dwai
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Everything posted by dwai
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http://www.sageramana.org/files/Essence of Ribhu Gita.pdf
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How does one meditate without being mindful? Mindfulness is a part of the meditative system. Karma is not energetic btw, more about selfless/desireless action. In hindu tradition there is the study of Advaita Vedanta where a large part of the preliminary practice is based on being mindful.
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Those three forms of knowing are for mundane knowing. For Brahman/Parabrahman there is only aparoksha anubhuti, or direct apperception. Other forms of knowing are not real. And again, awareness is not knowing. Knowing happens in awareness
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The discomfort is a result of one's existing/held belief, is it not? For a Hindu, the concept of Atman is not alarming at all. When an advaita vedantin say "Hold on to the Self", he/she means "The One without a Second" and not the personality appearance who is considered "self" in the mundane sense. We consider it to be an unequivocal fact. Now, exactly what this is, is a source of debate and questions between different camps, but not any different from say it would be between buddhist schools or Daoist schools too. One could say, based on my Buddhist or Daoist or XYZ paradigm, I find these concept (Atman and Abiding in Self, etc) alarming. But that is without trying to understand what the the AV/Hindu means. Same words can mean different things to different people.
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And my apologies for hijacking this thread
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Which is why both jeff and I defined what we mean by Awareness and Mind. What he calls mind, I call awareness, what he calls awareness, I call mind. Thereby the confusion
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We do many things that defies the boundary of the body. During my taiji meditations I often perceive my body to be congealed energy and nothing else. A lot of "matter manipulation" happens because there "body" is not what it seems. It is another matter as to why is it so hard let go of the notion that the body is made of matter, and the mind/consciousness is a property that emerges from this...
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There is a hierarchy of validity in the three levels i have shared of course. Most valid is Direct experience, next testimony of reliable witnesses and finally inference. So it is quite possible that what you know through inference is overruled by the previous two. What you know by the testimony of others be overruled by direct experience. Let us put it this way. Inference is a tertiary mode of knowing. In terms of mathematics, a result of a probabilistic assessment of something's trueness or not.
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Yes. That is what happens in Nirvikalpa samadhi. There is neither mind, nor body, only awareness.
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If you don't want to call Pure Consciousness without objects (or Empty mind) as Mind, then that's fine with me too. If you want to call "knowing" as awareness, then that too is fine by me. There is neither birth nor death. They too are arisings in awareness. Birth is the establishment of a sense of being "I AM". And Death is a cessation of it. We are born and die every day, with waking up and deep sleep. Awareness, as i use the term, exists irrespective of whether an "I AM" exists or not.
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Again, Awareness is the quality that allows knowing to arise. It is Pure Consciousness without objects. Try this exercise, tell your mind -"'Mind...I am going to listen to whatever you want to tell me, see whatever you are going to show me.." and then sit in attention, for the mind to rise and show you things. You have found awareness or consciousness without objects because the mind will refuse to rise.
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That is not my experience, nor of millions of other meditators who have gone before us. The body and mind are both products of the awareness. Turning off the mind doesn't stop anything except the world. Awareness remains as clarity.
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Yes, the mind is prone to errors. That is not logical. You need awareness to prove or disprove anything.
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It is just a matter of convention. I use awareness as the primary quality of illumination. Some people call it Pure Consciousness or Objectless Consciousness. If you call it the "mind", then that's fine with me. By mind I mean a stream of objects in Pure Consciousness/Awareness. It is just a matter of semantics.
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yes but that doesn't mean inference is always correct (like Jeff pointed out, sometimes fog can be mistaken for smoke, a rope for a snake, and so on).
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it is a modification of awareness, only. Doesn't REALLY exist. Sort of like how a dream object doesn't REALLY exist, when considered from a waking state perspective Not new definitions at all. These are just deeper unfolding of the subject. It is always better to start with a simple set of concepts, and then unfold naturally
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And the mind arises in awareness. So it was predicated on awareness.
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I define mind as a stream of objects/thoughts. When there is no thought, mind = Awareness.
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without it, you cannot even presume to prove that something "exists" outside of awareness. So even that meta-concept (that something exists outside of awareness) is predicated on awareness.
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Mind rises in awareness. It is perfectly possible to be aware without a mind (no objects). In fact, if we look at one of your favorite subjects (KS), it is said the Shiva's awareness is Prakasha (light), and his quality is vimarsha (awareness of this light). So in this context, "Mind" is a result of vimarsha. Awareness is Prakasha. http://www.nevernotpresent.com/satsangs/prakasha-and-vimarsha/
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And yet, you needed awareness for this entire exercise
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of course not
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I'd say that it's better to say "all things known are predicated on awareness". What is not known, is well not known, so it's pointless to bring them up. And this does not prove that they don't eventually arise in awareness or that they exist independently. I know that of course. Yes of course there is the possibility of making mistakes. The Rope can be mistaken to be a snake, fog for smoke, etc. But like you pointed out, the "knowing" you are referring to is different from knowing in the mundane sense. That's why we don't rely on the( local) mind beyond a point, as it is prone to mistakes and limited. Mind too is a process that arises in Awareness. But awareness is not the mind.
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That is a classical argument against this viewpoint. But I ask you, when have you known anything that you are not aware of? You could say, things exist even if I am not aware of them all the time. But then I ask you, how do you know that they exist? Do you not assume things that you don't know about exist nonetheless? There are three ways of knowing. This is called pramāna (or evidence). Direct Experience Testimony of a reliable witness (someone's word, a book, etc) Intuition (you see smoke in the horizon and intuit that there is a fire that caused the smoke to rise). All knowing, is predicated on awareness. One can never know anything outside of awareness/consciousness, no matter, how such knowing comes about (one of the three means mentioned above). Then one could argue, there are things that are known and there are those that are not known. Those that are not known don't technically exist until they come into the domain of awareness. One might concede that "things might exist" without anyone being aware of them. But that is an assumption, not a fact. In fact, to make such a statement requires awareness. For, can something that is not aware be able to formulate such thoughts, and articulate them? So, if that is the case, then how can anything be apart from awareness?
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I have found that Jeff does not ask these questions for disruptive reasons, but really out of genuine curiosity and desire to engage in discussion.
