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Mindfulness/Awareness
ThailandTom
Veteran
in Meditation
So I have established for my practice that in everday situations one needs to observe when feelings or thoughts arise, are they good or bad, what do they lead to and where do they come from. Or this is my perception of what should be done from my recent reading, and of course just reading is useless so I want to bring it from the text to my practice. Can anybody offer up their experiences with this side of Buddhism and any tips? Cheers.
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What is the result if I don't claim ownership of those thing? [2nd, 3rd, 4th NT]
But I've just realized... THIS. This is it. I've become more aware of my thoughts and instead of simply identifying with them, it's allowed me to take a step back and wonder, "Why am I feeling this way?" Thoughts and emotions can appear extremely flawed when you actually observe the reasoning behind them. But if you never look... you just go on exactly as you were before... possibly unacceptably angry or unreasonably entitled... at the mercy of the eight winds, as some might say.
The eight winds are: gain and loss, fame and defame, praise and blame, pleasure and pain. They are based upon the eight worldly dharmas. From: this website.
1 being our friend to ourself
2 seeing what is there
3 sitting with difficulty
4 ? (maybe to be in the present moment?)
5 a sense of no big deal
Go practice, you!
Is it even possible not to observe them?
So what is actually happening when we try to observe?
Most of the time. Definitely. We focus.
Not much probably
If you want to understand anatta, not-self, it is helpful to see that no one is trying to focus in meditation, and that no one sees this.
From our eyes to our thoughts, how could self or not-self ever be seen or understood?
And then see what happens when there is no aversion or attachment.
And if there is aversion towards aversion then allow aversion with a loving mindfulness.
And if there is attachment then allow that attachment with loving mindfulness.
If you allow and rest the push, pull what happens to the thing? What happens to the solidity?
And when there is push and pull is there a rise in solidity of phenomena?
Throughly examine this in your experience.
In what you consider the self and other phenomena as well.
When you do this long enough then the Buddhadharma will make sense and you will see how suffering is constructed and how suffering is released.
It is stupid simple and subtle.
Best wishes my friend.
mind...
But this isn't the way things are, is it?
Awareness cannot be separated from the sense objects.
In thinking just the thought, nothing else.
In smelling just the smell, nothing else.
In tasting just the taste, nothing else.
All of these vivid arising. Appearing where they are and then gone.
Sense of body is a grouping of sensations and color then imputation of body onto those to create a sense of wholeness/thingness.
Examine how reality is constructed.
See how color meets color to form shape. How light meets shape and forms form. And how the mind brings this all together and labels and distinctions are formed.
See how the thingness arises together with the name.
See how clinging (aversion/attachment) solidify that which is assumed to have thingness. And see how assuming thingness automatically creates clinging.
See how relationships between self and phenomena can only occur if there is an assumption of an independently existent thing.
If there is no relationship, there is no thing.
See how perception arises directly with experience. See how if you change perception then experience changes.
See how if there is no perception then there is no experience of thingness.
Just vivid, shimmering appearances. Utterly empty, no substance. Just sound, gone. Just thought, gone. All magical, apparent, clear, yet totally made up of no "thing".
Consciousness can't pay attention to itself, can it?
I appreciate you taking the time to help me out, but I'm still faaaar from sold on the "no self" idea.
It just means not adding to what does exist.
As if consciousness was a light that could be extinguished, leaving darkness?
You see, there's no absence of it, because it isn't a phenomenon like light, existing in a relative world, and it certainly isn't consciousness.
So reality is there as it is, and our entire lives we have been adding things to it such names/labels and misconceptions etc?
But the names and labels and misconceptions are it too.
Goodnight
My pet theory is that no self means no ego self or no mind, not the actual end of existence or awareness.
I say "my pet theory" but it's a pretty common one, I just don't know how or if it ties into Buddhist theory and it's the one I personally believe.
That is what Ven. Khemaka said. Gratified, the elder monks delighted in his words. And while this explanation was being given, the minds of sixty-some monks, through no clinging, were fully released from fermentations — as was Ven. Khemaka's.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.089.than.html