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Looking for "where" sensations are

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Looking for "where" sensations are
Answer
7/30/14 8:11 AM
So I just tried something, and thought this would be a good place to ask about it.  My main method when meditating has been "acceptance" - which was just a word I was giving to something that was happening in experience - and I've been floundering a bit over the last few weeks to understand what I'd been doing before.  I just tried something new, though, and it seemed to match up.

Basically, I asked myself "where" the emotions were happening.  Like, obviously there are sensations happening in the body, but when I tried to see where they were registering, or being experienced, there didn't seem to be anything there.  It was almost like it made the sensations disappear entierly.  Oddly enough, this dropped me into the state I'd been calling a PCE - where everything became very clear and direct.  I've been aiming for that state all along, and I always seemed to get there by realizing nothing needed to change in the past (thus, acceptance as a method), so this all seems linked.

Is anatta related to the idea of no central location, specifically? In Mahayana they call it emptiness, which I never really got before, but emptiness seems to be implying a spacial type thing. This feels a bit like untying a central knot. Everything is the same, it just isn't happening anywhere specifically.

RE: Looking for "where" sensations are
Answer
7/30/14 11:30 AM as a reply to Not Tao.
Not Tao:

Is anatta related to the idea of no central location, specifically? In Mahayana they call it emptiness, which I never really got before, but emptiness seems to be implying a spacial type thing. This feels a bit like untying a central knot. Everything is the same, it just isn't happening anywhere specifically.

Look up site:http://www.dharmaoverground.org proprioception
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception
There seems to be several layers added to this naturally occuring sense that includes several selfing processes operating that can be shut down. These processes seem to allow certain sensations of self to be prioritized over other sensations. When this changes sensations are expereinced much more clearly where they are, as they are, without priority and added stress. I vipasanna'ed the sense of center point, boundry of body and personal bubble. I had some good luck doing so.
Good luck,
~D

RE: Looking for "where" sensations are
Answer
7/30/14 12:24 PM as a reply to Dream Walker.
Ok, I think I see what you mean, but I'm referring to what happens after you locate where a sensation is in space.  For example, I know that sight is happening "in front of me" in a spacial context, but then I ask where THAT is happening.  Like, where is this sense of sight registering, or maybe, in what space is the sense of sight contained.  This makes the sense of sight, itself, seem non-existant because it doesn't seem to be happening anywhere in specific, it's just happening somehow.

It might be more clear with thoughts.  You can't locate thinking in space.  It might sound like it's coming from somewhere until you realize there's no sound.  So where are the thoughts then?  They just are, they aren't anyWHERE.

RE: Looking for "where" sensations are
Answer
7/30/14 5:27 PM as a reply to Not Tao.
If you focus on this, look closely, very closely, the experience of any object (self, chair, thought, emotion, even intention) has no "real" location. The "where" of any object is, oddly, both anywhere and nowhere, and at the same time.

RE: Looking for "where" sensations are
Answer
7/30/14 5:46 PM as a reply to Chris Marti.
Chris Marti:
If you focus on this, look closely, very closely, the experience of any object (self, chair, thought, emotion, even intention) has no "real" location. The "where" of any object is, oddly, both anywhere and nowhere, and at the same time.

The experience of an object isn't an object. It'd be silly to ascribe the properties of objects to experiences... e.g., how much does this experience weigh?

RE: Looking for "where" sensations are
Answer
7/30/14 5:50 PM as a reply to John Wilde.
Does an object have to have physical properties? Does a thought have them? An emotion? 

RE: Looking for "where" sensations are
Answer
7/30/14 6:54 PM as a reply to Chris Marti.
Chris Marti:
Does an object have to have physical properties? Does a thought have them? An emotion? 


Whether objects are necessarily physical, whether they exist wholly or partly independently of experience, seems to me a different question altogether. What I was trying to say cuts across that controversy.

I concur with the original -- and with your follow-up -- that experiences (no matter what they're 'of', if anything) don't have the properties we ascribe to objects, like weight, dimensions, or locations. They're in a different ontological category.

In other words, even if you're a realist who believes in the inherent existence of objects independently of consciousness, you still can't weigh or measure the experience of an object.

RE: Looking for "where" sensations are
Answer
8/6/14 1:32 PM as a reply to Not Tao.
I got an impression that you try to find sensations in relation to something that is created by those sensations. Watcher is aggregate of bodily sensations placed allover your body. When proper locations of bits of this aggregate of self are seen for what they are then PCE experience begin. What you do is probably related to seeing that, and also overloading this system which can work only when one do not dwell in those things.

Basically all impressions we have sensing things with our external and internal senses are aggregates of sensations twisted to point to some center of object/sensation and can be deconstructed in the same way. Its turtles all the way down type of thing and its usefulness is in programming and control capabilities over aggregates that are seen through. I cannot eg. make my body to feel lighter concentrating on object of my body and wishing it would happen. I have to act on its aggregates deconstructing it all the way down recursively to where there is direct control even though no object seem to be it. It happen on neuron network level, change is potential that have risen, new program that cannot be realized until mind run existing programs. If existing programs potential fall down this new will take over and mind will reprogram itself.

But what is purpose of my rambling?
You assume there is something by there being nothing. This is bad conclusion based on bad assumptions. First see and have 100% certainty what experience is made of then try to see things like sight and thought in relation to that.

RE: Looking for "where" sensations are
Answer
8/8/14 7:52 AM as a reply to Not Tao.
hi not tao

nice,

recognising that all sensations appear actually nowhere/everywhere ( then we construct the ideas of objects/space/time/distance/etc ) is an important insight. It helps deconstructs the idea of "me in here" and "world out there". Here is a good article about it:

http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/ajahn-amaro-on-non-duality-and.html
and the rest of the blog is good too

like chris and john point out, the place where sensations are experienced... where is it? can't really be said to be anywhere.
have fun!