The most obvious?

[silent thunder]

This question, keeps arising lately without intention and I've been appreciating the process.

So, without being serious at all, yet with complete sincerity...

 

What is most obvious?

 

[Lost in Translation]

That which is most obvious is also least noticed.

[Marblehead]

The functionality of my chair is obvious.

 

[3bob]

absolute doubt which turns out to be false.

[lifeforce]

Things are the way they are because......things are the way they are.

[Zork]

Permanence is an illusion.

(i know, i know, i cheated, it has been said already by the Buddha, but IMHO it's the greatest truth hidden in plain sight)

Edited September 8, 2018 by Zork

[Marblehead]

1 hour ago, Zork said:

Permanence is an illusion.

(i know, i know, i cheated, it has been said already by the Buddha, but IMHO it's the greatest truth hidden in plain sight)

But for many, illusion is permanent.

 

[silent thunder]

18 hours ago, Marblehead said:

But for many, illusion is permanent.

 

If I wasn't laughing at that... I'd be cryin'.

[doc benway]

On 9/7/2018 at 7:15 PM, silent thunder said:

This question, keeps arising lately without intention and I've been appreciating the process.

So, without being serious at all, yet with complete sincerity...

 

What is most obvious?

 

 

What is most obvious to me is that we are always right here, right now; and yet most of us spend so much time so far removed from this miraculous and brief experience of life.

[silent thunder]

awareness seems so foundational...  it recurrs as the likely candidate for me.

 

what could be more foundational than awareness?   aside perhaps from void?  or unness... the unmanifest? 

 

perhaps void and awareness are two aspects of one foundational unfolding...

[Everything]

On 9-9-2018 at 6:53 PM, silent thunder said:

awareness seems so foundational...  it recurrs as the likely candidate for me.

 

what could be more foundational than awareness?   aside perhaps from void?  or unness... the unmanifest? 

 

perhaps void and awareness are two aspects of one foundational unfolding...

First you talk about the "subtle" or "non-physical" it is a vibrational reality, and yes you can feel it. It is the place from which all of the universe has been projected into manifestation.

 

Then you are talking about contrast, which allows you to focus, and choose from the variety what to focus upon, and come to new conclusions and preferences. Thereby, expanding the entire universe. It is something that naturally happens. You can't help but do it.

You see, black and white are not actually a thing, it is just contrast allowing you to focus and experience all the variety. If you zoom into black space, again, you see many stars and galaxies.

Edited September 11, 2018 by Everything

[liminal_luke]

What is most obvious?  I wish I could say "the void" was obvious but it`s not for me.  Even awareness isn`t obvious, at least not if by awareness you mean "awareness of awareness."  Those things might be ever-present.  They might be primal and super important, but for me anyway they aren`t the most obvious.

 

Here are some of my choices.  Which one of these is most obvious depends on my environment at the time you ask.

 

Hunger and satiation.

Cold and heat.

Pain.

Basic feeling states: joy, sadness, grief, gratitude, fear, rage

[Marblehead]

Oh, No!  Sounds like Luke is becoming a Materialist.

 

[liminal_luke]

6 hours ago, Marblehead said:

Oh, No!  Sounds like Luke is becoming a Materialist.

 

 

Not to worry, Marblehead.  If the question had been "what is most fundamental?"  I`d go all wuji on ya.

[Rocky Lionmouth]

Thunder my dear friend, that is the most exquisite koan i’ve laid eyes on.

Merits one of those ”so the guy put his sandal on his head and just left.” kind of answers.

 

Mine is very unpoetic:

 

What is the most obvious?

There is no rest, there is only noise.

[silent thunder]

2 hours ago, Rocky Lionmouth said:

...

 

What is the most obvious?

There is no rest, there is only noise.

Well said mate.

 

There seems to always be a background noise to life does there not?  Even in stillness, my body churns every cell vibrates and thoughts arise and recede from the surface of my mind pond.  Even darkness and stillness when I experience them seem to be filled with potential, with the vibrancy of the possibility of manifesting.

 

Whatever the source of my thoughts may be, this question of what is most obvious just keeps surfacing... unbidden and unsought, never insistent, yet consistently, regularly present.  The question re-presents itself from wherever it is that thoughts arise from...  

 

I suspect what is most obvious may be so obvious that it abides beneath my radar.

 

Another closely related notion arises along with this is that there may be no such thing as darkness.  That what I consider to be dark is the presence of light that is beyond my ability to perceive or interact with...   only this is so foundational it lies beyond the ken of my rational waking mind to really interact with...

 

It sure seems convincing that i am

 

no matter what else occurs, it consistently seems i am aware that i am... and that in and of itself is a kind of noise, or resonant presence.

 

Edited September 15, 2018 by silent thunder

[John_H]

There is not naught, most obviously.

Edited September 15, 2018 by John_H

[Wu Ming Jen]

I told my wife she was penciling her eyebrows to high it should be most obvious but she looked surprised.

 

 

Accessible knowledge that is clear and conspicuous in meaning.

discernible from what is false. A distinct method evident to all ,noticeable, recognizable

self-evident

straightforward

undeniable

unmistakable

visible and not visible but yet very obvious.

[silent thunder]

2 minutes ago, Wu Ming Jen said:

I told my wife she was penciling her eyebrows to high it should be most obvious but she looked surprised.

  lol

2 minutes ago, Wu Ming Jen said:

 

 

Accessible knowledge that is clear and conspicuous in meaning.

discernible from what is false. A distinct method evident to all ,noticeable, recognizable

self-evident

straightforward

undeniable

unmistakable

visible and not visible but yet very obvious.

so grateful you take your time to share here my friend.

 

[Everything]

On 14-9-2018 at 4:10 AM, liminal_luke said:

What is most obvious?  I wish I could say "the void" was obvious but it`s not for me.  Even awareness isn`t obvious, at least not if by awareness you mean "awareness of awareness."  Those things might be ever-present.  They might be primal and super important, but for me anyway they aren`t the most obvious.

 

Here are some of my choices.  Which one of these is most obvious depends on my environment at the time you ask.

 

Hunger and satiation.

Cold and heat.

Pain.

Basic feeling states: joy, sadness, grief, gratitude, fear, rage

Pain is abstracted from contrast, so it's even capable of becomong more obvious I think. Right?

 

Cause you may sort of get shocked by a cold you're not used to. Or pleased by a woosh relief of cool wind as you're feeling suffocated by heat. But again, if it is too big of a gap or too sharp of a contrast, it becomes painful. Like, I love you! More than anything! Now see how I'm fucking your best friend? Awesome right. Now here, some people may say "great! i wanna join too, make room baby! Here I come! =D" or they may find the contrast to be too sharp and it sort of feels like a gunshot to their heart. A big hit. A powerful fast moving stream of energy that they are not up to speed with. And it sort of hits them like a train. Bang. "You betrayed me...."

 

So pain and pleasure are not obvious enough. It is the ability to distinguish that allows us to experience and focus and come to conclusions and preferences. And this ability to distinguish is dependant upon contrast.

 

Black and white. 

 

And so that'a where expansion comes from. I think. It has got something to do with that contrast. To know who you are by knowing that which you are not.

 

For if you have no ability to develop any awareness whatsoever of what you are not, then you cannot have any awareness of yourself.

 

That is like ALL THAT EXISTS has nothing outside of it. So it is not conscious anymore. Not aware of itself. It is just pure existance. Pure being. But again, why would that be a void? Well, maybe the unconsciousness is the void, but existance surely is not a void. And again, from every void, and unconsciousness, one eventually wakes up. 

 

For me usually the most obvious things are always completely oblivious to us. It is not something that you can see easily. Or know you do. Easily. And you may need to really do the opposite of what you've always been doing your whole life to develop the awareness of what that thing is that you've always truely been so oblivious about. Like sort of moving into a difficult situation and realize that the progress you make is absolutely irrelevant wether you choose a difficult situation or easy.

 

So the most difficult thing for people is to understand how simple it truely is and can be.

 

You exist as existance itself. So you sort of become the unconscious all that is, but that is not necessary. Because you are already looking at yourself right now. You are all that exists around you. Why? Because you are made out of it! You are existance. And so you are made out of existance. Another way to look at it, you are the center of the universe, look around you. You are the center of existance. So there is no place above or below you. No heaven or hell. Only the ever deepening awareness and lucidity of your now and your ever expansion into the depth of what this now truely is for you.

 

In the same way people ask what came first. The chicken or the egg? When you have to realize, you are the sequence. And the sequence is what the future and past are made out of. Everything exists right now. Also the future. And the past. And so your future and past exist right now all part of the same ever expanding sequence. And so now you realize how multidimensional you truely are. Because you expand into yourself. And your past improves along with you. And your future aswell. It is all here and now.

Edited September 16, 2018 by Everything

[liminal_luke]

32 minutes ago, Everything said:

Pain is abstracted from contrast, so it's even capable of becomong more obvious I think. Right?

 

 

Our ability to experience contrast underlies our perception of pain and hunger and sadness and all the rest of it.  In this sense you`re right: contrast is more primary than pain.  To make this point, however, requires high-level reasoning ability; it`s something of an intellectual feat.  Therefore, to my mind, it`s not obvious.  When I think obvious, I think what is obvious to the organism itself.  Take a four year old who burns his hand on the stove.  If we ask him if he`s in pain, he`ll say yes.  There`s no question.  It`s quite obvious.  He`s crying.  He`s asking for his mommy.  It hurts!  But if we ask him if he`s experiencing contrast he`s apt to look at us a little funny.  We`re psychologically sophisticated adults and we know he`s experiencing contrast, but he`s a little kid who hasn`t yet developed abstract thinking skills.

 

Depending on how we want to define obviousness you may be right.  However it`s not obvious that you`re right.  Not to a four year old.

[liminal_luke]

1 hour ago, Everything said:

 

For me usually the most obvious things are always completely oblivious to us. It is not something that you can see easily. Or know you do. Easily. And you may need to really do the opposite of what you've always been doing your whole life to develop the awareness of what that thing is that you've always truely been so oblivious about. 

 

Ummm...I don`t think so.  The things that we can`t easily see and are oblivious of are not obvious at all.  By definition.  Seems to me they are precisely the opposite of obvious.

 

You know what though, I suspect that your answer is in the spirit of the thread.  Have you heard the story about fish and water?  The fish, who spend their entire lives submerged in the water, don`t even know water exists.  Since the water is such a constant in their lives they aren`t even aware of it.  

 

We might ask then...what is our water?  What is the thing that we are so unceasingly immersed in that we are completely missing it?  What is the thing that would be head-thumpingly obvious about our existence to another life form but that we`re too "in it" to see?

 

My answer? Love.  

[Nintendao]

Continually grasping after the obvious, i only find myself reaching for shelter in obliviousness. The answer should be so easy! Right there front and center, as the most obvious should properly be. So without further ado, please raise the curtains. Alas, the thing is so close it's hiding right under my knose. No, closer! It's like when something is so close to your eyeball that it is impossible to focus on. Closer than your lashes! As the clouds should drift through my empty skull before fully crystallizing my wavering being upon its truths,  then i digest to say:

 

I agree with liminal_luke. The child wailing over his stove-burt hand evokes Buddha's 1st noble Truth. Surely, though, had the child no Love for his hand he would not be taking it so hard in the first place.

 

Furthermore, i reckon it's obvious that we love TheDaoBums at least a little.. because otherwise would not be here to even read the question..

 

[Rocky Lionmouth]

It could be obvious that i am. But then, going back to the child example, it takes kids a while to even develop a sense of i and being.

Before that it seems much more primal, they’re not used to being an identity or a person. Stuff just is.

 

Relationship, interrelatedness or something. Hard to even call it awareness, i think the fish and water thing is good, omnipresent somehow. Its just a thereness that is utterly subjective without having a subjective to reflect on. It is not made, not unmade just unexisting as of then.

 

I try again:

 

The most obvious is not that i am, rather that it is.

 

[silent thunder]

12 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

 

Ummm...I don`t think so.  The things that we can`t easily see and are oblivious of are not obvious at all.  By definition.  Seems to me they are precisely the opposite of obvious.

 

You know what though, I suspect that your answer is in the spirit of the thread.  Have you heard the story about fish and water?  The fish, who spend their entire lives submerged in the water, don`t even know water exists.  Since the water is such a constant in their lives they aren`t even aware of it.  

 

We might ask then...what is our water?  What is the thing that we are so unceasingly immersed in that we are completely missing it?  What is the thing that would be head-thumpingly obvious about our existence to another life form but that we`re too "in it" to see?

 

My answer? Love.  

What is our water?

Wow my friend... we share some deep resonance often but this is uncanny.  My first title for this thread was What is our Water?.

 

Throughout my life one notion that arises repeatedly on my thought pond is... "if my essential nature is made of some thing, I suspect that thing is love... love as the foundation upon which all else rises in the manifest."   I no longer have the sense that the people I love create the love that I feel... rather I am love and when near the people, places or things that make me feel this openly, the aspects of life that I carry around that cause me to not feel this natural state, dissolve and without those occlusions, the natural state is recognized again and I tune into my essential nature. 

 

So I am no longer saying I love you... but rather.  You remind me of the love I am... thank you.

 

And here's the real kicker... in my experiences throughout this life, the action and motion of love in my life moves like water, in the beneficial and the violent ways.  Sometimes a slow, gentle lapping trickle, softly feeding all it touches and gently reaching into and lovingly nurturing all the most intimate corners... and when the storms arise, these are also love,  but the possessive, frightened and raging frothing fomenting whirlpool or tidal surge that sweeps all before it in a tormented stormy press.