xabir2005

D.O. is exactly how things work. That is not how I or Buddha experiences it. It points neither to mystery or conceptual certainty. It points to a non-conceptual realization of how things are interconnected and interdependently arisen... that nothing has independent, unchanging existence in and of itself. This can be directly seen and realized, and this realization is deeply liberating. What is important is a quantum shift of perception.... not a conceptual perspective. What is important is awakeness, not more concepts and perspectives. One just needs to wake up from delusion.

The explanation is below. You see plenty of bodies, not thinker or seers. Yes. This mindstream is distinct from others, conventionally. His seeing is conventionally different from your seeing. Yes, there is no formless substance hiding anywhere. That is precisely my point. There is just that experience of sight, sound, etc. That is what I call 'seeing, hearing'. There is no formless seer or hearer behind experience. Therefore in seeing just the seen, in hearing just the heard! I have already said: in seeing just the seen, means in seeing just the experience of scenery. No seer! No separate, formless substance to be found! It is just ungraspable direct experience only. It is not a self and not a thing. Thinking is not predicated by a thinker. The notion of thinker is just another thought! Just thought after thought. And by the way, I don't mean that hearing and thinking arise without cause. Everything arises due to various causes and conditions, including the body, the sense object, etc. But there is no self to be found as an agent - everything arises interdependently originated. Body is interdependent with mind, but body is not an independent or unchanging seer - it is just one of the conditions for the manifestation of consciousness. Just like water, sunlight, etc is not the origin of flower but are one of the vital conditions for flower. Also, water is not the same as flower, and in the same way body is not the same as consciousness, but they are interdependent... but they are interdependently arisen. I don't say they don't exist, just as I don't say river doesn't exist, weather doesn't exist, wind doesn't exist. I said there is no windness behind blowing, weather-ness behind the everchanging clouds and wind and rain, no unchanging river-ness behind the flowing. Similarly there is no hearer behind the hearing, no seer behind the seeing, thinker behind the thinking, etc. No... I don't say emerge from deeper phenomena. There is no shallow or deep phenomena. No hierarchy. Just phenomena! Just blowing, flowing, seeing, etc. Is, is not, existence, non-existence, simply do not apply to the empty nature of reality! Emptiness is therefore free from four extremes: existence, non-existence, both existence and non-existence, neither existence and non-existence. These four extremes predicate on an inherent existence - i.e. a self, or a windness, that can 'exist' or 'not exist'. But if a windness of wind cannot be pinned down as a truth or (unchanging, independent, locatable) reality somewhere, nothing of 'is' or 'is not' or 'existence' or 'non-existence' can be said about that! No findable entity can be established to exist, not-exist, etc.

Sorry, yeah I missed it. Anatta means there is in seeing just the seen, no agent/seer behind seeing. Seeing is just the experience of scenery. Same goes to hearing/heard, thinking/thought, etc etc. The self-luminous process of hearing/seeing/thinking activities is self-luminous ('self-cognizant') rolls on its own accord due to dependent origination, without an agent, a perceiver, or a doer, or a separate self behind them. As for 'there is no organism doing the hearing and seeing' - actually the organism is simply the process of varying dependently originated bodily and mental activities, including hearing and seeing. I am not denying hearing and seeing as a process, I am denying an independent, unchanging, and inherent organism-self. Just like the word 'weather' does not refer to a thing-in-itself, but an ungraspable ever-changing process of clouds passing, wind, lightning, rain, etc etc. Therefore there is no organism 'behind hearing and seeing' since 'organism' is simply a label or convention for the various activities including hearing and seeing, just as there is no such thing as 'a weather behind clouds and raining' as 'weather' is simply a label for a conglomerate of ever-changing activities like clouds, rain, lightning, etc etc. There is no separate agent, hearer, seer, behind perception... just as there is no windness behind blowing, weatherness behind raining, riverness behind flowing, etc.

Yes... non-dual experience can be very very blissful and wonderful. But not liberating. Blissful does not equal liberating. Liberating means liberation from false views... from all views, and thereby all forms of clinging subtle to gross.

Have already discussed this. D.O. is a pointer to the realization of Shunyata and Maha as a natural state. The realization of Shunyata and Maha is completely non-conceptual. It is not a view, it is freedom from all views. Even those at "I AM" makes the statement. Even those at substantial non-duality makes the same statement. What you have to realize is that it is the realization of the twofold emptiness that liberates you from inherent view. When you are liberated from inherent view, you are free from the constructs/concepts of 'is' and 'is not' - and therefore being free from such constructs, you are left with the suchness of experience. But what is essential is the realization of the twofold emptiness. Because you can have non-dual experience and realization... you can have non-conceptual experiences, and talk about 'suchness'. Whether before realization, or after 'I AM', or after substantial non-duality... people all talk about Suchness and deem it as highest. But they are unable to overcome inherent views, and they had ample non-conceptual experiences but non-conceptual experiences does not liberate - only realization does. Anyway when you realize anatta one striking thing (like all previous realizations) is how free of constructs and conceptualization and direct it is - I mean what more direct can be 'in seeing just seen, in hearing just heard' etc. Anatta, emptiness, etc are non-conceptual realizations. There is no such thing as an anatta view or emptiness view. Maybe to the unenlightened, they understand it intellectually and hold them to be a view. When you realize it, they are not views at all... it is just a non-conceptual realization that causes you to drop all views, without leaving even a 'anatta/shunyata view'. Just like you wake up from a dream of chasing monsters means 'full stop'. Freedom. Awakeness. You don't create another dream of 'no chasing monsters'. All concepts - body, i am my body, i am my mind, i am ... All come down to a basic misperception of 'is' and 'is not' due to not comprehend the emptiness of self and objects. It is not the gross concepts 'I am so and so...' that is the problem - it is the underlying view and belief that 'I Am' is a truth. Buddha calls it 'the conceit of I Am'. Therefore it is a view, and from which stems other grosser conceptualizations and thoughts like 'I am such and such'... but when you cease conceptualizations, you realize and experience a bare naked fact of being and awareness to be the luminous essence of mind, you still do not overcome that view of 'I Am' - in fact that bare naked non-dual fact of presence and awareness is then quickly reified as the pure I AMness even without that thought of I AM, in other words we still cling to it as an independent and unchanging essence. People generally call this the 'I AM' prior to 'I am this and that' - the I AM prior to concepts. And those who realize this tend to treat this as ultimate, so they spend all their effort trying to abide as that non-conceptual, non-dual Self. There is realization and experience of the non-conceptual luminous essence, but not the empty nature. By not realizing anatta, i.e. in seeing just the seen, in hearing just the heard, we conceive of some independent, separate, unchanging self that is behind and perceiving things... some kind of independent agent. This view can only be dissolved by realization, no other ways. Those who have realization of luminosity will say this - even at I AM level, or substantial non-dual level, much less anatta insight. But they have not overcome inherent view so aren't liberated. You aren't being clear about what causes liberation... it is not as simple as being non-conceptual. If not, any people who realized I AM or even the ordinary mindfulness therapy teacher would have attained anuttarasamyaksambodhi. I can remember always talking about the non-conceptual truth of presence, ungraspable by any concepts or thoughts, 'suchness', when I first attained self-realization over a year ago. ...are not the problem. You aren't being honest if you say you don't make use concepts and thoughts in daily lives. At the same time it is possible not to confuse concepts and thoughts as simply useful and convenient tools, with actual experience. i.e. abstract concepts like 'nature', 'weather', 'wind' are useful for communication but there is no inherent nature-ness, weather-ness, wind-ness, car-ness, self-ness, etc. "Conceptual thoughts are in nature great awareness" - Milarepa Precisely. And you can only get entangled in concepts when you posit a truth or reality 'is' or 'is not' to those labels, concepts, conventions. Otherwise it is like useful conventions - weather, wind, river, but there is nothing to grasp - literally... then you can use concepts but not be 'used' by them. No, there is no eternal now. There is no now. There is no ground. There is literally nothing that abides. My blog name is a bad hippie nick created by a friend in 2004 in sgforums (actually he just called it that because he thought he sounded cool but he didn't know it has 'spiritual connotations'), which I then overtook his account along with the Buddhist forum shortly after. I kept that name elsewhere because people recognized that name. The Diamond Sutra says, “The past mind cannot be grasped; the present mind cannot be grasped; the future mind cannot be grasped.” Even without concepts, people still cling to an inherent Now-ness. Why? Attachments lie deeper than gross conceptualizations. Even though Now is just a belief, a thought, people generally don't recognize that. Just like 'Self', 'Awareness', etc. They see that Now, Self, Awareness are inherently existing and independent, whether we have thoughts or not. So they kept referring back to this sense of Now-ness, Self-ness, Aware-ness. They can get very grounded and very non-conceptual, but they are unable to overcome the view of inherency. Staying thoughtless, non-conceptual, and abiding in samadhi all day isn't going to help either. Some people can abide in non-dual, non-conceptual samadhi all day and still not realize and overcome the view of inherency. What is required for liberation is realization into the twofold emptiness. Bad bad hearer. Which is just a method. Satipatthana is a gradual method, albeit one that does lead to true experience and insight. JK talks about nondual experience but there is no clarity about realization of anatta in what he said there - though some of the stuff he said is quite good.

What are you?

It is to realize your own mind essence. Your buddha-nature. All efforts must be directed towards the goal of knowing yourself... All samadhis and powers and experiences are merely side-effects and not the main thing. In fact if you are chasing after some evanescent experiences, you will fail to realize who and what you truly are. Presence is a term for your essence. You should really read and practice this: http://www.arunachala-ramana.org/publications/who_am_i.html And my e-book: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-e-booke-journal.html

I don't cling to views. If you think I do, substantiate your claims. By the way I don't think conceptualization in and of itself is a problem. Conceptualizations and thoughts are just as fine as seeing and hearing. They are also a beautiful part of experience and one we cannot do without unless we are living alone in a mountain which even then I suspect we will still need some conceptualization proccesses to survive. The only problem is the view "is" or "is not" I.e. The view of inherency with regards to selfhood and objects, which can only be dissolved via the realization of the twofold emptiness. The view of inherency results in clinging - for example if we think "wind" that's not a problem if we understand it to be mere empty conventions for the ungraspable activities of blowing, unless we cling to a notion of inherent windness behind blowing then it becomes a problem, source of clinging and suffering. The concept, thought, convention, label in itself is not the problem but the reification of conventions into independent existence is a problem as it causes grasping and a distorted vision of reality (I.e. Dualistically and inherently). After realization, we do not cling to concepts and thoughts, but it is not the same as not being able to think or being in aversion to thoughts. In fact after realization, concepts lose their appeal and one prefers to rest in direct experience. This is a good thing and is a natural progression in experience. But one must not mistake non conceptualization with true realization. True realization of anatta and agentlessness and shunyata/d.o. Liberates... Not the practice of non conceptualization which is in and of itself simply a shamatha practice (though also important). Many people stress on non conceptuality as a form of practice (be it teachers like eckhart tolle or even usual or even clinical mindfulness therapy) but because twofold emptiness insight has not arisen, they still cling to their notion of self or objects as inherent. And they don't need to verbalize their clinging - just as lucky said, the view runs deep and the clinging occurs on a pre verbalization level. They may cling to an awareness even without engaging in labels or conceptualization, due to a subtle belief in an inherent awareness, for example. Telling these people to cease conceptualizing isn't going to help, as they already had ample non conceptual experiences of reality and yet are unable to overcome their inherent view. Therefore it is not non conceptuality in and of itself that liberates... It is realization that liberates you from extreme views... And in fact all views, hence called the viewless view.

no self means no self, there is no such thing as half no self. There never is a self in any way, in any kind, even if you believe there is - just like there never is a santa claus any where even if you believe there is. There are many various insights that complements the insight into no self (this much even ciaran admits) - but at the same time the insight of no self cannot be compromised, as it is simply a basic fact about reality. And once you realize no self you can never believe in the existence of self again, you can never unsee it. Realizing no self may not dissolve all negative, afflictive habits immediately but as the realization sinks in deeply, they will certainly be dissolved. Habits are simply the habitual momentum of consciousness... Just like a wheel, you may stop spinning it (reinforcing the spinning via delusions) but the wheel still need some time to stop.

"Do I exist" is like asking does weather exist? Conventionally speaking, yes. But as an actual entity that can be pinned down somewhere? No. "Self" is like that. A convention for the dependently originated process of the five aggregates, but it cannot be pinned down as an actual independent entity. Because there is no independent and unchanging "self" that can be pinned down, "is" or "is not" does not apply. Seeing occurs without seer, hearing happens without hearer.

it is not about words, words are simply pointing to some aspect of one's experience... And also before one has true experience and realization these words might seem like nonsense, but after true experience and realization, whatever I said will make perfect sense. No matter how you say "walk outside, feel the wind blowing" The fact remains that people still feel like they are this entity constricted inside their head or body, looking outwards at the sky, feeling the wind, etc What I am saying is that once no-self is realized, you don't "feel the wind" - you are the wind, and even that is not quite right, there is simply the wind blowing and there is no feeler. There is an unbounded freedom from constriction, the sense of a body-mind is dropped off and there is great bliss and intensity of non-dual luminosity or clarity as a result. Once you have experiential realization all these are seen in real time and you are not binded by words, but you can freely and spontaneously use words to point this out to someone else.

At first, we are deluded into thinking there is a windness behind blowing. Then we experienced forgetting the windness, left the blowing. After which, we keep trying to forget windness. Until we realise that "wind" is simply a label collating the everchanging blowing activities, that there is no "windness" behind blowing. At this point, all confusions and grasping dissolve, and we are simply left enjoying the ungraspable and intimate process of blowing. Same applies to "self" and "five aggregates".

liberation requires a quantum shift of perception. Because even if you have temporary experiences where the sense of self temporarily dissolves, as long as you still believe that the "self" is real, you will forever be back in the loop of seeing a self and trying to chase it away. Like being in a dream of monsters and trying hard to get rid of that monster in the dream not realizing it was all just a fictitious thought. In the same way, no-self does not point to an experience, does not point to temporary unitive experiences where the sense of self is temporarily forgotten (this is quite common). Rather it points to a fact about reality, and it is not a belief but it can be directly realized and verified: the fact of no self. Hearing, seeing, thinking, everything is not and cannot be denied... It is only that notion, sense of agent that must be investigated and seen through. I cannot stress how important that quantum shift of perception is... Otherwise no matter how you practice or attempt to let go of self, you can never realize that no self is already the natural state and already always so. That is, in seeing always just scenery without seer. In hearing always just sound no hearer... Etc. The view that posits "is" or "is not" with regards to a self, which means the view of inherent existence, is the cause behind all grasping. In order to treat our afflictions, we must treat it from the root - the conceit of "I am" as Buddha calls it. That conceit, that view must be thoroughly abandoned not by efforting but by realization. I have not long ago written something about the view: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2011/07/view.html

This morning I was going through some of Thusness's older posts. This is relevant, from January 2006: Yes LongChen, I agree with what you said. There shouldn’t be a separation. Smile There are 2 seeds that I sense lying deep in Galen’s Consciousness: 1. The meditative experience he gained on the aspect of 'No-Self' 2. The meditative experience of the 'ISness Presence, Knowingness Presence However the imprint of the Knowingness Presence' is stronger than the understanding of 'No-Self' and serves as the seed that makes Galen remarked 'We are the Watcher, not the thinker, or the doer, or the experiencer', thus, creating separation. The meditative experience of “AMness” is a very powerful one. It creates the impression of Certainty, Absoluteness and Realness. It creates the impression that we have touched the innermost reality of our own core being where thoughts play absolutely no role in that moment of experience. This is a very unique and sacred experience but is a double edge sword. It must be cleansed with the “Emptiness” truth otherwise there will always be separation. What is the ultimate nature of this “ISness” Presence? Is the “ISness” Presence still the “Presence” when there is separation? When we are listening to a piece of music, where and what is this Ultimate Presence right at that moment? During meditation or when one is totally submerged in appreciating the piece of music, he might exclaim, “I become the music”, “I am the listening itself” or “I am the music itself”. The Presence is the Music is the Awareness is the ‘I’. Does it mean that the subject, the object and the action have suddenly become one? Or is there really no separation from beginning? Separation is often the result of wrong identification, labeling and attachment. This is the problem of language and attachment. When one is free from labeling and experience is direct, there is really only listening, there is no ‘I’. This is what really is happening if we are not hypnotized and deceived by thoughts and labeling -- One complete co-arising emptiness flow, ever present and ever clear. There is no ‘ghost’ and ‘shadow’ in between, the ‘I’ is unnecessary and separation is illusionary.

'Sailor' Bob: "Truth or Reality cannot be stored, cannot be amassed--it does not accumulate. The value of any insight, understanding, or realisation can only be in the ever-fresh presence of the moment. Yesterday's realisation is not a bit of good. Now it is dead. Now it has lost it's vitality. It is useless to try and cling to or hold onto an insight, an understanding, or a realisation, for only in it's movement can there be the enabling of ever-fresh and new insights of Truth or Reality to appear. The idea of enlightenment or self-realisation as a onetime event or a lasting and permanent state or experience is an erroneous concept. Understand-ING or know-ING is alive in the immediacy which can never be negated. The emphasis is on the activity of know-ING which is going on as the immediacy now--not the dead concept 'I understand' or 'I know'".

More precisely, it is simply a thought about I, but never a real I... just like a thought of santa claus does not make santa claus real. Good insight. No, there is no 'you' to be living your thoughts, and more precisely, they are not 'your thoughts'. Thoughts are not 'yours' and there is no 'you'. Forget whatever you think you experienced. No-self is a fact Right Now... it does not reside in a past experience or insight. Right Now.... there is just hearing, seeing, sounds, thoughts, scenery... no 'I' apart from that isn't it? Isn't hearing, thinking, a self-occuring, self-aware cognizant process without a separate controller or perceiver apart from them? Good. It just takes some investigation, that's all. Whatever you seen is a good start. What you need to realize is that, in seeing there is ALWAYS just the seen without seer.... in hearing there is ALWAYS just the sound without hearer.... in thinking, just thoughts without thinker - always. Once you realize that this is the nature of reality and not a maintenance state that can be 'gained' or 'lost', you can never unsee it.

Even if your experience is limited by the 5 senses, no self should be very clear. There is hearing, no hearer. Seeing, no seer. Thinking, no thinker.

Conventionally speaking it's you. Ultimately there is no you-ness and it-ness. Drinking tea that's all. p.s. this is funny - reminds me of some of the things in this forum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja86AkbxQLQ&hd=1

If you are liberated from views i.e. 'is' and 'is not' and this leaves you with 'emptiness is form' basically, how is this not 'the duality of the content of concepts themselves'?

http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2009/03/on-anatta-emptiness-and-spontaneous.html A week ago, the clear experience of Maha dawned and became quite effortless and at the same time there is a direct realization that it is also a natural state. In Sunyata, Maha is natural and must be fully factored into the path of experiencing whatever arises. Nevertheless Maha as a ground state requires the maturing of non-dual experience; we cannot feel entirely as the interconnectedness of everything coming spontaneously into being as this moment of vivid manifestation with a divided mind.

D.O. is a concept which points to something beyond concepts: Maha as a living reality.

Actually it is always important... all realizations and experiences are important. Even I AM is important, you know. Even non-dual and anatta is important. Also, Thusness has suggested to me to tell you to do reversing of insights... which I have informed you many days back. Yes.

Yes. But what I am saying is that it is also necessary to see in real time the interconnectedness of everything... D.O. is not a concept, D.O. is a living reality, and of course it is beyond extremes, empty, unlocatable, etc, but this doesn't deny D.O. as a living reality so to speak... in the same way that seeing and hearing is not a concept but a living reality to you.