Stable Rigpa

Gregor, modified 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 10:06 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 10:06 AM

Stable Rigpa

Posts: 75 Join Date: 1/12/20 Recent Posts
In April I had an experience in which 'Self' droped away - I had a very long period of Review following, in which I abided in Rigpa for quite a while. 
Now it seems to be integrated and there's much less suffering - I don't refer to phenomena as "I, me, mine" anymore.
During my meditation I just sit & let go - meditation happens effortlessly, meaning that there's just this nothingness & stuff happens on its own. However, my waking experience off cushion varies. It feels like moving between total nothingness (let's call it a la Bernadette Roberts 'No-Self') and seperation/contraction. 
This abiding in 'natural mind' is unfortunately unstable I wonder how to work on its stability. 
An Eternal Now, modified 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 10:20 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 10:20 AM

RE: Stable Rigpa

Posts: 638 Join Date: 9/15/09 Recent Posts
Gregor:
In April I had an experience in which 'Self' droped away - I had a very long period of Review following, in which I abided in Rigpa for quite a while. 
Now it seems to be integrated and there's much less suffering - I don't refer to phenomena as "I, me, mine" anymore.
During my meditation I just sit & let go - meditation happens effortlessly, meaning that there's just this nothingness & stuff happens on its own. However, my waking experience off cushion varies. It feels like moving between total nothingness (let's call it a la Bernadette Roberts 'No-Self') and seperation/contraction. 
This abiding in 'natural mind' is unfortunately unstable I wonder how to work on its stability. 

What is your experience of Self dropping away like?
Gregor, modified 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 11:18 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 11:18 AM

RE: Stable Rigpa

Posts: 75 Join Date: 1/12/20 Recent Posts
Awareness being aware of itself; centerlessness, no agency, non-duality - just nothingness + self-reflection not possible 
An Eternal Now, modified 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 11:23 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 11:21 AM

RE: Stable Rigpa

Posts: 638 Join Date: 9/15/09 Recent Posts
Gregor:
Awareness being aware of itself; centerlessness, no agency, non-duality - just nothingness + self-reflection not possible 


What is the relationship between awareness and a sound or a color or a sensation? When awareness is aware of itself, is it something formless and separate from these? If not what is it in relation to them -- do they arise being watched by a background awareness? Do these arise from within awareness? Or do they arise inseparably from awareness? Or are they the awareness themselves? Is awareness different from these sounds, colors, sensations?

What is this nothingness like? Is it inert? Or is it a pure formless aware-presence? If not, what is it like? How is it in relation to awareness? And how is it in relation to a sound, a sight, a color, or a sensation?

How is no agency experienced like in your experience?
Gregor, modified 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 11:28 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 11:28 AM

RE: Stable Rigpa

Posts: 75 Join Date: 1/12/20 Recent Posts
An Eternal Now:

What is the relationship between awareness and a sound or a color or a sensation? When awareness is aware of itself, is it something formless and separate from these? If not what is it in relation to them -- do they arise being watched by a background awareness? Do these arise from within awareness? Or do they arise inseparably from awareness? Or are they the awareness themselves? Is awareness different from these sounds, colors, sensations?

What is this nothingness like? Is it inert? Or is it a pure formless aware-presence? If not, what is it like? How is it in relation to awareness? And how is it in relation to a sound, a sight, a color, or a sensation?

How is no agency experienced like in your experience?

Don't mean to shut down the conversation or anything but I am not interested in conceptualizing experience here - I'm just curious on how to make that stable. 

-Mettacittena 
An Eternal Now, modified 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 11:32 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 11:32 AM

RE: Stable Rigpa

Posts: 638 Join Date: 9/15/09 Recent Posts
Gregor:
An Eternal Now:

What is the relationship between awareness and a sound or a color or a sensation? When awareness is aware of itself, is it something formless and separate from these? If not what is it in relation to them -- do they arise being watched by a background awareness? Do these arise from within awareness? Or do they arise inseparably from awareness? Or are they the awareness themselves? Is awareness different from these sounds, colors, sensations?

What is this nothingness like? Is it inert? Or is it a pure formless aware-presence? If not, what is it like? How is it in relation to awareness? And how is it in relation to a sound, a sight, a color, or a sensation?

How is no agency experienced like in your experience?

Don't mean to shut down the conversation or anything but I am not interested in conceptualizing experience here - I'm just curious on how to make that stable. 

-Mettacittena 

These questions are vital to stabilize your experience. Unless you have direct insight into the relationship between awareness and transient phenomena, there cannot be a stable nondual experience.
An Eternal Now, modified 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 11:35 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 11:35 AM

RE: Stable Rigpa

Posts: 638 Join Date: 9/15/09 Recent Posts
Someone who go into Awareness practice must go through these stages of insight for mature realization and effortless experience:

http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2007/03/thusnesss-six-stages-of-experience.html
Gregor, modified 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 12:29 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 12:29 PM

RE: Stable Rigpa

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Okay - so it's a non-conceptual state & sensations know where they are. Re: having no agency - Everything happens on it's own (there's no doer involved) 
-
I'm not good in answering those questions, I'm sorry. I appreciate your help though 
An Eternal Now, modified 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 2:11 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 1:52 PM

RE: Stable Rigpa

Posts: 638 Join Date: 9/15/09 Recent Posts
Gregor:
Okay - so it's a non-conceptual state & sensations know where they are. Re: having no agency - Everything happens on it's own (there's no doer involved) 
-
I'm not good in answering those questions, I'm sorry. I appreciate your help though 

Ah ok. I see what you are experiencing.

When people say 'awareness experiencing itself', it can mean different things. Many people experience it as a formless sense of Presence, the I AM.

But from your description, you are describing a state of no mind -- sensations know themselves where they are (there is no sense of a knower or knowing behind them), plus non-doership -- everything happens on its own.

The way to stabilize this is to realize anatta as always already so -- that is there must be the realization that anatta is a seal, all along so.  No seer, just scenery, no hearer, just sound.

Contemplating on Bahiya Sutta ( http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2008/01/ajahn-amaro-on-non-duality-and.html ) can help, but the emphasis should be on insight rather than triggering a peak experience, as Robert Dominik explained his mistake was treating Bahiya Sutta as merely a way to induce a state of no-mind previously: https://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2019/09/robert-dominiks-breakthrough.html


Also see: https://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2018/11/no-mind-and-anatta-focusing-on-insight.html
An Eternal Now, modified 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 1:55 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 1:55 PM

RE: Stable Rigpa

Posts: 638 Join Date: 9/15/09 Recent Posts
Wrote many years ago:

"First I do not see Anatta as merely a freeing from personality sort of experience as you mentioned; I see it as that a self/agent, a doer, a thinker, a watcher, etc, cannot be found apart from the moment to moment flow of manifestation or as its commonly expressed as ‘the observer is the observed’; there is no self apart from arising and passing. A very important point here is that Anatta/No-Self is a Dharma Seal, it is the nature of Reality all the time -- and not merely as a state free from personality, ego or the ‘small self’ or a stage to attain. This means that it does not depend on the level of achievement of a practitioner to experience anatta but Reality has always been Anatta and what is important here is the intuitive insight into it as the nature, characteristic, of phenomenon (dharma seal).

To put further emphasis on the importance of this point, I would like to borrow from the Bahiya Sutta (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.1.10.irel.html) that ‘in the seeing, there is just the seen, no seer’, ‘in the hearing, there is just the heard, no hearer’ as an illustration. When a person says that I have gone beyond the experiences from ‘I hear sound’ to a stage of ‘becoming sound’, he is mistaken. When it is taken to be a stage, it is illusory. For in actual case, there is and always is only sound when hearing; never was there a hearer to begin with. Nothing attained for it is always so. This is the seal of no-self. Therefore to a non dualist, the practice is in understanding the illusionary views of the sense of self and the split. Before the awakening of prajna wisdom, there will always be an unknowing attempt to maintain a purest state of 'presence'. This purest presence is the 'how' of a dualistic mind -- its dualistic attempt to provide a solution due to its lack of clarity of the spontaneous nature of the unconditioned. It is critical to note here that both the doubts/confusions/searches and the solutions that are created for these doubts/confusions/searches actually derive from the same cause -- our karmic propensities of ever seeing things dualistically"
Gregor, modified 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 3:27 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 3:27 PM

RE: Stable Rigpa

Posts: 75 Join Date: 1/12/20 Recent Posts
Thanks much for sharing this, it's quite helpful to get a better understanding! 
‘in the seeing, there is just the seen, no seer’, ‘in the hearing, there is just the heard, no hearer’ - I reflected quite a lot on this in the beginning until it happend and I saw it. Are there further stages of development? 
And would you say the path is about that realization, or is it about making this as a constant waking experience? 
Thanks much(:
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Chris M, modified 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 6:39 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 6/20/20 6:39 PM

RE: Stable Rigpa

Posts: 5104 Join Date: 1/26/13 Recent Posts
... or is it about making this as a constant waking experience? 

What is constant?

Tim Farrington, modified 3 Years ago at 6/21/20 1:17 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 6/21/20 12:45 AM

RE: Stable Rigpa

Posts: 2464 Join Date: 6/13/11 Recent Posts
An Eternal Now:
Gregor:
An Eternal Now:

What is the relationship between awareness and a sound or a color or a sensation? When awareness is aware of itself, is it something formless and separate from these? If not what is it in relation to them -- do they arise being watched by a background awareness? Do these arise from within awareness? Or do they arise inseparably from awareness? Or are they the awareness themselves? Is awareness different from these sounds, colors, sensations?

What is this nothingness like? Is it inert? Or is it a pure formless aware-presence? If not, what is it like? How is it in relation to awareness? And how is it in relation to a sound, a sight, a color, or a sensation?

How is no agency experienced like in your experience?

Don't mean to shut down the conversation or anything but I am not interested in conceptualizing experience here - I'm just curious on how to make that stable. 

-Mettacittena 

These questions are vital to stabilize your experience. Unless you have direct insight into the relationship between awareness and transient phenomena, there cannot be a stable nondual experience.

Gregor, that is like saying, "Okay, granted, this may be a stroke or a brain tumor, the onset of severe dissociation, early senility, Alzheimer's, dementia, or, uh, some kind of enlightenment shit? I think it's the Ultimate Fucking Experience, of course. So don't bother analyzing MY HIGH SHIT. Just tell me how to build a good stone tomb for it."

I do have a relevant reply from an expert (well, he said he was, and faxed a cerificate, and showed a picture of some very impressive merit badges earned in another tradition, he's a seventh level something something, i can never keep that Andromedan shit straight, to tell you the truth, they've lost all sense of lineage in those outlaw bardos), a meditator of sorts, if such a term may be bandied about without further analysis, in Andromeda Galaxy on an immaterial spaceship cruising dukha in n-dimensions, from a "universe" (using the term in its roughest draft form)  far far away.

HESHEIT says:

"GREGOR, symptoms you describe are perfectly consistent with you having your head way too far up your ass. Be well, and practice hard, and humbly. Don't ask questions you may not like the answer to."

love, tim
An Eternal Now, modified 3 Years ago at 6/21/20 1:00 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 6/21/20 1:00 AM

RE: Stable Rigpa

Posts: 638 Join Date: 9/15/09 Recent Posts
Gregor:
Thanks much for sharing this, it's quite helpful to get a better understanding! 
‘in the seeing, there is just the seen, no seer’, ‘in the hearing, there is just the heard, no hearer’ - I reflected quite a lot on this in the beginning until it happend and I saw it. Are there further stages of development? 
And would you say the path is about that realization, or is it about making this as a constant waking experience? 
Thanks much(:


Should focus on contemplating to give rise to the realization. Then the experience of no-mind you have had will become an effortless natural state.
An Eternal Now, modified 3 Years ago at 6/21/20 1:06 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 6/21/20 1:06 AM

RE: Stable Rigpa

Posts: 638 Join Date: 9/15/09 Recent Posts
Also, maybe check out this book.

Khamtrul Rinpoche on the realization of anatta in the Mahamudra text (recommended reading! with lots of pointers for contemplation too):

"At that point, is the observer—awareness—other than the
observed—stillness and movement—or is it actually that stillness and
movement itself? By investigating with the gaze of your own awareness,
you come to understand that that which is investigating itself is also
no other than stillness and movement. Once this happens you will
experience lucid emptiness as the naturally luminous self-knowing
awareness. Ultimately, whether we say nature and radiance, undesirable
and antidote, observer and observed, mindfulness and thoughts, stillness
and movement, etc., you should know that the terms of each pair are no
different from one another; by receiving the blessing of the guru,
properly ascertain that they are inseparable. Ultimately, to arrive at
the expanse free of observer and observed is the realization realization
of the true meaning and the culmination of all analyses. This is called
“the view transcending concepts,” which is free of conceptualization,
or “the vajra mind view.”

"Fruition vipashyana is the correct realization of the final conviction of the nonduality of observer and observed."
Khamtrul Rinpoche III. The Royal Seal of Mahamudra: Volume One: A
Guidebook for the Realization of Coemergence: 1 (p. 242). Shambhala.


John Tan commented on the above:

[9:14 PM, 6/20/2020] John Tan: This is not just mere experience.
[9:15 PM, 6/20/2020] John Tan: It sees through the conventions and analysis and realized the emptiness of these conventions...
Gregor, modified 3 Years ago at 6/21/20 2:44 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 6/21/20 2:44 PM

RE: Stable Rigpa

Posts: 75 Join Date: 1/12/20 Recent Posts
Thanks - I already read his book but didn't find it to be useful, I might give it another try