stirling

Complete realization is the end of thinking you are in charge, the end of questions, the end of karma, but the beginning of a continual deepening of just what reality is.

Actually the experience is that things are changing moment to moment. The past (even only moments previous) and future are understood to only be thoughts occurring in awareness now. Moment to moment bardo shifts are visible. Walking through a door into another room can feel like a different day, or world. When concentration is applied reality can be seen to be pixelated - boiling and shifting in constant change, BUT there is a "stillness" to it, for lack of a better word that is part of its emptiness. Underneath the millisecond to millisecond change is a continuity and quietness that is always present and unchanging. This is how "dependent origination" is a relative teaching, and how even the teachings of the Buddha are nonsense. The body is the same, though some senses become sharper without the continuous mental dialogue creating noise between pure experiencing. Loosely held ideals and hobbies, or activities that really only ameliorated the illusory "self" become uninteresting and are dropped. Energetics are seen to be like any other phenomena, IMHO, not necessarily important in the scheme of things, or having any real insight attached to them. Synchronicities, especially ones that seem to make things easier happen often. What sort of patterns do you mean?

It's just a way to notice that the sound of things isn't sourced at the ears. It's an exercise in opening up the way we think about the senses. I imagine you perceive the world as full of separate beings and things. This is an illusion it is possible to see through. On this we agree. I'd be curious to hear about your experience of the veil lifting. You can definitely play with the sense of proprioception, and I can imagine that it could be a way in. Working with panoramic seeing is one step - I think you mentioned that you are doing this. Practicing hearing sound and locating those sounds in the exterior environment is another. Imagining that all of your senses do not necessarily correspond to a body location might be another. Not at all! There are pointers to realities non-dual nature not only in most religions, but in science and your everyday experience happening all the time. I use the word remediation on purpose. We spend a lot of our time reinforcing our dualistic way of seeing. Dropping our story about how things are and just being present, as well as working to accept reality in this moment as it is are fantastic practices that do not require any story about a tradition. It's good to hold the story we build, including the one about our practices or religion, lightly, IMHO. I'm glad we have some common ground. Any good "non-dualist" (whatever that is) or Buddhist will press you to meditate. Honestly, that's enough. The philosophical arguments don't really get anyone anywhere. What you need to know is experiential, and you can do that without arguing if you are curious. A spiritual experience then? Either way, I would say that science is perfectly capable of inducing spiritual and religious experiences in people - and does. Mine too - only one of them is very obviously an illusion. I could trot out the common arguments for how the boundary of things is obviously artificial, but I'm guessing you've heard of that before. Just in case: https://lafavephilosophy.x10host.com/The_Questions_of_King_Milinda.htm I have great respect for that! Are the insights you might have something you can experience in this moment? This, IMHO, is one of the most important questions. Thank you for your post, Mr. Sternbach.

Yes. Unless otherwise noted, all posts proceeding a first will be in answer to the specific poster initially mentioned.

First - thank you for being open and sharing the system you are working in. I confess after the reading the first page I'm not clear where it is going, but I think that is more down to google translate than anything else? Something I feel I haven't imparted clearly enough is that duality is ALWAYS present in non-duality. This is most obviously exemplified in such documents as the Heart Sutra: Without the field of duality, non-duality has nowhere to obviously manifest. They co-exist, though it is always obvious that non-duality is the deeper base-level reality. There ARE prizes in duality - I have a wife, family, pets, friends. There is deeper more beautiful non-duality obviously visible in nature, love, music. If anything non-duality makes duality even MORE stunning and precious. It doesn't surprise me that you would look in duality. Perhaps the teachings you work with, or the movement/visualization/meditation you do is also precious to you. Still, understanding the non-dual nature of reality isn't "leaping ahead". You CAN'T leap ahead. Non-dual understanding isn't the product of someone's hard work... it just happens. Yes! Setting Yin and Yang aside, it ALL operates without you in control. Nonduality is disidentification, so I applaud your intended goal. The difference between your typical awakened person and one that has realized no-self IS this disidentification. It might be dismissed by someone who is a non-dual philosophy fan, but no-one with realization thinks that any particular practice was what precipitated understanding non-duality completely. I certainly don't dismiss you. Whether or not you have realization, your path is your path. You will pursue what you are driven to pursue. There ARE no dead ends. There are no enlightened people, just the recognition of enlightenment by itself. Thank you for sharing your experience and practice.

When you meditate, and the mind is quiet and empty listen carefully. Does a birds call sound like it comes from your ear, or from out in the forest, or down the street somewhere. I am saying that your mental model of how you perceive reality is wrong. I would also suggest that reality AS YOU UNDERSTAND IT is has illusory elements that you fill in. It isn't the philosophical understanding you are after but the experiential understanding. Your experience isn't an abstraction is it? Right. Why should any of your senses get a pass? As a conceptual overlay it is difficult to fathom, but doesn't seem impossible. As an experiential understanding it is much easier to apprehend, though it require the complete remediation of your world view. Sounds much like many spiritual propositions designed to back the mind into a corner! Could be useful, I imagine. Is the Coulomb force something you can touch or apprehend with your own experience, or merely a philosophical construct that does a fine job of explaining a phenomena? Science has a way of treating it's models as realities that isn't healthy... or is unintentionally hilarious. This once recently made me laugh out loud: https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/36726/20220322/dark-matter-evidence-anti-universe-running-backward-through-time-mirrors.htm So... we need to create a conceptual universe in which time runs backwards in order to make the entirely theoretical existence of dark matter work? Science as a religious experience! I don't think you are alone in having such experiences. This is the beauty of Dependent Origination. If all things exist dependent on other things for their existence, how many independently existing things ARE there? It is less important what a Zen priest thinks of your theory, and MORE important what your experiential knowledge tells you. Keep looking! The thinking mind seems to have endless facility to obfuscate what can be seen. It is as it is.

This is pretty much the instruction for how to work with the suffering of others as a teacher that my teacher has passed on to me. Beautifully put, Luke.

I honestly don't know... but why not? Definitely there are famous encounters of incorruptible, or corruption-resistant Buddhist teachers in China, and Christian saints and martyrs.

There are also other lists of siddhis too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhi I have met otherwise absolutely credible teachers who tell stories of dramatic time drop outs, seeing past lives, and sudden unintended materialization through walls amongst other things. I don't see "seeing some really weird shit" on the list but it really ought to be included, based on personal experience/those I have met.

Typo. Don't be silly. ...or an attempt at understanding and compassion? In my experience these are the usual reasons people get pissed off at strangers when this topic is discussed on the internet. Iconoclasm doesn't need any help or encouragement from me.

I don't think you are playing devil's advocate in the least. I think these are more about the phenomena of realized beings at the moment of death than enlightenment, and there is no reason in my mind that they couldn't be completely true, though I have no personal experience with such things. I haven't seen gods or demons but there is no reason why anything that could be imagined can't appear in this moment. Where time, space, and self are seen to be entirely conceptual ideas there is plenty of room for warm monks, and paranirvana rainbows.

I'm not sure what you are referring to.

I appreciate that this is hard to talk about but want to clarify that IF Maharshi was realized it wouldn't be a "choice" as you think of it. It would be more like this: There would be awareness of a single thought arising in the mind. The thought might be "I choose to abide in Atman". This thought would likely come AFTER abiding in Atman had occurred. Ramana would know with absolute clarity that no person had a made a choice and that there had never been a choice to make... that the thought "I choose to abide" is hilarious nonsense that refers to nothing and no-one. Again - this isn't Maharshi's choice here. Imagine if a handful of mentos fell into a bowl of cola. The mentos would froth up and over the bowl making a mess. There was a reaction, but only because all of the necessary elements combined in one moment of their own accord to make it happen. So it is with non-dual understanding. The conditions are Maharshi, thieves and ashram. The character "Maharshi" is naturally predisposed to kindness, so he wishes to spare other beings needless suffering. He wasn't afraid of the thieves so he remained. The non-dual is present with duality. Feelings and emotions still arise in a realized "person", but don't belong to anybody. They come and go, like everything that is seen or felt. There ARE no non-dualists. Nobody chooses to realize how things are. A non-dualist doesn't have to do anything to shore up understanding. It isn't a practice or a position one takes on how things are. There is no-one to have preferences or choose. Your arguments are the same as when this thread started and you are positing the same kinds of scenarios. Is it that we have failed in trying to explain this to you? Maybe you are (understandably) afraid and angry about the idea that your "self" or the universe of duality isn't real in the way you think it is, or that this premise challenges your belief system? I don't mind if you don't buy it, or that you choose to believe something else, but I do think we all want to be understood, perhaps? I'm still curious about what your belief system is called and who some of the major proponents or figures might be. Did you share that and I missed it?

Nicely said.

Enlightenment is ALSO seeing that the sense doors are empty. Phenomena arise where they are, not at any locality. There are a number of terms that are used for the oneness/wholeness/emptiness and its characteristics including consciousness, perception and awareness. Of these, awareness in my opinion feels the most accurate. To me, perception and consciousness imply an awareness and something that is apperceived by it. Each is incorrect because of the duality and implied mechanism. What there is, in my opinion, is a simple awareness that permeates all. Reality (setting aside for a moment what is or isn't a universe) is infinite, but not in the conventional sense of being full of innumerable things and going on forever. It is infinite in that it cannot be made finite. It has no boundaries. It is also indefinable since it exists independent of all attempts to create incomplete artificial conceptual divisions; ultimately there AREN'T any, such divisions only exist in the conceptual constructs of the mind. A star is a fantastic example of an artificial conceptual division. Where is the edge of a star if it depends on its own gravity, the relative gravity of other bodies, the various items of its composition, and countless other factors for its existence? It cannot exist within the artificial limits we make it mentally fit into. We give a star its own designation as a separate thing, but in those moments where you take in the entire field of the sky in wonder, and the mind is quiet and empty, how many stars do you recognize? Do you see stars, or just the expanse of the panorama? This is far closer to the truth. Can we understand the consciousness of such a thing? There is nothing separate out there there to have any consciousness of its own. Indeed, YOU don't really have any consciousness of your own - you mistake your self-referential thoughts and chatter for a person on a planet that has important things to do. Under it all there is just awareness of phenomena, and yet simultaneously we all shop for food, go to the toilet and fall asleep while watching TV.

Mr. S. Cat, All conceptual descriptions in whatever language are incorrect in some way or another, which I honestly believe is the main problem in this thread and with discussion of this topic in general. Still, the discussion itself could be enough for someone to realize how things are, so... why not? The "none" is the "emptiness" aspect of non-duality, IMHO the most explicit version. Its clearest expression is the Madhyamaka doctrine in which all phenomenal objects only exist as dependent on other objects, therefore there ARE no real objects that have an existence which his entirely their own. Even the existence of this emptiness of separateness is itself merely an explanation that depends on their being separate terms the have no reality of their own, so it TOO is empty. The theory is hard to parse for sure, but the experiential understanding of it is contrastingly quite simple. It is both a unity of things, AND an emptiness of separate things. It is one, and not-two. It is both "Self" (a unity of all things) and no-self (an emptiness of things with intrinsic (separate) reality. It's like looking at a carrot through a prism. Think of these as different views as different facets of the prism looking of the same thing, and all of them are true. To me it is plainly obvious that what the Upanishads, Buddhism, Advaita and Neo-Advaita, Taoism, Jainism, etc. are talking about is precisely the same thing. THIS thing. Enlightenment is absolutely non-denominational. Why would someone think that there are separate "enlightenments"? It might get explained differently, but it is obvious what is pointed to once understood. People get attached to practices and traditions, but this is an impediment to actual progress. If you prefer a tradition, great, but getting the idea that it has any kind of exclusivity is hilarious nonsense. It is all "empty"... what is there to be exclusive? Feel free to PM me with further questions, or ask here.

In the Buddhist context a "God" is still stuck in samsara, is not on the level of a Buddha, and doesn't see reality as it is. Still, not a bad place to get stuck. vs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saṃsāra_(Buddhism)#Realms_of_rebirth

Nirvana is HERE. Right now. It's what you are looking at. You are just sitting around in it right now. The Buddha WAS present in nirvana after realization. Of course, there is also Bodhisattva Vow. The Buddha is said to have vowed to liberate all sentient beings before becoming enlightened himself. The joke is that enlightenment is the realization that all appearances (beings) are ALREADY enlightened. If you knew that parts of the very intimate and beloved fabric of reality were ignorant to their enlightenment or suffering, wouldn't you want to pitch in and throw them a few pointers?

This is the one I would check out: https://www.abebooks.com/Mind-Beyond-Death-Ponlop-Dzogchen-Snow/31177178412/bd?cm_mmc=ggl-_-US_Shopp_Trade_10to20-_-product_id=COM9781559393010USED-_-keyword=&gclid=CjwKCAjw9-KTBhBcEiwAr19ig6Tr8xWyzEaKznalMElmbodDoAA6d7TH0Fey7b47XwVXqfualpNbFRoCpHMQAvD_BwE

I'll answer your post, but I would still be interested in a direct answer mine. It was: Jesus, the Buddha, Ramana Maharshi - you name it - ALL teachers die. They get mad, they suffer, they get sick and they die. The Buddha got mad... Jesus flipped the tables of the money changers in the temple. Every teacher I have ever met, including the ones that I discovered had complete insight get mad. This is because they are HUMANS. How does this prove that they haven't "arrived"? Where do you think there are ultimately going, exactly? Add this to my questions for you. "Non-dual containment" is purely your invention. There IS often a pervasive joy of sorts, but there is no "identifying" it. It just IS. With or without it you are still along for the ride. The story of reality includes wars, disease, sex, taxes, and death amongst the 10,000 things. Who says that is going away? None of the great spiritual teachers of history, certainly. WHERE does it say that goes away? (Another question.) The story of the world is what you experience as a person. Non-dual understanding is knowing that ultimately the person is a fiction like all other appearances. There is only the unity... but ALSO there is still the story of the duality, and the duality doesn't stop suffering. Non-duality doesn't differentiate between the dual and non-dual. Both are ALWAYS present. Non-dual understanding doesn't make duality go away, and NO-ONE is saying it does. This is a note-perfect description of non-dual understanding.

I think the non dual realization precondition also puts into its proper frame what happens and who/what is involved.

Gotcha. That's more clear to me. Thank you.

...to cultivate agency to enact a "higher will"? Who's agency?

I'd be interested in hearing more. What do you consider "full blown agency". How does the instruction of the "higher self" appear? How does one "realise agency"? In what tradition is this happening, and who/what are some examples of successful understanding. Non-dual realization is free of the agency of the personal self.

While aspects of quantum physics sure hint at the underlying non-dual nature of reality (and why WOULDN'T they) boilerplate science and math aren't as applicable in my opinion. Science depends on the creation of "models" that necessarily use a limited set of variables to make predictions about what might happen in various experiments. Using science as a tool to attempt to dismantle or understand a non-dual universe is problematic because it doesn't HAVE any variables. It's like trying to measure water in a bowl with a ruler. Similarly math assumes a universe divisible into specific numbers of items, or hard and fast rules about the interactions of discreet objects. Non-dual reality is the understanding that there AREN'T any truly existing separate items to be counted, divided, or even interact. What we could really use is a non-dual science, but without subject/object language I'm not sure how that would exist. This reminds me of a podcast I heard once where the guest was imminently popular scientist Mr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson. The topic was: "Ghosts - Do They Exist". Mr. DeGrasse Tyson's answer was definitively no, since they had never been able to measure one with any of the available blinking science boxes in his lab, despite peoples claims of having witnessed such things. The problem is, of course, that the boxes are just abstractions. They are one removed from actual experiencing and can't really tell us ANYTHING about reality unless we are absolutely convinced that our external world is absolutely 100% real as we believe it- which even quantum physics tells us it is not. Full disclosure: Science was my religion for many many years until.... it wasn't. B. Allan Wallace cast enough shade on the idea that my beliefs were critically injured: https://www.abebooks.com/Choosing-Reality-Contemplative-View-Physics-Mind/30899233140/bd?cm_mmc=ggl-_-US_Shopp_Trade0to10-_-product_id=COM9780877734697USED-_-keyword=&gclid=CjwKCAjw9-KTBhBcEiwAr19ig2ndLS8tjSsH_1DTlyh4BnmdZ3t2AtO9ixyXGHzhv6nRmX-DOuJ41RoCrzkQAvD_BwE ...then insight decimated beliefs in general.