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Seeing things as they really are
Sam8
Hamilton, NZ Explorer
in Mindfulness
This is just my journey with mindfulness and my take on the practice in general. My main theme is that mindfulness is not just about managing stress, anxiety and depression (and therefore only relevant to the stressed-out or mentally ill), it's about radical insight into your mind and the world, or "seeing things as they really are."
Read on if you're interested:
https://samweston.org/2021/04/04/the-art-of-mindfulness-seeing-things-as-they-really-are/
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Comments
Thanks for sharing @Sam8 - nice blog!
Hope you are well.
@Bunks Thanks! Hope you are well too.
All good here thanks!
How's the Tron these days? I was there about 15 years ago. Saw Shihad and the Mint Chicks at a local pub.
@Bunks That's cool. Yep the Tron is still the Tron, life's good here, can't complain
Enjoyed the blog.
I don't believe what I see, hear or feel. In other words impressions are just that; generated mimics of reality.
So what is real? No idea.
@Shoshin has reminded us a lot of being mindful/aware.
Part of the Buddhist view is the nature of the ordinary undisciplined mind is one of dukkha/stress/cream cakes. As we gain a stilling of our monkey mind, the incessant irritation becomes stiller.
Certainly what we see are impressions of things, sketches that our senses present to our attention and open to interpretation before something further along the cognitive pipeline decides to take action on it or not.
So each stage of this cognitive pipeline can insert distortions in what is seen, although the initial sketch produced by the sensorium remains as-is.
Reality is constructed.
Created by the cognition pipeline.
So, in emptiness, there is no body,
no feeling, no thought,
no will, no consciousness.
There are no eyes, no ears,
no nose, no tongue,
no body, no mind.
There is no seeing, no hearing,
no smelling, no tasting,
no touching, no imagining.
There is nothing seen, nor heard,
nor smelled, nor tasted,
nor touched, nor imagined.
Holy Fuck
Know profanity!
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/heartsutra.html
The way I understand this is that the brain creates a dynamic mental model of our environment, by continually combining inputs from the senses. Then we react and respond to this mental model.
The problem is not with the mental model itself, IMO, but with the assumptions we make about it, and how we react.
"Seeing things as they really are" just requires a willingness to look carefully at various aspects of experience, to understand what's really going on. There is a sense of "standing back".
Not really possible. In a sense, attention clouds or is the presence. No presence, then reality?
Not really.
I think if you look at modern particle physics - where most of the space we touch is actually empty, yet we experience a world of surfaces and solids - you realise that what the mind works with is a simplified version of what's really there, seeing properties of collections of particles at a comparatively large scale.
So what you see is mostly true, at a certain scale. You wouldn't expect to see the particles, they are too tiny. But it seems our understanding is limited by the scale at which we see things.
For the most part we tend to live in our own little make-believe reality bubble...
Samsara=Mind turned outward lost in its Projection
Nirvana =Mind turned inward recognising its True Nature
Thus have I heard....Dharma practice is the needle that pops the bubble...
Exactly so @Shoshin1
Then the True Nature recognises the inherent or True/Buddha Nature in the outer it has been projecting on. This is why the saying 'samsara is Nirvana' which is a more developed experience.
Our thinking/emotions/body fixations/impediments are the inflation of the ego bubble. In dharma we practice stillness to stop the inflation. Concentration is often the pin.
Make-believe/fantasy/delusion/worldly flimflam = samsara.