This is funny...

[Songtsan]

Its funny, after just yesterday spouting something about how its ok to spend time developing mind models of how reality works through using the monkey-mind to create a better monkey mind I've suddenly come to the opposite viewpoint as well - I've spent my whole life thinking and thinking incessantly..all day long 24/7...brain that never stops...it certainly has some correlation with dopamine levels..but I used to kick myself in the ass because I always heard that the monkey-mind was the cause of all our suffering and to be 'improved' or 'grown up' spiritually meant silencing that mind and unifying with the Tao, with primordial being, with ultimate reality outside of our own limited reflection of reality. Become empty so that the ultimate reality will constantly fill you. But then I gave up trying to master it by defeating it and decided to master it instead by becoming friends with it and understanding it, without trying to escape it. It seemed to me that instead of trying to 'drop it' all, one could instead refine it, so that the inside became more and more like the ultimate reality of the outside. Find the untruths that were within and tame them, make the mind 99.99% similar to the ultimate reality of the Tao - an almost pure reflection. And its completely true that I refined much of my understanding and approached gnosis within. But I am still stuck in that all day long crazy thought world, its just far more 'presentable' as they would say and I am far more at ease. The thing is that the Tao is forever changing and that as soon as one creates what one views as the perfect mind map of reality, reality goes and changes on you, and then you have to learn again anew on a daily basis. I am now starting to think that I was wrong and that in order to truly be in accord with the universe as it really is, I must let go of the mind, as everyone has been saying all along...It's good that I have finally started to trust this age old wisdom, because before I was always doubtful, because I was thinking, 'But shouldnt we know how things work, detail by detail, like scientists?' 'Isn't this also enlightenment?' Definitely there is great value in logical analysis, yet the universe is so much complex than we could ever learn through a lifetime of analysis and learning. I think that by joining with reality and letting the wisdom mind be constantly open in awareness we simply connect our brain to the larger brain of the group-mind, the group-body, that instead of having to do all this work of analyzing it constantly to make sure that the reflection is accurate, one simply becomes the accurate reflection, because one simply is the accurate reflection by being directly noninvolved with interfering with the reflection process. By becoming empty within, the fullness of without joins with the emptiness of within. By becoming empty within we become full of the truth, without having to snatch the truth out of the air by wrestling it to the ground and sweating every second of the day and then exhausting our brain and killing ourselves with the stress.

 

At the same time I think that a full mind is also a constancy of our reality - forever emptying, forever filling. Whether the reflection is accurate because of direct perception, or whether it has become an accurate perception through mental fencing...both have value, but I think in the end that learning to empty oneself as often as possible, one learns far faster than the other. Both ways can bring bliss, but by emptying, bliss can also come far easier as well.

 

Also, by basing understanding on a reflection, no matter how accurate - you are always slightly living an untruth, even if it is only by .1% but when one truly integrates with what really is, one is always true and always completed. As the truth is constantly changing as the wheel turns, the truth does not remain stagnant, but rotates in step along with 'that' The truest truth one can attain - at least as far as I can tell.

Edited June 12, 2013 by Songtsan

[Marblehead]

Yeah, you too think too much. Hehehe.

 

But thinking is good as it keeps the juices flowing.

 

Just don't believe everything you think. (We do lie to ourself, you know.)

[Songtsan]

Now I am flowing the opposite way again...but not leaving the other too. I aim to integrate them both. When thinking is too extreme and I just cant focus on one thing - do mind mapping and refinement. When mind is slowed down, focus on one thing.

 

The Tibetan Buddhists in the Vajrayana school I think do this practice where they view everything in the world as a big mandala, and all the beings as various divinized gods and demons. This is viewing the mind as everything and making the mind a holy place of gods and demons. This is nearly exactly the mind techniques I use. It is unifying oneself to the divine. But your focus changes depending on whats going on at the time, so its not one-pointed focus techniques...focus is there, but every-shifting. Focus is used to create ideal forms, to replace the minds not-so-ideal constructs with better ones, thus replacing the self with a better self.

 

Emptiness is the way of dropping everything in mind, fullness is the way of using everything in mind and creating with the elements of the fullness. The combination of the two can be stronger still. All 3 ways can be equally strong. Different strokes for different folks. I will combine them into one way. I will combine all ways into one way. Ways = way = all ways dropped, and then just is.

[Marblehead]

Yeah. What was the title of the Beatles song? "Let It Be"

 

I use empty-minded meditation. It gets easier as you get older.

[Songtsan]

Another path that is supposedly good is the path of bhakti, or adoration for a divine principle - it works too...I practice this as well...devotion to the kundalini - who helps me out all the time. 'She' is my beloved, in the sufi way. So I practice a threefold path: devotion, fullness, emptiness...I am finally just working it out...the doubt is starting to completely disintegrate..Happy as a clam

[Marblehead]

Happy as a clam

Watch out for the marine mammals though - they love clams.