Dan from Virginia:
D Z:
Based on your response you seem to be coming at this with some experience in Adivaita /Self-enquiry type practice, is that correct ?
Hi DZ, self inquiry, yes. I'd heard the word, Adivaita, for a few years here and there and recently I've run into it a bit. A teacher named Jean Klein on youtube seems (to me) v. clear. I don't know how common Adivaita is, but (and this is just my felt sense) some adivaitist students and teachers I've seen/listened to on youtube seem to be referencing the mind heavily for the way in which they are able to speak (again just my impression from the "stiffness"). I've not studied Adivaita, but I do recall their vocabulary wasn't as specialized as I've seen in here on this site or in Daniel Ingress's book.
This is an interesting place and tradition. I found this site today (below) which appears to be the same tradition as here (to me). The descriptive language of which I found very clear. It may be from ingesting/groking a good portion of Daniel's book over the last few days.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/mahasi/progress.html#fn-41How about you? From where do you come at this?
Dan
Cool. The reason I am asking is that it makes it a bit easier to explain how the MCTB stuff relates to your realization. My background is mostly in pragmatic dharma / whatever works. But lately I am finding value in traditional Buddhist stuff.
Some thoughts...
Self-enquiry: Results in a realization of a sort of ultimate Subject, or Self, or Pure Consciousness. It is vivid and pure, abiding in this base removes all the suffering of what we would normally call the unenlightened self. This becomes a sort of pure experiential base of all things. An analogy would be an empty page on which the picture of impermanent picture of reality is painted
MCTB: Center-less, Agency-less, no-Self. There is no experiential base only experience. But the way that this realization is attained, is by manipulating the flow of attention in a way that it is periodically interrupted (noting / refreshing awareness). This allows quite a bit of insight, but the noting pattern interrupts, do not promote consistent abiding. So people practicing in this way do not experience vividness or sensory clarity, and in the MCTB tradition this is 'impermanence'.
At this point they seem pretty disparate, and they are is why there will be al lot of confusion when you try to understand the other in terms of your own realization.
It is however possible to reconcile the two.
Coming from the MCTB side, the solution for me was stabilize attention, by paying attention to the sense doors. And then later deconstructing the sensory perceptions themselves.
Coming from the self-realization, one might follow a path that looks something
like this. Bascially further breaking down duality by examining the 'Self'. And then later deconstructing sensory reality (which is also really breaking down duality).
An analogy for this reconciled realization might be a futuristic hologram drawn on thin air, vivid and insubstantial at the same time.