Daniel M. Ingram:
It is interesting that in another thread the was the assertion that MCTB whatever was about the first meaning of emptiness, rather than what your quote defines as both.
Just to be clear:
When I mean empty, I also mean without boundary, without inside and outside
I also mean the direct immediate experience in its unprocessed or raw form. I also mean the total dissolution of the sense of a perceiver.
I also mean no active agent.
I also mean that nothing is stable, including space and time.
I also mean that all is bare, shifting, empty sensate experience, causal, happening according to the basic laws of the universe, naturally, on its own.
I also would say that there is no boundary or differentiation between the sense doors at they occur, nor between body and mind, nor between manifestation and awareness, nor between this and that, beyond those ordinarily used for communication and discriminating function, but these are not the essential nature of experience, just part of it as sensations when they occur.
Nor can one find any here that is stable, nor a now that is stable, nor a knower, nor an investigator, nor any practitioner, nor any attainer.
When I talk of an integrated transient, natural, causal, luminous experience field, this sounds to me exactly like your "All collapse into a single sphere of natural presence and spontaneous simplicity."
I see no obvious difference either in theory or in actual practice.
Thoughts?
What you said is all very resonating here.
However, I see emptiness of subjective self and emptiness of objects as two distinct realization. One may penetrate the subject, agent, perceiver, source, etc... and yet conceive of things appearing as 'outside'. Well experientially, without a perceiver, there is no sense of an inside and outside and experience is just 'in seeing only scenery', however it may still seem that the things in scenery exist 'outside' on its own.
Does seeing through the subjective self lead to seeing everything as 'mere appearance' or 'just experience'? Not necessarily. Things can still appear to be external to mind/awareness/experience after no-self. This is not just a matter of no subject/object duality in experience. The experience may already be non-dual, but subtle dualistic view can still distort perception.
The realization of emptiness is something intimate and non-intellectual. That is to say, understanding the theory of anatta doctrinally is not the same as actually realizing and experiencing it, the same goes for twofold emptiness.
Investigating into thoughts and perceptions, looking for the origin, location, core, and ceasing of phenomena, it may be suddenly realized that everything is an unborn and unoriginated appearance that is illusory like a magical apparition (without a magician as there is no self/Self). Non-arising and non-ceasing. It is not that everything is subsumed into a changeless/deathless Self or Mind (that view is seen through in anatta), it is that "mind", even though empty of self and seen as mere mental activities, that manifesting activities is further penetrated to be empty. Everything is mere appearance/mind/experience/empty and non-arising. Contemplating on thoughts and perceptions this way and the resultant insight happened after reading an instruction from Mahamudra.
One can also try an experiment such as taking a small mirror and tilt it to an angle that reflects one light source from above at you. Then, noticing that depending on which eye you use to look (without even needing to close your eye), you can see that light at the top, or bottom (or another location) of the surface of the mirror and if you use both eyes you see two lights on the surface. Is there inherently one light at the top, at the bottom, or two lights? This is not to be answered intellectually like, "it's all empty" or a "yes and no" answer. It is being contemplated until intuitive insight of dependent origination and a conviction and experience of everything as an empty coreless illusion/appearance arises. There is a deconstruction of externality/objectivity into an immediate taste, just like in anatta realization there is a deconstruction of subjectivity into a non-dual luminous taste of 'just sensation'. This must arise as a taste and not a logic, then bliss and wonder and release will arise. This 'experiment' arose spontaneously and led to to an experience so I am sharing this from experience.
Just as Loppon Namdrol said:
...At base, the main fetter of self-grasping is predicated upon naive refication of existence and non-existence. Dependent origination is what allows us to see into the non-arising nature of dependently originated phenomena, i.e. the self-nature of our aggregates. Thus, right view is the direct seeing, in meditative equipoise, of this this non-arising nature of all phenomena. As such, it is not a "view" in the sense that is something we hold as concept, it is rather a wisdom which "flows" into our post-equipoise and causes us to truly perceive the world in the following way in Nagarjuna's Bodhicittavivarana:
"Form is similar to a foam,
Feeling is like water bubbles,
Ideation is equivalent with a mirage,
Formations are similar with a banana tree,
Consciousness is like an illusion."
This vision is not just a Mahayana thing - it is clearly described by Buddha in many occassions, including in Phena Sutta.
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/advise-for-taiyaki.html
Thusness:
Last year, a forummer from the NewBuddhist forum (Albert Hong a.k.a. Taiyaki) penetrated within a year the realization of I AM to non dual and anatta. He is an avid reader of this blog.
Thusness wrote the following pointers for him:
"There are several points that maybe of help to Taiyaki:
1. First there must be a deep conviction that arising does not need an essence. That view of subjective essence is simply a convenient view.
2. First emptying of self/Self does not necessarily lead to illusion-like experience of reality. It does however allows experience to become vivid, luminous, direct and non-dual.
3. First emptying may also lead a practitioner to be attached to an 'objective' world or turns physical. The 'dualistic' tendency will resurface after a period of few months so it is advisable to monitor one's progress for a few months.
4. Second emptying of phenomena will turn experience illusion-like but take note of how emptying of phenomena is simply extending the same "emptiness view" of Self/self.
5. From these experiences and realizations, contemplate what is meant by "thing", what is meant by mere construct and imputation.
6. "Mind and body drop" are simply dissolving of mind and body constructs. If one day the experience of anatta turns a practitioner to the attachment of an 'objective and actual' world, deconstruct "physical".
7. There is a relationship between "mental constructs", energy, luminosity and weight. A practitioner will experience a release of energies, freedom, clarity and feel light and weightless deconstructing 'mental constructs'.
8. Also understand how the maha experience of interpenetration and non-obstruction is related to deconstructions of inherent view.
9. No body, no mind, no dependent origination, no nothing, no something, no birth, no death. Profoundly deconstructed and emptied! Just vivid shimmering appearances as Primordial Suchness in one whole seamless unobstructed-interpenetration."