| | "Specifically when doing insight practices, the working assumption is.." Seems like a bit of a redirect in the answer. Is this a thing where you try to focus thought/practice more towards where it is suspected would be the best for that person according to where that person might be at that time?
"debunk the general illusion that there is some separate you that is in control" Now for this one, I don't think I understand for sure the illusion that one is attempting to debunk. I don't really know how other people think and conceive of things. It might be the same as me but I don't want to assume without checking. The way I see it, there are thoughts and sensations that if you notice and try to track them, then you can't find the ultimate origin. Sometimes or often, they may be associated with other thoughts, happenings, sensations, and/or memories but if you keep following them back along the chain, there is only so far you can trace before it's like blackness you can't see past.
And there is a conscious 'you,' which is the "I" that types these words, that does the looking and tracing, but that form of me that types these words can't see where the stuff (sensations, feelings etc) ultimately comes from originally. That me likes to think it is in control but it can't account for where stuff comes from so control is limited or I think Buddhism would say there is no control, just illusion of control or something like that. (but if time and space is an illusion, well then one could make a point that whole concepts like control, luck, beforeandafter, etc are all mistaken assumptions based on ignorance and just don't exist and you can't truly make your own reality because everything is already done and/or exists eternally and then your brain gets tired thinking about it and so you go and eat some ice cream..) Anyway, so the conscious I that types these words doesn't know/can't see where stuff comes from so where does stuff come from?
One could assume there is another me or part of me that is behind the blackness that is involved with the origins of that stuff. If there is such a part of me, the way I see it, that part would likely (or really just has to be) be very different than this me that I can easily notice but that does not originate things. It's nature is very different such that it's hard for this me to understand it, if at all. But perhaps popularly called the subconscious mind or somesuch. Is it that buddhism says that the origins of the thought/sensations are not another me or part of me and there is no other me that is in 'control' but it's more like 'the field' or something like that? Is that the other 'you' that Buddhist practice is attempting to debunk the concept of? -Eva |