John W. Hooper
"The seen, sound are the non-dual luminous experience; but direct experience of non-dual luminosity is not suffcient. Though perfectly clear and vividly present as in non-dual experience, the 'seen' is radically different from the 'sound' -- this is its emptiness nature. This viewless view must be fused into our non-dual insight. When views are firmly established and non-dual experience thoroughly authenticated, a practitioner will see everything as Awareness without conflict in both views and experiences. Not bounded within an inherent and dualistic paradigm, he will not be confused. When the real cause and the empty nature of our pristine awareness are understood, this ‘Emptiness’ view too must be discarded."
Can anyone explain this paragraph?
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2008/02/thusnesss-reply-to-longchen-at.html
Awakening to Reality: The Link Between Non-Duality and Emptiness
awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com
The reply to Longchen may sound confusing but it is a reflection of the journey I have gone through. After the experience of anatta, there is a period of desync between what experienced and the existing paradigm we used to orientate...
Like · · Share · February 12 at 10:53pm
Viorica Doina Neacsu likes this.
John W. Hooper What happened? I saw a notification for a comment and then it disappeared!
February 12 at 11:39pm · Like
Albert Hong If we focus on experience, we do not see how latent views conditions experience.
For instance we may practice and continually try to abide as presence/awareness. We get it and we lose it.
That is because we are holding onto the view of inherency, while going for a non-conceptual, direct experience.
So experientially that is feeling into sensations and finding the presence of awareness then using that as a central reference point. Then we relate everything from there.
This is using experience as a means to experience. (while not seeing that we are actually using a view)
Whereas if we use the view (intentionally) into experience then something interesting occurs. The experience changes.
If we take the view of dependent origination and apply it to the non dual experience then we counter directly the "ignroant klesha momentum" of inherency, which was masked by our focus on experience rather than seeing how views and experience arises dependently.
February 13 at 12:13am · Edited · Unlike · 5
Albert Hong http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com.au/.../experience...
This is a great article to read on how views effect experience and how they different from realizations.
February 12 at 11:56pm · Like · 4
Albert Hong Emptiness loosens the inherent grip as awareness as a source, witness, container, a single essential dot.
Even if we categorize and experience awareness as a formless presence + form appearance.
In either case the momentum and value is given to the non conceptual experience of awareness.
At its peak it is a non-self experience.
There is only the PCE or the very seeing/color and feeling/sensation of the world and no I either in or out of that experiencing.
So verbs take the place of nouns and even verbs are seen to be empty in that they are merely conventions overlaid on continual becoming without center.
But that is merely a passing state of most. Because the habitual momentum of ignorance is strong.
Anatta and emptiness are the nature of all experiencing. We don't gain emptiness or lose emptiness. It is how reality already is.
We cannot access this unless we see the views we hold. And we can safely say that if we do not see the emptiness of inherent existence then we are holding an inherent view on some level be it conceptual or replicated in the subtle body and hence the whole world.
February 13 at 12:01am · Like
Albert Hong The common views we see on these forums.
Nihilism: everything is meaningless and unreal.
Eternalism: everything is meaningful.
Monism: everything is one.
Dualism: there is two.
Buddhist view:
Dependent origination: this is, that is, this isn't, that isn't. X is dependent upon other than X.
Things lack inherent, independent existence, a singular/unit.
The problems are rather simple yet impossible to see if we cling to a non-conceptual experience.
Views and karmic momentum's are real forces.
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/.../total-exertion...
This is a great article on total exertion of wisdom or ignorance.
Enjoy.
February 13 at 12:05am · Like · 4
Tom Radcliffe I am not objects. I am awareness. Objects arise in awareness. Objects arise out of awareness. Objects are awareness. Awareness. A. .
February 13 at 6:33am · Like
Soh I deleted this yesterday and edited it a bit today.
1) When we penetrate the illusion of a hearer hearing sound, we realize that in hearing there's only sound, no hearer! sound hears, scenery sees, everything gapless and self-luminous.
When we contemplate on the Bahiya Sutta, in seeing just the seen, or, in reference to the seen only the seen, no you in terms of that.. the point is not to objectify the seen or make an absolute statement that 'there is only X' (or like Empty Mirror would say 'There is only This') but to see that in reference to your immediate experience of X (in hearing or in sound, in seeing or in sight), which is undeniable, it is only X (that manifest foreground experience) and is empty of an agent, self, background observer apart from the self-luminosity of experience. Seen is seeing, there isn't a 'seer or seeing seeing the seen'. It is an immediate realization of the falsity of a self/Self/agent and that led to direct gapless experience of foreground self-luminosity without subsuming into subject (like pure subjectivity of advaita) or object.
'In seeing just the seen' or 'in reference to the seen only the seen' is descriptive rather than assertive, it is experiential, it simply points out your experience as it is, it points out the falsity of a subjective essence or Self, but it does not assert a truly existing object that the seen references or a subjective reality (such as clarity as changeless Self) in which the seen/seeing is subsumed into.
Non-dual luminosity becomes implicit, but as Thusness states, this is 'not sufficient'
2) See the utterly disjoint, unsupported, groundless aspect of all manifestations, another aspect of anatta that led to spontaneous manifestation and self-release without a linking agent or ground. This is not just the self-luminosity of manifestation without background aspect of anatta, a different side of anatta. This allowed me to dissolve the construct of 'actual ground, here/now, which I could abide/be grounded in/return to'.
3) We do not just realize 'in seeing just the seen' but understand that 'hearer', 'self' is an imputation on the aggregates, the sensory experiences, just like 'body' is an imputation on sensations (realizing this led to mind-body drop days after my initial anatta realization), 'weather' is an imputation on clouds shifting wind blowing sun shining all sorts of everchanging conditions but without a core essence... one applies this 'emptiness of imputation' to all aspects, from self to body to physical world to here/now, etc. This is seeing the view aspect of emptiness.
4) With the view of D.O. + actualization of anatta, we realize the dependent origination of everything! e.g. When hearing sound, we don't just 'see' the non-dual presence of sound, we see the seamless exertion of sound via the person, the stick, the bell, hitting, air, ears, etc, i.e. the conditions. The whole universe is the Tonggggg... great without boundaries, seamless and interdependent activity. What I wrote in 'Dharma Body' article.
5) We look at a thought, a sound, a sight, and we ask, is X truly arising? abiding? ceasing? anything coming into existence or is the appearance like a dream or a movie or a reflection appearing in a mirror, a dependently arisen appearance that is not born, not coming into existence, not abiding and ceasing, empty? where is X? where does X originate from, abide in, or go to? Until we resolve the emptiness and non-arising of X. There is wonder and bliss at the magic of empty-appearance, appearing yet empty, appearing but not arising. This is the emptiness and non-arising of pure sensory experience, not merely the imputation as in point 1/3.
6) Lastly once we keep double emptying we will realize that whatever dependently originates is spontaneously accomplished and naturally perfected. As Thusness wrote, "If there is no essence in both background and foreground, nothing is graspable. If nothing is graspable, there is no doing. If there is no doing, there is only effortless spontaneous accomplishment and natural perfection.
So from seeing 2 folds, you move towards the view of spontaneous perfection."
February 13 at 3:41pm · Edited · Like · 6
Soh "Though perfectly clear and vividly present as in non-dual experience, the 'seen' is radically different from the 'sound' -- this is its emptiness nature."
I would say this is spoken to counter the sense that Awareness is "one substance modulating as everything" as if everything is the same, one awareness. That is One Mind view. Awareness/luminosity is inseparable from conditions and empty.
Thusness: "
When consciousness experiences the pure sense of “I AM”, overwhelmed by the transcendental thoughtless moment of Beingness, consciousness clings to that experience as its purest identity. By doing so, it subtly creates a ‘watcher’ and fails to see that the ‘Pure Sense of Existence’ is nothing but an aspect of pure consciousness relating to the thought realm. This in turn serves as the karmic condition that prevents the experience of pure consciousness that arises from other sense-objects. Extending it to the other senses, there is hearing without a hearer and seeing without a seer -- the experience of Pure Sound-Consciousness is radically different from Pure Sight-Consciousness. Sincerely, if we are able to give up ‘I’ and replaces it with “Emptiness Nature”, Consciousness is experienced as non-local. No one state is purer than the other. All is just One Taste, the manifold of Presence."
February 13 at 5:23pm · Edited · Like · 5
John W. Hooper I am still reading the links Albert posted (thanks!). It will probably take me a while to fully understand it, but at least is makes sense in light of my own experiences over the last 30 years, whereas the One Mind that is everything seemed to merely move the self to a grander domain. My lifelong PCE experiences were not the experience of One Mind, but *as* pure luminous experience, unreferenced, empty, timeless. At one point, all objects were luminous for a few days, all day long. It was before I had any clear direction in my practice. Now I have had all kinds of insights and experiences, yet I still find myself often stuck back at the beginning, operating from the story of self, I just don't know what to do anymore. I did some AF, and it did produce more PCEs without a doubt, but it did not feel right to me. I tried the Empty Mirror approach, but it seems to demand belief, and rejects the "don't know" insights I learned so well from Zen. From what I understand so far, what you are saying could be an approach that would work for me. Right now I'm just trying to figure out where to begin.
February 13 at 8:06pm · Edited · Unlike · 3
Piotr Ludwiński Imho Soh is just writing about insights/"stages" and about asking oneself right questions that need to be "answered" through bare attention/vipassana mode od practice. But as far as I can see he is not giving any path/"approach" per se
February 13 at 8:27pm · Edited · Like
John W. Hooper Often others can easily see where I am making mistakes. It is obvious to them. After 30 years, I probably don't need a path from beginning to end, I just need to know what I didn't learn in my many practices over the years: Zen koan, Krishnamurti inq...See More
February 13 at 8:35pm · Like
Soh PCE is natural and effortless after deep insight into anatta... just focus on the insights... then PCE is realized as a natural state, not a stage to attain. My approach is different from AF approach - apart from view wise, AF emphasizes on cultivating the experience. I emphasize the realization. Experience comes naturally. As I said: "Anatta experience is characterized by direct, gapless, lurid, self-luminous experience of all sensory experiences. It cannot be otherwise. When you see through the agent, or sense of self/Self, everything becomes naturally direct, gapless, and you touch the very 'life', 'luminosity', 'clearness/vividness/knowingness' of manifestation, and there is only that - sound hears, sight sees. You are experiencing life (or rather - manifestation is experiencing itself directly, no 'you') directly rather than through an imputation (like seer-seeing-seen)."
Related: http://dharmaconnectiongroup.blogspot.sg/.../no-mind-and...
Dharma Connection: No Mind and Anatta, Focusing on Insight
dharmaconnectiongroup.blogspot.com
February 13 at 10:58pm · Edited · Like · 4 · Remove Preview
Albert Hong John W. Hooper
it's worth reading soh's ebook on his blogspot.
as it covers the whole gambit.
also stick around.
literally we have the same conversations over and over again.
meeting the same momentum's of ignorance.
it's rather a humorous, painful and patience driven expression.
February 14 at 2:34am · Edited · Unlike · 3
"The seen, sound are the non-dual luminous experience; but direct experience of non-dual luminosity is not suffcient. Though perfectly clear and vividly present as in non-dual experience, the 'seen' is radically different from the 'sound' -- this is its emptiness nature. This viewless view must be fused into our non-dual insight. When views are firmly established and non-dual experience thoroughly authenticated, a practitioner will see everything as Awareness without conflict in both views and experiences. Not bounded within an inherent and dualistic paradigm, he will not be confused. When the real cause and the empty nature of our pristine awareness are understood, this ‘Emptiness’ view too must be discarded."
Can anyone explain this paragraph?
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2008/02/thusnesss-reply-to-longchen-at.html
Awakening to Reality: The Link Between Non-Duality and Emptiness
awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com
The reply to Longchen may sound confusing but it is a reflection of the journey I have gone through. After the experience of anatta, there is a period of desync between what experienced and the existing paradigm we used to orientate...
Like · · Share · February 12 at 10:53pm
Viorica Doina Neacsu likes this.
John W. Hooper What happened? I saw a notification for a comment and then it disappeared!
February 12 at 11:39pm · Like
Albert Hong If we focus on experience, we do not see how latent views conditions experience.
For instance we may practice and continually try to abide as presence/awareness. We get it and we lose it.
That is because we are holding onto the view of inherency, while going for a non-conceptual, direct experience.
So experientially that is feeling into sensations and finding the presence of awareness then using that as a central reference point. Then we relate everything from there.
This is using experience as a means to experience. (while not seeing that we are actually using a view)
Whereas if we use the view (intentionally) into experience then something interesting occurs. The experience changes.
If we take the view of dependent origination and apply it to the non dual experience then we counter directly the "ignroant klesha momentum" of inherency, which was masked by our focus on experience rather than seeing how views and experience arises dependently.
February 13 at 12:13am · Edited · Unlike · 5
Albert Hong http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com.au/.../experience...
This is a great article to read on how views effect experience and how they different from realizations.
February 12 at 11:56pm · Like · 4
Albert Hong Emptiness loosens the inherent grip as awareness as a source, witness, container, a single essential dot.
Even if we categorize and experience awareness as a formless presence + form appearance.
In either case the momentum and value is given to the non conceptual experience of awareness.
At its peak it is a non-self experience.
There is only the PCE or the very seeing/color and feeling/sensation of the world and no I either in or out of that experiencing.
So verbs take the place of nouns and even verbs are seen to be empty in that they are merely conventions overlaid on continual becoming without center.
But that is merely a passing state of most. Because the habitual momentum of ignorance is strong.
Anatta and emptiness are the nature of all experiencing. We don't gain emptiness or lose emptiness. It is how reality already is.
We cannot access this unless we see the views we hold. And we can safely say that if we do not see the emptiness of inherent existence then we are holding an inherent view on some level be it conceptual or replicated in the subtle body and hence the whole world.
February 13 at 12:01am · Like
Albert Hong The common views we see on these forums.
Nihilism: everything is meaningless and unreal.
Eternalism: everything is meaningful.
Monism: everything is one.
Dualism: there is two.
Buddhist view:
Dependent origination: this is, that is, this isn't, that isn't. X is dependent upon other than X.
Things lack inherent, independent existence, a singular/unit.
The problems are rather simple yet impossible to see if we cling to a non-conceptual experience.
Views and karmic momentum's are real forces.
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/.../total-exertion...
This is a great article on total exertion of wisdom or ignorance.
Enjoy.
February 13 at 12:05am · Like · 4
Tom Radcliffe I am not objects. I am awareness. Objects arise in awareness. Objects arise out of awareness. Objects are awareness. Awareness. A. .
February 13 at 6:33am · Like
Soh I deleted this yesterday and edited it a bit today.
1) When we penetrate the illusion of a hearer hearing sound, we realize that in hearing there's only sound, no hearer! sound hears, scenery sees, everything gapless and self-luminous.
When we contemplate on the Bahiya Sutta, in seeing just the seen, or, in reference to the seen only the seen, no you in terms of that.. the point is not to objectify the seen or make an absolute statement that 'there is only X' (or like Empty Mirror would say 'There is only This') but to see that in reference to your immediate experience of X (in hearing or in sound, in seeing or in sight), which is undeniable, it is only X (that manifest foreground experience) and is empty of an agent, self, background observer apart from the self-luminosity of experience. Seen is seeing, there isn't a 'seer or seeing seeing the seen'. It is an immediate realization of the falsity of a self/Self/agent and that led to direct gapless experience of foreground self-luminosity without subsuming into subject (like pure subjectivity of advaita) or object.
'In seeing just the seen' or 'in reference to the seen only the seen' is descriptive rather than assertive, it is experiential, it simply points out your experience as it is, it points out the falsity of a subjective essence or Self, but it does not assert a truly existing object that the seen references or a subjective reality (such as clarity as changeless Self) in which the seen/seeing is subsumed into.
Non-dual luminosity becomes implicit, but as Thusness states, this is 'not sufficient'
2) See the utterly disjoint, unsupported, groundless aspect of all manifestations, another aspect of anatta that led to spontaneous manifestation and self-release without a linking agent or ground. This is not just the self-luminosity of manifestation without background aspect of anatta, a different side of anatta. This allowed me to dissolve the construct of 'actual ground, here/now, which I could abide/be grounded in/return to'.
3) We do not just realize 'in seeing just the seen' but understand that 'hearer', 'self' is an imputation on the aggregates, the sensory experiences, just like 'body' is an imputation on sensations (realizing this led to mind-body drop days after my initial anatta realization), 'weather' is an imputation on clouds shifting wind blowing sun shining all sorts of everchanging conditions but without a core essence... one applies this 'emptiness of imputation' to all aspects, from self to body to physical world to here/now, etc. This is seeing the view aspect of emptiness.
4) With the view of D.O. + actualization of anatta, we realize the dependent origination of everything! e.g. When hearing sound, we don't just 'see' the non-dual presence of sound, we see the seamless exertion of sound via the person, the stick, the bell, hitting, air, ears, etc, i.e. the conditions. The whole universe is the Tonggggg... great without boundaries, seamless and interdependent activity. What I wrote in 'Dharma Body' article.
5) We look at a thought, a sound, a sight, and we ask, is X truly arising? abiding? ceasing? anything coming into existence or is the appearance like a dream or a movie or a reflection appearing in a mirror, a dependently arisen appearance that is not born, not coming into existence, not abiding and ceasing, empty? where is X? where does X originate from, abide in, or go to? Until we resolve the emptiness and non-arising of X. There is wonder and bliss at the magic of empty-appearance, appearing yet empty, appearing but not arising. This is the emptiness and non-arising of pure sensory experience, not merely the imputation as in point 1/3.
6) Lastly once we keep double emptying we will realize that whatever dependently originates is spontaneously accomplished and naturally perfected. As Thusness wrote, "If there is no essence in both background and foreground, nothing is graspable. If nothing is graspable, there is no doing. If there is no doing, there is only effortless spontaneous accomplishment and natural perfection.
So from seeing 2 folds, you move towards the view of spontaneous perfection."
February 13 at 3:41pm · Edited · Like · 6
Soh "Though perfectly clear and vividly present as in non-dual experience, the 'seen' is radically different from the 'sound' -- this is its emptiness nature."
I would say this is spoken to counter the sense that Awareness is "one substance modulating as everything" as if everything is the same, one awareness. That is One Mind view. Awareness/luminosity is inseparable from conditions and empty.
Thusness: "
When consciousness experiences the pure sense of “I AM”, overwhelmed by the transcendental thoughtless moment of Beingness, consciousness clings to that experience as its purest identity. By doing so, it subtly creates a ‘watcher’ and fails to see that the ‘Pure Sense of Existence’ is nothing but an aspect of pure consciousness relating to the thought realm. This in turn serves as the karmic condition that prevents the experience of pure consciousness that arises from other sense-objects. Extending it to the other senses, there is hearing without a hearer and seeing without a seer -- the experience of Pure Sound-Consciousness is radically different from Pure Sight-Consciousness. Sincerely, if we are able to give up ‘I’ and replaces it with “Emptiness Nature”, Consciousness is experienced as non-local. No one state is purer than the other. All is just One Taste, the manifold of Presence."
February 13 at 5:23pm · Edited · Like · 5
John W. Hooper I am still reading the links Albert posted (thanks!). It will probably take me a while to fully understand it, but at least is makes sense in light of my own experiences over the last 30 years, whereas the One Mind that is everything seemed to merely move the self to a grander domain. My lifelong PCE experiences were not the experience of One Mind, but *as* pure luminous experience, unreferenced, empty, timeless. At one point, all objects were luminous for a few days, all day long. It was before I had any clear direction in my practice. Now I have had all kinds of insights and experiences, yet I still find myself often stuck back at the beginning, operating from the story of self, I just don't know what to do anymore. I did some AF, and it did produce more PCEs without a doubt, but it did not feel right to me. I tried the Empty Mirror approach, but it seems to demand belief, and rejects the "don't know" insights I learned so well from Zen. From what I understand so far, what you are saying could be an approach that would work for me. Right now I'm just trying to figure out where to begin.
February 13 at 8:06pm · Edited · Unlike · 3
Piotr Ludwiński Imho Soh is just writing about insights/"stages" and about asking oneself right questions that need to be "answered" through bare attention/vipassana mode od practice. But as far as I can see he is not giving any path/"approach" per se
February 13 at 8:27pm · Edited · Like
John W. Hooper Often others can easily see where I am making mistakes. It is obvious to them. After 30 years, I probably don't need a path from beginning to end, I just need to know what I didn't learn in my many practices over the years: Zen koan, Krishnamurti inq...See More
February 13 at 8:35pm · Like
Soh PCE is natural and effortless after deep insight into anatta... just focus on the insights... then PCE is realized as a natural state, not a stage to attain. My approach is different from AF approach - apart from view wise, AF emphasizes on cultivating the experience. I emphasize the realization. Experience comes naturally. As I said: "Anatta experience is characterized by direct, gapless, lurid, self-luminous experience of all sensory experiences. It cannot be otherwise. When you see through the agent, or sense of self/Self, everything becomes naturally direct, gapless, and you touch the very 'life', 'luminosity', 'clearness/vividness/knowingness' of manifestation, and there is only that - sound hears, sight sees. You are experiencing life (or rather - manifestation is experiencing itself directly, no 'you') directly rather than through an imputation (like seer-seeing-seen)."
Related: http://dharmaconnectiongroup.blogspot.sg/.../no-mind-and...
Dharma Connection: No Mind and Anatta, Focusing on Insight
dharmaconnectiongroup.blogspot.com
February 13 at 10:58pm · Edited · Like · 4 · Remove Preview
Albert Hong John W. Hooper
it's worth reading soh's ebook on his blogspot.
as it covers the whole gambit.
also stick around.
literally we have the same conversations over and over again.
meeting the same momentum's of ignorance.
it's rather a humorous, painful and patience driven expression.
February 14 at 2:34am · Edited · Unlike · 3
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