Hi Chris,
Chris Coleman:
Ian And:
The heart of what I focused on was this last paragraph, keeping mindful of all the preceding ideas. I looked at (contemplated) my own experience in light of that last paragraph, and the insight struck me like a thunderbolt! I'll leave it to you to make sense of it.
Ian,
I've been following your comments in this thread with careful attention. It's possible that I've attained this insight, but it's also possible that I'm a million miles away from it.
It depends upon exactly what you mean in this final statement. On the one hand, I feel (a) that I understand the proposition that there is no "me," only a stream of perceptions; (b) that I believe that this statement is true based upon my own observations of my own experience; and (c) that I could probably explain the proposition back to you using different words that you would recognize as expressing the same truth.
On the other hand, my reaction is sort of "so what?" --
no thunderbolts.
Actually, "thunderbolt" may have been a bit of a hyperbolic term to use, but it drives home the point. It was
definitely eye-opening from a different angle that I had hitherto not considered. Just yet another way of looking at
anatta. Gotama was famous for making these kinds of points in several different ways. Just pick one and run with it; whatever strikes your fancy.
Chris Coleman:
I'm pretty sure that's because all I have is a dry intellectual understanding (which is relatively easy to attain), but not a true insight in the sense that you mean it.
It doesn't matter how you came by the perception (whether by "dry intellectual understanding" or by "clearly being able to see" the truth directly based upon clear, unobstructed observation — what you might call "insight").
What matters is
that you saw it and processed it as factual. And now that has changed your perception of reality. The real question is: will you remain mindful of it in your normal everyday living.
Chris Coleman:
In other words, I'm pretty sure you don't mean "I finally put all the clues together and figured out that there is no "me," but rather perhaps something like "something clicked from an unexpected direction in a way that caused me to directly be aware -- before and outside of any thought on the matter --that there is no "me."
Yes, you are correct in both assumptions. Although I wouldn't phrase the last part of that in those words ("that there is no me"). What I saw was
exactly what the Buddha stated, directly: "“Were a man to say: I shall show the coming, the going, the passing away, the arising, the growth, the increase or the development of consciousness
apart from matter, feeling, perception, and mental formations, he would be speaking of something that does not exist.”
What I saw was the truth about "the coming, the going, the passing away, the arising, the growth, the increase or the development of consciousness," that there had to be a body (in existence) with the six senses first in order to be able to perceive these objects, and that without that body there was no one there (no "thing" there) to perceive. "The coming, the going, the passing away, the arising, the growth, the increase or the development of consciousness" is
dependent upon having a body.
But you see, I had already had a previous insight about the five aggregates, and this played right into that insight. From a slightly different way of looking at it. That's all.
Chris Coleman:
I find myself reading these boards and constantly thinking "I already know this." But I can't quite tell if that's because I've somehow stumbled into great wisdom (highly unlikely, but I've had some unusual experiences so perhaps not completely impossible) or if that's because "knowing" it is easy and obvious but really isn't the point at all (probably much more likely).
Of course you already know this. We all DO. It is just that through the process of living and reacting to the events in our lives we sometimes lose sight of these truths and begin to believe the
mental conditioning that physical life brings on based upon the conditioning of the culture we live in. When that mental conditioning takes precedence over what we already know in our deepest conscience, then that's when the mind begins to fabricate a reality around the conceptions we have, an ego is formed and developed, and our "feelings" (not in the sense of
vedana, which is "feeling," meaning an affective quality based upon one of three variables) are at risk to become "hurt." When the ego is felt to be "hurt" or "stroked" or whatever, that's when the person loses equanimity of formations and
becomes involved in and "of" the world.
What you want to develop is to be
in the world but not
become part
of it. Keep ego and conceit out of the mix. Otherwise you create the perfect condition for the arising of
dukkha!
I'll have more to say on the concept of "conceit" later on when I have time to sit and compose something about it. It seems there are those here who have a rather shallow idea about what conceit is. If you see it for what is really is, you begin to realize how subtle it can actually be. Mental events that one might have previously not considered displayed any conceit, would then be realized as being an example of conceit at a very subtle level.
Have I confirmed your understanding?
In peace,
Ian