Differences between dualism and non-dualism

[dwai]

57 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

I think we need a new pronoun for awakened people. How do you refer to someone whose Self is as big as the universe and smaller than a grain of sand?  He/She and even the ever-controversial They don't cut it for the Pleasant Experiences of the world.  May I suggest Wow.

 

Used in a sentence....

 

Has anybody seen Wow around?

We/Us/Ours ? 

[natural]

2 minutes ago, dwai said:

We/Us/Ours ? 

Whom?

[Apech]

10 minutes ago, natural said:

Whom?

Boo and Dha?

[natural]

3 minutes ago, Apech said:

Boo and Dha?

Is Casper a party of this trinity?

[old3bob]

lets not forget It and That;  btw. was Thus-ness floating around for awhile?

[dwai]

1 hour ago, Apech said:

Boo and Dha?

Boo Yaaa

[dwai]

1 hour ago, natural said:

Whom?

Whence

[manitou]

2 hours ago, old3bob said:

"awesome" is what all the kids (some young & some old) are walking around saying ;-)

 

 

I think that's passe now.  I think it's 'that's really Fire!' is what it's about.  I don't get it, but oh well.

[manitou]

1 hour ago, old3bob said:

lets not forget It and That;  btw. was Thus-ness floating around for awhile?

 

 

As in 'His Thusness?'  That's good!

[Bindi]

5 hours ago, manitou said:

 

 

I may have used the wrong terminology here, Bindi.  For me to have said 'dive' indicates an action.  That's not quite right, I was speaking more metaphorically. It's a dropping, an allowing.  Allowing the conditioning to disperse so that the clarity can be experienced and recognized.  I'm almost seeing enlightenment as a physical thing, like a switch in the brain which toggles when needed for clarity, for answers, for seeing reality.  Reality isn't a particular set of conditions.  It's the is-ness, the one-ness of all life.  It is total acceptance of what is. 

 

Our condition on this planet is to ride two horses, for some reason.  To be born into the world of duality, illusion, stories, writing our own story which we mistake as reality.  Perhaps our mission, should we decide to accept it, is to tear off the mask of duality and experience the is-ness as reality.  In the DDJ it makes reference to the Dao treating us as straw dogs.  As we are all one entity in different skin bags with different conditioning, does it really matter at what point we live or die, and in what manner?  That thing inside us that 'doesn't move and doesn't age' is the real You.  All else is of the Head, and it's the head that gets us into trouble when it leads to separation of ourselves from others.

 

I woke up this morning realizing that I was a verb.  I am not a noun, I am not Barbara, separate from Bindi.  I should like to change my name to Pleasant Experience, if I didn't know it would confuse the pension department.  A Pleasant Experience is what we can all be, whether we are experiencing the company of another, or washing our car.  We can turn the car washing into a pleasant experience if we want, or we can also look at it from the point of view of the car!  It's happy to get washed!  One big pleasant experience.  One big verb!  As I was walking the dogs this morning, I saw that someone hadn't picked up their dog poop in the green belt.  I picked it up for them.  I created a Pleasant Experience for future dog walkers, who would probably have walked home fuming about the person who didn't pick up their dog poop.

 

I'm not speaking of people-pleasing here.  That's a horrible state to be in, stemming from insecurity.  Instead, Pleasant Experience stems from total acceptance of everything and everyone, every condition.  No judgment, to the very best of our ability (that ramification of enlightenment is a lifelong process, we just get better and better at it), no opinion, no thinking of someone else as lesser than you or greater than you, loving your brother as yourself (doesn't mean you have to take in every homeless person you come across, but to not fear the moment when one of those situations is presented, and to act in the way that Clarity tells you to - whether that's to give a few bucks or just smile as you pass by).

 

I've always had this undercurrent of fear inside me, stemming from who knows what.  It manifests as a tendency toward anti-socialism, staying apart from people, mentally (and subtly) pushing people away.  Sometimes pretending that I don't see them, sometimes purposely turning a corner so I don't have to socially interact with them.  I realized just this morning how very subtle this is, as I was about to turn a corner before having to say good morning to someone else.  How ridiculous!

 

Pleasant Experience doesn't have to do that any more!  Pleasant Experience can realize that it's all one big huge experience that the Dao, for some inexplicable reason, has rigged up for itself.  We're just a tiny cog.  The sooner we realize that Things Just Is is the sooner we find the peace of heart we're really looking for.

Sorry, I’m unconvinced. You choose to ‘allow’ pleasant experience instead of old conditioning, choosing this instead of that, because you have a preference for pleasant experience instead of fear. The fear undercurrent - coming from a psychological POV refusing to act on it is behavioural, but the driver of fear remains beneath the surface, unnoticed, still driving. This is spiritual bypassing. You can choose to behaviourally change each manifestation of fear, having to remember each time to allow pleasant experience instead of fear, or face the driver head on by digging into the subconscious and removing it. And fear is just the first of the emotional hijackers, there are more, all hidden, all in charge. 
 

 

 

[silent thunder]

 

5 hours ago, Bindi said:

Sorry, I’m unconvinced. You choose to ‘allow’ pleasant experience instead of old conditioning, choosing this instead of that, because you have a preference for pleasant experience instead of fear. The fear undercurrent - coming from a psychological POV refusing to act on it is behavioural, but the driver of fear remains beneath the surface, unnoticed, still driving. This is spiritual bypassing. You can choose to behaviourally change each manifestation of fear, having to remember each time to allow pleasant experience instead of fear, or face the driver head on by digging into the subconscious and removing it. And fear is just the first of the emotional hijackers, there are more, all hidden, all in charge. 
 

 

 

You're hanging up on the notion of 'choice'.

Choice is illusory.  Decisions are made prior to conscious awareness.

They arise spontaneously from conditioning and are a precursor to thought reaction which occurs 'after the fact' and is a function of memory, analysis and storytelling.

 

It's semantics in a manner of speaking, but neurobiology confirms choice occurs prior to conscious awareness.  Concsious awareness rationalizes the conditioned response to stimuli and then claims ownership of it. 

 

It does not cause it.

Edited June 6, 2022 by silent thunder
typo

[Bindi]

6 minutes ago, silent thunder said:

 

You're hanging up on the notion of 'choice'.

Choice is illusory.  Decisions are made prior to conscious awareness.

They arise spontaneously from conditioning and are a precursor to thought reaction which occurs 'after the fact' and is a function of memory, analysis and storytelling.

 

It's semantics in a manner of speaking, but neurobiology confirms choice occurs prior to conscious awareness.  Concsious awareness rationalizes the conditioned response to stimuli.  It does not cause it.

Fear is the conditioned action, arising prior to conscious awareness, not acting on that fear is the thought reaction, it relies on a conscious response to a specific manifestation of fear. 

[dawn90]

The only road that you can take that would garantee you minimal suffering is the road that leads in the devil's arms, there's no other.

So be careful with that.

 

I think a lot of wisdom is in that you are meant to follow the word of god and within that you find joy and eventually ultimate joy translated it means what I said in my previous post you want to be happy but within parameters set by god, or else you wander. The team suffers. Pep Guardiola sets up his team in order for it to function; and he says.

You work your magic within that system that I've set up, this is how we play and within that you express your individuality. And we all go for the win.

And most weeks he wins.

 

Edited June 5, 2022 by dawn90

[silent thunder]

35 minutes ago, Bindi said:

Fear is the conditioned action, arising prior to conscious awareness, not acting on that fear is the thought reaction, it relies on a conscious response to a specific manifestation of fear. 

C'est la vie.

We each experience reality from the center of our own awareness.

 

Yours be quite different from mine.

 

 

[Bindi]

Wouldn’t the nondualist accept that fear is present, not wishing to change it or the manifested action in any way? 

[Bindi]

9 hours ago, old3bob said:

besides the original Christian dualistic like context of this painting about the creation of Adam I think it could also allude to the idea that it takes two to return to a non-dualistic one,  with both reaching out and then joining together.

 

“Be in service to heaven, obey the earth, and store the Essence where they join.” 
~ Yellow Court External Illumination Scripture 

[silent thunder]

 

 

2 hours ago, Bindi said:

Wouldn’t the nondualist accept that fear is present, not wishing to change it or the manifested action in any way? 

 

This nondualist you propose is curious  Which nondualist?  You asking what 'the concept of a nondualist' would accept?

 

How could anyone know what it accepts? 

 

As it is not a reality to encounter, but a story character you've created in your mind to use in an abstracted scenario.  

 

[silent thunder]

Nonduality is word. 

What the word attempts to convey is experiential awareness which lies beyond the ken of words to compress into expressible terms.

 

The tao that can be spoken not being 'the tao' and such...

 

So many of the topics we approach here lie in the same 'untouchable' waters.  It's an occupational hazard of esotericism and philosophy. 

 

C'est la vie.

[Mark Foote]

6 hours ago, Bindi said:

Sorry, I’m unconvinced. You choose to ‘allow’ pleasant experience instead of old conditioning, choosing this instead of that, because you have a preference for pleasant experience instead of fear. The fear undercurrent - coming from a psychological POV refusing to act on it is behavioural, but the driver of fear remains beneath the surface, unnoticed, still driving. This is spiritual bypassing. You can choose to behaviourally change each manifestation of fear, having to remember each time to allow pleasant experience instead of fear, or face the driver head on by digging into the subconscious and removing it. And fear is just the first of the emotional hijackers, there are more, all hidden, all in charge. 

 

As the end of days looms ever larger in the windshield (my end of days, not necessarily the world's), I am fascinated to watch movies from the days when my parents were growing up, and to think about the parts of my personality that seem drawn from each of them.  

I discovered that a slight my father showed me, rolling a silver dollar over the backs of the fingers of one hand, is demonstrated in a Mr. Moto movie.  Likewise, palming a card from the front of the hand to the back and vice-versa, so that it appears the hand has been shown empty.  My father liked the mystery detective films of the '30's, when he was a teen.

 

I realized that my mother probably saw films with Louise Brooks in her late teens, and the stars that Jimmy Durante brought to Hollywood, James Cagney and Joan Blondell, in her twenties.  These people modeled attitudes and values, and IMHO they are still an influence today, somewhere in the background.

I suspect that my temper and impetuosity are from my father, and my general social impulses are from my mother.   How much of what I have from them, did they get from their parents, and from circumstances stretching back through the generations!

Reading the Pali sermons, I can see that at least initially Gautama's emphasis was on enlightenment.  I believe that it was only later that he began to advocate for the particular mindfulness that he said made up his way of living, and to refer to his way of living as a "a thing peaceful in itself, and a pleasant way of living."  Peaceful in itself, like maybe it's enough to master the way of living he taught (not the rules of the order, but the mindfulness), and leave off the pursuit of enlightenment.  

Cessation of volitive action, at least of the body (and in particular with respect to inhalation and exhalation), appears to have been one of the elements of his way of mindfulness.  That requires surrendering agency to a point that invokes the suffocation response, and an anxiety associated with the precariousness of posture.  These things require a person to relax and keep calm, as the ground gives way beneath them. 

Maybe this is the something of the highjacking you refer to, Bindi, but as you can see I am looking to find these factors with respect to inhalation and exhalation, and the action of the body.  My thoughts--I must make peace with them, to turn to cessation.

Finding the place where I am and the way at this moment is not the same as choosing to ignore some undercurrent of personality.  At least, not in my experience.  Get real, that's what's entailed, get real and unsupported by any action of your own, in physical space.

 

In the hall today there certainly are people who are losing their bodies and their lives.

(attributed to Ch’ang Ch’ing, "The Blue Cliff Record", tr. Cleary & Cleary, p 144)

 

 

Edited June 6, 2022 by Mark Foote

[Mark Foote]

On 6/4/2022 at 5:32 PM, dawn90 said:

 

I don't share that view, maybe he meant. That you're supposed to find a way not to suffer walking along the rightful path, and that leads to realization - I'm not sure about your interpretation because even the non-dual path is rife with suffering doubts contrary to what they might profess otherwise they wouldn't be posting down here would they? They'd be realized; and you can sense: doubt, inquietness. The will to debate, very dual things so as far as I'm concerned the non-verbal language of our friends the non-dualists here doesn't exactly convince me they've attained anything anywhere what they profess to have attained - you can sense the search.

So; that's my view.

 

That moral behavior is a prerequisite to that cessation of action of speech, body, and mind by which one contacts freedom, certainly Gautama taught that.

Then again, he also taught:

 

Where there have been deeds, Ananda, personal weal and woe arise in consequence of the will there was in the deeds. Where there has been speech–where there has been thought, personal weal and woe arise in consequence of the will there was in the speech–in the thought.

 

Either we of ourselves, Ananda, plan those planned deeds conditioned by ignorance, whence so caused arises personal weal and woe, or others plan those planned deeds that we do conditioned on ignorance, whence so conditioned arises personal weal and woe. Either they are done deliberately, or we do them unwittingly. Thence both ways arises personal weal and woe. So also is it where there has been speech, where there has been thought. Either we plan, speaking, thinking deliberately, or others plan, so that we speak, think unwittingly. Thence arises personal weal and woe. In these six cases ignorance is followed after.

 

But from the utter fading away and cessation of ignorance, Ananda, those deeds are not, whence so conditioned arises personal weal and woe. Neither is that speech, nor that thought. As field they are not; as base they are not; as wherewithal they are not; as occasion they are not, that so conditioned there might arise personal weal and woe.

 

(SN II text ii, 36, Pali Text Society SN Vol II p. 31-32)

 

 

The cessation of ignorance leads to the cessation of willful action.  Just as Gautama assumes his listener will know that cessation is the cessation of willful activity, he assumes his listener will understand that ignorance is the ignorance of the lack of any self in connection with form, feeling, mind, habitual tendencies, or mental states.  At least, that's the way I read it!

I would say really overcoming that ignorance would involve an experience of the cessation of volition in perceiving and feeling.  That state, and the states of concentration that lead to that state, are attained through "lack of desire, by means of lack of desire", and "whatever (one) imagines (these states) to be, (they) are otherwise."

It's the grasping after self in connection with the five groups that constitutes suffering. 

 

For the most part, I think Gautama realized the cessation of volition in in-breathing and out-breathing at regular intervals, and not the cessation of volition in perceiving and feeling.   

 

Edited June 6, 2022 by Mark Foote

[Apech]

11 hours ago, silent thunder said:

 

You're hanging up on the notion of 'choice'.

Choice is illusory.  Decisions are made prior to conscious awareness.

They arise spontaneously from conditioning and are a precursor to thought reaction which occurs 'after the fact' and is a function of memory, analysis and storytelling.

 

It's semantics in a manner of speaking, but neurobiology confirms choice occurs prior to conscious awareness.  Concsious awareness rationalizes the conditioned response to stimuli and then claims ownership of it. 

 

It does not cause it.

 

'Wisdom' or prajna is prior to conscious awareness (vijnana) and does choose, choice is not illusory as that is just bunkum made up by neuroscientists like Sam Harris based on bogus experiments on measuring brain activity on people pressing buttons.

 

[Apech]

8 hours ago, Bindi said:

Wouldn’t the nondualist accept that fear is present, not wishing to change it or the manifested action in any way? 

 

What is fear ... is the question.

[blue eyed snake]

12 hours ago, Bindi said:

Sorry, I’m unconvinced. 

 

do you want to be convinced?

 

err... this is the first time I talked about this, never even gave it a name. It's... like a near death experience, as you just know that was  ' real' and that your sense of I is not constrained to your body. This has the same quality of being sure about it.

It's like explaining red to one who is colorblind.

 

How that works out, in the short and the long run no idea, i suppose that's (slightly) different for each earthly unit.

 

Her Thusness tells us about her experience and you think it unconvincing, may well be the same as asking a first-year student about science.

 

I find reading this thread some things are very recognizable, as I've seen red and when someone tries to explain red I get it. The only thing I am sure about is that development goes on, it's not an endpoint but a turning point, or a door that opens, something like that.

 

 

[Bindi]

1 hour ago, Apech said:

 

What is fear ... is the question.

Is it? Fear is at bottom life saving, designed I believe to protect the organism, but major early fears do tend to reverberate in dysfunctional ways into adulthood. I see the dysfunctional manifestations as a restriction on our freedom to live happily/peacefully and achieve personal goals, but the subconscious source of dysfunctional fears can be confronted.This is actually empowering, and certainly emotionally healthy. 

[Bindi]

50 minutes ago, blue eyed snake said:

 

do you want to be convinced?

 

err... this is the first time I talked about this, never even gave it a name. It's... like a near death experience, as you just know that was  ' real' and that your sense of I is not constrained to your body. This has the same quality of being sure about it.

 

I have no issue with this as a personal experience, though to believe that it describes reality is just a belief. I might also believe that consciousness is not dependent on the physical body, but this doesn’t make it true either. 

 

50 minutes ago, blue eyed snake said:

It's like explaining red to one who is colorblind.

 

 

I don’t feel these experiences are really so hard to comprehend, lots of people have experienced different states, I think they can be described well enough. 

 

50 minutes ago, blue eyed snake said:

 

How that works out, in the short and the long run no idea, i suppose that's (slightly) different for each earthly unit.

 

Her Thusness tells us about her experience and you think it unconvincing, may well be the same as asking a first-year student about science.

 

 

What I find unconvincing is the depth of change in self-proclaimed awakened non-dualists, it seems to me that parts of life that don’t fit the nondual story are remodelled and adjusted on a shallow level, eg., fear, oh I’m feeling fear, I’ll just stop feeling that because fear is just a story, and I don’t need to run that story anymore. I find this unconvincing, and just another story to tell oneself. 

 

50 minutes ago, blue eyed snake said:

 

I find reading this thread some things are very recognizable, as I've seen red and when someone tries to explain red I get it. The only thing I am sure about is that development goes on, it's not an endpoint but a turning point, or a door that opens, something like that.

 

 

A turning point it may be, but it doesn’t appear to be a complete and final disassociation from all physical and emotional and mental and karmic identifications, and this complete disidentification seems to be the greater achievement (to me).