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What I experience is a deeper knowing, an inner stillness. It's continuously present and has a quite different quality to the usual activity of mind/body. I guess here I'm exploring ways of thinking about what the experience represents.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
I think it's something that is experienced rather than simply talked about. Awareness isn't a something that we can talk about with adjectives, nouns and verbs and come up with an adequate explanation. I was chatting with my friend and our local sangha leader, who has decades of experience and teachings under his belt, including having traveled the world and met with internationally known teachers and this is what he said when I mentioned we had been discussing this question. And it's what makes the most sense to me. Sometimes the answers we seek aren't exactly there, and perhaps there is a good reason for that. not everything can be logically understood or explained and sometimes, that has to be good enough. Perhaps when we experience such things the ability to explain it isn't there because we aren't supposed to explain it to those who haven't experienced it yet.
Anyhow, here is what my friend said "yes, awareness is not in the body/mind, the body/mind exist in and as awareness." I don't think awareness in that sense can be put in a box to be observed and described. You know when it's there. But why isn't that good enough? Why do we have to seek to logically understand it rather than just be a part of it?
@karasti said:
I think it's something that is experienced rather than simply talked about. Awareness isn't a something that we can talk about with adjectives, nouns and verbs and come up with an adequate explanation. I was chatting with my friend and our local sangha leader, who has decades of experience and teachings under his belt, including having traveled the world and met with internationally known teachers and this is what he said when I mentioned we had been discussing this question. And it's what makes the most sense to me. Sometimes the answers we seek aren't exactly there, and perhaps there is a good reason for that. not everything can be logically understood or explained and sometimes, that has to be good enough. Perhaps when we experience such things the ability to explain it isn't there because we aren't supposed to explain it to those who haven't experienced it yet.
Anyhow, here is what my friend said "yes, awareness is not in the body/mind, the body/mind exist in and as awareness." I don't think awareness in that sense can be put in a box to be observed and described. You know when it's there. But why isn't that good enough? Why do we have to seek to logically understand it rather than just be a part of it?
I always thought that what is well understood can be clearly explained. If awareness can’t be clearly explained, it is probably not well understood, even by experienced people.
This is not a problem, as long as we’re happy to do some more research.
Should we see awareness more as a verb than as a noun? For example, if you lift your forearm, who is doing the action? You biceps, elbow, motor cortex....or everything together? If the same is true for awareness, could we say that it is what the combination of the aggregates does at that precise moment in time?
I disagree. There are things experienced all the time that cannot be explained. Those who try to explain to others are usually simply waved away and not believed. If someone claimed to be Buddha tomorrow when you were standing in line at the market, would you listen to what that person had to say? Or would you dismiss them? What about if it was Jesus or another similar figure? Not everything experienced can be understood on a level that is well explained in language. Language has a LOT of limits. Especially in the western world. There are many things well conveyed in Eastern languages that Western language cannot translate well, if at all. They have singular words that it would take paragraphs to explain in English. Same with native languages. Some things can be explained, but only to those who have also experienced it.
Awareness/awakeness is outside of the aggregates. That is the point.
@pegembara said: This is the way it is. You detach. You let go. Whenever there is any feeling of clinging, we detach from it, because we know that that very feeling is just as it is. It didn’t come along especially to annoy us. We might think that it did, but in truth it just is that way. If we start to think and consider it further, that, too, is just as it is. If we let go, then form is merely form, sound is merely sound, odour is merely odour, taste is merely taste, touch is merely touch and the heart is merely the heart. It’s similar to oil and water. If you put the two together in a bottle, they won’t mix because of the difference of their nature.
Ajahn Chah
But who or what is letting go, detaching, turning away from, letting be? Who or what is the "you" and "we" referred to here?
Good question. Does it have a shape, color, boundary? Is it male/female, young/old? Is it over here or over there? If it is signless ie. without distinguishing marks, how could it ever be personal.
All things (conditioned and unconditioned) are not self - Sabbe dhamma anatta
"Unbinding lies on the other side of release."
"What lies on the other side of Unbinding?"
"You've gone too far, friend Visakha. You can't keep holding on up to the limit of questions. For the holy life gains a footing in Unbinding, culminates in Unbinding, has Unbinding as its final end.
^^^ agree with @karasti
If we talk about 'presence', 'attention', 'awareness', 'mindful', 'mind empty', people immediately ask, 'the presence of what?' 'the attention of what with what?' and so on.
... however, in the sense of using language to convey, point to but unable to really define with the precision reserved for science, we are in a limitation of language dilemma ...
Being mindful as a practice, can certainly be taught, explained and developed. It is however an aproximation of 'empty mindfulness' or form without being. The paradoxical use of language, conveys poorly what is impossible to describe sensibly.
« Ce qui ce conçoit bien, s’énonce clairement » (what is well understood, is clearly explained) is what Nocolas Boileau-Despreaux (France, 1636-1711) concluded ,adding that what is badly understood is explained in a muddied and convoluted way.
I think that’s true. Think about anything in life you know well, e.g. maths, science, grammatical rules, cooking..., and you’ll find that you can explain it clearly to a newcomer. Things you don’t understand that well though, are much harder to explain, if not impossible.
Why would it be different in spiritual practise? You can explain the experience, the learning curve etc...
Not being able to explain what’s really happening is just because we don’t have any scientific evidence to base ourselves upon. That is nothing to be ashamed about: scientists are only now slowly starting to understand how our brain works.
With such a basic knowledge of the brain, how can we expect to know the mind?
Accepting that we need to learn more is part of the path. For me, it is also part of the fun!
Because these types of experiences go beyond the rational, logical world that we live in. It goes beyond knowledge. There most certainly are things I have experienced that I cannot explain. But that is because I do not feel a need to explain, not because I don't understand. The understanding is on a level beyond language.
You remind me very much of my college aged son, @littlestudent. The world isn't so nearly black and white, however. No one is saying there isn't a whole lotta learning left to do. No one is claiming to know everything, or even a fraction of things. Not everything can be communicated, or perhaps the better word is to say not everything SHOULD be communicated.
Have you ever tried to explain an experience you had to someone who wasn't there? Like an amazing sunrise? You can use all sorts of colorful adjectives. you can even take an amazing photograph. But none of that comes close to having experienced it. What about love? you can write novels about what love is, obviously a lot of people have done that. But it does nothing to explain to someone what love is if they haven't experienced it.
Those types of experiences, where you are overwhelmed with the beauty of things are part of our awareness, our nature. They are a small opening to our awakened heart. You can explain what your senses picked up but you cannot explain all of it in words no matter how many you use. Because it is that awareness that is connecting you, not just your senses and other aggregates.
Awareness is obviously an experience that you have to experience to know what it is (sorry for using the same word twice! ), but how can you explain what exactly is happening without logic and rational words?
It might end up by being much less poetic, I agree, maybe something such as this or that group of neurons firing or being suppressed. However, that could –in the far future- then explain why it is beneficial!
I hope that does not sound too mundane. It is not because something consists of e.g. chemical reactions that it is less beautiful. On the contrary, knowing what it is made of makes it even more wonderful! Think of rainbow: is it less beautiful because you know what it is?
You can't. And perhaps we aren't meant to explain every experience. If you talk to some teachers they will actually tell you there are experiences that happen to beings that are just personal connections that aren't meant to be shared with the world. Not everything has to be explained in words and understood by others. Some things are ok just to know. They share the parts of it that fall within the aggregates, because that is how human beings see, perceive, understand and thus communicate within their social structures. But to limit us to only those things is a mistake. We are far more vast than that.
Obviously Buddha would know what awareness is. Yet he did not easily explain it to us, did he? Why not? If anyone had the words to understand it at an expert level, he did. Yet he leaves us with this question that we cannot answer.
I don't reduce human beings (or other beings) to simply a mass of processes that go on. That is part of our living, yes. But awareness is outside of that. It is not a matter of just not understanding like we used to not understand that cigarettes cause cancer or that rainbows weren't magic. It is different than that. But nothing I say can convince you of that. I just hope at some point you experience it and know what I mean.
DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
edited March 2016
Even when we can explain our experiences simply enough it helps to realize that we are the proverbial finger pointing to the moon.
Two people that have the same feeling of interconnectiveness will still end up explaining and expressing it slightly differently. Both of those explanations and expressions will be lost on some, understood by some and have the potential to become dogma in others.
I have a feeling that we are the infinite and unique aspects of an eternal and unnameable reality in the process of self awareness.
Who is aware?
I think that when we get a glimpse from beyond the constraints of a separate self it is Buddhanature or the Tao experiencing itself through our senses.
Whether or not it could be aware without us is a perplexing question too.
It indeed can get pretty complex and mind blowing to think about, lol. What is life, really? What is it to be alive? Is awareness part of life, or separate from it? Is awareness aware of itself? Aware of life? My uncle and a friend were debating this topic on my wall on FB all day. it's been really interesting to read along.
@pegembara said:> Good question. Does it have a shape, color, boundary? Is it male/female, young/old? Is it over here or over there? If it is signless ie. without distinguishing marks, how could it ever be personal.
I didn't suggest it was personal. If it makes the question clearer, try answering in terms of "what" rather than "who". What is letting go, detaching, turning away from, letting be?
@lobster said:> If we talk about 'presence', 'attention', 'awareness', 'mindful', 'mind empty', people immediately ask, 'the presence of what?' 'the attention of what with what?' and so on. Being mindful as a practice, can certainly be taught, explained and developed. It is however an aproximation of 'empty mindfulness' or form without being. The paradoxical use of language, conveys poorly what is impossible to describe sensibly.
I think you're still glossing over an important distinction here. "Just knowing" makes sense because it's passive. "Just mindfulness" doesn't make sense because it's active, a deliberate activity involved intention.
It's like the difference between "seeing" ( passive ) and "looking" ( active ).
Practice is active, the result of practice is passive.
@karasti said: Awareness/awakeness is outside of the aggregates. That is the point.
That's how it feels to me.
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
I think so @David, yes. That is kind of the entire point of the Heart Sutra. To go beyond the aggregates. I normally am not much of a sutra person, but that is one that I think really gets to the heart (lol, sorry) of what Buddhism is entirely. To be able to be open to that spacious awareness that is beyond the aggregates and to be able to experience it. On a quantum level reality doesn't exist unless someone/something is there to observe/measure it. Particles behave differently when they are being measured. Most likely our entire reality works this way, so our old "does a tree make a noise if it falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it" isn't as simple as we tend to think it is. Because, in fact, it might not make noise. How that plays into a higher level of awareness is interesting to consider. Awareness supposedly just is. But can it lie outside of physics? I'm not sure. Is awareness truly out there waiting for us to discover it, or isn't it there until we are experiencing it? that's why it's so important to not always be striving for those big moments in meditation. Perhaps they don't exist at all until we are in them.
I've had brief glimpses of it, and that is about the best I can say. That it is a vast spaciousness that is outside of all the aggregate factors. It's almost like it is the space that deep love and compassion live in, as cheesy as that probably sounds. But I'm not sure someone who has experienced it can explain it to someone who has not. Just like I think it's probably pretty hard for someone who is awakened and lives in that awareness or mindfullness to truly tell the rest of us what it is like.
@littlestudent Where we lose things like this in language, yes some of it is due to an inability to properly explain. But to discuss and reach a common ground, there has to be some shared experience. Then there is give and take, sharing of experience and idea and adjectives to compare, contrast and describe. I can say "to me, love is this, based on these experiences" and you can come back and say "Ok, I get that, but to me, I'd add these factors in based on these experiences" and then you continue and arrive at a bit of common ground. But when one party has not experienced love, you can never arrive at that common ground. However, even if you have not experienced something, just hearing someone talk about it can plant a little seed so that when it does happen you have a nugget to refer back to.
Things like awareness and mindfulness when you experience them on a higher level go beyond duality. Yet our language by it's very existence is a result of dual thinking. It is a result of comparing things and needing to label them. Yet in our practice we are trying to get beyond that. So I don't think there is always adequate language to explain something that goes beyond duality. Add to that the complication that no matter what a dictionary definition is, we all have our ideas of what words mean based on our cultural experiences and history of use of the word. I can say one word and you will understand it differently than I intended. Discussing the most banal topics can turn into arguments because of this, I'm sure we've all seen it, lol.
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
@karasti said:
I think so @David, yes. That is kind of the entire point of the Heart Sutra. To go beyond the aggregates. I normally am not much of a sutra person, but that is one that I think really gets to the heart (lol, sorry) of what Buddhism is entirely. To be able to be open to that spacious awareness that is beyond the aggregates and to be able to experience it.
That's my problem here though. How do "we" experience that which is beyond the aggregates without using the aggregates?
I've had brief glimpses of it, and that is about the best I can say. That it is a vast spaciousness that is outside of all the aggregate factors. It's almost like it is the space that deep love and compassion live in, as cheesy as that probably sounds. But I'm not sure someone who has experienced it can explain it to someone who has not. Just like I think it's probably pretty hard for someone who is awakened and lives in it to truly tell the rest of us what it is like.
Sometimes it's hard to explain it fully to another who has experienced it too. And it doesn't sound cheesy at all, lol.
You also have to be beyond the aggregates. I don't think we can relate to it because we are so firmly implanted in the reality that we experience. But if you've ever gone outside of it it's not like you are sitting on your cushion and you are observing being elsewhere. You aren't sensing or perceiving "you" being outside the aggregates and in the awareness. It is just there, and only when you are thrown out of it do you reconnect with the aggregates to try to make sense of what happened because your mind knows there was something else going on that was not connected to the reality we are usually living in.
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
But without the aggregates, what is pushed into or out of "it"?
Put it this way... How could we remember the experience (and I do, vividly) if we are beyond the aggregates?
Hello, I am very new here, so forgive the elementary response: I am wondering is it the Lion who see's the kitten staring back at him. This would be the analogy of me looking back in the mirror more times than not. Glad to be here.
Obviously Buddha would know what awareness is. Yet he did not easily explain it to us, did he? Why not? If anyone had the words to understand it at an expert level, he did. Yet he leaves us with this question that we cannot answer.
That's an important point.
I don't reduce human beings (or other beings) to simply a mass of processes that go on. That is part of our living, yes. But awareness is outside of that. It is not a matter of just not understanding like we used to not understand that cigarettes cause cancer or that rainbows weren't magic. It is different than that. But nothing I say can convince you of that. I just hope at some point you experience it and know what I mean.
In that case, I'm looking forward to learning/experiencing more!
Moreover, we live in exciting times, as neuroscience is making gigantic steps forward, and as we able to discuss it with people from all over the world.
@David because awareness/mindfulness IS everything, it includes and encompasses all, including our experience. We are part of the whole thing, but our intense clinging to self keeps up firmly attached to the aggregates except in the moments that awareness can see beyond it. We ARE that awareness. We don't get closer or farther from it, because "it" is all that there is. We just explain it that way because we live in a dualistic world stuck in our dualistic minds. Kind of like a fogged up window. You can clear the condensation and see out clearly, but only for a moment as the condensation fills in again. It's always there. The problem is on our end with our attachment to the aggregates, that is what gets in the way.
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
edited March 2016
@karasti said: @David because awareness/mindfulness IS everything, it includes and encompasses all, including our experience. We are part of the whole thing, but our intense clinging to self keeps up firmly attached to the aggregates except in the moments that awareness can see beyond it. We ARE that awareness. We don't get closer or farther from it, because "it" is all that there is. We just explain it that way because we live in a dualistic world stuck in our dualistic minds. Kind of like a fogged up window. You can clear the condensation and see out clearly, but only for a moment as the condensation fills in again. It's always there. The problem is on our end with our attachment to the aggregates, that is what gets in the way.
Hey, you're preaching to the choir here, lol. I'm not arguing any of that except for the level of awareness present without us to experience it.
I would call it a rudimentary form of consciousness but do not think there is self awareness to it except through sentient beings to experience it from (and ultimately beyond) a frame of reference.
@pegembara said:> Good question. Does it have a shape, color, boundary? Is it male/female, young/old? Is it over here or over there? If it is signless ie. without distinguishing marks, how could it ever be personal.
I didn't suggest it was personal. If it makes the question clearer, try answering in terms of "what" rather than "who". What is letting go, detaching, turning away from, letting be?
Note that I used the word "it", not he/she/them. What could "it" be without the signs, marks, mentally created distinctions? I believe some have called this "God", "Atman", "Ultimate Self". Whatever "it" is, you are not that for if you were we wouldn't be talking about "it" as if it is something separate.
And what monks, is the path leading to the not-fabricated (asaṅkhatagāmimagga)? The emptiness samādhi (suññatā samādhi), the signless samādhi (animittā samādhi), the undirected samādhi (appaṇihitā samādhi). This is called the path leading to the not-fabricated. http://measurelessmind.ca/bodhi/wordpress/?p=224
This theory will give you @SpinyNorman something to think about and perhaps put you on the right track...
Thought itself is the thinker which takes on an identity of its own ( ."Who asked the original question???" A thought identifying as @SpinyNorman the questioner did ! ) ...
So knowing in the ultimate sense, is just the all encompassing awareness, sans thought the thinker ... However back in the conventional everyday, run of the mill world, self-sense, we are just a thought that composes one of many identities from which the self either thinks it's aware of being aware of the altered state of awareness, or it thinks it does not...It's as simple as that
Food for thought (Or, perhaps who would have thought )
Now if this doesn't confuse the self out of you , then "I" give up
@Shoshin said:> Thought itself is the thinker which takes on an identity of its own ( ."Who asked the original question???" A thought identifying as @SpinyNorman the questioner did ! ) ...>
But there is non-conceptual awareness without thought. It seems that there is a deeper knowing which "sees through" this identification with thoughts, and with the aggregates generally. Mindfulness practice is one way to access it. https://suttacentral.net/en/sn43.5
@Will_Baker said:
"Who or what is being mindful?"
-oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine and magnesium.
That's how I see it for the moment indeed, even though my opinion might evolve as I become (hopefully) a bit more experienced.
@Will_Baker said: "Who or what is being mindful?"
-oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine and magnesium.
I don't think that chemical elements are capable of practising mindfulness.
That's a long article, is there anything particularly relevant to this discussion?
You can read the paragraph "The boys in the basement" to understand what awareness is looking at when we are mindful. It does not explain who or what awareness is, but I understand nobody can. However, personally I find it very helpful to know what it is actually doing.
@Will_Baker said: "Who or what is being mindful?"
-oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine and magnesium.
I don't think that chemical elements are capable of practising mindfulness.
Why don't you like chemicals? I know some of them ate toxic, but without them there is no life, no earth, no universe. They are us and we are them. They are wonderful. They are life.
@Will_Baker said: "Who or what is being mindful?"
-oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine and magnesium.
I don't think that chemical elements are capable of practising mindfulness.
-I don't know about mindfulness, but as this exchange demonstrates, those elements are certainly capable of arranging themselves such that they can communicate via the internet. And you did request we avoid cliches :-) Of course, since everything is stardust anyway, my response to you is as stripped down as I could make it...
@littlestudent said: Why don't you like chemicals? I know some of them ate toxic, but without them there is no life, no earth, no universe. They are us and we are them. They are wonderful. They are life.
I don't mind chemicals at all, and I rather like abiogenesis. But consciousness is not the same as chemical elements.
I think if you strip down anything completely, you'll find a combination and interaction of chemicals.
That's true, I think, for anything in life, including life itself and consciousness. The only problem is we don't know the exact formula. However, that might be a good thing!
"It does not explain who or what awareness is, but I understand nobody can..."
-@littlestudent, I'll copy/paste a bit below regard one theory:
"...the brain uses a method that most neuroscientists call attention. Lacking the resources to process everything at the same time, the brain focuses its processing on a very few items at any one time. Attention is a data-handling trick for deeply processing some information at the expense of most information. Second, the brain uses internal data to construct simplified, schematic models of objects and events in the world. Those models can be used to make predictions, try out simulations, and plan actions.
What happens when the brain inevitably combines those two talents? In theory, awareness is the brain’s simplified, schematic model of the complicated, data-handling process of attention. Moreover, a brain can use the construct of awareness to model its own attentional state or to model someone else’s attentional state. For example, Harry might be focusing his attention on a coffee stain on his shirt. You look at him and understand that Harry is aware of the stain. In the theory, much of the same machinery, the same brain regions and computational processing that are used in a social context to attribute awareness to someone else, are also used on a continuous basis to construct your own awareness and attribute it to yourself. Social perception and awareness share a substrate. The attention schema theory, as I eventually called it, takes a shot at explaining consciousness in a scientifically plausible manner without trivializing the problem..."
-M. Graziono, Consciousness and the Social Brain
@littlestudent said:>
I think if you strip down anything completely, you'll find a combination and interaction of chemicals.
That's true, I think, for anything in life, including life itself and consciousness. The only problem is we don't know the exact formula. However, that might be a good thing!
I think you need to start practising mindfulness, here and now. What you find might not be what you actually expect, so keep an open mind. If it helps to know, I am not some new-age air-head, I have a science degree and I'm an amateur naturalist and astronomer. I used to work as an Information Analyst for the Health Service in the UK and made a significant contribution to outcomes for heart attack patients.
Comments
It's a bit like a handful of water you try to grasp.
What I experience is a deeper knowing, an inner stillness. It's continuously present and has a quite different quality to the usual activity of mind/body. I guess here I'm exploring ways of thinking about what the experience represents.
who is "I"...?
(Isn't that the basis of your original question?)
I think it's something that is experienced rather than simply talked about. Awareness isn't a something that we can talk about with adjectives, nouns and verbs and come up with an adequate explanation. I was chatting with my friend and our local sangha leader, who has decades of experience and teachings under his belt, including having traveled the world and met with internationally known teachers and this is what he said when I mentioned we had been discussing this question. And it's what makes the most sense to me. Sometimes the answers we seek aren't exactly there, and perhaps there is a good reason for that. not everything can be logically understood or explained and sometimes, that has to be good enough. Perhaps when we experience such things the ability to explain it isn't there because we aren't supposed to explain it to those who haven't experienced it yet.
Anyhow, here is what my friend said "yes, awareness is not in the body/mind, the body/mind exist in and as awareness." I don't think awareness in that sense can be put in a box to be observed and described. You know when it's there. But why isn't that good enough? Why do we have to seek to logically understand it rather than just be a part of it?
I always thought that what is well understood can be clearly explained. If awareness can’t be clearly explained, it is probably not well understood, even by experienced people.
This is not a problem, as long as we’re happy to do some more research.
Should we see awareness more as a verb than as a noun? For example, if you lift your forearm, who is doing the action? You biceps, elbow, motor cortex....or everything together? If the same is true for awareness, could we say that it is what the combination of the aggregates does at that precise moment in time?
I disagree. There are things experienced all the time that cannot be explained. Those who try to explain to others are usually simply waved away and not believed. If someone claimed to be Buddha tomorrow when you were standing in line at the market, would you listen to what that person had to say? Or would you dismiss them? What about if it was Jesus or another similar figure? Not everything experienced can be understood on a level that is well explained in language. Language has a LOT of limits. Especially in the western world. There are many things well conveyed in Eastern languages that Western language cannot translate well, if at all. They have singular words that it would take paragraphs to explain in English. Same with native languages. Some things can be explained, but only to those who have also experienced it.
Awareness/awakeness is outside of the aggregates. That is the point.
Good question. Does it have a shape, color, boundary? Is it male/female, young/old? Is it over here or over there? If it is signless ie. without distinguishing marks, how could it ever be personal.
All things (conditioned and unconditioned) are not self - Sabbe dhamma anatta
Regards
^^^ agree with @karasti
If we talk about 'presence', 'attention', 'awareness', 'mindful', 'mind empty', people immediately ask, 'the presence of what?' 'the attention of what with what?' and so on.
... however, in the sense of using language to convey, point to but unable to really define with the precision reserved for science, we are in a limitation of language dilemma ...
Being mindful as a practice, can certainly be taught, explained and developed. It is however an aproximation of 'empty mindfulness' or form without being. The paradoxical use of language, conveys poorly what is impossible to describe sensibly.
« Ce qui ce conçoit bien, s’énonce clairement » (what is well understood, is clearly explained) is what Nocolas Boileau-Despreaux (France, 1636-1711) concluded ,adding that what is badly understood is explained in a muddied and convoluted way.
I think that’s true. Think about anything in life you know well, e.g. maths, science, grammatical rules, cooking..., and you’ll find that you can explain it clearly to a newcomer. Things you don’t understand that well though, are much harder to explain, if not impossible.
Why would it be different in spiritual practise? You can explain the experience, the learning curve etc...
Not being able to explain what’s really happening is just because we don’t have any scientific evidence to base ourselves upon. That is nothing to be ashamed about: scientists are only now slowly starting to understand how our brain works.
With such a basic knowledge of the brain, how can we expect to know the mind?
Accepting that we need to learn more is part of the path. For me, it is also part of the fun!
Because these types of experiences go beyond the rational, logical world that we live in. It goes beyond knowledge. There most certainly are things I have experienced that I cannot explain. But that is because I do not feel a need to explain, not because I don't understand. The understanding is on a level beyond language.
You remind me very much of my college aged son, @littlestudent. The world isn't so nearly black and white, however. No one is saying there isn't a whole lotta learning left to do. No one is claiming to know everything, or even a fraction of things. Not everything can be communicated, or perhaps the better word is to say not everything SHOULD be communicated.
Have you ever tried to explain an experience you had to someone who wasn't there? Like an amazing sunrise? You can use all sorts of colorful adjectives. you can even take an amazing photograph. But none of that comes close to having experienced it. What about love? you can write novels about what love is, obviously a lot of people have done that. But it does nothing to explain to someone what love is if they haven't experienced it.
Those types of experiences, where you are overwhelmed with the beauty of things are part of our awareness, our nature. They are a small opening to our awakened heart. You can explain what your senses picked up but you cannot explain all of it in words no matter how many you use. Because it is that awareness that is connecting you, not just your senses and other aggregates.
Awareness is obviously an experience that you have to experience to know what it is (sorry for using the same word twice!
), but how can you explain what exactly is happening without logic and rational words?
It might end up by being much less poetic, I agree, maybe something such as this or that group of neurons firing or being suppressed. However, that could –in the far future- then explain why it is beneficial!
I hope that does not sound too mundane. It is not because something consists of e.g. chemical reactions that it is less beautiful. On the contrary, knowing what it is made of makes it even more wonderful! Think of rainbow: is it less beautiful because you know what it is?
You can't. And perhaps we aren't meant to explain every experience. If you talk to some teachers they will actually tell you there are experiences that happen to beings that are just personal connections that aren't meant to be shared with the world. Not everything has to be explained in words and understood by others. Some things are ok just to know. They share the parts of it that fall within the aggregates, because that is how human beings see, perceive, understand and thus communicate within their social structures. But to limit us to only those things is a mistake. We are far more vast than that.
Obviously Buddha would know what awareness is. Yet he did not easily explain it to us, did he? Why not? If anyone had the words to understand it at an expert level, he did. Yet he leaves us with this question that we cannot answer.
I don't reduce human beings (or other beings) to simply a mass of processes that go on. That is part of our living, yes. But awareness is outside of that. It is not a matter of just not understanding like we used to not understand that cigarettes cause cancer or that rainbows weren't magic. It is different than that. But nothing I say can convince you of that. I just hope at some point you experience it and know what I mean.
Somebody and nobody is my final answer.
Even when we can explain our experiences simply enough it helps to realize that we are the proverbial finger pointing to the moon.
Two people that have the same feeling of interconnectiveness will still end up explaining and expressing it slightly differently. Both of those explanations and expressions will be lost on some, understood by some and have the potential to become dogma in others.
I have a feeling that we are the infinite and unique aspects of an eternal and unnameable reality in the process of self awareness.
Who is aware?
I think that when we get a glimpse from beyond the constraints of a separate self it is Buddhanature or the Tao experiencing itself through our senses.
Whether or not it could be aware without us is a perplexing question too.
It indeed can get pretty complex and mind blowing to think about, lol. What is life, really? What is it to be alive? Is awareness part of life, or separate from it? Is awareness aware of itself? Aware of life? My uncle and a friend were debating this topic on my wall on FB all day. it's been really interesting to read along.
Conventional truth: I am mindful
Ultimate truth: There is mindfulness
Bugs Bunny: What's up, doc?
Who or what has been really interested in reading along ??? .....Only joking
Who or what is joking?
I didn't suggest it was personal. If it makes the question clearer, try answering in terms of "what" rather than "who". What is letting go, detaching, turning away from, letting be?
I think you're still glossing over an important distinction here. "Just knowing" makes sense because it's passive. "Just mindfulness" doesn't make sense because it's active, a deliberate activity involved intention.
It's like the difference between "seeing" ( passive ) and "looking" ( active ).
Practice is active, the result of practice is passive.
That's how it feels to me.
But could it be aware if the aggregates didn't offer a vehicle?
I think so @David, yes. That is kind of the entire point of the Heart Sutra. To go beyond the aggregates. I normally am not much of a sutra person, but that is one that I think really gets to the heart (lol, sorry) of what Buddhism is entirely. To be able to be open to that spacious awareness that is beyond the aggregates and to be able to experience it. On a quantum level reality doesn't exist unless someone/something is there to observe/measure it. Particles behave differently when they are being measured. Most likely our entire reality works this way, so our old "does a tree make a noise if it falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it" isn't as simple as we tend to think it is. Because, in fact, it might not make noise. How that plays into a higher level of awareness is interesting to consider. Awareness supposedly just is. But can it lie outside of physics? I'm not sure. Is awareness truly out there waiting for us to discover it, or isn't it there until we are experiencing it? that's why it's so important to not always be striving for those big moments in meditation. Perhaps they don't exist at all until we are in them.
I've had brief glimpses of it, and that is about the best I can say. That it is a vast spaciousness that is outside of all the aggregate factors. It's almost like it is the space that deep love and compassion live in, as cheesy as that probably sounds. But I'm not sure someone who has experienced it can explain it to someone who has not. Just like I think it's probably pretty hard for someone who is awakened and lives in that awareness or mindfullness to truly tell the rest of us what it is like.
@littlestudent Where we lose things like this in language, yes some of it is due to an inability to properly explain. But to discuss and reach a common ground, there has to be some shared experience. Then there is give and take, sharing of experience and idea and adjectives to compare, contrast and describe. I can say "to me, love is this, based on these experiences" and you can come back and say "Ok, I get that, but to me, I'd add these factors in based on these experiences" and then you continue and arrive at a bit of common ground. But when one party has not experienced love, you can never arrive at that common ground. However, even if you have not experienced something, just hearing someone talk about it can plant a little seed so that when it does happen you have a nugget to refer back to.
Things like awareness and mindfulness when you experience them on a higher level go beyond duality. Yet our language by it's very existence is a result of dual thinking. It is a result of comparing things and needing to label them. Yet in our practice we are trying to get beyond that. So I don't think there is always adequate language to explain something that goes beyond duality. Add to that the complication that no matter what a dictionary definition is, we all have our ideas of what words mean based on our cultural experiences and history of use of the word. I can say one word and you will understand it differently than I intended. Discussing the most banal topics can turn into arguments because of this, I'm sure we've all seen it, lol.
That's my problem here though. How do "we" experience that which is beyond the aggregates without using the aggregates?
Sometimes it's hard to explain it fully to another who has experienced it too. And it doesn't sound cheesy at all, lol.
It feels like a symbiotic relationship almost.
You also have to be beyond the aggregates. I don't think we can relate to it because we are so firmly implanted in the reality that we experience. But if you've ever gone outside of it it's not like you are sitting on your cushion and you are observing being elsewhere. You aren't sensing or perceiving "you" being outside the aggregates and in the awareness. It is just there, and only when you are thrown out of it do you reconnect with the aggregates to try to make sense of what happened because your mind knows there was something else going on that was not connected to the reality we are usually living in.
But without the aggregates, what is pushed into or out of "it"?
Put it this way... How could we remember the experience (and I do, vividly) if we are beyond the aggregates?
Hello, I am very new here, so forgive the elementary response: I am wondering is it the Lion who see's the kitten staring back at him. This would be the analogy of me looking back in the mirror more times than not. Glad to be here.
That's an important point.
In that case, I'm looking forward to learning/experiencing more!
Moreover, we live in exciting times, as neuroscience is making gigantic steps forward, and as we able to discuss it with people from all over the world.
Welcome VWStanford!
Thank you very much! I have SO much to learn, but am very much looking forward to the journey!
"Joking" of course
@David because awareness/mindfulness IS everything, it includes and encompasses all, including our experience. We are part of the whole thing, but our intense clinging to self keeps up firmly attached to the aggregates except in the moments that awareness can see beyond it. We ARE that awareness. We don't get closer or farther from it, because "it" is all that there is. We just explain it that way because we live in a dualistic world stuck in our dualistic minds. Kind of like a fogged up window. You can clear the condensation and see out clearly, but only for a moment as the condensation fills in again. It's always there. The problem is on our end with our attachment to the aggregates, that is what gets in the way.
Hey, you're preaching to the choir here, lol. I'm not arguing any of that except for the level of awareness present without us to experience it.
I would call it a rudimentary form of consciousness but do not think there is self awareness to it except through sentient beings to experience it from (and ultimately beyond) a frame of reference.
Note that I used the word "it", not he/she/them. What could "it" be without the signs, marks, mentally created distinctions? I believe some have called this "God", "Atman", "Ultimate Self". Whatever "it" is, you are not that for if you were we wouldn't be talking about "it" as if it is something separate.
Regards
This theory will give you @SpinyNorman something to think about and perhaps put you on the right track...
Thought itself is the thinker which takes on an identity of its own ( ."Who asked the original question???" A thought identifying as @SpinyNorman the questioner did ! ) ...
So knowing in the ultimate sense, is just the all encompassing awareness, sans
thought the thinker ... However back in the conventional everyday, run of the mill world, self-sense, we are just a thought that composes one of many identities from which the self either thinks it's aware of being aware of the altered state of awareness, or it thinks it does not...It's as simple as that
Food for thought
(Or, perhaps who would have thought ) 
Now if this doesn't confuse the self out of you , then "I" give up
Or The Deathless, the unconditioned, Buddha Nature, original face, and so on. Different ways of talking about the same thing?
But there is non-conceptual awareness without thought. It seems that there is a deeper knowing which "sees through" this identification with thoughts, and with the aggregates generally. Mindfulness practice is one way to access it.
https://suttacentral.net/en/sn43.5
"Who or what is being mindful?"
-oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine and magnesium.
What is velocity?
-Velocity is a virtue of a body due it's speed.
Who is getting velocity?
-body
So does it mean that body is being mindful? if applied same analogy.
After all Theravada does not differ body and self.
That's how I see it for the moment indeed, even though my opinion might evolve as I become (hopefully) a bit more experienced.
Thanks to the modular model of the brain that most modern psychologist seem to agree upon, we have an idea of what we're looking at when we're mindful.
See http://www.wildmind.org/blogs/on-practice/the-empty-room-the-plagiarist-and-the-boys-in-the-basement for an explanation in easy words.
However, it doesn't explain what awareness is, except if awareness is indeed just life, body, the chemicals that make us what we are...
That's a long article, is there anything particularly relevant to this discussion?
I don't think that chemical elements are capable of practising mindfulness.
There is mindfulness of the body, but also mindfulness of the mind.
You can read the paragraph "The boys in the basement" to understand what awareness is looking at when we are mindful. It does not explain who or what awareness is, but I understand nobody can. However, personally I find it very helpful to know what it is actually doing.
Why don't you like chemicals? I know some of them ate toxic, but without them there is no life, no earth, no universe. They are us and we are them. They are wonderful. They are life.
-I don't know about mindfulness, but as this exchange demonstrates, those elements are certainly capable of arranging themselves such that they can communicate via the internet. And you did request we avoid cliches :-) Of course, since everything is stardust anyway, my response to you is as stripped down as I could make it...
I don't mind chemicals at all, and I rather like abiogenesis. But consciousness is not the same as chemical elements.
I think if you strip down anything completely, you'll find a combination and interaction of chemicals.
That's true, I think, for anything in life, including life itself and consciousness. The only problem is we don't know the exact formula. However, that might be a good thing!
"It does not explain who or what awareness is, but I understand nobody can..."
-@littlestudent, I'll copy/paste a bit below regard one theory:
"...the brain uses a method that most neuroscientists call attention. Lacking the resources to process everything at the same time, the brain focuses its processing on a very few items at any one time. Attention is a data-handling trick for deeply processing some information at the expense of most information. Second, the brain uses internal data to construct simplified, schematic models of objects and events in the world. Those models can be used to make predictions, try out simulations, and plan actions.
What happens when the brain inevitably combines those two talents? In theory, awareness is the brain’s simplified, schematic model of the complicated, data-handling process of attention. Moreover, a brain can use the construct of awareness to model its own attentional state or to model someone else’s attentional state. For example, Harry might be focusing his attention on a coffee stain on his shirt. You look at him and understand that Harry is aware of the stain. In the theory, much of the same machinery, the same brain regions and computational processing that are used in a social context to attribute awareness to someone else, are also used on a continuous basis to construct your own awareness and attribute it to yourself. Social perception and awareness share a substrate. The attention schema theory, as I eventually called it, takes a shot at explaining consciousness in a scientifically plausible manner without trivializing the problem..."
-M. Graziono, Consciousness and the Social Brain
I think you need to start practising mindfulness, here and now. What you find might not be what you actually expect, so keep an open mind. If it helps to know, I am not some new-age air-head, I have a science degree and I'm an amateur naturalist and astronomer. I used to work as an Information Analyst for the Health Service in the UK and made a significant contribution to outcomes for heart attack patients.