Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
What is the reality? How to be more present?
There is the world of conventional terms expressed as words and ideas and there is the world of absolute realities, that is things that are actually real in our experience before conceptualising and proliferating thought has distorted their true nature.
The material and mental phenomena which appear in our daily life can be directly experienced through the mind-door, no matter how we name them or organise them for our own use. This is the world which is real, the world of conditioned realities as they are initially encountered through the senses.
When we see, there is the world of colour, because in reality what we initially see is only colour experienced through the eyes. When we hear there is the world of sound experienced through the ear.
When we feel a touch-feeling on the body, there is the world of bodily feeling experienced through the body. When we think, there is the world of thought experienced through the mind. This holds true for the world of smell experienced through the nose and the world of taste experienced through the tongue.
We may think we can touch a visible object, but when there is "touching", what appears? It may be hardness, softness, heat, cold, motion or pressure. A visible object that which appears through the eye door can't be touched, it can only be seen. When a visible object is touched, it becomes a tangible object appearing through the sense-door of the body, being a completely different experience from that of a visible object.
When we touch a table it is not the table which appears, but a tangible object or an experience of hardness, etc. At the moment hardness appears, there is only hardness and the "experience of hardness"; there is no table in hardness, there is no self in hardness.
We may think of the concept "table", but thinking and formulating concepts are different conditioned phenomena altogether from those of hardness and the experience of hardness, etc.
If there is no mindfulness of the characteristics of nama (feeling, perception, thinking, mental moods, and consciousness) as they arise one at a time, we fall into the delusion of a self who experiences.
Mindfulness and wisdom are conditioned mental factors which are not self. They arise only because they have been cultivated and developed and not otherwise. If we confuse them for being self or that we are doing these things or if we think it is my mind, there is again no real wisdom, only thinking and delusion.
From: Breaking through the self delusion (by Ven. Yogavacara Rahula)
The material and mental phenomena which appear in our daily life can be directly experienced through the mind-door, no matter how we name them or organise them for our own use. This is the world which is real, the world of conditioned realities as they are initially encountered through the senses.
When we see, there is the world of colour, because in reality what we initially see is only colour experienced through the eyes. When we hear there is the world of sound experienced through the ear.
When we feel a touch-feeling on the body, there is the world of bodily feeling experienced through the body. When we think, there is the world of thought experienced through the mind. This holds true for the world of smell experienced through the nose and the world of taste experienced through the tongue.
We may think we can touch a visible object, but when there is "touching", what appears? It may be hardness, softness, heat, cold, motion or pressure. A visible object that which appears through the eye door can't be touched, it can only be seen. When a visible object is touched, it becomes a tangible object appearing through the sense-door of the body, being a completely different experience from that of a visible object.
When we touch a table it is not the table which appears, but a tangible object or an experience of hardness, etc. At the moment hardness appears, there is only hardness and the "experience of hardness"; there is no table in hardness, there is no self in hardness.
We may think of the concept "table", but thinking and formulating concepts are different conditioned phenomena altogether from those of hardness and the experience of hardness, etc.
If there is no mindfulness of the characteristics of nama (feeling, perception, thinking, mental moods, and consciousness) as they arise one at a time, we fall into the delusion of a self who experiences.
Mindfulness and wisdom are conditioned mental factors which are not self. They arise only because they have been cultivated and developed and not otherwise. If we confuse them for being self or that we are doing these things or if we think it is my mind, there is again no real wisdom, only thinking and delusion.
From: Breaking through the self delusion (by Ven. Yogavacara Rahula)
0
Comments
I have moved it from 'Buddhism for beginners' forum.
I've said it before, and I am repeating myself:
The Beginners' forum is not a repository for every single idea that comes to mind.
Please show more discernment when choosing where to post.
Thanks.