 11 at 11:35am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Yes everyone answered
February 11 at 11:36am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle To my liking
February 11 at 11:36am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Albert Hong, the thingle is the seat of consciousness right?
February 11 at 11:39am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle After this I promise I will spend time in experience lol
February 11 at 11:39am · Like
Robert Healion when were you ever apart from experience. enjoy life, play with your child, grow old and play with your grand children.
February 11 at 11:42am · Like · 2
Albert Hong this was sent to me by piotr.
Guru rinpoche?:
"Well, you may then ask, 'What is the difference between buddhas and sentient beings?"
It is nothing other than realizing or not realizing mind. The substance of the awakened state, of buddha, is present within you, but you don't recognize it. Not recognizing their minds, beings stray into the six streams of existence. You may then ask, 'What is the way to realize mind?' For that, it is taught, you need the oral instructions of a master.
In this regard, 'mind' is that which thinks and cognizes; there is indeed something that experiences. Don't seek this mind outside, look within! Let mind search for itself! Reach certainty about how the nature of mind is!
At first, from where does mind arise? Right now, where does it stay? At the end, look into where it goes! When your mind looks into itself, it finds no place from where it arises, remains, or goes to. There is no explanation of 'this is how it is.' 'Mind' is discovered to be without something outside or inside. It does not have someone that looks; it is not the act of looking.
It is experienced as a great original wakefulness without center or edge, an immense all-pervasiveness that is primordially empty and free.
This original wakefulness is intrinsic and self-existing. It is not made right now, but is present within yourself from the very beginning. Decide firmly that the view is to recognize just that!"
February 11 at 11:42am · Unlike · 6
Stuffs RedTurtle Thanks Albert. That's pretty awesome
February 11 at 11:45am · Like
Robert Healion Did you know Stephanie Marie the only separation form you now and you truly awakened is time and practice. Time will move according to your practice. Practice is the only aspect in this that you have control over.
This is the same for us all. Congratulations you have an interest most of the time has already passed.
February 11 at 11:47am · Like · 1
Dannon Flynn Stephanie Marie, Thigle (Teeglay) means 'sphere'. It usually means small sphere, like a seed. It is seed, it is sperm, it is a point of awareness, it is a singularity. There are many meanings. Many things are called Thigle. Small round spheres seen in the sunlit sky, rainbow colored. Bubbles. The great thigle is the universal sphere which all phenomena appear in, like a great bubble containing every perception that you experience.
February 11 at 11:50am · Like · 1
Dannon Flynn A drop.
February 11 at 11:50am · Like · 1
Robert Healion Dannon Flynn A A A A drop. Is this the conceptual same as bindi in Vedanta Tantra. The point of origin for consciousness, often depicted at the back of the head.
February 11 at 11:52am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh!
February 11 at 11:52am · Like
Dannon Flynn Click on both links:
https://www.google.com/search?q=thigle&safe=off&espv=210...
http://www.buddhabrats.com/glossary/thigle/
February 11 at 11:55am · Edited · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Thanks!!
February 11 at 11:55am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Wow!!!!
February 11 at 11:57am · Like
Robert Healion My understanding the Sanskrit letter is the root letter of there alphabet, and represents generation. Often monks in practice repeat this letter, I assume as a mantra of sorts.
February 11 at 11:59am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Right now, nothing else matters. Yay
February 11 at 12:31pm · Like
Dannon Flynn "Ah" is the primordial sound, representing natural sound, the union of emptiness and clarity.
February 11 at 12:40pm · Like · 2
Soh Piotr Ludwiński: it should be a joy to share what you know!
February 11 at 1:23pm · Like · 1
Soh Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson:
We have to be very careful about the terminologies, not because I'm very stringent about semantics, but because it deals not only with semantics and mixing these terms can cause confusion in a discussion and furthermore if one doesn't know the difference between these terms, one's practice will simply be more confusion and mixups.
When you said "The empty is no thing. The empty has been called emptiness, it has been called pure awareness,", you should have said "Formless awareness" rather than "empty". At least, emptiness in the Buddhist context has a very different meaning. In one of his articles: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/.../happiness-karma... , the Dalai Lama distinguished between the 'formlessness of mind/awareness' with the emptiness of mind and things which is the ultimate nature of mind.
You have to distinguish between emptiness and awareness. The realization of awareness is not the same as the realization of emptiness. Awareness is the brightly aware-presence, empty is the emptiness of any self or intrinsic existence (of anything and everything: including awareness, self, body, mind, mountains and rivers, etc etc). Emptiness does not mean 'no thing' or even a 'no thing that subsumes everything', emptiness is simply this emptiness of intrinsic existence, or a self/Self.
As Greg Goode (who comes from an Awareness/Advaita background) wrote in his article http://www.heartofnow.com/files/emptiness.html:
"For those who encounter emptiness teachings after they've become familiar with awareness teachings, it's very tempting to misread the emptiness teachings by substituting terms. That is, it's very easy to misread the emptiness teachings by seeing "emptiness" on the page and thinking to yourself, "awareness, consciousness, I know what they're talking about."
Early in my own study I began with this substitution in mind. With this misreading, I found a lot in the emptiness teachings to be quite INcomprehensible! So I started again, laying aside the notion that "emptiness" and "awareness" were equivalent. I tried to let the emptiness teachings speak for themselves. I came to find that they have a subtle beauty and power, a flavor quite different from the awareness teachings. Emptiness teachings do not speak of emptiness as a true nature that underlies or supports things. Rather, it speaks of selves and things as essenceless and free. "
So what you are saying is that 'awareness is formless'. Actually this statement is only partially true, the aspect of Luminous Mind in its mind-door prior to concepts is a formless presence or beingness. When later non-dual insights arise, the same taste of luminous presence of awareness is experienced as all senses, the myriad of sense experiences and thoughts reveals itself as non-dual luminous Presence. Then anatta insight must arise to enter into the firstfold emptiness of Presence (first emptying the label of 'Self', the sense of a Subject or Self or Agent).. then followed by secondfold emptiness (emptying the object, the Presence itself).
Awakening to Reality: Happiness, Karma and Mind
awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com
Many billions of years elapsed between the origin of this world and the first ap...See More
February 11 at 2:02pm · Edited · Like · 2 · Remove Preview
Kyle Dixon Thigle also represents the dharmatā of a given dharmin. Apperceiving dharmatā is encountering the subtle thigle i.e. recognizing the emptiness of X.
February 11 at 1:56pm · Like · 2
Soh Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson:
"I've been trough the impersonal looking at perception from the out side, to being the universe of perception."
I believe you are describing non-dual experience, where the sense of a subjective perceiver, and the sense that the universe of perception exists separately at a distance, collapses into a gapless non-dual experience. Do note that this 'non-dual experience' is different from the 'impersonality that led to universal intelligence sensation', they are dissolving of different constructs in experience (one is dissolving construct of subject/object/inside/outside duality and another is dissolving construct of personal self).
However, there is non-dual experience, and non-dual insights, and as to non-dual insights, there is substantialist non-dual insight, and insubstantial non-dual which begins at anatta realization.
What I call non-dual experience is a peak experience of non-duality. I had many peak non-dual experiences throughout my life.. starting from when I was 16 when I was looking at the tree and suddenly there was no "I looking" but it felt like "I was the looking, the tree, the movement, the swaying". Usually they lasted no more than a few minutes and it was amazing. But one day about 4 years later, about six months after Self-Realization, I was dancing to the music and Bahiya Sutta came up in mind, the sense of self and duality got completely released and there was the whole 'universe of perception' and 'universe of action', the music, movement, completely alive and happening without a sense of a separate self or observer. This time the experience lasted for about 2 days and became seemingly more effortless. Still, the dualistic tendency came back a few days later, manifesting as the sense of being a background Witness.
So, clear non-dual insight has not arisen. But this peak non-dual experience shifted my practice and my understanding from 'I am Pure Existence' (as a background formless beingness) to 'Existence is the very stuff of whatever arises' (as Thusness wrote to me at this phase: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/.../bringing-non...) In the following two months, deeper insights arose about the non-dual (no subject/object) nature of awareness, first I resolved everything into a single field of non-dual awareness subsuming all without boundaries, then I realized through Bahiya Sutta again that how the seer-seeing-seen framework do not apply in reality and 'seeing' is ever just the colours/shapes/scenery (no seer), hearing ever just sound... etc, so there is no more resolving of sound into an inherent awareness but seeing 'awareness' is simply the manifestation and nothing hidden/inherent/changeless/independent. After this, non-dual has become natural and effortless and ongoing, not a state that comes and goes.
Now my question to you is: how stable is your current experience that subject/object duality dissolves in 'mere sensory experience' (like Bahiya Sutta), since when has this arisen, and are they peak experiences? Again, contemplating on the lines of Bahiya Sutta should be helpful..
Awakening to Reality: Bringing Non-Dual to Foreground
awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com
February 11 at 3:01pm · Edited · Like · 3 · Remove Preview
Soh In my e-book, there was an entry (24th May 2010) where I wrote about a conversation I had with Thusness soon after my self-realization and experience of impersonality led to a sense of 'universal mind'. He told me then that I had made an extrapolation out of a direct experience.. which I understood later on.
I wrote in a forum post: "Your mirror-like awareness has no limitations, has no boundaries and edges. It does not belong to any object that appears on it. It does not belong to the body-mind object that you identify as 'yourself'. It does not belong to anything. But everything arise from that…
…Impersonal/Universal Awareness is animating or ‘powering’ the body and the personality like electricity is powering the TV to show the images on screen. Whatever happens on screen is ‘run’ only by the ‘power’ of the One Mind. Everything and everyone is the spontaneous functioning of One Mind, there is no individual doers/actors/selves."
Just had a conversation with Thusness about this.
He told me that there is a problem of saying more than what is necessary, and that it comes from a clinging mind. That is, stripping of 'individuality' and 'personality' becoming a 'Universal Mind' is an extrapolation, a deduction. It is not direct experience like "in thinking just thoughts", "in perceptions just perceptions", "in seeing just the seen" - just 'what is'.
Similarly when I experienced 'impersonality', it is just 'impersonality', but it becomes a 'Universal Mind' due to clinging which prevents seeing. And if I further reinforce this idea, it becomes a made belief and appears true and real.
Therefore when I said 'impersonality', I am not being blinded as I am merely describing what I have experienced. This Mind is still an individual mindstream, and though impersonality leads one to have the sort of 'Universal Mind' kind of sensation, one must correctly understand it.
Buddhism never denies this mind stream, it simply denies the self-view. It denies separation, it denies an observer, a thinker. It denies a perfect controller, an independent agent. This is what 'Self' means, otherwise why is it a 'Self'? An individual mindstream remains as an individual mindstream, but it is nothing related to a Self.
Hence it is important to understand liberation from the right understanding, otherwise one gets confused. There is the experience of non-duality, Anatta, 'Tada' (http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2010/04/tada.html), Stainlessness (http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/.../stainlessness...), but these have nothing to do with Self. Hence if one wants to understand Presence, then one must clearly and correctly understand Presence.
It is important to refine the understanding of Presence through the four aspects: impersonality, degree of luminosity, dissolving the need to re-confirm and understanding why it is unnecessary, and effortlessness.
These have no extrapolation and are what I am experiencing currently, and these requires improvement so that one can progress from "I AM".
There is the experience of impersonality. It is the stripping off of the personality aspect, and it causes one to link to a higher force, as if a cosmic life is functioning within me, like what Casino_King (a forummer who posted many years ago in both the Christian and Buddhist forums) experienced and described - the impersonal life force, which he called Holy Spirit.
It is as if it is all the functioning of a higher power, that life is itself taking the functioning, so dissolving 'personality' somehow allows me to get 'connected'.
I agreed with Thusness and told him that just yesterday I remembered a Christian quote that is very apt in describing this aspect: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." - Galatians 2:20
Thusness agrees and told me that it is about surrendering to this greater power, that it is not you, but the life in you that is doing the work. It is the key of getting 'connected' to a higher power, to a divine life, to a sacred power - and one wants to lose oneself for this divinity to work through us. And this is what Thusness meant by Thusness Stage 3 experience, the 'I' is the block, because of 'holding' one is unable to 'surrender' completely. When one completely surrenders, the divine will will become your 'will'.
This is not the non-dual sort of experience, nor is it about I AM or the Certainty of Being, nor is it about Anatta.
For example, "I AM" allows you to directly experience 'your' very own existence, the beingness, the inner most essence of 'You'.
A true and genuine practitioner must give rise to all these insights, and understand the causes and conditions that give rise to the experiences and not get mixed up. Many people get mixed up over different 'types' of 'no self'.
For example, no-self of non-dual, no-self of anatta, non-inherent existence and impersonality, are all not refering to the same experience - but rather they are different results of dissolving certain aspect of the tendencies.
Hence a practitioner must be sincere in his practice to clearly see, and not pretend that one knows. Otherwise practice is simply more mix-up, confusion, and nonsense. It is not that it cannot be known, it is just that the mind isn't clear enough to see the causes and conditions of arising.
Awakening to Reality: Tada!
awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com
February 11 at 2:49pm · Edited · Like · 2 · Remove Preview
Soh
Write a comment...
What do you think samsara is; a reality or a parable?
Are multi dimensions a reality to you?, Even if they are empty, or likened to a dream?
Is non dual pointing insanity, denial, a waste of time or effective ?
I find a lot of hypocrisy in Religious leaders, does this bother you?
Like · · February 10 at 12:36am
Joel Agee and 3 others like this.
Albert Hong Isn't it interesting how if you see it one way then thats the way it is. And if you see it another way then thats the way it is.
It's like rubbing your index finger with your thumb.
Shifting your attention from the thumb to the index finger.
Which one is touching? Depends on the attention.
February 10 at 12:59am · Like · 5
Fred Eric Samsara is nirvana/nibbana is samsara... The only obstacle between samsara you and nirvana you is the Ego, which gives this impression of separateness, of individuality... Dwelling in an egoless state is blissfull, it's all there, it's instantaneous and spontaneous, it's like not being there but being all that at once, it's right here right now, try it... Watch the ego and you're no longer the ego... But who/what is watching? That ´s the real you, stay with it...It's that simple really... Choose the teachings that ring truth to you, push the boundaries, free yourself, be happy
February 10 at 1:02am · Edited · Like · 1
Albert Hong There are sounds. We say the word samsara.
Then with that sound-symbol we assume that it actually points to a referent.
The replication must actually replicate something.
And that's where the investigation starts. Do these words/symbols/images/sounds actually point to something?
And how does this relate to the obvious appearance of consciousness as the forms and sounds?
And then the real question.
What is the nature of mind? The nature of experience? Is there an essential core? Does it actually arise and cease?
Resolution can only come when we examine. Enjoy.
February 10 at 1:07am · Like · 2
Viorica Doina Neacsu "What do you think samsara is"
You already gave yourself the answer in the question... "thinking" is samsara
February 10 at 1:07am · Like · 4
Stuffs RedTurtle I was more wondering your opinions on the subject
February 10 at 1:08am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Like, what exactly is the nature of this mind we live in
February 10 at 1:09am · Like
Viorica Doina Neacsu "Are multi dimensions a reality to you?"
Yes, many dimensions... depending on the way it is perceived the reality...
February 10 at 1:09am · Like · 1
Fred Eric Women's egos are also weaker than men's egos nowadays, should be easier for women to taste this me thinks
February 10 at 1:09am · Like
Fred Eric Weaker in a good sense of course!
February 10 at 1:10am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle And how do we know it's empty other than theory?
Can we experience emptiness ?
February 10 at 1:10am · Like
Albert Hong My rinpoche says the same thing as well.
Females have more of a chance to attain enlightenment than men.
Because we men are arrogant, prideful and desire so badly to become gurus/teachers. =]
February 10 at 1:11am · Like · 3
Stuffs RedTurtle These are real wondering here, this solipsism stuff is making me feel insane
February 10 at 1:11am · Like
Viorica Doina Neacsu Hi Fred Eric That is an old belief, i had myself that belief until i met 500 people in a school in the same room and i listened them talking about their deep fears... i was so moved to see that men are more sensitive than women...
February 10 at 1:12am · Like · 3
Albert Hong Stephanie Marie
If you're nihilistic then you should focus on dependent origination.
This will help balance out the negation aspect.
If we are too eternalistic then we should focus on the negation aspect.
Eventually these balance out and are seen to be the same.
February 10 at 1:13am · Like · 1
Albert Hong Like for instance if we say the whole world is an illusion.
Then cool.
But we cannot deny karma or causality.
Eating illusory bunk food can cause illusory diarrhea.
February 10 at 1:14am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Dependent origination of sense phenomena or material things?
I'm having a hard time accepting that the outside world doesn't exist; I don't like it
February 10 at 1:15am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Lol!! So true
February 10 at 1:15am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle So Albert Hong, does the outside world exist, or is it in the mind?
February 10 at 1:16am · Like
Albert Hong Well let me give you a clear example.
IF there is the condition of poop with the condition of sense organ nose and mental attention then we can have the effect of smell consciousness.
If we decide not to use our nose.
Then there is no smell consciousness.
This is dependent origination in a crude, obvious form. And this is emptiness.
February 10 at 1:16am · Like · 1
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland 'Exist' doesn't apply. Neither does 'does not exist'.
February 10 at 1:17am · Like · 3
Stuffs RedTurtle I read a sutra where Buddha says smells don't exist from or dependent on a nose, do you agree?
February 10 at 1:17am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Odors I mean
February 10 at 1:18am · Like
Albert Hong Its very clear to note that emptiness isn't nihilism or a state of nothingness.
Emptiness denies a very specific assumption. The assumption of inherent existence.
What is left is a dynamic, interdependent flux/becoming.
An echo display arising and appearing yet never really making anything.
And hence luminous-emptiness.
February 10 at 1:18am · Like · 1
Albert Hong Yes the smell does not exist independently because it requires a nose.
X always requires other than X.
this is how in the heart sutra they say no nose, no smell, no consciousness, etc.
Because it lacks an independent identity, it requires everything else.
February 10 at 1:20am · Like · 1
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland What arises dependently, which is all arising, is ignorance.
There is no dependently arisen phenomenal projection for a buddha.
February 10 at 1:22am · Like · 1
Albert Hong Stian Gudmundsen Høiland
Yes, but the dharma is taught to help sentient beings.
In all spectrums and variables.
May we help all illusory beings and liberate them all into illusory enlightenment .
February 10 at 1:24am · Like · 1
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland Only buddhas can become buddhas.
Liberation is exactly when a sentient being stops being a sentient being. This is exactly when dependently arisen phenomenal projection is realized to be empty.
In other words, liberation is when dependent origination ceases.
Teaching only dependent origination and not its cessation is pure bondage.
February 10 at 1:28am · Like · 1
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland This is absolutely crucial!
February 10 at 1:28am · Like · 1
Fred Eric Viorica for thousands of years we have had societies dominated by men because of their stronger egos, women are "halfway" there already... Stronger egos which have led to patriarchist societies where the father figure holds the authority, where women, their bodies, their bodily functions and their sexuality are repressed and villified (Islam being a prime example but there are so many others), where men fight, kill and enslave other men for earth and possessions, etc, etc. I am not saying that men are not sensitive, they are just as much sensitive as women ultimately since we all come from the same source... But men's sensitivity is by far more clouded by thicker egos than women's, who are softer, lighter beings... But things have been turning around over the last few hundred years or so, with the abolition of slavery, the promotion of human rights, ecological movements (ego is also separate from the earth and nature which is to be dominated and exploited, the folly of men), with women gaining the right to vote, with the promotion of children's health and welfare, with gay rights coming to light, etc! Still a long way to go, but mankind is currently moving into a reconciliation with its true self, beyond the follies of the slavery of the ego... Let's keep pushing
February 10 at 1:34am · Edited · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Does matter exist?
February 10 at 1:30am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Or is it only the senses?
February 10 at 1:31am · Like
Albert Hong Stian Gudmundsen Høiland
Actually there is dependent origination in reverse, from the stand point of wisdom. In the Heart of the buddha's teaching by thich nhat hanh he goes through the buddha's experience of the 12 chain as liberation.
February 10 at 1:32am · Edited · Like · 1
Albert Hong Stephanie Marie
that is an interesting inquiry.
what exactly does it means to exist.
and what is matter?
and are the senses apart from matter?
And if so what exactly are the sense?
February 10 at 1:35am · Like · 1
Albert Hong In some sense if you study dependent origination,
these questions kind of are moot.
because the premise assumes is or isn't. this or that. existence or non-existence.
dependent origination in a way has nothing to do with those polarities.
and hence the buddha stayed silent.
February 10 at 1:36am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Consciousness and then form, that's what I mean... That's the reverse you are speaking of right Albert?
February 10 at 1:38am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle From consciousness comes form, that's it right ?
February 10 at 1:41am · Like
Albert Hong When conditioned by true mind:
1. clear understanding
2. great aspiration
3. four wisdoms: wisdom of wonderful realization, wonderful observation wisdom, wisdom of equality, great mirror wisdom.
4. transformation body
5. result body
6. mindfulness of contact
7. mindfulness of feeling
8. four immeasurable minds
9. freedom
10. wondrous being
11. wisdom of no-birth
12. wisdom of no-death
February 10 at 1:42am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle You may have already answered Albert , but if you did it went over my head
February 10 at 1:42am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Hmmm
February 10 at 1:43am · Like
Albert Hong Dependent origination is a huge topic.
And I see where the confusion is.
Check these out:
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/.../dependent...
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/.../eternalism...
February 10 at 1:46am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Thank you
February 10 at 1:46am · Like
John Tan Every dependent arising is an invocation.
Every dependent arising is an empowerment.
Every dependent arising is a blessing.
Nothing truly arise.
Nothing truly cease.
For all phenomena r ones own self state.
Accept all arisings fully, completely and unreservedly.
Homage to all arisings.
Homage to Boddhichitta.
February 10 at 2:06am · Unlike · 10
Albert Hong
Albert Hong's photo.
February 10 at 2:09am · Like · 3
Kyle Dixon "All phenomena are such that they manifest yet do not cease, do not originate, do not come, do not go, cannot be categorically denied, cannot be naively affirmed, and have never existed as ultimately distinct or ultimately identical. Rather, it should be understood and they are simply illusions based on interdependent connection [dependent origination]."
- Longchenpa
February 10 at 2:24am · Unlike · 7
Stuffs RedTurtle So by this standard , string theory could be correct, we could be vibrating strings in a field of energy
February 10 at 3:00am · Like
Fred Eric I think that this is going too far according to the Buddha's standards (keep it simple) but, it could be that string theory is correct! in other words, recognizing that the Ego is not who we are, and not feeding it/not giving into it/letting go of it, although not an easy task as it has become such a habit for humans to hold it as their true identity for thousands of years, is more accessible and effective for curbing and curing psychological suffering than the string theory... Imo at least
February 10 at 3:24am · Edited · Like
Michael Zaurov No conceptual model will ever accurately describe reality. The brain evolved for survival, not truth. You have to let go of all concepts to see reality, since there is no duality at all between you and the universe. Too many thoughts just get in the way And I do think mixing modern science theories will only lead to confusion. Keep in mind that right view via Buddhism is meant to be a catalyst for direct awakening, rather than serving as a conceptual explanation for how things are. It is a means to an end, not a means to explain and satisfy
February 10 at 3:14am · Edited · Like · 3
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland Great quote, Kyle.
February 10 at 3:52am · Edited · Like
Brian Zey All my efforts to intellectually "understand" reality have led me to poor choices and bad behavior. I have given up that path and am much happier for it. Perhaps others could benefit from the same type of giving up. I remember a Taoist story about a man who becomes afraid because his shadow is following him. He tries to run away from it, but it easily keeps up with him. No matter how fast he runs it makes no difference. He runs, and runs, and eventually falls dead from exhaustion. If he had stopped to rest in the shade of a tree and just enjoyed the moment as it was he would have been free from what was chasing him. Hopefully this comment is not too foolish, though I suspect that I am. Have a lovely Sunday afternoon!
February 10 at 3:52am · Like · 3
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland Dependent origination is the paradigm within which sentient beings arise.
Awakening is the realization of the unstopped non-arisenness of dependently originated phenomena. It is breaking out of the confines of dependent origination into Measureless Mind, Unbinding.
February 10 at 3:52am · Like · 1
Tom Radcliffe I think samsara is an observable reality. It is a very good description of our experience when under the delusion of separation. Multi dimensions are obviously a reality too from the point of view of someone in the dualistic dream. Non dual pointing is an absolute delight, wonder and unavoidable. Try not to talk about this! Hypocrisy in religious leaders is as unpleasant as my own or anyone else's.
February 10 at 4:04am · Like · 1
Robert Dominik Nice picture Albert. It reminded me of halo around the moon that I saw a sometime ago. Actually it was 3 circles of halo - every one of them quite bright, apparent and rainbow-like
February 10 at 4:38am · Edited · Like · 2
Dannon Flynn Does the outside world exist or is it in the mind? Is that any different than the question does the mind exist or is it in the world? I think what is being pointed to is there is no duality between mind/world. To propose one is prior to the other is a chicken/egg fallacy.
Are there other dimensions? This is like asking if there is life on other planets. Seems reasonable to assume so. I have definitely had some crazy experiences but who knows, it could have all been in my mind! lol....
What it all comes down to, for me in my opinion, is all this speculation of out there doesn't help me and my settling in peace right here in the center of my experience at the source of my own life-force-stream. I don't know to what extent all these rivers can flow to, to what worlds, what unfolding dimensions, it is probably infinite. We can get infinitely away from our source. But I have found the source and that is what is important to me.
My ex-wife thought all this stuff was solipsist as well, and in my opinion she misunderstood where I was coming from. When we say that it is all Mind that doesn't mean the intellectual mind, the conceptual mind. It is mind/heart/awareness/living clarity. Citta is the word in sanskrit. It is like saying that the universe is aware. Space is aware. It doesn't mean that it is all in MY imagination.
Perhaps forget about all this intellectual philosophy for a while and enjoy the sensations of your energy. This group is very scholarly and a little obsessive about correct intellectual understanding. If it makes you suffer maybe you are making it more important than it really is for you... there are scholars and there are yogis. The right thing is to balance theory with practice. Confirm the teachings with your own experience.
Maybe even look into other traditions as well, something with some devotion in it.
Be happy, that is what is important! Trust your intuition. Follow your heart, not your head.
February 10 at 5:10am · Like · 2
Dannon Flynn I will tell you a secret: It doesn't need to be so complicated. It is actually putting something so completely simple into words is the complicated part. It is too simple for words. Words are clumsy.
It all comes down to the ONE thing that only you can know for sure. Try putting that into words! lol.
If the words don't make sense or seem too complicated or conceptual or drive you crazy, then forget about the words and be at peace.
February 10 at 5:21am · Like · 3
Stuffs RedTurtle Dannon that makes perfect sense, thank you. I knew that intuitively, thank you!
February 10 at 5:25am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle I know you already went through this with me Viorica Doina Neacsu, and I thank you, just trying to verify I'm not insane
February 10 at 5:30am · Like · 1
Robert Dominik “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” <- Friedrich Nietzsche
February 10 at 5:32am · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Awesome
February 10 at 5:35am · Like
Takeit Easee Stephanie: Nice inquiry. I am not a person of any attainment, so please feel free to disregard my opinion. When such questions come up, trying to figure the answer with the mind, and reading about more concepts really does not seem help, at least in my case. Leaving these questions open and letting them percolate for a long time, sometime for months together, the resolution comes. Sometimes in the form of the question itself making no sense, sometimes in the form of an internal shift in perception that resolves it. When accepting an answer from someone else, it usually feels like buying into someone else experience not one's own.
February 10 at 5:36am · Like · 1
Robert Dominik Insanity is a good example of "something" empty. There are many cultures which have different standards and beliefs of what insanity is. Some even do not have concepts like that at all. Even in the West there was the anty-psychiatry movement (with some psychiatrists - like Thomas Szasz - or philosophers - like Michel Foucalt - leading or attributing to it), which seeked to reevelaute the concept of a mental illness. Looking at the vast array of different, various, dynamic symptons, which largely depend also on the conditions (diet, current mood, people around) of an "insane" person we cannot pinpoint neither one (nor even many) solid thing existing on its own that we can call insanity. Still people can hallucinate, have panic attacks, end up in hospital due to not being able to handle ordinary tasks etc - so even we cannot say that nothing is going on in a nihilistic - we cannot then treat it in a nihilistic way and say that there is nothing.
February 10 at 5:47am · Edited · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle My own experience, since a girl, is that the outside world can be likened to a video game, that reality and dreams are not much different. That "direct experience is all there is" that is a reality for me, since I was ten
February 10 at 5:45am · Like · 1
Tom Radcliffe The senses arise and pass. The objects arise and pass. What does not arise and pass?
February 10 at 7:43am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Awareness right?
February 10 at 7:44am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Because to be aware of nothing, the knowing of it is still there?
February 10 at 7:44am · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle ( meaning even if all senses are absent someone or something is aware of it)?
February 10 at 7:45am · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Or does everything arise and pass ?
February 10 at 7:46am · Like · 2
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland The unconditioned does not arise and pass. 'Wisdom' is unconditioned.
February 10 at 7:47am · Like · 1
Tom Radcliffe At a certain point after 20 years of sitting watching transience i knew without doubt that everything was transient. It was then I was directed to look deliberately for what was not transient. I guess I'd had enough of bloody transience so…….
February 10 at 7:48am · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh! And the clear light is the unconditioned, the mirror right?
But it's always in transience, always reflecting?
February 10 at 7:48am · Like
Tom Radcliffe I am suggesting you look not answer.
February 10 at 7:48am · Like · 5
Robert Dominik Look for the awareness. What do you find? Is there someone recognising the result (or the lack of it) of looking?
February 10 at 7:49am · Like · 3
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh lol
February 10 at 7:49am · Like
Robert Dominik Synchronic Tom I was about to suggest that
February 10 at 7:49am · Like
Tom Radcliffe When the eye sees itself ……...
February 10 at 7:50am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle When I look, the deepest thing I can find is that , I am aware" even though I can't find the I, all I can find is that there are senses and I am aware of them
Am I not going deep enough? I feel stuck
February 10 at 7:51am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle There is seeing
Hearing
Touching
Tasting,
Thoughts
And an awareness of those things...
I don't know what else
February 10 at 7:53am · Like · 1
Robert Dominik The sad thing is that it's good to give up expectations of results and answers. Looking, paying attention, being aware and present to what is are actually what is important xD I heard once a funny statement indicating that it isn't that you meditate and then get somewhere but that you meditate and at some point you meditate all the time without getting distracted Dunno if that helps...
February 10 at 7:53am · Edited · Like · 1
Tom Radcliffe Are you anywhere in the body? Look. Feet, legs, torso, head?
February 10 at 7:53am · Like · 2
Tom Radcliffe Yes I find that I can't not be mindful, dammit!
February 10 at 7:55am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I can't find myself anywhere except in the heart and maybe cognizance behind the eyes, but I don't feel like that's right, I can't find the I anywhere
February 10 at 7:55am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Just those feelings of emotion that are strong in the heart, and consciousness in the head
February 10 at 7:56am · Like · 1
Robert Dominik "And an awareness of those things..." <- Is it additional and standing apart from hearing, touching etc? For example if you "look" at sight. Are there two things like sight and some awareness like next to it, apart from it? Now you might get impression that there is "awareness". What is it? A thought? A trace? A suspection? A belief? Where is it?
February 10 at 7:58am · Edited · Like · 1
Tom Radcliffe If you are aware of the sensation in the heart or behind the eyes then that cannot be you. Are you aware of an edge to the body?
February 10 at 7:57am · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle No the awareness of the senses and thoughts don't seems to be separate from the Senses themselves
February 10 at 7:59am · Like
Tom Radcliffe Robert, there is only one moment at a time. The sense of me arises after the sense impression. What does the sense impression arise in?
February 10 at 7:59am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle What do you mean by edge Tom? I always get confused by that question
February 10 at 8:00am · Like
Tom Radcliffe Can you find where you end?
February 10 at 8:00am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle no, because even the sight is a sense, part of me, so no
February 10 at 8:01am · Like
Tom Radcliffe Can you find where you begin? Look.
February 10 at 8:02am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Stian Gudmundsen Høiland I mean, I feel that the heart area has emotion, drive, maybe in heart and tummy, but I wouldn't be able to pin it down as I
February 10 at 8:02am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I can't find where I begin either, everything is sense... Hmmm
February 10 at 8:03am · Like
Tom Radcliffe If you have no location in the body. If you have no edge. If you have no beginning and no end, what are you?
February 10 at 8:04am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle So outside of the senses I can't verify an outside world
February 10 at 8:04am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Everything? Does that sound nuts? Nothing but the senses
February 10 at 8:04am · Like
Tom Radcliffe Which feels right to you everything or nothing but the senses?
February 10 at 8:05am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Nothing but the senses
February 10 at 8:05am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Would be the same though right?
February 10 at 8:05am · Like
Tom Radcliffe No, the senses arise and pass away. Everything does not.
February 10 at 8:06am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh I see
February 10 at 8:07am · Like
Tom Radcliffe Really?
February 10 at 8:07am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle For it to only be the senses they would have to always be there
February 10 at 8:07am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle But they are transient, the awareness isn't
February 10 at 8:08am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I'm trying, really
February 10 at 8:08am · Like
Robert Dominik "Robert, there is only one moment at a time." <- Funny you should say/write that. Recently I was trying to pay more attention to how thoughts claim future/past and how appearing sensation-moments are mistakenly taken to be whole entities like body, objects etc...
February 10 at 8:13am · Edited · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Am I seeing that correctly?
February 10 at 8:09am · Like
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland There's no awareness.
February 10 at 8:09am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh..
February 10 at 8:09am · Like
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland if you don't believe me, try to find it.
February 10 at 8:10am · Like · 1
Tom Radcliffe Just entertain the idea that everything arises in you rather than the other way around. There is no separation. See if you can find separation. Does space separate? Where is there no space? Just turn off the computer and look.
February 10 at 8:11am · Like · 1
Tom Radcliffe Goodnight.
February 10 at 8:11am · Like · 1
Robert Dominik Goodnight Tom Radcliffe . Glad to have you joined our little group
February 10 at 8:12am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Okay, this is the only thing I can find
Seeing
Hearing
Tasting
Touching
Tasting
So sensing, that's all I can find
And that there is an awareness of those or the absense of those, that's it
February 10 at 8:13am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I will look deeper but I don't know what to look for
February 10 at 8:14am · Like
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland I don't believe you
February 10 at 8:14am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle The above it rising in awareness, no separation, I agree to that
February 10 at 8:14am · Like
Viorica Doina Neacsu "Our little group"???
DC has 600 members Robert! OMG! Our little group! hahahahaha!
February 10 at 8:14am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle What else is there?
February 10 at 8:14am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Thoughts?
February 10 at 8:14am · Like
Robert Dominik Hahaha we're bigger than the Salvation Army... not xD
February 10 at 8:15am · Edited · Like · 1
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland There 'is' nothing
February 10 at 8:15am · Edited · Like · 1
Viorica Doina Neacsu hahahahahahhaha!
Viorica Doina Neacsu's photo.
February 10 at 8:17am · Like · 1
Robert Dominik http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/.../sun-that-never... <- haha here is a good article with (Kyle's?) observations and inquiries. It's pretty lenghty and right now it sort of feels off to encourage you to read more texts rather than advice you to simply keep looking and paying attention... but this article actually has some propositions for experiments, inquries (like the one with the salt) and looking so it's ok I guess.
February 10 at 8:17am · Edited · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Thanks, I just don't know where else to look
February 10 at 8:18am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I can't find awareness anywhere, only the senses, thoughts cognition, I mean, I'm aware when one is missing, thanks though
February 10 at 8:20am · Like
Robert Dominik You're looking in the right direction. Just keep looking and don't expect too much, especially not some flying colours, bright lights and Padmasambhava appearing in front of you after few instances of looking xD
February 10 at 8:20am · Like · 1
Robert Dominik "I'm aware when one is missing, thanks though" <- How? How is that done?
February 10 at 8:22am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Well I had an out of body experience, I was aware that my body was missing, also I can't smell anything right now , I'm aware of that...
February 10 at 8:29am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle So it's why I'm confused
February 10 at 8:29am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh bright flashing lights aren't supposed to happen? Lol
February 10 at 8:31am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle But I guess that doesn't mean that I'm aware of it, just that it's absent...
February 10 at 8:32am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I'll keep looking
February 10 at 8:32am · Like
Robert Dominik Hahaha sometimes there are meditative experiences, nyams These can be used in the context of many practices. Chogyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche says that they are good and may be signs of practice going well. Just that we shouldn't get attached to them and crave them xD If we are looking to have some nice, interesting visions then we can take some LSD xD
February 10 at 8:33am · Edited · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Vio must be so annoyed with me
February 10 at 8:32am · Like
Robert Dominik I asked how was it done (about being aware of the senses not functioning) For example it could be that there were still thoughts (not neccesarily verbal thoughts) claiming "oh! now we lack one sense!". That's not neccesarily how it was. I wouldn't like to force this idea on you - only providing one possibility that can open some options for looking and inquiring.
February 10 at 8:34am · Like · 1
Viorica Doina Neacsu Oh no!!! No sweetheart! I am glad you ask here your questions and so many members care to answer so kind and friendly... i am moved that everybody is trying to help you with an open heart!
You can do it, i know you can do it!
February 10 at 8:37am · Edited · Like · 3
Stuffs RedTurtle For the body thing it was unmistakably, not there, it was very weird
February 10 at 8:36am · Like
Viorica Doina Neacsu Why was very weird?
February 10 at 8:38am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I rolled over on my bed, was very tired thought I was gonna hit the wall, didn't and then I realized something was up, because I was conscious, ended up under my bed, and knew if I didn't go back, I was gonna fall through the floor. At the time I knew my body was gone. This was many years ago, and I wasn't sure if it was a crazy lucid dream, but I know it wasn't
February 10 at 8:54am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Then, meditating on pain, it happened again, everything shut off except that one sensation
February 10 at 8:54am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle If it weren't for those two happenings I would've equated this all to madness, so when I say I can't find anything but a combination of sense impressions, and an awareness of them being there or gone, that's what I mean
When I look, there is;
The seeing
Hearing
Sensation/feeling
Tasting
Thought
That's all I can verify in direct experience
February 10 at 8:57am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle I don't mean those are the only happenings, I've been looking for months, but those are the most profound experiences
February 10 at 8:59am · Like · 1
Viorica Doina Neacsu I know you are in The Direct Path group. Where are you with those experiences? Did them help in a way or another?
February 10 at 9:01am · Edited · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Looking at color everything went 2d, I've done all of the experiments, can't find separation, and I see how like warmth isn't existent from it's own side, like the chair we talked about yesterday, or the weather
February 10 at 9:06am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle So just the senses..
February 10 at 9:07am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle But the extent of consciousness what it is, I have no clue; I had thoughts outside my body, so that's weird
February 10 at 9:07am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Like, I was still able to know stuff even though I wasn't in it in the Body, during the obe
February 10 at 7:31pm · Edited · Like
Viorica Doina Neacsu So you want to understand those experiences...
February 10 at 9:10am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Yes!!! Exactly!!! Badly!!!
February 10 at 9:11am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Like how and why did that happen?
February 10 at 9:15am · Like · 1
Viorica Doina Neacsu Regarding the first experince "I rolled over on my bed...".
I had many times this experience "out of the body", in different situations. The idea is that the mind temporary leaves the body and this can happen because of many reasons. If you want details, i will pms you but not now because i need to sleep, it is 1:18am! hahahaha! Don't worry honey, all it's okay, the mind is leaving the body as a protection... Talk to you tomorrow! nite nite love!
February 10 at 9:22am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Thanks Vio, night!
February 10 at 7:32pm · Like · 1
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson The Ultimate is not explainable and understandable by the human mind. It's contained within it, in pure potential, in full form and neither... Makes no sense to the mind right... That's why it's only something you experience directly if you allow your self It is what you ultimately are.
And yes this world is totally insubstantial. When you fold out of form into the empty it's like a candle being blown out (hence Nirvana = blowout) like your being disperses into your perception and disappears into thin air/no thing. The feeling when it happens is a bit like falling. I have a feeling that it is the root of the feeling one gets often as a kid of falling when you are falling asleep.
After this experience, despite having a degree in Psychology, I see insanity only as what happens when your experience/story goes substantially enough out of sync with other peoples story that it stops being reconcilable. Because, when you have seen through the vial you see that all this are but stories. No, story either true or false but equally true and false. Again makes no sense right? Just has to be experienced directly.
This life is as personal as it gets. The only thing you are responsible for is you, and the only thing you can change is you. I totally disagree with the view that you are just floating with no input. You can participate in the push pull creation of this illusion that is out of your personal control even though you are a full participant in the dance without being aware of it. Or you can let go, fall back. Let go of the illusion of independent control and independent existence and then the realization that you are the entirety of the dance but not just the note and the No Thing that births it and neither
P.S. The No Thing is not nothing. It really is the fullest No Thing you have ever experienced. I know it's a clishé, but it is the best description I've found so far. It is the silence behind everything, the buzzing being-ness.
February 10 at 7:52pm · Edited · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Wow. Thank you so much for all of that Sigurður !! I suspect once I let go this should get easier . I have been grasping to conventional reality like a noose.
This thinking since I played that virtual reality game when I was 10, that the world is not what we think has plaugued my like a dark shadow since. It's crazy for me to find that this whole time, they key to existence is what that little ten year old girl was holding.
Crazy. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Makes it so much easier to know I'm not alone
February 10 at 7:58pm · Like · 1
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson
February 10 at 8:04pm · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Thanks Robert Dominik, that was a great article, Berkeley really helped, I can't believe this is truly it! Wow. I am everything and No-thing, Wow. Just the knowing/known. Wow.
February 10 at 8:13pm · Like
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson Just remember, every time you get defensive, ask your self why am I getting defensive, what do I need to defend, what is the fear that I'm holding onto and trying to defend. When you find it find a way to let go of it. Fear/defense, I find, is the strongest clue to where you are holding on/clinging to your separate identity.
Remember you are only responsible for your self. That is not a cop out, that is allot of responsibility but absolutely the only one you have. And so does everyone else. But that is their responsibility not yours. When you realize this that brings you in, not out. That is where the key is. Within you is the only place you can make the world a better place.
Once you've fully realized who you are you can start helping others find their way... but remember their path is never yours. It is their personal path.... to find out for real that they as anything independent or separate don't exist, let alone as individual persons/fields of perception
February 10 at 8:16pm · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Thank you again!! So much!!
February 10 at 8:43pm · Like
Viorica Doina Neacsu Very nice and hearted comments, Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson
I resonate very deep with what you said... i am coming from the same place...
February 10 at 9:56pm · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Whenever you have time Vio I'm dying to know about the mind and OBE lol
February 10 at 10:01pm · Like · 1
Nicholas Mason Recently I've had the intuition that all of the afflictions of the mind are actually bodhicitta. Some sort of alchemical transformation, hyuck, hyuck.
February 10 at 10:28pm · Edited · Like · 1
Nicholas Mason Tell me, have you seen Soh?
February 10 at 10:25pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle You mean, all of the afflictions are love?
February 10 at 10:28pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Soh just posted
February 10 at 10:29pm · Like
Nicholas Mason No. When one recognizes the nature of the affliction/poison [this is from a vajrayana perspective] they are transformed into the five wisdoms.
February 10 at 10:31pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle 5 wisdoms?
February 10 at 10:33pm · Like
Nicholas Mason Question for those knowledgeable: What is the point of Dzogchen's view of Path?
February 10 at 10:34pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I should know this stuff, but I don't lol
February 10 at 10:34pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I would say no path
February 10 at 10:34pm · Like · 1
Nicholas Mason Maybe someone else can give a basic explanation? I only have a preliminary conceptual understanding.
February 10 at 10:38pm · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle I don't know the lingo, I've always just liked it because it resonated, is my kind of crazy lol
February 10 at 10:40pm · Like
Tom Radcliffe There is a path from the point of view of a concept of self but how can you have a path once self is seen to be a fiction?
February 10 at 10:43pm · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Can't have a path, it's all done for you!
February 10 at 10:44pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Not by a doer though, just is...
February 10 at 10:44pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle But maybe the prelims are important if course, but there is no one path
February 10 at 10:47pm · Like
Tom Radcliffe There is no path but I certainly travelled the illusion of one. When the illusion crashed - there was insight.
February 10 at 10:48pm · Like · 3
Stuffs RedTurtle Cool, the whole, when you meet the Buddha kill him thing right?
February 10 at 10:50pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle That's not so easy lol, left me good and depressed ha ha
February 10 at 10:51pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle I don't know if I need to do anything else now but look into direct exp; anything else I fear I'm piling on more concepts
February 10 at 10:54pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Thanks btw Tom Radcliffe
February 10 at 10:56pm · Like
Nicholas Mason I'd suggest breath meditation. Even 20 minutes a day is helpful. Also, finding a teacher and/or joining a group in real life has unimaginable, inconceivable benefits.
February 10 at 10:56pm · Like · 2
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson My path was driving my ego into a wall on full blast.
Using mindfulness and meditation to come to terms with the wreckage.
Discovering that it was easier if I just stayed in meditation all day (observer). Then having that observer collaps on me spontaneously into the No Thing.
February 10 at 11:46pm · Edited · Like · 1
Nicholas Mason What?
February 10 at 11:12pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Cool. Yeah the meditation seems important for this monkey mind lol
February 10 at 11:12pm · Like · 1
Albert Hong Nicholas Mason
"While my view is as high as the sky, my actions regarding cause and effect [karma] are as meticulous as finely ground barley flour," sang the Lotus Master Padmasambhava
My teacher says that even an enlightened being can run out of his or her merit. And hence even though the view is ati, we must work with circumstances and propagate actions are bring good results.
The path is exactly that.
And at the same time its not apart from the view/base and fruit.
February 10 at 11:38pm · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle What is merit??
February 10 at 11:39pm · Like
Albert Hong Say if you murder someone.
That has consequences be it gross or subtle.
Say if you teach and uphold the dharma as your lief.
Well that has consequences gross and subtle.
February 10 at 11:45pm · Edited · Like · 2
Albert Hong To be attracted to Buddhism, yet alone practice and actualize dharma is due to merit.
Good causes and conditions lead to good effects.
As positive thoughts always follow positive actions.
And on the flip side of this:
Merit is empty as well.
But if we take the world to be real, then we must work with circumstances.
and even if we take the world as illusion,
we still must work with circumstances.
And even if we move beyond categories,
we still have to work with circumstances.
February 10 at 11:47pm · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh I see! Consequences for this life and next, subtle body/subtle mind and gross mind and body
February 10 at 11:47pm · Like
Albert Hong If you're a buddha or a sentient being you still have to pay one dollar for 5 chicken nuggets.
February 10 at 11:47pm · Like · 1
Nicholas Mason Merit is realizing Bodhicitta. Realizing Bodhicitta is Buddhahood.
February 10 at 11:50pm · Edited · Like · 1
Nicholas Mason What if you don't go to McDonald's? What if you go to Burger King?
February 10 at 11:49pm · Like · 2
Albert Hong Well then we give because we have nothing to lose or gain. And that in itself is the greatest merit.
February 10 at 11:49pm · Like · 1
Albert Hong If you really forgave yourself then you'd stop giving yourself hell.
February 10 at 11:50pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle So I must have some good merit
Oh I see lol
February 10 at 11:50pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Ha ha.
February 10 at 11:50pm · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle So you have to let all the bad go...
I'm not a person anyway
Namo Budaya
February 10 at 11:51pm · Like
Nicholas Mason The darkness of a thousand eons cannot dim
The brilliant radiance that is the essence of the sun.
Likewise, eons of samsara cannot dim
The sheer clarity that is the essence of your mind.
-Tilopa's Ganges Mahamudra Pith Instructions
February 10 at 11:52pm · Edited · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Nice
February 10 at 11:52pm · Like
Nicholas Mason Milarepa killed at least 35 people and went on to become one of Tibet's most revered saints.
February 10 at 11:53pm · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh wow
So nothing set in stone, very good
I suppose I should forgive myself, since I am the only one who can, and the good of my life here now and the next depend on it
February 10 at 11:57pm · Like · 1
Nicholas Mason If I had pith instructions to give you they would be to enjoy the ride.
February 10 at 11:58pm · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Thanks Nick
February 10 at 11:59pm · Like · 1
Soh "What do you think samsara is; a reality or a parable?"
Samsara is an illusory experiential reality, the creation of real fictions. How real samsara appears! How real contraction, sense of self, sense of solidity in the world, and so forth appear... Even if they are a dream, they sure seem like a real one... even if a nightmare is merely a dream and a dream is unreal, there is (apparent) suffering in it.
"Are multi dimensions a reality to you?, Even if they are empty, or likened to a dream?"
I don't know what are multi dimensions but all states are empty and like a dream.
"Is non dual pointing insanity, denial, a waste of time or effective ?"
There are many types of non-dual pointing, what are you referring to?
In any case, usually they are effective and brings about certain results.
"I find a lot of hypocrisy in Religious leaders, does this bother you?"
Therefore if one is finding a teacher, find a very good teacher.
February 11 at 12:28am · Like · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle Great answers Soh! Muti dimensions I mean per Stephen hawking, quantum physics and the six realms of samsara
February 11 at 12:30am · Unlike · 1
Stuffs RedTurtle If atoms, which we are made of take all paths simultaneously, and switch between wave and particle, that opens the doors for the 11 dimensions, dreams, samsara, everything!
February 11 at 12:32am · Like
Soh Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson It seems like you realized the "I AMness". This is an important realization. But in my experience there are certain insights that further arise to bring this 'luminous and empty taste' (do note also the realization of luminosity is not the same as the realization of emptiness) into all aspects of life more effortlessly and naturally, rather than simply abiding as a formless background. As written in http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/.../thusnesss-six... a series of insights unfolded for many of us here.
Awakening to Reality: Thusness/PasserBy's Seven Stages of Enlightenment
awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com
The path that Thusness describes, his insights, are his and his alone.
February 11 at 12:36am · Edited · Like · Remove Preview
Soh Stephanie Marie There's a nice article by Sim Pern Chong few years ago about different realms and emptiness and D.O.:
The non-solidity of existence
This article describes a spiritual insight. It may be quite hard to understand.
The things that we experience are registered by all the sense organs. The eye sight registers vision, the ears register sound, the body registers sensations. These perception, sensations and experiences are not happening in some places. They are the experience of the arising of certain conditions. There is no solidity and physicality in the actual experience.
What we experienced is not universal and common to all. Here's an example to illustrate that: We know that as human beings, we see in term of colours. Some animals are however colour-blind, thus they see differently from us. But none of us, is really seeing the truth nature directly. The senses of different species of sentient beings experience things differently. So who is seeing the real image of an object? None.
Likewise, the various planes of existence are due to different conditions arising. In certain types of meditation, one is said to be able to access these planes of existence. This is because they are not specific locations. They are mental states and are thus non-localised. In these meditations, our consciousness changes and 'aligned' more with these other states or planes of existence.
All the planes of existence are simultaneously manifesting, but because our senses are human-based conditioned arisings, we only see the human world and other beings that shared 'similar' resonating arising conditions. But nevertheless, the other planes of existences are not elsewhere in some other places.
What we think of as places are really just consciousness and there is no solidity whatsoever. Even our touch sense is just that. The touch sense gives an impression of feeling something that is physical and three-dimensional. But there is really no solid self-existing object there. Instead, it is simply the sensation that gives the impression of physical solidity and form.
OK, that all I can think of and write about this topic. I will revise and improve this article where the need arises.
For your necessary ponderance. Thank you for reading.
These articles are parts of a series of spiritual realisation articles .
-------------------------------
Thusness replied:
Hi Longchen,
I can see the synchronization of emptiness view into your non-dual experiences --. Integrating view, practice and experience. This is the essence of our emptiness nature and right understanding of non-dual experience in Buddhism that is different from Advaita Vedanta teaching. This is also the understanding of why Everything is the One Reality incorporating causes, conditions and luminosity of our Empty nature as One and inseparable. Everything as the One Reality should never be understood from a dualistic/inherent standpoint.
"This also explains the nature of 'supernatural power' like clairvoyance and seeing things far away, etc."
Indeed! You can see the how the view, practice and experience leading to the understanding of non-locality in terms of views, practices and experience.
Stage 6. The nature of Presence is Empty
Not only is there no ‘who’ in pristine awareness, there is no ‘where’ and ‘when’. This is its nature.
When there is this, that is.
With the arising of this, that arises.
When this is not, neither is that.
With the cessation of this, that ceases.
-- the principle of conditionality
The self-luminous awareness from beginning-less time has never been separated and cannot be separated from its conditions. They are not two -- This is, That is. Along with the conditions, Luminosity shines without a center and arises without a place. No where to be found. This is the emptiness nature of Presence.
February 11 at 12:42am · Like · 4
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson Soh: Here is something I wrote as a reply in the hall of mirrors. This is my experience what ever it is called
I'm not claiming Enlightenment. I've experienced that state for a day but that is not my every day experience.
The empty is no thing. The empty has been called emptiness, it has been called pure awareness, it has been called I am, the alfa and omega, the abyss, Ginnungagap, Nirvana, the unspeakable etc. It is out of what this virtual reality is drawn and in what it is. It is before anything, it is during anything, it is after anything and where nothing has ever happened. It is where you and I are literally one as there is absolutely nothing else. You are the emptyness in it's entirety! But so am I and so is everything else.
It is the stuff out of which your virtual sense of self, separateness and mind are formed. So those forms are formed out of and in the empty but can never contain what they are contained within and made out of.
From my perspective there is never any Facebook, me and you if you are in total unity. But in a fully enlightened state you can reflect the truth in this reality of separation. So even then there is some form of separation. Otherwise you would be fully able to see Maya from any perspective... and then it's no longer Maya as Maya is created out of the virtual splits/polarities of the empty. So the focus tool that I was talking about in earlier posts, where I felt that the control that I have is to engage and let go... that is also a part of this illusion and disappears when you are fully in unity.
After I fell into the Empty for the first time I get a sheering pain in my body every time I take something personally. When Thought arises and is believed that is in conflict with the truth, the full understanding of the unity of it all.
But there are many habits that are formed in that illusion, many things one thinks one needs to defend. Even though when you fully realize that I am you and you are me... not in a metaphoric sense but literally and absolutely... then how can you get defensive about anything.... But the habits are still there.
This process is obviously breaking them up one by one and can bee very painful. Sometimes the pain arises and I let go of the contraction of separation immediately and then the pain vanishes into thin air. Sometimes the habit is deeper rooted and I have to use more extreme measures to break out of it, like going to the bathroom and use a mantra or something else to break me out of the habit.
February 11 at 12:55am · Edited · Like · 3
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson Sorry that I re-post this here out of context but it was quicker then rewrite most of it. I find the emptiness teaching are helping most with landing this realization in my life.
February 11 at 1:00am · Like
Soh Do you experience that as a 'state' or a 'doubtless realization'?
February 11 at 1:01am · Like · 1
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson Doubtless realisation.
February 11 at 1:01am · Unlike · 1
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson The only doubtless realisation I've had in my life
February 11 at 1:02am · Like
Soh There is the Self-Realization of pure Beingness where there is no trace of doubts left, only complete certainty of Being. This I believe is what you call doubtless realisation. What caused that doubtless realization, how did that doubtlessness came about and also do you have a direct experience where the sense of ego is purged and you experience impersonality where 'you and I are literally one' sensation is directly experienced and if so, when did it occur - did that 'impersonality' experience/insight occur some time after your self-realization and do you know what caused it?
Just curious to find out your development.
February 11 at 1:09am · Edited · Like · 1
Soh p.s. on impersonality I wrote: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/.../experience...
" As impersonality matures one feels like everything including oneself is expressed by a higher source, a higher power, an impersonal living force or intelligence.
p.s. (update) Just one day after writing this chapter, I found a book by the same name as mine, 'Who am I?' by Pandit Shriram Sharma Archaya. He distinguishes the Soul, the Inner Self/the Inner Witness/the 'Nucleus of your World', from the Universal Self or the Omnipresent Supreme Being which is the supreme source of even that Inner Self and everything else in the world. He says that one has to realise the Inner Self first before realizing the unity or oneness of that Inner Self with that Universal Self, Atman=Brahman.
This is precisely what I'm talking about - the difference between the initial experience and realization of I AM (as the inner Self), then the maturation into the Universal I AM, which is the aspect of impersonality. This is the difference between Thusness Stage 1 and 2. In the Universal I AM, it is just this "unified field" in which "everything belongs to everyone", and that in this phase "A Yogi is one whose individuality has been consciously united (merged) with the cosmic Self." Everything and everyone is impersonally expressed and lived by this pervasive source, as stated by him, "particles of universally pervasive intelligence and energy, cosmic consciousness [Chetna] and life, are activating infinite systems, forms and forces of this cosmos.""
Awakening to Reality: Experience, Realization, View, Practice and Fruition
awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com
Found this to be a very true and helpful post. Thanks for writing it.Also thanks...See More
February 11 at 1:08am · Like · 3 · Remove Preview
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson Yes, that is what I was talking about, being able to reflect the Empty in form. Then I can feel how the whole thing is put together at the seems. It is a very quiet, but you can feel the whole dance of the Universe literally.
February 11 at 1:11am · Unlike · 4
Stuffs RedTurtle Wow that sounds amazing!!!
February 11 at 1:12am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Soh, that post made perfect sense thank you.
I think if I let go of doubt and fear of losing sanity I will be fine. For what it's worth, I have seen enough to know it's real and leave me doubt free, though I have never had the experience of being a tree, because of the two above scenarios, deep reflection, signs, intellectual understanding and leaving my body and only being sensation, I should just surrender
February 11 at 1:15am · Like · 1
Soh I think it is important to distinguish the causes for certain experiences and insights. That is, I've seen that the direct realization of Existence/Beingness is not the same as 'impersonality'. For Self-Realization, what led to the sense of 'certainty' is the direct mode of being, the eye of immediacy that allows one to penetrate all conceptual intermediaries and directly realize, taste and apprehend Awareness itself. This manifested when I inquired on 'Before birth, Who am I' for almost two years until I directly realized without a trace of doubt what "I" am. Whatever inquiries/methods one utilizes must be able to lead one to a direct mode of apprehending whatever one is inquiring, and self-inquiry is one such way, thus allowing direct self-realization. However, Impersonality is quite another thing. It is not the same as 'self-realization'. Some people had an experience of 'impersonality' before Self-realization, and some had it after.
I had it after.. some months after self-realization. It is a maturation of my understanding and experience. It is the dissolving of the construct of 'personal self' that led to a purging of ego effect to a state of clean, pure, not-mine sort of "perception shift", accompanied with a sense that everything and everyone is being expressions of the same aliveness/intelligence/consciousness. This can then be easily extrapolated into a sense of a 'universal source' (but this is merely an extrapolation and at a later phase is deconstructed). Even this is not some 'final insight', it is still not insight into non-dual, or anatta, or emptiness.
In any case, in my experience after an initial self-realization, my path progressed when I progressed in terms of four aspects of I Am which I roughly summarize as: 1) impersonality: when the sense of personal self or ego is seen through and dissolved, one feels oneself and everything and everyone being the expression of an impersonal intelligence, one feels that one is being 'lived' by a universal mind/intelligence/consciousness/life. this is not merely nondoership but something more than that 2) intensity of luminosity: one feels the intensity and amazingness of that intensity of luminous awareness in every mundane sense perception and activity 3) seeing through the delusion that there is a need to re-confirm and abide in Self as completely extra and unnecessary 4) effortlessness of Presence.
Then by maturing my experience in terms of these four aspects, plus contemplating on the non-dual, anatta and empty nature of Presence, it allowed for deeper insights to unfold. I wrote recently to someone undergoing those territories:
"I think these should help: 1) sensing Presence to the minutest details in all sense doors by bringing non-dual Presence from being background to being all foreground sensations as non-dual Presence, 2) challenging all dualistic/inherent constructs. Challenge the sense of a subject apart from object, seer apart from seen, seeing apart from seen, hearer apart from hearing/hearing apart from sound, awareness apart from manifestation (where does awareness end and manifestation begin?) 3) keep in mind Bahiya Sutta's pointers (http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/.../ajahn-amaro-on...)"
p.s. I elaborated a lot more in my e-book/e-journal: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/.../my-e-booke...
Awakening to Reality: The Buddha on Non-Duality
awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com
This passage has been most useful to me personally. The challenge is to constant...See More
February 11 at 1:29am · Edited · Like · 3 · Remove Preview
Stuffs RedTurtle Thanks Soh!
February 11 at 1:30am · Like
Viorica Doina Neacsu What a coincidence, Stephanie ! hahahahahaha! Now i see that! Soh posted that article by Sim Pern Chong while we were talking about the same things ! hahahahaha
February 11 at 3:01am · Like · 1
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson Soh At the moment I feel like my ego is being unwound.
I've been trough the impersonal looking at perception from the out side, to being the universe of perception.
Folding out of form into the empty a few times. Being able to reflect the empty in form.... feeling how it is all put together. Being able to feel how this I, Hitler, Britney Spears and Mother Theresa are all the same.
I've had time and space break down on me. Where I could see how this illusion is put together.
Now, it's just kind of an eggshell thin is-ness with the quiet of the empty looming underneath/in it all. When I just totally relax into it it's just like writhing flux of energy. But every time a habit that is in conflict with this realization is expressed a stabbing pain appears in my body and forces me to break out of that habit. And to relax back into it.
February 11 at 3:14am · Unlike · 3
Piotr Ludwiński Soh you are never tired...
February 11 at 4:09am · Like · 3
Viorica Doina Neacsu Welcome back Piotr
February 11 at 4:44am · Like · 1
Viorica Doina Neacsu Yes, Soh is never tired... His generosity is boundless
February 11 at 4:47am · Like · 3
Ram Jayaram It's interesting to note that the word 'samsara' means conversation in some Indian languages...
February 11 at 5:26am · Like · 2
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh
February 11 at 5:27am · Like
Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson Soh, Thanks allot for the links to your blogs. It's so refreshing to find something other than the Neo-advitan regurgitation. Finally I have some conceptual frame for this unfolding that makes some sense to me. I come from a Buddhist background and the emptiness/dependent arising view point resonates.
February 11 at 5:34am · Unlike · 2
Ram Jayaram Stephanie Marie, yes! It also means spouse (female spouse mostly)!
February 11 at 5:35am · Like · 1
Ram Jayaram Perhaps this is why men would leave their home (and spouse) and become silent, in order to attain Nirvana!
February 11 at 5:39am · Like
Robert Dominik Good thread xD // Noone expected Spanish In... ehhh I mean hello Piotr
February 11 at 5:49am · Edited · Like · 2
Robert Dominik Ram Jayaram - lol
February 11 at 5:51am · Like
Robert Healion All gone to sleep. interesting comments. Did you understand and agree with the majority. I liked the diversion into gender issues. haha. And Albert wrote some superb stuff, but me thinks he is drunk on emptiness. your questions are like a spread of scattered thoughts, and looking at them I ask, why are you asking them. Soh suggested Iamness, which is something I am not familiar with. To me the only logical suggestion is to practice thought control, which I am no expert at. These and other questions like them will eventually not take root and disappear.
February 11 at 11:28am · Like · 2
Albert Hong definitely drunk.
devoted to emptiness.
it all just comes out, wish i could help it.
February 11 at 11:33am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle They aren't scattered, they had very much to do with sonething
February 11 at 11:35am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Yes everyone answered
February 11 at 11:36am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle To my liking
February 11 at 11:36am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Albert Hong, the thingle is the seat of consciousness right?
February 11 at 11:39am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle After this I promise I will spend time in experience lol
February 11 at 11:39am · Like
Robert Healion when were you ever apart from experience. enjoy life, play with your child, grow old and play with your grand children.
February 11 at 11:42am · Like · 2
Albert Hong this was sent to me by piotr.
Guru rinpoche?:
"Well, you may then ask, 'What is the difference between buddhas and sentient beings?"
It is nothing other than realizing or not realizing mind. The substance of the awakened state, of buddha, is present within you, but you don't recognize it. Not recognizing their minds, beings stray into the six streams of existence. You may then ask, 'What is the way to realize mind?' For that, it is taught, you need the oral instructions of a master.
In this regard, 'mind' is that which thinks and cognizes; there is indeed something that experiences. Don't seek this mind outside, look within! Let mind search for itself! Reach certainty about how the nature of mind is!
At first, from where does mind arise? Right now, where does it stay? At the end, look into where it goes! When your mind looks into itself, it finds no place from where it arises, remains, or goes to. There is no explanation of 'this is how it is.' 'Mind' is discovered to be without something outside or inside. It does not have someone that looks; it is not the act of looking.
It is experienced as a great original wakefulness without center or edge, an immense all-pervasiveness that is primordially empty and free.
This original wakefulness is intrinsic and self-existing. It is not made right now, but is present within yourself from the very beginning. Decide firmly that the view is to recognize just that!"
February 11 at 11:42am · Unlike · 6
Stuffs RedTurtle Thanks Albert. That's pretty awesome
February 11 at 11:45am · Like
Robert Healion Did you know Stephanie Marie the only separation form you now and you truly awakened is time and practice. Time will move according to your practice. Practice is the only aspect in this that you have control over.
This is the same for us all. Congratulations you have an interest most of the time has already passed.
February 11 at 11:47am · Like · 1
Dannon Flynn Stephanie Marie, Thigle (Teeglay) means 'sphere'. It usually means small sphere, like a seed. It is seed, it is sperm, it is a point of awareness, it is a singularity. There are many meanings. Many things are called Thigle. Small round spheres seen in the sunlit sky, rainbow colored. Bubbles. The great thigle is the universal sphere which all phenomena appear in, like a great bubble containing every perception that you experience.
February 11 at 11:50am · Like · 1
Dannon Flynn A drop.
February 11 at 11:50am · Like · 1
Robert Healion Dannon Flynn A A A A drop. Is this the conceptual same as bindi in Vedanta Tantra. The point of origin for consciousness, often depicted at the back of the head.
February 11 at 11:52am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Oh!
February 11 at 11:52am · Like
Dannon Flynn Click on both links:
https://www.google.com/search?q=thigle&safe=off&espv=210...
http://www.buddhabrats.com/glossary/thigle/
February 11 at 11:55am · Edited · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Thanks!!
February 11 at 11:55am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Wow!!!!
February 11 at 11:57am · Like
Robert Healion My understanding the Sanskrit letter is the root letter of there alphabet, and represents generation. Often monks in practice repeat this letter, I assume as a mantra of sorts.
February 11 at 11:59am · Like
Stuffs RedTurtle Right now, nothing else matters. Yay
February 11 at 12:31pm · Like
Dannon Flynn "Ah" is the primordial sound, representing natural sound, the union of emptiness and clarity.
February 11 at 12:40pm · Like · 2
Soh Piotr Ludwiński: it should be a joy to share what you know!
February 11 at 1:23pm · Like · 1
Soh Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson:
We have to be very careful about the terminologies, not because I'm very stringent about semantics, but because it deals not only with semantics and mixing these terms can cause confusion in a discussion and furthermore if one doesn't know the difference between these terms, one's practice will simply be more confusion and mixups.
When you said "The empty is no thing. The empty has been called emptiness, it has been called pure awareness,", you should have said "Formless awareness" rather than "empty". At least, emptiness in the Buddhist context has a very different meaning. In one of his articles: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/.../happiness-karma... , the Dalai Lama distinguished between the 'formlessness of mind/awareness' with the emptiness of mind and things which is the ultimate nature of mind.
You have to distinguish between emptiness and awareness. The realization of awareness is not the same as the realization of emptiness. Awareness is the brightly aware-presence, empty is the emptiness of any self or intrinsic existence (of anything and everything: including awareness, self, body, mind, mountains and rivers, etc etc). Emptiness does not mean 'no thing' or even a 'no thing that subsumes everything', emptiness is simply this emptiness of intrinsic existence, or a self/Self.
As Greg Goode (who comes from an Awareness/Advaita background) wrote in his article http://www.heartofnow.com/files/emptiness.html:
"For those who encounter emptiness teachings after they've become familiar with awareness teachings, it's very tempting to misread the emptiness teachings by substituting terms. That is, it's very easy to misread the emptiness teachings by seeing "emptiness" on the page and thinking to yourself, "awareness, consciousness, I know what they're talking about."
Early in my own study I began with this substitution in mind. With this misreading, I found a lot in the emptiness teachings to be quite INcomprehensible! So I started again, laying aside the notion that "emptiness" and "awareness" were equivalent. I tried to let the emptiness teachings speak for themselves. I came to find that they have a subtle beauty and power, a flavor quite different from the awareness teachings. Emptiness teachings do not speak of emptiness as a true nature that underlies or supports things. Rather, it speaks of selves and things as essenceless and free. "
So what you are saying is that 'awareness is formless'. Actually this statement is only partially true, the aspect of Luminous Mind in its mind-door prior to concepts is a formless presence or beingness. When later non-dual insights arise, the same taste of luminous presence of awareness is experienced as all senses, the myriad of sense experiences and thoughts reveals itself as non-dual luminous Presence. Then anatta insight must arise to enter into the firstfold emptiness of Presence (first emptying the label of 'Self', the sense of a Subject or Self or Agent).. then followed by secondfold emptiness (emptying the object, the Presence itself).
Awakening to Reality: Happiness, Karma and Mind
awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com
Many billions of years elapsed between the origin of this world and the first ap...See More
February 11 at 2:02pm · Edited · Like · 2 · Remove Preview
Kyle Dixon Thigle also represents the dharmatā of a given dharmin. Apperceiving dharmatā is encountering the subtle thigle i.e. recognizing the emptiness of X.
February 11 at 1:56pm · Like · 2
Soh Sigurður Jónas Eysteinsson:
"I've been trough the impersonal looking at perception from the out side, to being the universe of perception."
I believe you are describing non-dual experience, where the sense of a subjective perceiver, and the sense that the universe of perception exists separately at a distance, collapses into a gapless non-dual experience. Do note that this 'non-dual experience' is different from the 'impersonality that led to universal intelligence sensation', they are dissolving of different constructs in experience (one is dissolving construct of subject/object/inside/outside duality and another is dissolving construct of personal self).
However, there is non-dual experience, and non-dual insights, and as to non-dual insights, there is substantialist non-dual insight, and insubstantial non-dual which begins at anatta realization.
What I call non-dual experience is a peak experience of non-duality. I had many peak non-dual experiences throughout my life.. starting from when I was 16 when I was looking at the tree and suddenly there was no "I looking" but it felt like "I was the looking, the tree, the movement, the swaying". Usually they lasted no more than a few minutes and it was amazing. But one day about 4 years later, about six months after Self-Realization, I was dancing to the music and Bahiya Sutta came up in mind, the sense of self and duality got completely released and there was the whole 'universe of perception' and 'universe of action', the music, movement, completely alive and happening without a sense of a separate self or observer. This time the experience lasted for about 2 days and became seemingly more effortless. Still, the dualistic tendency came back a few days later, manifesting as the sense of being a background Witness.
So, clear non-dual insight has not arisen. But this peak non-dual experience shifted my practice and my understanding from 'I am Pure Existence' (as a background formless beingness) to 'Existence is the very stuff of whatever arises' (as Thusness wrote to me at this phase: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/.../bringing-non...) In the following two months, deeper insights arose about the non-dual (no subject/object) nature of awareness, first I resolved everything into a single field of non-dual awareness subsuming all without boundaries, then I realized through Bahiya Sutta again that how the seer-seeing-seen framework do not apply in reality and 'seeing' is ever just the colours/shapes/scenery (no seer), hearing ever just sound... etc, so there is no more resolving of sound into an inherent awareness but seeing 'awareness' is simply the manifestation and nothing hidden/inherent/changeless/independent. After this, non-dual has become natural and effortless and ongoing, not a state that comes and goes.
Now my question to you is: how stable is your current experience that subject/object duality dissolves in 'mere sensory experience' (like Bahiya Sutta), since when has this arisen, and are they peak experiences? Again, contemplating on the lines of Bahiya Sutta should be helpful..
Awakening to Reality: Bringing Non-Dual to Foreground
awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com
February 11 at 3:01pm · Edited · Like · 3 · Remove Preview
Soh In my e-book, there was an entry (24th May 2010) where I wrote about a conversation I had with Thusness soon after my self-realization and experience of impersonality led to a sense of 'universal mind'. He told me then that I had made an extrapolation out of a direct experience.. which I understood later on.
I wrote in a forum post: "Your mirror-like awareness has no limitations, has no boundaries and edges. It does not belong to any object that appears on it. It does not belong to the body-mind object that you identify as 'yourself'. It does not belong to anything. But everything arise from that…
…Impersonal/Universal Awareness is animating or ‘powering’ the body and the personality like electricity is powering the TV to show the images on screen. Whatever happens on screen is ‘run’ only by the ‘power’ of the One Mind. Everything and everyone is the spontaneous functioning of One Mind, there is no individual doers/actors/selves."
Just had a conversation with Thusness about this.
He told me that there is a problem of saying more than what is necessary, and that it comes from a clinging mind. That is, stripping of 'individuality' and 'personality' becoming a 'Universal Mind' is an extrapolation, a deduction. It is not direct experience like "in thinking just thoughts", "in perceptions just perceptions", "in seeing just the seen" - just 'what is'.
Similarly when I experienced 'impersonality', it is just 'impersonality', but it becomes a 'Universal Mind' due to clinging which prevents seeing. And if I further reinforce this idea, it becomes a made belief and appears true and real.
Therefore when I said 'impersonality', I am not being blinded as I am merely describing what I have experienced. This Mind is still an individual mindstream, and though impersonality leads one to have the sort of 'Universal Mind' kind of sensation, one must correctly understand it.
Buddhism never denies this mind stream, it simply denies the self-view. It denies separation, it denies an observer, a thinker. It denies a perfect controller, an independent agent. This is what 'Self' means, otherwise why is it a 'Self'? An individual mindstream remains as an individual mindstream, but it is nothing related to a Self.
Hence it is important to understand liberation from the right understanding, otherwise one gets confused. There is the experience of non-duality, Anatta, 'Tada' (http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2010/04/tada.html), Stainlessness (http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/.../stainlessness...), but these have nothing to do with Self. Hence if one wants to understand Presence, then one must clearly and correctly understand Presence.
It is important to refine the understanding of Presence through the four aspects: impersonality, degree of luminosity, dissolving the need to re-confirm and understanding why it is unnecessary, and effortlessness.
These have no extrapolation and are what I am experiencing currently, and these requires improvement so that one can progress from "I AM".
There is the experience of impersonality. It is the stripping off of the personality aspect, and it causes one to link to a higher force, as if a cosmic life is functioning within me, like what Casino_King (a forummer who posted many years ago in both the Christian and Buddhist forums) experienced and described - the impersonal life force, which he called Holy Spirit.
It is as if it is all the functioning of a higher power, that life is itself taking the functioning, so dissolving 'personality' somehow allows me to get 'connected'.
I agreed with Thusness and told him that just yesterday I remembered a Christian quote that is very apt in describing this aspect: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." - Galatians 2:20
Thusness agrees and told me that it is about surrendering to this greater power, that it is not you, but the life in you that is doing the work. It is the key of getting 'connected' to a higher power, to a divine life, to a sacred power - and one wants to lose oneself for this divinity to work through us. And this is what Thusness meant by Thusness Stage 3 experience, the 'I' is the block, because of 'holding' one is unable to 'surrender' completely. When one completely surrenders, the divine will will become your 'will'.
This is not the non-dual sort of experience, nor is it about I AM or the Certainty of Being, nor is it about Anatta.
For example, "I AM" allows you to directly experience 'your' very own existence, the beingness, the inner most essence of 'You'.
A true and genuine practitioner must give rise to all these insights, and understand the causes and conditions that give rise to the experiences and not get mixed up. Many people get mixed up over different 'types' of 'no self'.
For example, no-self of non-dual, no-self of anatta, non-inherent existence and impersonality, are all not refering to the same experience - but rather they are different results of dissolving certain aspect of the tendencies.
Hence a practitioner must be sincere in his practice to clearly see, and not pretend that one knows. Otherwise practice is simply more mix-up, confusion, and nonsense. It is not that it cannot be known, it is just that the mind isn't clear enough to see the causes and conditions of arising.
Awakening to Reality: Tada!
awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com
February 11 at 2:49pm · Edited · Like · 2 · Remove Preview
Soh
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