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I believe that you are far too dismissive of this intrinsic feeling, of the I Am; or said more intimately, dismissive of your 'Original Me,' simply because the mind cannot flesh it out with description.
I also have to wonder if, in throwing away your ego, you haven’t also thrown away the baby with the bath water?
For me, it is because of contemplated this very feeling of ‘Me,’ and in this way asking “Who am I?” as Ramana says we should, that I have been able to go beyond definitions.
In contemplating this ‘Original Me,’ I have continued to deepen within it, become it, to the point where satisfaction has come to stay. This ‘Me’ is not like anything else, and yet it is very Real.
This ‘Me’ is not two, and it is not one, and yet it is not empty. “Me” is an ‘Alive Presence,’ which once experienced; cannot be denied.
Run as you may, you cannot outrun 'Intrinsic Me.' Everywhere you go, it is right there with you. Don’t take my word for it. Try to out run the 'Presence of Me,' and see where that gets you. It is impossible.
Hello,
I'll be replying your post in reverse order. First of all let it be clear that I am not dismissing the clear experience and insight of that I AM Presence (this is what I have been trying to point out in 11-11-2009, 12:24 PM). It's impossible. It's undoubtable. That sense of pure Beingness, Presence, I AMness, is the most real 'thing' or 'non-thing', for whatever you are experiencing at that moment, that sense of Presence, Beingness, Pure Knowingness is constantly present, cognizant, alive and is your very nature, with such vividness and realness such that everything else including thoughts pales in comparison and is seen as merely like a dream or an illusion (though no longer the case in non-dual realisation when these phenomena themselves reveal as Presence as you will see later). And yes, You can't run away from You, for that attempt to run away is simply a thought arising in the clear presence of You. Even if one wants to doubt that I AM Presence, that I AM Presence is present as that to which the doubting arises, and that is undeniable, so the doubt is without basis. So it is certainly not just an experience that is available at a particular meditative state or a particular experience, it just goes unnoticed for most people whose attention is almost constantly fixated on and chasing after their conceptual notion of self and things. But Presence can never be lost anytime (it is timeless) and that is not separate at all from you -- It cannot be made an object of observation from a point of view of an observer, for you are never separate from IT -- this Presence that you are, being of the nature of cognizance is Self-Knowing. Therefore as I state earlier, that pure I AMness is non-dual, non-separate. For it is YOU/I, so when one who realises it feels that he/she has touched his innermost core of being.
So if I am not dismissing this clear experience and insight of I AMness then what am I talking about? I'm saying that, to quote from Thusness, that there is no forgoing of this I AMness but "...it is rather a deepening of insight to include the non-dual, groundlessness and interconnectedness of our luminous nature. Like what Rob said, "keep the experience but refine the views"." -- so again, same Presence as I AMness, only that one sees through the notion of center-ness, the notion of being a permanent agent, seeing the non-dual nature (not non-dual as I AM but non-dual with all phenomena), etc.
And by that: I mean, originally the I AMness feels centered, not in the sense of being located somewhere in phenomena or the body-mind, but centered in a sense that there is still some separation between this I AMness and phenomena. You feel that this I AMness not AS those phenomena, but as behind all those passing phenomena.
However there will come a time, resting in I AMness, if you then look at, say, a mountain, you might begin to notice that the sensation of the I AM or Pure Being and the sensation of the mountain are the same sensation. When you "feel" your pure Self and you "feel" the mountain, they are absolutely the same feeling. (see Some Writings on Non-duality by Ken Wilber - Do read this) And when this realisation arise, you cannot deny this as well, the non-dual Presence revealing As everything cannot be denied just as you cannot deny the I AMness. The I AM-Presence is no more I AM, no more real, non-dual, and vivid than the non-dual Mountain-Presence, so to speak, and there is no trace of separation between you and that Mountain-Presence just as you do not feel separate from the I AM Presence. Just pure mountain-presence, bird chirping-presence, without a hearer, feeler, seer, etc.
I was meditating the above stanza deeply…about its meaning until one day, suddenly I heard ‘tongss…’, it was so clear, there was nothing else, just the sound and nothing else! And ‘tongs…’ resounding…. It was so clear, so vivid!
That experience is so familiar, so real and so clear. It is the same experience of “I AM”….it is without thought, without concepts, without intermediary, without anyone there, without any in-between…What is it? IT is Presence! But this time it is not ‘I AM’, it is not asking ‘who am I’, it is not the pure sense of “I AM”, it is ‘TONGSss….’, the pure Sound…
Then come Taste, just the Taste and nothing else….
The heart beats…..
the Scenery…
(as you can see also, the methodology is also different, to give rise to the non-conceptual experience/insight of I AM you contemplate 'Who am I' Ramana Maharshi style, and like you, Thusness was very attracted to Ramana Maharshi at that stage and collected all his books... and also very attracted to Zen (because after the I AM realisation one feels authenticated by these texts easily) but to realise non-dual and no-self, you contemplate on something different, as stated here On Anatta (No-Self), Emptiness, Maha and Ordinariness, and Spontaneous Perfection -- this is not to say R.M. or Zen only reached Stage 1 but that they emphasize a lot on leading practitioners to the I AM realisation first, which is an important realisation btw and paves the way to further realisations, but it is clear that even they do not stop at Stage 1 - I AM -- see R.M.'s explanation of 'Brahman is the World' (scroll to the bottom: http://www.kheper.net/topics/Vedanta/Ramana_on_creation.html) for instance, though many of them, many Zen masters included, stop at Stage 4 Non-Dual Brahman, though not always the case)
So this time, it is still the same non-dual self-knowing presence as I AM, except that its nonseparation is the non-separation of you and mountain. There is no sense of being an outside observer apart from the mountain. No sense of standing back from the mountain. No sense of distance at all from 'you' and 'mountain', 0 distance, just as you feel 0 distance with the I AM Presence. When you see this (when there is no 'you' to see this), then any sense of subtle localization at all, whether somewhere in your body-mind, somewhere in your head, completely dissolves, and you no longer feel you are looking out from yourself through your eyes at the mountain, and there is Just mountain itself, self-aware, self-felt. Just non-localized Presence pervading and not separate from all phenomena. This is the meaning of 'body-mind drop off'. So there is sound, taste, touch, but no sense of a separate hearer, taster, feeler, etc. You enter (well not exactly 'enter' since it is not a stage, but rather to realised it as always already so) the mode of being/seeing where there is just mountain self-aware of itself. So again it is the same self-aware Presence as I AM, but except this time it is self-aware Presence as Sound, Taste, Touch, Smells, Sight, even Thought. Everything reveals itself as Pure Non-Dual Presence. And I emphasize again, that this must arise as an Insight into the nature of reality, and is not an altered state of experience or a meditative state, just as the I AMness is not something induced by meditation but is something that is very fundamental as the nature of reality itself, already always so.
The sense of The Center dissolves and Presence turns out to be everything -- everything is a center, a point of luminous clarity, a manifestation of buddha-nature.
This is what is meant by the analogy given by Thusness:
The first 'I-ness' stage of experiencing awareness face to face is like a point on a sphere which you called it the center. You marked it.
Then later you realized that when you marked other points on the surface of a sphere, they have the same characteristics. This is the initial experience of non-dual. Once the insight of No-Self is stabilized, you just freely point to any point on the surface of the sphere -- all points are a center, hence there is no 'the' center. 'The' center does not exist: all points are a center.
After then practice move from 'concentrative' to 'effortlessness'. That said, after this initial non-dual insight, 'background' will still surface occasionally for another few years due to latent tendencies.
So at this point, since there is no more sense of The Center, it is as Dan Berkow says: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/search/label/Dan%20Berkow
What has happened to the awareness previously situated as "the observer"? Now, awareness and perception are unsplit. For example, if a tree is perceived, the "observer" is "every leaf of the tree". There is no observer/awareness apart from things,
nor are there any things apart from awareness. What dawns is: "this is it". All the pontifications, pointings, wise sayings, implications of "special knowledge", fearless quests for truth, paradoxically clever insights -- all of these are seen to be unnecessary and beside the point. "This", exactly as is, is "It". There is no need to add to "This" with anything further, in fact there is no "further" - nor is there any "thing" to hold on to, or to do away with.
....
Not using "I AM", and instead referring to "pure awareness", is a way to say the awareness isn't focused on an "I" nor is it concerned with distinguishing being from not-being regarding
itself. It isn't viewing itself in any sort of objectifying way, so wouldn't have concepts about states it is in -- "I AM" only fits as opposed to "something else is", or "I am not". With no "something else" and no "not-I", there can't be an "I AM" awareness. "Pure awareness" can be criticized in a similar way - is there "impure" awareness, is there something other than awareness? So the terms "pure awareness, or just "awareness" are simply used to interact through dialogue, with recognition that words always imply dualistic contrasts.
Even the notion of 'Consciousness' as I mentioned earlier as something granduer, something more ultimate than transient manifestation, eventually the notion is dropped (it is already naturally implicit in/as everything without needing to make it an ultimate reality), as Greg Goode puts it:
once experience doesn't seem divided and once it doesn't seem like there is anything other than consciousness, then the notion of consciousness itself will gently and peacefully dissolve.
And then, even if this non-dual is clearly seen through, not to mistake that this is the end of the path. This is just Stage 4. There are further insights, which do not in any way deny the vividness and clarity of Presence but provides clearer insight into the nature of that Presence (i.e. the insights of anatta, emptiness, interdependent origination, etc)
It will not be easy to understand or be convinced about non-duality, let alone anatta and emptiness, until you have a real taste, glimpse, and hopefully a 'decisive realisation' beyond mere glimpses that will make this as clear as cloudless sunlit sky, just as once you had a clear taste of I AMness it is not going to be something that can be doubted. Eventually the clinging to Pure Subjectivity dissolves when the last trace of it being more ultimate than something else dissolves, and it happens on its own accord when the insight manifests.
I think that “the sense of observation” is a fine way to put it; as you are certainly aware of this observing that seems to be going on. Yet, at the same time, you cannot quite seem to put your finger on what, or who, is looking,
As Lin Chi has said, “Who is this fellow going in and out of my eyes? “
However, I do agree with Krishnamurti in this way, that when speaking about I Am, the observed being the I Am is also the observer, but of one piece.
Yet, we must not take this as dualistic, just because language has a propensity to lean us in this direction. I believe that Krishnamurti was speaking of a more 'Intrinsic Knowing,' which isn’t actually broken up into pieces like observer and observed. You might rather say that, the I Am knows its self to be the I Am, and all that that entails, simply by being its self.
Krishnamurti never talks about I AM. Observer is observed can mean two things: the I AM is Self-Knowing without subject-object division, or it could mean that the sense of an observer turns out to be none other than everything that is experienced such that there is no trace of an observer apart from these sights, sounds, etc. This is what he meant (the 2nd one). He is always talking about Non-Duality in that sense -- the non-duality of thinker and thought, seer and scenery, hearer and sound, etc. And his insight on that matter (non-dual, and anatta) is subtle but seldom do people understand him.
For example:
You look at this magnificent tree and you wonder who is watching whom and presently there is no watcher at all. Everything is so intensely alive and there is only life, and the watcher is as dead as that leaf... Utterly still... listening without a moment of action, without recording, without experiencing, only seeing and listening... really the outside is the inside and the inside is the outside, and it is difficult, almost impossible to separate them. (p. 214)
So we are asking is there a holistic awareness of all the senses, therefore there is never asking for the 'more'. I wonder if you follow all this ?. Are we together in this even partially? And where there is this total - fully aware - of all the senses, awareness of it - not you are aware of it.... the awareness of the senses in themselves - then there is no centre - in which there is awareness of the wholeness. If you consider it, you will see that to suppress the senses... is contradictory, conflicting, sorrowful.... To understand the truth you must have complete sensitivity. Do you understand Sirs? Reality demands your whole being; you must come to it with your body, mind, and heart as a total human being..... Insight is complete total attention....
When this is a fact not an idea, then dualism and division between observer and observed comes to an end. The observer is the observed - they are not separate states. The observer and the observed are a joint phenomenon and when you experience that directly then you will find that the thing which you have dreaded as emptiness which makes you seek escape into various forms of sensation including religion - ceases and you are able to face it and be it.
- Collection of K teachings from the KFT CDROM
Watch what is happening inside you, do not think, but just watch, do not move your eye-balls, just keep them very, very quiet, because there is nothing to see now, you have seen all the things around you, now you are seeing what is happening inside your mind, and to see what is happening inside your mind, you have to be very quiet inside. And when you do this, do you know what happens to you? You become very sensitive, you become very alert to things outside and inside. Then you find out that the outside is the inside, then you find out that the observer is the observed.
- Pg 36, K on education
As long as there is the thinker and the thought, there must be duality. As long as there is a seeker who is seeking, there must be duality. As long as there is an experiencer and the thing to be experienced, there must be duality. So duality exists when there is the observer and the observed. That is, as long as there is a centre, the censor, the observer, the thinker, the seeker, the experiencer as the centre, there must be the opposite.
- Talks by Krishnamurty in India 1966 p.72
Liberation is not an end. Liberation is from moment to moment in the understanding of 'what is'-when the mind is free, not made free.
Are not the thinker and his thought an inseparable phenomenon? Why do we separate the thought from the thinker? Is it not one of the cunning tricks of the mind so that the thinker can change his garb according to circumstances, yet remain the same? Outwardly there is the appearance of change but inwardly the thinker continues to be as he is. The craving for continuity, for permanency, creates this division between the thinker and his thoughts. When the thinker and his thought become inseparable then only is duality transcended. Only then is there the true religious experience. Only when the thinker ceases is there Reality. This inseparable unity of the thinker and his thought is to be experienced but not to be speculated upon. This experience is liberation; in it there is inexpressible joy.
- Authentic Report of Sixteen Talks given in 1945 & 1946 ...p.14.
One day some years ago, after I had made the decision not to step out of the now, or rather never to continue seeking into the future again, (because if what I wanted wasn’t in this very moment, than it was no where), I also realized what I call the ‘I Am’ wasn’t within my body, but that it was also out there in the room all around me. So I am not mistaking the I Am as being a thing with location, neither am I personifying it as my higher self.
However, just because I see the mind clearly to be made up out of the observer and the observed, not actually separated in any way, doesn’t mean that I must own this process and call it me.
Believe me I am not saying you are wrong, and I believe that I am receptive to deepening, fully understanding that this is possible, having undergone such before. But, at this time, I do not see why I have to call everything that I see me. That seems more like a characteristic of mind, to own everything it looks at, to look at tree and morph into being tree.
Where I Am right now, I feel more like an empty room that is fully aware. I don’t seem to have any inclination to start moving things into that room.
What you have just written to me is a magnificent piece of work. It is so clear. I feel honored that you are taking so much trouble for me.
Yet, at the very same time, I am not going to take one step that I do not merit by having witness myself that it is the next best step, or more correct. This is not out of stubbornness on my part. This is more because, at this point, I am more moved than in charge of moving. It is almost spiritually organic, or rather built in, if you will, more like a rose blooming than that same rose being yanked open willfully.
At this point, I could no more turn my back on the ‘I Am,’ than I could kill my own mother. But also like a teenager, who is beginning to see mom differently, I fully understand that my take on mom is going to mature with time.
I do hope that what I am saying here, is also giving something to you. If not, than I hope that you are at least at such a good place, that you do not need my help.
You know, for people supposedly acquainted with the "I AM" of everything, both of you are showing your true knowledge on the subject, and that "knowledge" doesn't seem to be amounting to much, even if you don't claim to be enlightened.
I guess the answer to this one is, because the masters, esp. often the Zen masters, write the punch lines out for us. But, we don’t really get the joke.
It surprised me, when I first heard about the people who at the moment of enlightenment, laughed out loud?
One day some years ago, after I had made the decision not to step out of the now, or rather never to continue seeking into the future again, (because if what I wanted wasn’t in this very moment, than it was no where), I also realized what I call the ‘I Am’ wasn’t within my body, but that it was also out there in the room all around me. So I am not mistaking the I Am as being a thing with location, neither am I personifying it as my higher self.
However, just because I see the mind clearly to be made up out of the observer and the observed, not actually separated in any way, doesn’t mean that I must own this process and call it me.
Yes, the I AM is definitely not localized in mind-body but is oceanic and space-like. However there is still some subtle separation with phenomena initially.
Believe me I am not saying you are wrong, and I believe that I am receptive to deepening, fully understanding that this is possible, having undergone such before. But, at this time, I do not see why I have to call everything that I see me. That seems more like a characteristic of mind, to own everything it looks at, to look at tree and morph into being tree.
If you do experience that, that is non-dual experience. There is no conceptual boundary of what is me and what is not me, only ISness as everything, not any less vivid as the I AM.
Where I Am right now, I feel more like an empty room that is fully aware. I don’t seem to have any inclination to start moving things into that room.
Right. You can't move things into that room. Things spontaneously manifest on its own as Consciousness without intentions or knowledge beforehand, including thoughts (can you ever know what your next thought will be or does it just come up?) This is what all the fuss about the 'no doer', 'spontaneous arising' teachings is about.
Also be careful with spatial analogies like 'room' or 'space' as we can be unknowingly creating a subtle duality there especially if we think in terms of 'things coming into the room and out of the room'.
So Thusness would say
Do not underestimate the impact of the constant chattering in a dualistic manner. If we continuously repeat “phenomenon arises in awareness” and not “as Awareness”, even though there never was a separation, consciousness will see as if there is a separation. Although it may seem to be a casual expression for communication sake, the impact is subtle. In time to come, the slow and subtle impact will make separation appear amazingly real. This is true even for those that have experienced non-duality; they are not spared from it.
Yet, at the very same time, I am not going to take one step that I do not merit by having witness myself that it is the next best step, or more correct. This is not out of stubbornness on my part. This is more because, at this point, I am more moved than in charge of moving. It is almost spiritually organic, or rather built in, if you will, more like a rose blooming than that same rose being yanked open willfully.
At this point, I could no more turn my back on the ‘I Am,’ than I could kill my own mother. But also like a teenager, who is beginning to see mom differently, I fully understand that my take on mom is going to mature with time.
I do hope that what I am saying here, is also giving something to you. If not, than I hope that you are at least at such a good place, that you do not need my help.
Kind regards,
S9
Yes. The process unfolds itself with contemplation and insights and cannot be forced. You don't turn your back on I AM, you simply refine the insights.
I get the feeling where we differ the most, is on this whole idea of “unity.”
For instance, you would have the two hands clapping (Zen) made into one unite, and therefore called it one hand clapping with its sound. I, on the other hand, see no need to jump around like that; creating some united thing, and calling it me.
I, rather, see both hands and the sound, and their separation as being perfectly all right, or as just how the mind works, and requiring no change. I, also, do not see these hands or their sound as being ‘Me,’ or the I Am.
Now you obviously believe my reasoning will change with time, as I come to see more clearly. But I, on the other hand, actually believe that you might have fallen into a subtle trap of the mind. Further, although you are seeing mind and her Witness quite clearly, I must say; you have also started owning, and thereby identifying with, the mind at this new level.
You believe that if I don’t buy into unity, than I am trapped in duality. I see buying into unity as just choosing sides within a higher duality than usual.
I have no argument with Mara. I see her as entertaining, and no longer able to hurt me. But, I do not want to identify with Mara as being just one more of her many legions, even if she promises to homogenize the whole lot of them into one big thing called Radical Non-dualism, with the help of our mutual friend Ken W.
I believe that this oceanic and space like feeling that you’re speak of, is just one more creation by mind’s imagination. I feel my ‘Me’ is far more intimately than some amorphous thing. My highest understanding is closer to Pure Subjectivity.
I believe that when we see this Witness to be just one more part of the mind, this is the time to take one more step back from it, and not to jump forward, or is it outside, and back into the multitude with one caveat, that of calling it united being into one.
Maybe I can try one more time, to say this more clearly. Let us Pray. ; ^ )
I believe that everything is, (when rightfully seen), the One. But I do not believe that, the One is also everything. It is not a two way street. One being everything is a mistaken view, and wrong direction, or mere confusion.
In the I Am, I do not feel any conceptual boundary. The mistaken idea, that we are this unity, is not a boundary within me. If we were giving up a mistaken view, would we than say that I have set up a boundary between me, and my mistaken view, which I wish to drop? Probably not.
Not only do I not want to move things into this empty/intimate/living I Am (room), but also I do not, fragrantly, want to leave my doors and windows open, and thereby let just anything move in and take up residence. By doing this, I would be back into the mind, where I started this escape, only now in a homogenized mind. This brings me little comfort.
Please understand that I am trying not being argumentative with you, and I do welcome any instruction that might further me in my understanding.
Thanx 4 the go/ahead:
Huh, sharing my thought on Ken W. "Enter at your own risk!" ; ^ )
Perhaps this is why these fellows were often called “Holy Fools,” because they had changed from being a serious ass, into an ass having fun, at least? ; ^ )
Yeah, sure, I have something to say. "Both of you are missing the point."
For example, I am not on a "side".
If someone were to ask, "Is there an observer to experience?", the answer is No.
If that person were then to ask, "oh. So there is no observer to experience?" The answer, again, is No. Both of you are trying to "grasp" how this can be so, and in doing so, you are forgetting that the buddha taught no grasping. He taught "seeing".
So, if you really want to settle the question, you need not grasp or try to think it through with logic or rationality; you just need to see things as they are.
Who exactly are you speaking to here? I am not sure that you always make that clear enough, at least for me to understand.
Who is this I, who is not on a side?
Did you ever consider the fact that you are grasping at seeing? It does seem that someone, whoever that may be, is awfully proud of possessing that seeing.
That would be called, “Seeing Bound.” Throw seeing away. Be vastly empty.
Hi Subjectivity, interesting comments and thoughts there. As I'm not exactly sure myself about certain points I have asked Thusness some of the questions. However he is often busy and won't be around for the next 2 days so I'll be replying after that.
Yeah, sure, I have something to say. "Both of you are missing the point."
For example, I am not on a "side".
If someone were to ask, "Is there an observer to experience?", the answer is No.
If that person were then to ask, "oh. So there is no observer to experience?" The answer, again, is No. Both of you are trying to "grasp" how this can be so, and in doing so, you are forgetting that the buddha taught no grasping. He taught "seeing".
So, if you really want to settle the question, you need not grasp or try to think it through with logic or rationality; you just need to see things as they are.
There is absolutely no such thing as an observer, as the Buddha taught - there is only 5 skandhas or 18 dhatus. None of them is 'observer' or 'self'. The Consciousness skandha is not self and not observer also. There is only experiences arising, ownerless, not me and not mine. They are not arising to an observer, they are simply 'aware where they are'. They are only manifesting in its own Suchness. The notion of an observer is just as real as horns of a rabbit: never real, only constructed. And yes, this is much more simple in the direct seeing and experience. I do have direct experience of this, so I know this not in a mere intellectual way, though direct experience which fades is not the same as a permanent insight or realisation.
If you see this, you realise what Buddha teach in Kalaka Sutta:
On one occasion the Blessed One was staying in Saketa at Kalaka's park. There he addressed the monks: "Monks!"
"Yes, lord," the monks responded.
The Blessed One said: "Monks, whatever in the cosmos — with its devas, Maras, & Brahmas, its generations with their contemplatives & priests royalty & common people — is seen, heard, sensed, cognized, attained, sought after, pondered by the intellect: That do I know. Whatever in the cosmos — with its devas, Maras, & Brahmas, its generations with their contemplatives & priests, their royalty & common people — is seen, heard, sensed, cognized, attained, sought after, pondered by the intellect: That I directly know. That has been realized by the Tathagata, but in the Tathagata1 it has not been established.2
"If I were to say, 'I don't know whatever in the cosmos... is seen, heard, sensed, cognized... pondered by the intellect,' that would be a falsehood in me. If I were to say, 'I both know and don't know whatever in the cosmos... is seen, heard, sensed, cognized... pondered by the intellect,' that would be just the same. If I were to say, 'I neither know nor don't know whatever in the cosmos... is seen, heard, sensed, cognized... pondered by the intellect,' that would be a fault in me.
"Thus, monks, the Tathagata, when seeing what is to be seen, doesn't construe an [object as] seen. He doesn't construe an unseen. He doesn't construe an [object] to-be-seen. He doesn't construe a seer.
"When hearing...
"When sensing...
"When cognizing what is to be cognized, he doesn't construe an [object as] cognized. He doesn't construe an uncognized. He doesn't construe an [object] to-be-cognized. He doesn't construe a cognizer.
Thus, monks, the Tathagata — being the same with regard to all phenomena that can be seen, heard, sensed, & cognized — is 'Such.' And I tell you: There's no other 'Such' higher or more sublime.
"Whatever is seen or heard or sensed
and fastened onto as true by others,
One who is Such — among the self-fettered —
wouldn't further claim to be true or even false.
"Having seen well in advance that arrow
where generations are fastened & hung — 'I know, I see, that's just how it is!' —
there's nothing of the Tathagata fastened."
<hr style="height: 3px;"> Notes 1. Reading tathagate with the Thai edition. 2. I.e., the Tathagata hasn't taken a stance on it.
The whole concept of progress is what the path is all about, and I have stepped off of the path, once and for all, and have refused to leave home.
I see growing in intimacy with my own I Am, as the only thing left. This has become more of a deepening and enrichment.
Incidentally, I believe that I have at times witnessed a Satori. This experience was very close to what you seem to be describing as the 'Thusness stage 4,' or at least as I understand your words.
Although this experience was delightful and magical, no doubt, it is not anything like what I experience as my I Am. The I Am is far more under-whelming, or without the bells and whistle, which the mind would very much appreciate.
Mind very often overlooks the I Am. Mind could never misplace a Satori. It is too in your face.
The thing that makes me suspicious of the Satori experience is, it comes and goes. Right there, it fails my test of what is Real, and not just another dream, no matter how delightful.
Where as, the I Am is always right here and right now.
A Satori lets you down, by leaving, and sets up a craving for its return. This makes it a part or the pleasure/pain cycle. If it walks like a duck (mind), and talks like a duck (mind), in all good faith, it is more than likely a duck (mind). ; ^ )
Thusness told me that at present try not to talk too much about non-dual and he also talked to me about the deepening of the "I AM" in 4 aspects: 1) the aspect of impersonality, 2) the aspect of the degree of luminosity, 3) the aspect of dissolving the need to re-confirm and abide in I AMness and understanding why such a need is irrelevant, 4) the aspect of experiencing effortlessness.
Impersonality will help dissolve the sense of self but it has the danger of making one attached to a metaphysical essence. It makes a practitioner feel "God".
The degree of luminosity refers to feeling with entire being, feel wholely and directly without thoughts. Feeling 'realness' of whatever one encounters, the tree bark, the sand, etc. (see the next post)
Dissolving the need to re-confirm is important as whatever is done is an attempt to distant itself from itself, if there is no way one can distant from the "I AM", the attempt to abide in it is itself an illusion.
On the other hand, abiding in presence is a form of meditative practice, like chanting, and leads to absorption. It can result in the oceanic experience. But once one focuses on the 4 aspects mentioned above, one will have that experience too.
Also, as for I AMness, there are varying degrees. It is related to the five categories of Koan.
In Zen tradition, different koan were meant for different purposes. For example the experience derived from the koan “before birth who are you?” (which leads to the realisation/experience of I AMness) is not the same as the Hakuin’s koan of “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” The five categories of koan in Zen ranges from hosshin [introductory koan - Either What is your original face before birth? or Mu] that give practitioner the first glimpse of ultimate reality to five-ranks that aims to awaken practitioner the spontaneous unity of relative and absolute (non-duality).
Similarly different techniques can also be devised to allow a practitioner to experience the different qualities of Awareness. The experience of “impersonality” is not the same as the experience of the “pristineness” of our nature; the experience of “oneness” is also not the same experience as spontaneity; the experience of non-dual without a subject and object split does not necessary result in the thorough insight of anatta; the experience of anatta is also not the same experience when a practitioner thoroughly sees the emptiness nature of phenomena. Hence, there are the 5 categories of koan. It is not a one for all sort of medicine.
Here's a good post on 'the degree of luminosity' by a friend 'JonLS' or 'Amadeus':
I was walking through the park on my way home when something happened. Something holy arose from within and took over. I was standing there looking out at the trees and the grass like it was the first time I was seeing them. I was looking at my hands and feeling my body as it moved and I was marvelling at being alive and being in this body. I was acutely aware of being in the world, that I was a separate being in the world. I was enjoying all this as a child would enjoy a new and novel experience. I went over to a tree and grabbed a branch, I touched it softly and then grabbed it firmly, I really wanted to feel the tree, I really wanted to be there with it, to be present, to feel and see and take it all in. I bent down and touched the trunk near the roots, it was very real, very solid to my touch, it felt very alive. I noticed some bare earth around the tree trunk and picked up a chunk and broke it in my hand and watched and felt it crumble and stream through my fingers as it fell down to the earth. I was feeling so primal, so alive, I went around to the other side of the tree where the branches were a little higher off the ground and sqatted under the branches near the tree trunk and put my hand on the trunk and left it there. I was feeling the roots and feeling extremely rooted myself in being. I stayed there for a few minutes, the feelings arising were so intense and overwhelming that tears were streaming down my face. Finally I left the tree and moved closer to the bench and sat and watched the crescent moon in the clear blue sky, there was a very bright star right beside it, so bright that I thought it might be the headlight of a plane heading towards me. I sat there and watched this scene and marvelled at life and being alive.
I finally got up and was going to go inside but I had to walk by the sandbox and I was immediately attracted to the sand. I bent down and started letting the sand run through my fingers, feeling the texture of the grains on the skin of my hand. I dug deeply into the sand and noticed that the sand was very damp when you dug down 3 or 4 inches. And then I found a flat stone. I don't know why this was so fascinating but I was like a little child, I would pick up the stone with a handful of sand and squeeze the sand so it would run through my fingers and then I would feel the hard stone pressing against the flesh of my palm and fingers. It was like finding a treasure, I did this over and over again.
I left the sandbox and moved over to a very large pine tree and grabbed on the branches really hard. I gave a really good pull on it and ripped that piece of branch clean off and allowed the needles to run through my fingers as they fell through the ground. I grabbed two branches, and held on really tight like I was holding hands with the pine tree, I looked up at it and was just present with it for a little while. But things were beginning to feel really intense inside of me so I went inside.
I went in the bedroom to change and got undressed, but when I was completely undressed I was drawn down to my knees and I bent very low with my forehead against the carpet. The energy was flowing like crazy inside, it felt like it was all emanating from the gut area. My head was on the carpet and my gut was much higher since I was still on my knees, this felt right as it had so many times before. Energy was flowing from my gut down through my head and out. But the energy also radiated outwards in all directions at the same time, like a sacred sun was shining in my gut. It was extremely intense and overwhelming and continued for at least 15 minutes.
I have no idea what is going on and I don't care. It feels very right and it makes everything sacred, my own body, and everything else in the world. It's almost a mystical experience at times to be alive.
I'm completely filled by this experience, it's overflowing.
This is just the answer to your first, most recent, posting. Thank you for all of the effort you are taking in my behalf. : ^ )
I think that sometimes when we talk to each other about the more subtle aspects of Buddhism that we don’t always understand each other, like your “aspect of Impersonality.” Is that something that is beyond the ego only, or are you saying that it is beyond the I Am as well?
Or when you say, “Impersonality, will dissolve the sense of self,” are you saying that there will be no sense of subjectivity, in any way describable to the mine, or no subjectivity at all, period? In other words, this world and everything in it, including you and me on every possible level, is a function without an intelligent occupant in the function. Also are you saying that absolutely nothing transcends this function? Unlike "God in the machine," are you saying "a machine completely devoid of God?"
Your degree of luminosity seems a bit like empathy to me. This feeling the realness of the aliveness of a tree, for instance, is something very familiar to me. I almost feel like the trees are in telepathic communication with me, if you will, and that they are aware of my presence in this way, also. I feel that all of nature is tied up in this way. (Some people list these types of feelings under a sort of ESP.)
One year on my farm, when it was so dry from a drought, I felt so sorry for the plants and could almost feel their pain and their struggle like it was my own. This made me cry for them. They are like little pets.
But, I do not see what luminosity has to do with empathy. I do realize that some people call the clearness of Awareness, a kind of luminosity. But, I do no think they are speaking of light, which is the opposite of darkness, do you? I am seeing light or luminosity more as being like’Clarity’ of a sort, or even some sort of ‘Intelligence,’ or ‘Knowing,” if you will.
“Dissolving the need for re-confirming” is only necessary if there is still some doubt, of which I have none. I Am Certain. If you are referring to my mind still looking at I Am. I cannot see that as a problem. Mind loves to do so. It is a love affair.
Although I must say that, I seem to be sinking further into the I Am daily, so that looking at the world is not like looking away from I Am, anymore. The dust of this world is floating/suspended in the rays of this Sun/I Am.
What do you mean by, “Whatever is done is an attempt to distant itself from itself,” and why do we need to distance oneself from the I Am, anyway? Isn’t distancing one’s self a doing, and/or an effort? Furthermore, I could only abide in it, if it was separate from my actual being, which it is not.
I am sorry, but I suspect your “oceanic experience” of being a mistaken understanding of what ‘IS’. Perhaps, if you described it further, clarification might get us on the same page. I’m slow, but I do learn. ; ^ )
However, I can agree there is a Presence. Absorption, however, smacks of being more like concentration, which is a preview of the mind or a form of doing (action). Is the oceanic experience a trance of some sort, which is a byproduct of effort?
My Samadhi experiences seemed to come about, during a time of intense meditation practice on my part. But like I said previously, they came and went, unlike the I Am experience.
I do not see the I Am as being something that changes with experience, or even has degrees. Maybe what you are looking at and calling the I Am, is not what I am looking at and calling the I Am? That is possible.
If the I Am had degrees, it would be a product of the mind, and I Am is not a product of the mind.
I can however understand that there might be 5 degrees of approaching the I Am. And yes, these might also lead to a glimpse.
How can there possibly be a unity of relative and absolute (non-duality)? The Absolute is like Teflon, and absolutely nothing sticks to it.
Incidentally, by relative do you mean finitude or mind?
It is not easy for me to understand why ‘impersonality’ is not like ‘pristineness,’ if I don’t know what you mean by ‘pristineness,’ or even why ‘oneness’ isn’t the same as your ideas about ‘spontaneity.’ Obviously I know what these words mean, generally, just not your personal spin on them, or rather a spin shared by you and your friends.
Sorry to be such a pain in the neck. ; ^ )
I am going to try translating your words into mine and see where that gets us:
Lets see if I can get a handle on this, and you can tell me where I am missing what you are saying.
Non-dual without a subject/object dichotomy would be beyond the mind, right? So I wouldn’t be identifying any longer with the ego-self or small-mind, therefore no ego self.
Seeing emptiness in nature doesn’t get the whole picture either. Because you have me being a thing that I call I Am, and where I am isn’t empty of this I Am thing I am grapping onto, right?
This Anatta is so empty that it is even empty of my concepts of emptiness. As long as I am holding on to anything, even the concept of I Am, I am still not empty enough of self. I am only creating ghosts. Right?
This natural world is surely miraculous in its beauty. I believe that the reason we only occasionally notice this, in part, is because we are separated from direct contact with nature by our habitual mind. Habit teaches us to sum things up, and take things for granted, and buffers our joy.
I noticed this when, for a time, I walked about writing haiku. This instrument of perspective taught me to look directly and to notice more. The need to reproduce what I saw in word; intensified my intention to see every detail, and also its influence upon me, or to miss nothing.
Haiku is like a tiny Samadhi.
I am thinking, perhaps this is similar to luminosity. It might even border on what Maslow called, “Actualization.”
This is just the answer to your first, most recent, posting. Thank you for all of the effort you are taking in my behalf. : ^ )
I think that sometimes when we talk to each other about the more subtle aspects of Buddhism that we don’t always understand each other, like your “aspect of Impersonality.” Is that something that is beyond the ego only, or are you saying that it is beyond the I Am as well?
Or when you say, “Impersonality, will dissolve the sense of self,” are you saying that there will be no sense of subjectivity, in any way describable to the mine, or no subjectivity at all, period? In other words, this world and everything in it, including you and me on every possible level, is a function without an intelligent occupant in the function. Also are you saying that absolutely nothing transcends this function? Unlike "God in the machine," are you saying "a machine completely devoid of God?"
The question of impersonality was the one that Thusness asked himself in Stage 1 and 2.
To answer you, no, impersonality is the doing away of ego, the doing away of I AM is Anatta. Impersonality is not the same as Anatta.
Your degree of luminosity seems a bit like empathy to me. This feeling the realness of the aliveness of a tree, for instance, is something very familiar to me. I almost feel like the trees are in telepathic communication with me, if you will, and that they are aware of my presence in this way, also. I feel that all of nature is tied up in this way. (Some people list these types of feelings under a sort of ESP.)
One year on my farm, when it was so dry from a drought, I felt so sorry for the plants and could almost feel their pain and their struggle like it was my own. This made me cry for them. They are like little pets.
But, I do not see what luminosity has to do with empathy. I do realize that some people call the clearness of Awareness, a kind of luminosity. But, I do no think they are speaking of light, which is the opposite of darkness, do you? I am seeing light or luminosity more as being like’Clarity’ of a sort, or even some sort of ‘Intelligence,’ or ‘Knowing,” if you will.
Your last sentence is what I mean.
I am sorry, but I suspect your “oceanic experience” of being a mistaken understanding of what ‘IS’. Perhaps, if you described it further, clarification might get us on the same page. I’m slow, but I do learn. ; ^ )
However, I can agree there is a Presence. Absorption, however, smacks of being more like concentration, which is a preview of the mind or a form of doing (action). Is the oceanic experience a trance of some sort, which is a byproduct of effort?
It's not a fabricated state, but is what already is but discovered through letting go and opening up to what is.
"Nondual consciousness is not a state of attention. It is experienced without effort of any kind. It is the mind completely at rest. In fact, there is not even a sense that the mind is resting, for that is still an activity of sorts. Rather, one experiences a simple lucid openness in which the phenomena of the world appear, and through which experiences such as thoughts, emotions, and sensations move without obstruction.
There is also a sense that one's consciousness is pervading all of the content of one's experience. Rather than an encounter between one's own head and the objects outside of one's head, as experienced in intentional, dualistic consciousness states, nondual consciousness is experienced globally. It pervades and subsumes one's whole body and everything in one's environment at the same time. "Consciousness is encountered as something more like a field than a localized point, a field that transcends the body and yet somehow interacts with it" (Forman, in Gallagher & Shear, 1999, p. 373).
One of the main characteristics of nondual realization is that it is discovered, rather than created, as rigid subjective organizations are released. Constructivists may insist that nondual consicousness is itself a conceptual construct. Speaking both from my own experience as well as from traditional accounts, I can attest that nondual realization is a process of gradually letting go of one's grip on oneself and one's environment -- as if opening a clenched fist. It does require concentrated effort and time to achieve a certain degree of letting go. But the expanse of nondual consciousness, pervading oneself and one's environment as a unified whole, appears of its own accord as a result of this letting go, and continues to appear, without any effort on one's own part."
When you say, "doing away with the ego," do you mean that you simply no longer identify with the ego? I ask because, it seems to me that the ego, although it is impermanent, is certainly the correct tool for bridging between intention and the doer in this finite dream, called life. Or as some have said, “We move by desire.” So if you were to actually kill the ego, (which I believe to be impossible) within this dream state, you might present symptoms to the world, much like catatonia.
I believe that we have two sets of laws going on here, similtaneously, and the body/mind can only mimic the I Am, when it thinks that its job is to turn into the I Am, and it is not. The body/mind is a dream state with no escape from itself. It is encapsulated or a closed system. What we actually do, I believe, is to wake up and realize that we are not a dream or any part of a dream.
Anatta, if it kills the 'I Am,' (and I am not referring to the Witness part of the mind here, that reflective part, [the mirror], that stands apart and aloft to witnesses this dream as a whole; a dream which includes both the subject/object duality), so if we kill I Am, than there is nothing left, but an empty field. Does that really make sense to you?
Now with what you are saying about luminosity, if I understand you correctly, you have us being a field, beyond this dead I Am, which is bright with the clarity of knowing. In other words, this field is the Mother of all possibility, but totally empty of any being of its own. Does that make sense to you?
But, then, does this field of knowing, know Its Self? Or is it just like a computer, all capacity, but no real identity of any sort? This sounds a little like, "When you are dead, you are dead, and there ain't no you, no how." : ^ )
Forgive me but, you say things that seem contradictory to me, and not really in a paradoxical way, like this field experiences. How is it possible to experience without any identity of any sort? What/who experiences? You deny things existing, and than go on to use these already ‘denied bricks’ to build something you say is better or different, and I cannot follow such reasoning. Sorry.
For instance, how can you know something without paying attention to what you know?
Or, how can you experience something that hasn’t got your attention? Not necessarily the mind's attention, but perhaps intrinsic attention of a sort; just knowing without subject or object, more immediate.
I can understand that if you have moved out of the mind, there would probably be no awareness of the mind. But than, how would you be aware of the tree if you were not using the mind and her senses to do so? Would the tree also be this empty field you speak of? Lastly, if the tree was this field also, why confuse the issue by calling it a tree?
I hope that you can see what I am getting at here? I am actually beginning to believe that this "field" you are speaking about, may very well be a trance state of some kind. It is the only way that it makes any sense to me.
By the way, I see this 'Empathy of Non-duality,' that Judith Blackstone is speaking of, as being a state natural to the mind, or just one more form of thought. Do you see this as something more, or special in some way?
When you say, "doing away with the ego," do you mean that you simply no longer identify with the ego? I ask because, it seems to me that the ego, although it is impermanent, is certainly the correct tool for bridging between intention and the doer in this finite dream, called life. Or as some have said, “We move by desire.” So if you were to actually kill the ego, (which I believe to be impossible) within this dream state, you might present symptoms to the world, much like catatonia.
I believe that we have two sets of laws going on here, similtaneously, and the body/mind can only mimic the I Am, when it thinks that its job is to turn into the I Am, and it is not. The body/mind is a dream state with no escape from itself. It is encapsulated or a closed system. What we actually do, I believe, is to wake up and realize that we are not a dream or any part of a dream.
Anatta, if it kills the 'I Am,' (and I am not referring to the Witness part of the mind here, that reflective part, [the mirror], that stands apart and aloft to witnesses this dream as a whole; a dream which includes both the subject/object duality), so if we kill I Am, than there is nothing left, but an empty field. Does that really make sense to you?
Not really. Impersonality is not about freedom from ego but to have deep and clear experiential insight of I AMness free from the conditioning of Any sense of personality. There is no need to do away with the personality but rather it is to experience a prolonged period free from the sense of self and this is crucial. It will help to refine the experience of I Am.
The sense of an I AM does not dissolve into nihilistic nothingness at non dual or further stages of insight. If you read Ken Wilber, he stated: "at some point, as you inquire into the Witness, and rest in the Witness, the sense of being a Witness “in here” completely vanishes itself, and the Witness turns out to be everything that is witnessed. The causal gives way to the Nondual, and formless mysticism gives way to nondual mysticism. “Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form.”"
In other words, in place of a background I AM, there is now only foreground phenomenality without the need to sink back to a background essence.
Now with what you are saying about luminosity, if I understand you correctly, you have us being a field, beyond this dead I Am, which is bright with the clarity of knowing. In other words, this field is the Mother of all possibility, but totally empty of any being of its own. Does that make sense to you?
But, then, does this field of knowing, know Its Self? Or is it just like a computer, all capacity, but no real identity of any sort? This sounds a little like, "When you are dead, you are dead, and there ain't no you, no how." : ^ )
Forgive me but, you say things that seem contradictory to me, and not really in a paradoxical way, like this field experiences. How is it possible to experience without any identity of any sort? What/who experiences? You deny things existing, and than go on to use these already ‘denied bricks’ to build something you say is better or different, and I cannot follow such reasoning. Sorry.
For instance, how can you know something without paying attention to what you know?
Or, how can you experience something that hasn’t got your attention? Not necessarily the mind's attention, but perhaps intrinsic attention of a sort; just knowing without subject or object, more immediate.
I can understand that if you have moved out of the mind, there would probably be no awareness of the mind. But than, how would you be aware of the tree if you were not using the mind and her senses to do so? Would the tree also be this empty field you speak of? Lastly, if the tree was this field also, why confuse the issue by calling it a tree?
I hope that you can see what I am getting at here? I am actually beginning to believe that this "field" you are speaking about, may very well be a trance state of some kind. It is the only way that it makes any sense to me.
By the way, I see this 'Empathy of Non-duality,' that Judith Blackstone is speaking of, as being a state natural to the mind, or just one more form of thought. Do you see this as something more, or special in some way?
Respectfully,
S9
Judith Blackstone is only describing non dual experience. She is not trying to theorize or conceptualize.
Also, non-duality has nothing to do with a trance state. It is what is already always the case. The 'oceanic experience' of I AM is not necessarily the Non-Dual I'm talking about either, it may be just an aspect of the I AM. However if that is experienced AS everything (all phenomena), then it is non-dual experience.
Anyway about non-duality I wrote before:
First I do not see Anatta as merely a freeing from personality sort of experience as you mentioned; I see it as that a self/agent, a doer, a thinker, a watcher, etc, cannot be found apart from the moment to moment flow of manifestation or as its commonly expressed as ‘the observer is the observed’; there is no self apart from arising and passing. A very important point here is that Anatta/No-Self is a Dharma Seal, it is the nature of Reality all the time -- and not merely as a state free from personality, ego or the ‘small self’ or a stage to attain. (related article: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2007/07/bernadette-roberts-interview.html) This means that it does not depend on the level of achievement of a practitioner to experience anatta but Reality has always been Anatta and what is important here is the intuitive insight into it as the nature, characteristic, of phenomenon (dharma seal).
To put further emphasis on the importance of this point, I would like to borrow from the Bahiya Sutta (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.1.10.irel.html) that ‘in the seeing, there is just the seen, no seer’, ‘in the hearing, there is just the heard, no hearer’ as an illustration. When a person says that I have gone beyond the experiences from ‘I hear sound’ to a stage of ‘becoming sound’, he is mistaken. When it is taken to be a stage, it is illusory. For in actual case, there is and always is only sound when hearing; never was there a hearer to begin with. Nothing attained for it is always so. This is the seal of no-self. Therefore to a non dualist, the practice is in understanding the illusionary views of the sense of self and the split. Before the awakening of prajna wisdom, there will always be an unknowing attempt to maintain a purest state of 'presence'. This purest presence is the 'how' of a dualistic mind -- its dualistic attempt to provide a solution due to its lack of clarity of the spontaneous nature of the unconditioned. It is critical to note here that both the doubts/confusions/searches and the solutions that are created for these doubts/confusions/searches actually derive from the same cause -- our karmic propensities of ever seeing things dualistically
So as you can see, non-dual is always already the case. At first it can be experienced through letting go. But as insight matures, the effort and attempt to let go is also dropped, as my highly enlightened friend Longchen writes:
To me, 'whatever arises already is' is a distinctive stage and insight. It allows me to maintain non-dual in activities... as there is the realisation that no 'need/effort' can be done to acheive non-dual.
Prior to this insight, there was the effort to drop the 'sense of self'. .. but the mind didn't realise that the effort was the split.
After a while, it gets really clear 'why' there wasn't a split in the first place... and therefore 'how' a split(subject-object division) can never occur in reality.
Before 'whatever arises already is' insight there was much unconscious/habitual effort to fix the split. After the insight, the experience is that no-split have ever occured at all... which enable no-self experience to be better 'integrated' with activities. With this, the benefits of the practice is more clearly experienced.
So, impersonality has more to do with the direction of which we are looking, (because obviously the ego self and the personality are synonymous.) So, we have not so much turned away from ego (rejecting the ego) as we have now turned our attention towards the I Am. Is this what you are saying?
Further, we are looking/intending to experience I Am directly, rather than trying to understand the I Am through reasoning or concepts. Or perhaps you are saying this is a 'break through' of some kind, when we actually and spontaneously just know the I Am directly, for the first time. So, we actually know this I Am intrinsically, and/or as our very Being, and we are not so much simply trying to capture the I Am through descriptions.
But, are we not actually knowing this I Am as our own True Identity, and/or our Transcendent Self (not to be confused with our ego self)?
Isn’t it your idea that this initial contact with I Am is actually tainted with what some people call the Witness, because we ever so quickly morph this first acquaintance with the I Am, with mind, and almost immediately create a mind object out of the I Am? I believe that this is the experience that very many people call a glimpse, because they see the I Am, alright, yet they cannot hold onto it. So, like you say, it may be a prolonged period of acquaintance, but it finally slips away.
Yes, I agree with Ken Wilber that the Witness slips away, mainly because the Witness is a mind object, and like any and all mind objects, it melts away. But, then, I am also contending that the I Am (its Self) is not the Witness. The Witness does turn out to be only a part of the mind.
I believe all of mind is one unity, much like what some call the Tao. But the I Am transcends this unity or dream stuff.
Yes, too, the I Am is not dualistic. But, I don’t believe this is because the I Am is a unity with all of multiplicity. Just like you dream at night, but you are not actually that nightly dream. The dream takes place, and you appear to be in it, but you are not (the I Am is not) part of it. The I Am merely allows the imagination to take place without interference (Wu Wei), and yet at the same time is not every single thing that is taking place in the imagination. For instance, the I Am is not a unicorn.
Obviously, in the I Am, because it is the One, there is no room for cause or effect (the causal), and there is no form because I Am is not material.
I would say rather that, form correctly seen and understood is emptiness, simply because form is concept, and concept is imagination.
X: “In other words, in place of a background I AM, there is now only foreground phenomenality without the need to sink back to a background essence.”
S9: I am going to have to ask you to rephrase this, please. I am not understanding what you are saying here.
X: Judith Blackstone is only describing non-dual experience. She is not trying to theorize or conceptualize.
S9: When someone describes their conceptual understanding of what they believe they have experienced, translated into words, then in a way they are mixing in their theories with their raw experience, it can’t be helped. We all do.
Okay, this is true, whatever ‘Is’ (Ultimately), whether it turns out to be your non-duality, or my I Am; It is certainly “always present,” or in your words “already always the case.”
Another place that we part ways in our understanding is this. You have just said that the ‘oceanic experience’ of the I Am may be an aspect of the I Am. I, on the other hand, will not admit to seeing the I Am having any aspects. Aspects would be mind objects. Also aspects would be dualistic, because they point out more than one way of being.
The only way that you can continue to have multiplicity is to redefine it as a unity, or smash everything together. This is a little like “having your cake, and eating it too,” don’t you think?
Personally, I see Anatta (no self) as describing the situation of the ego-mind very well. It does not describe the I Am. And this ego-mind is the same small mind that manufactures all things coming and going, which are also known as manifestation. Ego-mind is just a figment of our imagination, and so is all of the mind's multiplicity.
Yet, at the same time, I also see something (I call it Awareness, or Buddha Nature) as 'Being' that is completely separate, and 100% apart from the ego-mind and her creations. This is very similar to the way that Truth (or Buddha Nature) is separate and apart from error (or ego-mind).
So, we are not debating that the idea of ‘no-self’ is in error, I believe that we both agree that it is not. What I am actually questioning here is, if your ideas about what ‘no-self’ is, is in fact correct.
If there is absolutely no ‘Ultimate Self ’ or Awareness, or Buddha Nature, if you will, who has these insights you keep speaking about? Are insights a function without any knower of these insights? Or said differently, “What, or Who, has always been?” “What, or Who, are we seeking?”
This makes me think of that old question, “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to see it, does a tree actually fall?” (Or was it, does it make a sound? Anyway you get my point, I hope.)
Whether No-Self really means "I AM" is not a debate within Buddha Dharma, Subjectivity, it is a debate on the front doorstep of Buddhism. xabir is a patient fellow.
....and by the way, Maitreya does mean anti-christ.
Yeah, sure, I have something to say. "Both of you are missing the point."
For example, I am not on a "side".
If someone were to ask, "Is there an observer to experience?", the answer is No.
If that person were then to ask, "oh. So there is no observer to experience?" The answer, again, is No. Both of you are trying to "grasp" how this can be so, and in doing so, you are forgetting that the buddha taught no grasping. He taught "seeing".
So, if you really want to settle the question, you need not grasp or try to think it through with logic or rationality; you just need to see things as they are.
Hi Thought on thought. What I was taught in practice was that we cannot reduce it to either the notion of an observer, or the the notion of the absence of an observer. But since we start out with the assumption of an observer (and it is a tenacious assumption), Anatman use used as an antidote. In actual pratice there is niether self nor absence of self.
Whether No-Self really means "I AM" is not a debate within Buddha Dharma, Subjectivity, it is a debate on the front doorstep of Buddhism. xabir is a patient fellow.
....and by the way, Maitreya does mean anti-christ.
Wow now there is a freudian slip. Maitreya does not mean antichrist
This is really worth repeating. in practice we cannot reduce it to either the notion of an observer, or the notion of the absence of an observer. But since we start out with the assumption of an observer (and it is a tenacious assumption), Anatman is used as an antidote. In actual practice there is niether self nor absence of self.
Well in any event... I've been following this discussion and wanted to thank xabir for all the information and resources he's provided. Been very helpful.
And thank you for starting the discussion Richard; it's been insightful. Wb btw.
At present, though you have the realization of the I AMness, you still do not have the experiential insight of impersonality. Deconstruct 'personality' and deepen this experience first before further discussion, it is pointless for me to talk too much.
I do agree at this point in our discussion that we may have to agree to disagree. : ^ )
Perhaps, sometime in the future, we may rejoin on a slightly different topic, or even this one once again, when one of us, or even both of us, has had some new breakthrough or insight.
Comments
I'll be replying your post in reverse order. First of all let it be clear that I am not dismissing the clear experience and insight of that I AM Presence (this is what I have been trying to point out in 11-11-2009, 12:24 PM). It's impossible. It's undoubtable. That sense of pure Beingness, Presence, I AMness, is the most real 'thing' or 'non-thing', for whatever you are experiencing at that moment, that sense of Presence, Beingness, Pure Knowingness is constantly present, cognizant, alive and is your very nature, with such vividness and realness such that everything else including thoughts pales in comparison and is seen as merely like a dream or an illusion (though no longer the case in non-dual realisation when these phenomena themselves reveal as Presence as you will see later). And yes, You can't run away from You, for that attempt to run away is simply a thought arising in the clear presence of You. Even if one wants to doubt that I AM Presence, that I AM Presence is present as that to which the doubting arises, and that is undeniable, so the doubt is without basis. So it is certainly not just an experience that is available at a particular meditative state or a particular experience, it just goes unnoticed for most people whose attention is almost constantly fixated on and chasing after their conceptual notion of self and things. But Presence can never be lost anytime (it is timeless) and that is not separate at all from you -- It cannot be made an object of observation from a point of view of an observer, for you are never separate from IT -- this Presence that you are, being of the nature of cognizance is Self-Knowing. Therefore as I state earlier, that pure I AMness is non-dual, non-separate. For it is YOU/I, so when one who realises it feels that he/she has touched his innermost core of being.
So if I am not dismissing this clear experience and insight of I AMness then what am I talking about? I'm saying that, to quote from Thusness, that there is no forgoing of this I AMness but "...it is rather a deepening of insight to include the non-dual, groundlessness and interconnectedness of our luminous nature. Like what Rob said, "keep the experience but refine the views"." -- so again, same Presence as I AMness, only that one sees through the notion of center-ness, the notion of being a permanent agent, seeing the non-dual nature (not non-dual as I AM but non-dual with all phenomena), etc.
And by that: I mean, originally the I AMness feels centered, not in the sense of being located somewhere in phenomena or the body-mind, but centered in a sense that there is still some separation between this I AMness and phenomena. You feel that this I AMness not AS those phenomena, but as behind all those passing phenomena.
However there will come a time, resting in I AMness, if you then look at, say, a mountain, you might begin to notice that the sensation of the I AM or Pure Being and the sensation of the mountain are the same sensation. When you "feel" your pure Self and you "feel" the mountain, they are absolutely the same feeling. (see Some Writings on Non-duality by Ken Wilber - Do read this) And when this realisation arise, you cannot deny this as well, the non-dual Presence revealing As everything cannot be denied just as you cannot deny the I AMness. The I AM-Presence is no more I AM, no more real, non-dual, and vivid than the non-dual Mountain-Presence, so to speak, and there is no trace of separation between you and that Mountain-Presence just as you do not feel separate from the I AM Presence. Just pure mountain-presence, bird chirping-presence, without a hearer, feeler, seer, etc.
As Thusness wrote in his Stage 4:
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2007/03/thusnesss-six-stages-of-experience.html
I was meditating the above stanza deeply…about its meaning until one day, suddenly I heard ‘tongss…’, it was so clear, there was nothing else, just the sound and nothing else! And ‘tongs…’ resounding…. It was so clear, so vivid!
That experience is so familiar, so real and so clear. It is the same experience of “I AM”….it is without thought, without concepts, without intermediary, without anyone there, without any in-between…What is it? IT is Presence! But this time it is not ‘I AM’, it is not asking ‘who am I’, it is not the pure sense of “I AM”, it is ‘TONGSss….’, the pure Sound…
Then come Taste, just the Taste and nothing else….
The heart beats…..
the Scenery…
(as you can see also, the methodology is also different, to give rise to the non-conceptual experience/insight of I AM you contemplate 'Who am I' Ramana Maharshi style, and like you, Thusness was very attracted to Ramana Maharshi at that stage and collected all his books... and also very attracted to Zen (because after the I AM realisation one feels authenticated by these texts easily) but to realise non-dual and no-self, you contemplate on something different, as stated here On Anatta (No-Self), Emptiness, Maha and Ordinariness, and Spontaneous Perfection -- this is not to say R.M. or Zen only reached Stage 1 but that they emphasize a lot on leading practitioners to the I AM realisation first, which is an important realisation btw and paves the way to further realisations, but it is clear that even they do not stop at Stage 1 - I AM -- see R.M.'s explanation of 'Brahman is the World' (scroll to the bottom: http://www.kheper.net/topics/Vedanta/Ramana_on_creation.html) for instance, though many of them, many Zen masters included, stop at Stage 4 Non-Dual Brahman, though not always the case)
So this time, it is still the same non-dual self-knowing presence as I AM, except that its nonseparation is the non-separation of you and mountain. There is no sense of being an outside observer apart from the mountain. No sense of standing back from the mountain. No sense of distance at all from 'you' and 'mountain', 0 distance, just as you feel 0 distance with the I AM Presence. When you see this (when there is no 'you' to see this), then any sense of subtle localization at all, whether somewhere in your body-mind, somewhere in your head, completely dissolves, and you no longer feel you are looking out from yourself through your eyes at the mountain, and there is Just mountain itself, self-aware, self-felt. Just non-localized Presence pervading and not separate from all phenomena. This is the meaning of 'body-mind drop off'. So there is sound, taste, touch, but no sense of a separate hearer, taster, feeler, etc. You enter (well not exactly 'enter' since it is not a stage, but rather to realised it as always already so) the mode of being/seeing where there is just mountain self-aware of itself. So again it is the same self-aware Presence as I AM, but except this time it is self-aware Presence as Sound, Taste, Touch, Smells, Sight, even Thought. Everything reveals itself as Pure Non-Dual Presence. And I emphasize again, that this must arise as an Insight into the nature of reality, and is not an altered state of experience or a meditative state, just as the I AMness is not something induced by meditation but is something that is very fundamental as the nature of reality itself, already always so.
The sense of The Center dissolves and Presence turns out to be everything -- everything is a center, a point of luminous clarity, a manifestation of buddha-nature.
This is what is meant by the analogy given by Thusness:
The first 'I-ness' stage of experiencing awareness face to face is like a point on a sphere which you called it the center. You marked it.
Then later you realized that when you marked other points on the surface of a sphere, they have the same characteristics. This is the initial experience of non-dual. Once the insight of No-Self is stabilized, you just freely point to any point on the surface of the sphere -- all points are a center, hence there is no 'the' center. 'The' center does not exist: all points are a center.
After then practice move from 'concentrative' to 'effortlessness'. That said, after this initial non-dual insight, 'background' will still surface occasionally for another few years due to latent tendencies.
So at this point, since there is no more sense of The Center, it is as Dan Berkow says:
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/search/label/Dan%20Berkow
What has happened to the awareness previously situated as "the observer"? Now, awareness and perception are unsplit. For example, if a tree is perceived, the "observer" is "every leaf of the tree". There is no observer/awareness apart from things,
nor are there any things apart from awareness. What dawns is: "this is it". All the pontifications, pointings, wise sayings, implications of "special knowledge", fearless quests for truth, paradoxically clever insights -- all of these are seen to be unnecessary and beside the point. "This", exactly as is, is "It". There is no need to add to "This" with anything further, in fact there is no "further" - nor is there any "thing" to hold on to, or to do away with.
....
Not using "I AM", and instead referring to "pure awareness", is a way to say the awareness isn't focused on an "I" nor is it concerned with distinguishing being from not-being regarding
itself. It isn't viewing itself in any sort of objectifying way, so wouldn't have concepts about states it is in -- "I AM" only fits as opposed to "something else is", or "I am not". With no "something else" and no "not-I", there can't be an "I AM" awareness. "Pure awareness" can be criticized in a similar way - is there "impure" awareness, is there something other than awareness? So the terms "pure awareness, or just "awareness" are simply used to interact through dialogue, with recognition that words always imply dualistic contrasts.
Even the notion of 'Consciousness' as I mentioned earlier as something granduer, something more ultimate than transient manifestation, eventually the notion is dropped (it is already naturally implicit in/as everything without needing to make it an ultimate reality), as Greg Goode puts it:
once experience doesn't seem divided and once it doesn't seem like there is anything other than consciousness, then the notion of consciousness itself will gently and peacefully dissolve.
And then, even if this non-dual is clearly seen through, not to mistake that this is the end of the path. This is just Stage 4. There are further insights, which do not in any way deny the vividness and clarity of Presence but provides clearer insight into the nature of that Presence (i.e. the insights of anatta, emptiness, interdependent origination, etc)
It will not be easy to understand or be convinced about non-duality, let alone anatta and emptiness, until you have a real taste, glimpse, and hopefully a 'decisive realisation' beyond mere glimpses that will make this as clear as cloudless sunlit sky, just as once you had a clear taste of I AMness it is not going to be something that can be doubted. Eventually the clinging to Pure Subjectivity dissolves when the last trace of it being more ultimate than something else dissolves, and it happens on its own accord when the insight manifests. Krishnamurti never talks about I AM. Observer is observed can mean two things: the I AM is Self-Knowing without subject-object division, or it could mean that the sense of an observer turns out to be none other than everything that is experienced such that there is no trace of an observer apart from these sights, sounds, etc. This is what he meant (the 2nd one). He is always talking about Non-Duality in that sense -- the non-duality of thinker and thought, seer and scenery, hearer and sound, etc. And his insight on that matter (non-dual, and anatta) is subtle but seldom do people understand him.
For example:
You look at this magnificent tree and you wonder who is watching whom and presently there is no watcher at all. Everything is so intensely alive and there is only life, and the watcher is as dead as that leaf... Utterly still... listening without a moment of action, without recording, without experiencing, only seeing and listening... really the outside is the inside and the inside is the outside, and it is difficult, almost impossible to separate them. (p. 214)
So we are asking is there a holistic awareness of all the senses, therefore there is never asking for the 'more'. I wonder if you follow all this ?. Are we together in this even partially? And where there is this total - fully aware - of all the senses, awareness of it - not you are aware of it.... the awareness of the senses in themselves - then there is no centre - in which there is awareness of the wholeness. If you consider it, you will see that to suppress the senses... is contradictory, conflicting, sorrowful.... To understand the truth you must have complete sensitivity. Do you understand Sirs? Reality demands your whole being; you must come to it with your body, mind, and heart as a total human being..... Insight is complete total attention....
When this is a fact not an idea, then dualism and division between observer and observed comes to an end. The observer is the observed - they are not separate states. The observer and the observed are a joint phenomenon and when you experience that directly then you will find that the thing which you have dreaded as emptiness which makes you seek escape into various forms of sensation including religion - ceases and you are able to face it and be it.
- Collection of K teachings from the KFT CDROM
Watch what is happening inside you, do not think, but just watch, do not move your eye-balls, just keep them very, very quiet, because there is nothing to see now, you have seen all the things around you, now you are seeing what is happening inside your mind, and to see what is happening inside your mind, you have to be very quiet inside. And when you do this, do you know what happens to you? You become very sensitive, you become very alert to things outside and inside. Then you find out that the outside is the inside, then you find out that the observer is the observed.
- Pg 36, K on education
As long as there is the thinker and the thought, there must be duality. As long as there is a seeker who is seeking, there must be duality. As long as there is an experiencer and the thing to be experienced, there must be duality. So duality exists when there is the observer and the observed. That is, as long as there is a centre, the censor, the observer, the thinker, the seeker, the experiencer as the centre, there must be the opposite.
- Talks by Krishnamurty in India 1966 p.72
Liberation is not an end. Liberation is from moment to moment in the understanding of 'what is'-when the mind is free, not made free.
- Krishnamurti's Talks 1949-1950 (Verbatim Report)
...India p.22
Are not the thinker and his thought an inseparable phenomenon? Why do we separate the thought from the thinker? Is it not one of the cunning tricks of the mind so that the thinker can change his garb according to circumstances, yet remain the same? Outwardly there is the appearance of change but inwardly the thinker continues to be as he is. The craving for continuity, for permanency, creates this division between the thinker and his thoughts. When the thinker and his thought become inseparable then only is duality transcended. Only then is there the true religious experience. Only when the thinker ceases is there Reality. This inseparable unity of the thinker and his thought is to be experienced but not to be speculated upon. This experience is liberation; in it there is inexpressible joy.
- Authentic Report of Sixteen Talks given in 1945 & 1946 ...p.14.
One day some years ago, after I had made the decision not to step out of the now, or rather never to continue seeking into the future again, (because if what I wanted wasn’t in this very moment, than it was no where), I also realized what I call the ‘I Am’ wasn’t within my body, but that it was also out there in the room all around me. So I am not mistaking the I Am as being a thing with location, neither am I personifying it as my higher self.
However, just because I see the mind clearly to be made up out of the observer and the observed, not actually separated in any way, doesn’t mean that I must own this process and call it me.
Believe me I am not saying you are wrong, and I believe that I am receptive to deepening, fully understanding that this is possible, having undergone such before. But, at this time, I do not see why I have to call everything that I see me. That seems more like a characteristic of mind, to own everything it looks at, to look at tree and morph into being tree.
Where I Am right now, I feel more like an empty room that is fully aware. I don’t seem to have any inclination to start moving things into that room.
What you have just written to me is a magnificent piece of work. It is so clear. I feel honored that you are taking so much trouble for me.
Yet, at the very same time, I am not going to take one step that I do not merit by having witness myself that it is the next best step, or more correct. This is not out of stubbornness on my part. This is more because, at this point, I am more moved than in charge of moving. It is almost spiritually organic, or rather built in, if you will, more like a rose blooming than that same rose being yanked open willfully.
At this point, I could no more turn my back on the ‘I Am,’ than I could kill my own mother. But also like a teenager, who is beginning to see mom differently, I fully understand that my take on mom is going to mature with time.
I do hope that what I am saying here, is also giving something to you. If not, than I hope that you are at least at such a good place, that you do not need my help.
Kind regards,
S9
I welcome you to say, something of substance.
I am all ears.
I think we all know the punch lines.
Anyone who has done any reading at/all can pull all of these out of their back pocket and recite them, ever so wisely.
But please, in your own words, do you have anything to share with us?
I believe that we are all on the same side here, are we not?
S9
Good one! ; ^ )
I guess the answer to this one is, because the masters, esp. often the Zen masters, write the punch lines out for us. But, we don’t really get the joke.
It surprised me, when I first heard about the people who at the moment of enlightenment, laughed out loud?
Why do you think that is, that they laugh?
S9
Also be careful with spatial analogies like 'room' or 'space' as we can be unknowingly creating a subtle duality there especially if we think in terms of 'things coming into the room and out of the room'.
So Thusness would say
Do not underestimate the impact of the constant chattering in a dualistic manner. If we continuously repeat “phenomenon arises in awareness” and not “as Awareness”, even though there never was a separation, consciousness will see as if there is a separation. Although it may seem to be a casual expression for communication sake, the impact is subtle. In time to come, the slow and subtle impact will make separation appear amazingly real. This is true even for those that have experienced non-duality; they are not spared from it. Yes. The process unfolds itself with contemplation and insights and cannot be forced. You don't turn your back on I AM, you simply refine the insights.
Nice chatting with you. I do learn from you too.
I just read the article by Ken W on radical non-duality. Would you like to hear what I thoughts about it?
I am about to answer your last post, as well.
S9
I get the feeling where we differ the most, is on this whole idea of “unity.”
For instance, you would have the two hands clapping (Zen) made into one unite, and therefore called it one hand clapping with its sound. I, on the other hand, see no need to jump around like that; creating some united thing, and calling it me.
I, rather, see both hands and the sound, and their separation as being perfectly all right, or as just how the mind works, and requiring no change. I, also, do not see these hands or their sound as being ‘Me,’ or the I Am.
Now you obviously believe my reasoning will change with time, as I come to see more clearly. But I, on the other hand, actually believe that you might have fallen into a subtle trap of the mind. Further, although you are seeing mind and her Witness quite clearly, I must say; you have also started owning, and thereby identifying with, the mind at this new level.
You believe that if I don’t buy into unity, than I am trapped in duality. I see buying into unity as just choosing sides within a higher duality than usual.
I have no argument with Mara. I see her as entertaining, and no longer able to hurt me. But, I do not want to identify with Mara as being just one more of her many legions, even if she promises to homogenize the whole lot of them into one big thing called Radical Non-dualism, with the help of our mutual friend Ken W.
I believe that this oceanic and space like feeling that you’re speak of, is just one more creation by mind’s imagination. I feel my ‘Me’ is far more intimately than some amorphous thing. My highest understanding is closer to Pure Subjectivity.
I believe that when we see this Witness to be just one more part of the mind, this is the time to take one more step back from it, and not to jump forward, or is it outside, and back into the multitude with one caveat, that of calling it united being into one.
Maybe I can try one more time, to say this more clearly. Let us Pray. ; ^ )
I believe that everything is, (when rightfully seen), the One. But I do not believe that, the One is also everything. It is not a two way street. One being everything is a mistaken view, and wrong direction, or mere confusion.
In the I Am, I do not feel any conceptual boundary. The mistaken idea, that we are this unity, is not a boundary within me. If we were giving up a mistaken view, would we than say that I have set up a boundary between me, and my mistaken view, which I wish to drop? Probably not.
Not only do I not want to move things into this empty/intimate/living I Am (room), but also I do not, fragrantly, want to leave my doors and windows open, and thereby let just anything move in and take up residence. By doing this, I would be back into the mind, where I started this escape, only now in a homogenized mind. This brings me little comfort.
Please understand that I am trying not being argumentative with you, and I do welcome any instruction that might further me in my understanding.
Thanx 4 the go/ahead:
Huh, sharing my thought on Ken W. "Enter at your own risk!" ; ^ )
Namaste,
S9
Quite so.
I think you get the joke, too.
Perhaps this is why these fellows were often called “Holy Fools,” because they had changed from being a serious ass, into an ass having fun, at least? ; ^ )
Miles of Smiles,
S9
For example, I am not on a "side".
If someone were to ask, "Is there an observer to experience?", the answer is No.
If that person were then to ask, "oh. So there is no observer to experience?" The answer, again, is No. Both of you are trying to "grasp" how this can be so, and in doing so, you are forgetting that the buddha taught no grasping. He taught "seeing".
So, if you really want to settle the question, you need not grasp or try to think it through with logic or rationality; you just need to see things as they are.
Who exactly are you speaking to here? I am not sure that you always make that clear enough, at least for me to understand.
Who is this I, who is not on a side?
Did you ever consider the fact that you are grasping at seeing? It does seem that someone, whoever that may be, is awfully proud of possessing that seeing.
That would be called, “Seeing Bound.” Throw seeing away. Be vastly empty.
Zen might call it, "The stink of knowing."
S9
If you see this, you realise what Buddha teach in Kalaka Sutta:
Kalaka Sutta
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an04/an04.024.than.html
On one occasion the Blessed One was staying in Saketa at Kalaka's park. There he addressed the monks: "Monks!"
"Yes, lord," the monks responded.
The Blessed One said: "Monks, whatever in the cosmos — with its devas, Maras, & Brahmas, its generations with their contemplatives & priests royalty & common people — is seen, heard, sensed, cognized, attained, sought after, pondered by the intellect: That do I know. Whatever in the cosmos — with its devas, Maras, & Brahmas, its generations with their contemplatives & priests, their royalty & common people — is seen, heard, sensed, cognized, attained, sought after, pondered by the intellect: That I directly know. That has been realized by the Tathagata, but in the Tathagata1 it has not been established.2
"If I were to say, 'I don't know whatever in the cosmos... is seen, heard, sensed, cognized... pondered by the intellect,' that would be a falsehood in me. If I were to say, 'I both know and don't know whatever in the cosmos... is seen, heard, sensed, cognized... pondered by the intellect,' that would be just the same. If I were to say, 'I neither know nor don't know whatever in the cosmos... is seen, heard, sensed, cognized... pondered by the intellect,' that would be a fault in me.
"Thus, monks, the Tathagata, when seeing what is to be seen, doesn't construe an [object as] seen. He doesn't construe an unseen. He doesn't construe an [object] to-be-seen. He doesn't construe a seer.
"When hearing...
"When sensing...
"When cognizing what is to be cognized, he doesn't construe an [object as] cognized. He doesn't construe an uncognized. He doesn't construe an [object] to-be-cognized. He doesn't construe a cognizer.
Thus, monks, the Tathagata — being the same with regard to all phenomena that can be seen, heard, sensed, & cognized — is 'Such.' And I tell you: There's no other 'Such' higher or more sublime.
"Whatever is seen or heard or sensed
and fastened onto as true by others,
One who is Such — among the self-fettered —
wouldn't further claim to be true or even false.
"Having seen well in advance that arrow
where generations are fastened & hung
— 'I know, I see, that's just how it is!' —
there's nothing of the Tathagata fastened."
<hr style="height: 3px;"> Notes
1. Reading tathagate with the Thai edition.
2. I.e., the Tathagata hasn't taken a stance on it.
See also: MN 2; MN 58; MN 63; MN 72; AN 10.93; AN 10.94; AN 10.95; AN 10.96; Ud 1.10; Ud 8.1.
I would like to ask... what do you think is your next natural progression?
I don’t believe in progression anymore. : ^ )
The whole concept of progress is what the path is all about, and I have stepped off of the path, once and for all, and have refused to leave home.
I see growing in intimacy with my own I Am, as the only thing left. This has become more of a deepening and enrichment.
Incidentally, I believe that I have at times witnessed a Satori. This experience was very close to what you seem to be describing as the 'Thusness stage 4,' or at least as I understand your words.
Although this experience was delightful and magical, no doubt, it is not anything like what I experience as my I Am. The I Am is far more under-whelming, or without the bells and whistle, which the mind would very much appreciate.
Mind very often overlooks the I Am. Mind could never misplace a Satori. It is too in your face.
The thing that makes me suspicious of the Satori experience is, it comes and goes. Right there, it fails my test of what is Real, and not just another dream, no matter how delightful.
Where as, the I Am is always right here and right now.
A Satori lets you down, by leaving, and sets up a craving for its return. This makes it a part or the pleasure/pain cycle. If it walks like a duck (mind), and talks like a duck (mind), in all good faith, it is more than likely a duck (mind). ; ^ )
S9
Impersonality will help dissolve the sense of self but it has the danger of making one attached to a metaphysical essence. It makes a practitioner feel "God".
The degree of luminosity refers to feeling with entire being, feel wholely and directly without thoughts. Feeling 'realness' of whatever one encounters, the tree bark, the sand, etc. (see the next post)
Dissolving the need to re-confirm is important as whatever is done is an attempt to distant itself from itself, if there is no way one can distant from the "I AM", the attempt to abide in it is itself an illusion.
On the other hand, abiding in presence is a form of meditative practice, like chanting, and leads to absorption. It can result in the oceanic experience. But once one focuses on the 4 aspects mentioned above, one will have that experience too.
Also, as for I AMness, there are varying degrees. It is related to the five categories of Koan.
In Zen tradition, different koan were meant for different purposes. For example the experience derived from the koan “before birth who are you?” (which leads to the realisation/experience of I AMness) is not the same as the Hakuin’s koan of “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” The five categories of koan in Zen ranges from hosshin [introductory koan - Either What is your original face before birth? or Mu] that give practitioner the first glimpse of ultimate reality to five-ranks that aims to awaken practitioner the spontaneous unity of relative and absolute (non-duality).
Similarly different techniques can also be devised to allow a practitioner to experience the different qualities of Awareness. The experience of “impersonality” is not the same as the experience of the “pristineness” of our nature; the experience of “oneness” is also not the same experience as spontaneity; the experience of non-dual without a subject and object split does not necessary result in the thorough insight of anatta; the experience of anatta is also not the same experience when a practitioner thoroughly sees the emptiness nature of phenomena. Hence, there are the 5 categories of koan. It is not a one for all sort of medicine.
I was walking through the park on my way home when something happened. Something holy arose from within and took over. I was standing there looking out at the trees and the grass like it was the first time I was seeing them. I was looking at my hands and feeling my body as it moved and I was marvelling at being alive and being in this body. I was acutely aware of being in the world, that I was a separate being in the world. I was enjoying all this as a child would enjoy a new and novel experience. I went over to a tree and grabbed a branch, I touched it softly and then grabbed it firmly, I really wanted to feel the tree, I really wanted to be there with it, to be present, to feel and see and take it all in. I bent down and touched the trunk near the roots, it was very real, very solid to my touch, it felt very alive. I noticed some bare earth around the tree trunk and picked up a chunk and broke it in my hand and watched and felt it crumble and stream through my fingers as it fell down to the earth. I was feeling so primal, so alive, I went around to the other side of the tree where the branches were a little higher off the ground and sqatted under the branches near the tree trunk and put my hand on the trunk and left it there. I was feeling the roots and feeling extremely rooted myself in being. I stayed there for a few minutes, the feelings arising were so intense and overwhelming that tears were streaming down my face. Finally I left the tree and moved closer to the bench and sat and watched the crescent moon in the clear blue sky, there was a very bright star right beside it, so bright that I thought it might be the headlight of a plane heading towards me. I sat there and watched this scene and marvelled at life and being alive.
I finally got up and was going to go inside but I had to walk by the sandbox and I was immediately attracted to the sand. I bent down and started letting the sand run through my fingers, feeling the texture of the grains on the skin of my hand. I dug deeply into the sand and noticed that the sand was very damp when you dug down 3 or 4 inches. And then I found a flat stone. I don't know why this was so fascinating but I was like a little child, I would pick up the stone with a handful of sand and squeeze the sand so it would run through my fingers and then I would feel the hard stone pressing against the flesh of my palm and fingers. It was like finding a treasure, I did this over and over again.
I left the sandbox and moved over to a very large pine tree and grabbed on the branches really hard. I gave a really good pull on it and ripped that piece of branch clean off and allowed the needles to run through my fingers as they fell through the ground. I grabbed two branches, and held on really tight like I was holding hands with the pine tree, I looked up at it and was just present with it for a little while. But things were beginning to feel really intense inside of me so I went inside.
I went in the bedroom to change and got undressed, but when I was completely undressed I was drawn down to my knees and I bent very low with my forehead against the carpet. The energy was flowing like crazy inside, it felt like it was all emanating from the gut area. My head was on the carpet and my gut was much higher since I was still on my knees, this felt right as it had so many times before. Energy was flowing from my gut down through my head and out. But the energy also radiated outwards in all directions at the same time, like a sacred sun was shining in my gut. It was extremely intense and overwhelming and continued for at least 15 minutes.
I have no idea what is going on and I don't care. It feels very right and it makes everything sacred, my own body, and everything else in the world. It's almost a mystical experience at times to be alive.
I'm completely filled by this experience, it's overflowing.
I love you.
This is just the answer to your first, most recent, posting. Thank you for all of the effort you are taking in my behalf. : ^ )
I think that sometimes when we talk to each other about the more subtle aspects of Buddhism that we don’t always understand each other, like your “aspect of Impersonality.” Is that something that is beyond the ego only, or are you saying that it is beyond the I Am as well?
Or when you say, “Impersonality, will dissolve the sense of self,” are you saying that there will be no sense of subjectivity, in any way describable to the mine, or no subjectivity at all, period? In other words, this world and everything in it, including you and me on every possible level, is a function without an intelligent occupant in the function. Also are you saying that absolutely nothing transcends this function? Unlike "God in the machine," are you saying "a machine completely devoid of God?"
Your degree of luminosity seems a bit like empathy to me. This feeling the realness of the aliveness of a tree, for instance, is something very familiar to me. I almost feel like the trees are in telepathic communication with me, if you will, and that they are aware of my presence in this way, also. I feel that all of nature is tied up in this way. (Some people list these types of feelings under a sort of ESP.)
One year on my farm, when it was so dry from a drought, I felt so sorry for the plants and could almost feel their pain and their struggle like it was my own. This made me cry for them. They are like little pets.
But, I do not see what luminosity has to do with empathy. I do realize that some people call the clearness of Awareness, a kind of luminosity. But, I do no think they are speaking of light, which is the opposite of darkness, do you? I am seeing light or luminosity more as being like’Clarity’ of a sort, or even some sort of ‘Intelligence,’ or ‘Knowing,” if you will.
“Dissolving the need for re-confirming” is only necessary if there is still some doubt, of which I have none. I Am Certain. If you are referring to my mind still looking at I Am. I cannot see that as a problem. Mind loves to do so. It is a love affair.
Although I must say that, I seem to be sinking further into the I Am daily, so that looking at the world is not like looking away from I Am, anymore. The dust of this world is floating/suspended in the rays of this Sun/I Am.
What do you mean by, “Whatever is done is an attempt to distant itself from itself,” and why do we need to distance oneself from the I Am, anyway? Isn’t distancing one’s self a doing, and/or an effort? Furthermore, I could only abide in it, if it was separate from my actual being, which it is not.
I am sorry, but I suspect your “oceanic experience” of being a mistaken understanding of what ‘IS’. Perhaps, if you described it further, clarification might get us on the same page. I’m slow, but I do learn. ; ^ )
However, I can agree there is a Presence. Absorption, however, smacks of being more like concentration, which is a preview of the mind or a form of doing (action). Is the oceanic experience a trance of some sort, which is a byproduct of effort?
My Samadhi experiences seemed to come about, during a time of intense meditation practice on my part. But like I said previously, they came and went, unlike the I Am experience.
I do not see the I Am as being something that changes with experience, or even has degrees. Maybe what you are looking at and calling the I Am, is not what I am looking at and calling the I Am? That is possible.
If the I Am had degrees, it would be a product of the mind, and I Am is not a product of the mind.
I can however understand that there might be 5 degrees of approaching the I Am. And yes, these might also lead to a glimpse.
How can there possibly be a unity of relative and absolute (non-duality)? The Absolute is like Teflon, and absolutely nothing sticks to it.
Incidentally, by relative do you mean finitude or mind?
It is not easy for me to understand why ‘impersonality’ is not like ‘pristineness,’ if I don’t know what you mean by ‘pristineness,’ or even why ‘oneness’ isn’t the same as your ideas about ‘spontaneity.’ Obviously I know what these words mean, generally, just not your personal spin on them, or rather a spin shared by you and your friends.
Sorry to be such a pain in the neck. ; ^ )
I am going to try translating your words into mine and see where that gets us:
Lets see if I can get a handle on this, and you can tell me where I am missing what you are saying.
Non-dual without a subject/object dichotomy would be beyond the mind, right? So I wouldn’t be identifying any longer with the ego-self or small-mind, therefore no ego self.
Seeing emptiness in nature doesn’t get the whole picture either. Because you have me being a thing that I call I Am, and where I am isn’t empty of this I Am thing I am grapping onto, right?
This Anatta is so empty that it is even empty of my concepts of emptiness. As long as I am holding on to anything, even the concept of I Am, I am still not empty enough of self. I am only creating ghosts. Right?
Am I understanding you?
S9
This natural world is surely miraculous in its beauty. I believe that the reason we only occasionally notice this, in part, is because we are separated from direct contact with nature by our habitual mind. Habit teaches us to sum things up, and take things for granted, and buffers our joy.
I noticed this when, for a time, I walked about writing haiku. This instrument of perspective taught me to look directly and to notice more. The need to reproduce what I saw in word; intensified my intention to see every detail, and also its influence upon me, or to miss nothing.
Haiku is like a tiny Samadhi.
I am thinking, perhaps this is similar to luminosity. It might even border on what Maslow called, “Actualization.”
S9
To answer you, no, impersonality is the doing away of ego, the doing away of I AM is Anatta. Impersonality is not the same as Anatta. Your last sentence is what I mean.
There is also a sense that one's consciousness is pervading all of the content of one's experience. Rather than an encounter between one's own head and the objects outside of one's head, as experienced in intentional, dualistic consciousness states, nondual consciousness is experienced globally. It pervades and subsumes one's whole body and everything in one's environment at the same time. "Consciousness is encountered as something more like a field than a localized point, a field that transcends the body and yet somehow interacts with it" (Forman, in Gallagher & Shear, 1999, p. 373).
One of the main characteristics of nondual realization is that it is discovered, rather than created, as rigid subjective organizations are released. Constructivists may insist that nondual consicousness is itself a conceptual construct. Speaking both from my own experience as well as from traditional accounts, I can attest that nondual realization is a process of gradually letting go of one's grip on oneself and one's environment -- as if opening a clenched fist. It does require concentrated effort and time to achieve a certain degree of letting go. But the expanse of nondual consciousness, pervading oneself and one's environment as a unified whole, appears of its own accord as a result of this letting go, and continues to appear, without any effort on one's own part."
~ "The Empathic Ground" by Judith Blackstone
When you say, "doing away with the ego," do you mean that you simply no longer identify with the ego? I ask because, it seems to me that the ego, although it is impermanent, is certainly the correct tool for bridging between intention and the doer in this finite dream, called life. Or as some have said, “We move by desire.” So if you were to actually kill the ego, (which I believe to be impossible) within this dream state, you might present symptoms to the world, much like catatonia.
I believe that we have two sets of laws going on here, similtaneously, and the body/mind can only mimic the I Am, when it thinks that its job is to turn into the I Am, and it is not. The body/mind is a dream state with no escape from itself. It is encapsulated or a closed system. What we actually do, I believe, is to wake up and realize that we are not a dream or any part of a dream.
Anatta, if it kills the 'I Am,' (and I am not referring to the Witness part of the mind here, that reflective part, [the mirror], that stands apart and aloft to witnesses this dream as a whole; a dream which includes both the subject/object duality), so if we kill I Am, than there is nothing left, but an empty field. Does that really make sense to you?
Now with what you are saying about luminosity, if I understand you correctly, you have us being a field, beyond this dead I Am, which is bright with the clarity of knowing. In other words, this field is the Mother of all possibility, but totally empty of any being of its own. Does that make sense to you?
But, then, does this field of knowing, know Its Self? Or is it just like a computer, all capacity, but no real identity of any sort? This sounds a little like, "When you are dead, you are dead, and there ain't no you, no how." : ^ )
Forgive me but, you say things that seem contradictory to me, and not really in a paradoxical way, like this field experiences. How is it possible to experience without any identity of any sort? What/who experiences? You deny things existing, and than go on to use these already ‘denied bricks’ to build something you say is better or different, and I cannot follow such reasoning. Sorry.
For instance, how can you know something without paying attention to what you know?
Or, how can you experience something that hasn’t got your attention? Not necessarily the mind's attention, but perhaps intrinsic attention of a sort; just knowing without subject or object, more immediate.
I can understand that if you have moved out of the mind, there would probably be no awareness of the mind. But than, how would you be aware of the tree if you were not using the mind and her senses to do so? Would the tree also be this empty field you speak of? Lastly, if the tree was this field also, why confuse the issue by calling it a tree?
I hope that you can see what I am getting at here? I am actually beginning to believe that this "field" you are speaking about, may very well be a trance state of some kind. It is the only way that it makes any sense to me.
By the way, I see this 'Empathy of Non-duality,' that Judith Blackstone is speaking of, as being a state natural to the mind, or just one more form of thought. Do you see this as something more, or special in some way?
Respectfully,
S9
The sense of an I AM does not dissolve into nihilistic nothingness at non dual or further stages of insight. If you read Ken Wilber, he stated: "at some point, as you inquire into the Witness, and rest in the Witness, the sense of being a Witness “in here” completely vanishes itself, and the Witness turns out to be everything that is witnessed. The causal gives way to the Nondual, and formless mysticism gives way to nondual mysticism. “Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form.”"
In other words, in place of a background I AM, there is now only foreground phenomenality without the need to sink back to a background essence. Judith Blackstone is only describing non dual experience. She is not trying to theorize or conceptualize.
Also, non-duality has nothing to do with a trance state. It is what is already always the case. The 'oceanic experience' of I AM is not necessarily the Non-Dual I'm talking about either, it may be just an aspect of the I AM. However if that is experienced AS everything (all phenomena), then it is non-dual experience.
Anyway about non-duality I wrote before:
First I do not see Anatta as merely a freeing from personality sort of experience as you mentioned; I see it as that a self/agent, a doer, a thinker, a watcher, etc, cannot be found apart from the moment to moment flow of manifestation or as its commonly expressed as ‘the observer is the observed’; there is no self apart from arising and passing. A very important point here is that Anatta/No-Self is a Dharma Seal, it is the nature of Reality all the time -- and not merely as a state free from personality, ego or the ‘small self’ or a stage to attain. (related article: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2007/07/bernadette-roberts-interview.html) This means that it does not depend on the level of achievement of a practitioner to experience anatta but Reality has always been Anatta and what is important here is the intuitive insight into it as the nature, characteristic, of phenomenon (dharma seal).
To put further emphasis on the importance of this point, I would like to borrow from the Bahiya Sutta (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.1.10.irel.html) that ‘in the seeing, there is just the seen, no seer’, ‘in the hearing, there is just the heard, no hearer’ as an illustration. When a person says that I have gone beyond the experiences from ‘I hear sound’ to a stage of ‘becoming sound’, he is mistaken. When it is taken to be a stage, it is illusory. For in actual case, there is and always is only sound when hearing; never was there a hearer to begin with. Nothing attained for it is always so. This is the seal of no-self. Therefore to a non dualist, the practice is in understanding the illusionary views of the sense of self and the split. Before the awakening of prajna wisdom, there will always be an unknowing attempt to maintain a purest state of 'presence'. This purest presence is the 'how' of a dualistic mind -- its dualistic attempt to provide a solution due to its lack of clarity of the spontaneous nature of the unconditioned. It is critical to note here that both the doubts/confusions/searches and the solutions that are created for these doubts/confusions/searches actually derive from the same cause -- our karmic propensities of ever seeing things dualistically
So as you can see, non-dual is always already the case. At first it can be experienced through letting go. But as insight matures, the effort and attempt to let go is also dropped, as my highly enlightened friend Longchen writes:
To me, 'whatever arises already is' is a distinctive stage and insight. It allows me to maintain non-dual in activities... as there is the realisation that no 'need/effort' can be done to acheive non-dual.
Prior to this insight, there was the effort to drop the 'sense of self'. .. but the mind didn't realise that the effort was the split.
After a while, it gets really clear 'why' there wasn't a split in the first place... and therefore 'how' a split(subject-object division) can never occur in reality.
Before 'whatever arises already is' insight there was much unconscious/habitual effort to fix the split. After the insight, the experience is that no-split have ever occured at all... which enable no-self experience to be better 'integrated' with activities. With this, the benefits of the practice is more clearly experienced.
So, impersonality has more to do with the direction of which we are looking, (because obviously the ego self and the personality are synonymous.) So, we have not so much turned away from ego (rejecting the ego) as we have now turned our attention towards the I Am. Is this what you are saying?
Further, we are looking/intending to experience I Am directly, rather than trying to understand the I Am through reasoning or concepts. Or perhaps you are saying this is a 'break through' of some kind, when we actually and spontaneously just know the I Am directly, for the first time. So, we actually know this I Am intrinsically, and/or as our very Being, and we are not so much simply trying to capture the I Am through descriptions.
But, are we not actually knowing this I Am as our own True Identity, and/or our Transcendent Self (not to be confused with our ego self)?
Isn’t it your idea that this initial contact with I Am is actually tainted with what some people call the Witness, because we ever so quickly morph this first acquaintance with the I Am, with mind, and almost immediately create a mind object out of the I Am? I believe that this is the experience that very many people call a glimpse, because they see the I Am, alright, yet they cannot hold onto it. So, like you say, it may be a prolonged period of acquaintance, but it finally slips away.
Yes, I agree with Ken Wilber that the Witness slips away, mainly because the Witness is a mind object, and like any and all mind objects, it melts away. But, then, I am also contending that the I Am (its Self) is not the Witness. The Witness does turn out to be only a part of the mind.
I believe all of mind is one unity, much like what some call the Tao. But the I Am transcends this unity or dream stuff.
Yes, too, the I Am is not dualistic. But, I don’t believe this is because the I Am is a unity with all of multiplicity. Just like you dream at night, but you are not actually that nightly dream. The dream takes place, and you appear to be in it, but you are not (the I Am is not) part of it. The I Am merely allows the imagination to take place without interference (Wu Wei), and yet at the same time is not every single thing that is taking place in the imagination. For instance, the I Am is not a unicorn.
Obviously, in the I Am, because it is the One, there is no room for cause or effect (the causal), and there is no form because I Am is not material.
I would say rather that, form correctly seen and understood is emptiness, simply because form is concept, and concept is imagination.
X: “In other words, in place of a background I AM, there is now only foreground phenomenality without the need to sink back to a background essence.”
S9: I am going to have to ask you to rephrase this, please. I am not understanding what you are saying here.
X: Judith Blackstone is only describing non-dual experience. She is not trying to theorize or conceptualize.
S9: When someone describes their conceptual understanding of what they believe they have experienced, translated into words, then in a way they are mixing in their theories with their raw experience, it can’t be helped. We all do.
Okay, this is true, whatever ‘Is’ (Ultimately), whether it turns out to be your non-duality, or my I Am; It is certainly “always present,” or in your words “already always the case.”
Another place that we part ways in our understanding is this. You have just said that the ‘oceanic experience’ of the I Am may be an aspect of the I Am. I, on the other hand, will not admit to seeing the I Am having any aspects. Aspects would be mind objects. Also aspects would be dualistic, because they point out more than one way of being.
The only way that you can continue to have multiplicity is to redefine it as a unity, or smash everything together. This is a little like “having your cake, and eating it too,” don’t you think?
Personally, I see Anatta (no self) as describing the situation of the ego-mind very well. It does not describe the I Am. And this ego-mind is the same small mind that manufactures all things coming and going, which are also known as manifestation. Ego-mind is just a figment of our imagination, and so is all of the mind's multiplicity.
Yet, at the same time, I also see something (I call it Awareness, or Buddha Nature) as 'Being' that is completely separate, and 100% apart from the ego-mind and her creations. This is very similar to the way that Truth (or Buddha Nature) is separate and apart from error (or ego-mind).
So, we are not debating that the idea of ‘no-self’ is in error, I believe that we both agree that it is not. What I am actually questioning here is, if your ideas about what ‘no-self’ is, is in fact correct.
If there is absolutely no ‘Ultimate Self ’ or Awareness, or Buddha Nature, if you will, who has these insights you keep speaking about? Are insights a function without any knower of these insights? Or said differently, “What, or Who, has always been?” “What, or Who, are we seeking?”
This makes me think of that old question, “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to see it, does a tree actually fall?” (Or was it, does it make a sound? Anyway you get my point, I hope.)
Warm regards,
S9
....and by the way, Maitreya does mean anti-christ.
Hi Thought on thought. What I was taught in practice was that we cannot reduce it to either the notion of an observer, or the the notion of the absence of an observer. But since we start out with the assumption of an observer (and it is a tenacious assumption), Anatman use used as an antidote. In actual pratice there is niether self nor absence of self.
That is why we practice
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Well in any event... I've been following this discussion and wanted to thank xabir for all the information and resources he's provided. Been very helpful.
And thank you for starting the discussion Richard; it's been insightful. Wb btw.
At present, though you have the realization of the I AMness, you still do not have the experiential insight of impersonality. Deconstruct 'personality' and deepen this experience first before further discussion, it is pointless for me to talk too much.
Yes, thank you for this fine discussion.
I do agree at this point in our discussion that we may have to agree to disagree. : ^ )
Perhaps, sometime in the future, we may rejoin on a slightly different topic, or even this one once again, when one of us, or even both of us, has had some new breakthrough or insight.
Go in peace, my friend,
S9