I do not believe in emptiness. There will always be some quantum fluctuations arising to note ;)

As for that thing I am pretty sure that in order to not experience 'body image' the specific focus is needed - though of course trying to feel and trigger it from 'outside' should make it easier to find said focus mode.

It is not that touch isn't experienced. Only changes in it are experienced and otherwise body image isn't. It also feels like it was intended focus for animals and more like humans during their evolution were thrown out of it. Same is pretty much for most my other 'attainments' eg. vajra-like meditative stabilization which feels like something extremely helpful for survival thing - therefore rather than attainments I treat them as finding natural states. For my 'implementation' these two things are related but when I had on and off this body thing before it still felt amazing and I knew I wanted to have it as part of my self-realization.

Otherwise imho that body image is imho experience of what I call 'errors'. It is a phenomena related to 'routing issues' I mentioned numerous times. In corpus callosum "mind" it is easy to cause these errors by shifting focus to left or right hemisphere without ceasing activity of central mind. Otherwise that anterior commissure "mind" doesn't have any such experiences and outside the so called "main consciousness" there is little to cause errors in healthy brain. Some "tangles" and other things which are caused by dwelling at wrong places can cause persisting routing issues and why I for example still felt issues despite landing to that anterior commissure mind (1st path on and off and first half of 2nd path) body image was mostly non-experienced but with lots of exceptions, especially related to the so called normal sense of self.

Since I didn't exactly see good descriptions of people at pragmatic 4th path describing missing whole body image it might work differently without hemisphere synchronization which I would say lay Arhats most definitely do not have. I am also pretty sure Mahasi Sayadaw had synchronized hemispheres - kinda have that vibe, that 'glow'. Anyways, during switching (which I think is pretty rapid for Arhats - at least Daniel in his videos look like has these things switch very fast) the anterior commissure might be used to shift hemisphere rather than usual corpus callosum and the sheer speed of switching might lead to that flavor 4th path experience - so most/some benefit is there but body image still arises for short while to be there and its just not bothersome.

Hopefully my 'enlightenment' models do not bother you

 Dear Ni,

I apologize to Linda if it feels like thread-jacking, but I've been wanting to communicate something like this for a while and for some reason it feels like the right time: Ni Nurta, it is abundantly clear that in many of your posts you are trying to make specific and detailed points, and devote significant time and energy to that end; yet your discourse is so heavily filtered through quite specific worldviews and interpretations, that it is basically impossible for me to understand about 80% of what you write or what you are refering to, although I do read your posts, because it seems to me you seldom describe experiences or practices, but rather, give a very mental/theoretical explanations/view of these practices/experiences. That is too bad, because it makes your writing very hard to relate to. It also makes it feel like you're not trying to really communicate by adapting to your audience, but operate from a very personal point of view that others are supposed to adapt to. Also, I personally think your theoretical explanations are not correct. How about more directly describing things in the future some times ? Could be fun and interesting ?

Best wishes,

​​​​​​​Olivier
 

I split the thread to avoid hijacking the practice log.
​​​​​​​~D

I second this to an extent, though I do not have opinions on whether Ni Nurta is correct or not because I do not currently have an opinion on what is correct or not, in general, with respect to these topics. However, Ni Nurta seems to have a lot to say & of what I manage to comprehend, I find it would be worth understanding more. I presume that English is not a native language because of the grammar & syntax, so based on this presumption, I'd rather focus on the structure & explanation in the writing. At the same time, I'd like to tread cautiously in accusing Ni Nurta of what might be deduced to be a narrow & self-centered point of view - not that that's necessarily what's being accused here, but I'd like to state this nonetheless. I'm someone who thrives more on explanations that are theoretical, rather than empirical. So, I can run into issues Ni Nurta may be running into here, which is a difficulty to move from a complex theoretical model built from many different sources & lots of deep contemplation into an explanation that isn't exhausting for both parties & provides sufficient detail & structure for someone to follow with relative ease.

An analogous problem that could be used here is the "intelligent" person who communicates in a "smart way" - i.e., using language only a "smart" person could understand, such as big words & complex syntax. What the intelligent person fails to realize is that whilst they might be proving themselves to have an impressive vocabulary & ability to construct complicated sentences, they are equivalently proving themselves deficient in intellect through their inability to use language for its primary purpose: effective communication. Unless they are in the very rare circumstance where the former motivation is the actual priority, then they've done a good job of making themselves look like more of an idiot - even if this includes an inability to recognize priorities.

I say 'analogous' because I'm not accusing Ni Nurta of this. Rather, I'm trying to direct the attention towards communication. Superfluous figurative language, ambiguous language, failure to be concise & lack of direction in structure will all hamper communication. I'm no saint, myself; don't get me wrong, there. Please look out for these things.

Thank you Ni Nurta, I look forward to having more conversations with you & learning from you about your interesting thoughts & ideas.

Hi MBS, just to clarify - I don't think I am accusing Ni Nurta of anything here, just making an observation, and hopefully it is received that way.  In fact I hope that what I am saying can be helpful here, and, of course, Ni is free to express himself as he wishes. But:

Humans indeed tend to describe their experiences by giving interpretations of these experiences, and in many ways phenomenology is about bypassing the theories, judgments, etc., and "going back to things themselves. To given an example of this, here are four different ways of describing a meditative development which will be familiar to many here.

Take the following elaborate narrative by Tauler, a 13th century mystic, student of Eckhart, who describes one phase of what happens on the "Path to God" thusly : "When our dear lord sees that men want to indulge in excess and that they get drunk without measure, he does as a good and brave father of a family who has at home a lot of good noble wine. While he lay sleeping, his children went to the cellar and drank so much of this noble wine. When the good man got up and saw this, he made himself a good whip and flogged them so well that they felt more sadness than pleasure. Then he gives them so much water that they sober up as completely as they were intoxicated. Our Lord does the same. He acts as if he were asleep, and lets his friends take advantage of his good fortune and enjoy it as much as they like. But when he realizes that it is of no profit to them, and that they are making excese, he takes away their enjoyment, consolation and strong wine. He makes them as sad as they were joyful, and as sober as they were drunk. Then the consolations and pleasures they had begun to experience begin to become completely foreign to them."

That could be described in our MCTB lingo as "Moving from the A&P to the DN", which may be equally hard to related to for someone without the references to theravadin meditation territory.

Yet another description of such a development is this reddit post I got from r/TMI : ""Is this normal? Intense mindfulness followed by emotional 'hangover'"
I have been following TMI for 70 days and think I'm at stage 3.Yesterday I went for a walk in the woods next to my house, with no particular intention to meditate, but I ended up being intensely mindful and present throughout, with no striving or effort. I've never experienced anything like it before, and am struggling to put into words how it felt - beautiful, euphoric, but also calm and controlled?Last night however some uncomfortable emotions started arising which have carried over into today. A feeling of sadness and a strong yearning emotion that's hard to put my finger on. There is an element of worry too - if I'm honest, the worry is about whether I'm going to unintentionally trigger mental illness through meditation. Although part of me knows that I am so unused to calm and present mental states that I'm bound to initially experience them as destabilising.For a little background, I have been living under very high levels of stress for approx 8 years, experienced a period of poor mental health last winter, sought psychotherapeutic counselling which I still attend twice a month, and have come to meditation through the work I am doing on myself through counselling.I am wondering if the out-of-the-blue intense mindfulness experience I had, followed by strong uncomfortable emotions, is a normal part of the process, and if anyone could share if they have had similar experiences? Any advice, insights or words of wisdom appreciated. Thank you."

The latter would actually be the best example of a phenomenological description, imo.

Another possible way of talking about this could be "I tried to make my brain perceive a certain way that felt good and now my neurons are tired".

Now, the thing is that when specific experiences and effects are expressed mostly through hypothetical causal explanations based on an implicit worldview, it often becomes difficult to access the meaning behind the symbols, or what they experientially refer to. 

An example of this could be the following quote from Ni Nurta's post above, and which I was reacting to:

Now, I'm not saying there is anything morally wrong about this description or anything, but it is simply incomprehensible to me, which is perhaps indeed unfortunate, as who knows, it might be helpful ?

What does one do when "shifting focus to left or right hemisphere without ceasing activity of central mind", concretely ?

What is the central mind, experientially speaking ?

Also, on a theoretical level, claiming that specific internal gestures and experiences have such and such effects on very specific brain parts and that this is what is actually going on as some underlying physiological causal chain is... quite a big claim, imho 

Anyways, hopefully this can spur a discussion about effective communication. It is indeed a skill, but one that can be trained, and I think it is a very helpful one !

Best,

​​​​​​​Olivier
   

My comment on this, for now, is that I don't see emptiness as something sterile and lifeless, but more as a stance of less fabrication, less conceptualization. Liveliness is inherent in it as a potential and as something that does manifest, because the liveliness is not separate from the emptiness. 

Now, there are indeed practicioners who turn emptiness into a thing and get stuck in nihilism and life denying. I would call that an error. 

As for the brain synch thing, I too would be interested in hands-on descriptions on how it manifests and how one gets there, and how to distinguish it from other kinds of routing. I'm also wondering if it's the same thing as what Michael Taft refers to as having awake awareness do stuff instead of getting pulled out from awake awareness when we think we as a narrow little mind needs to be the controller. From what you have shared before, I suspect you are indeed talking about the same thing, and if so, it makes sense to me, and I find it interesting that it could manifest on a material level like that. It is indeed an empirical question whether or not it does, and it would be interesting to do research on it. Maybe Daniel's research consortium could have a look at it? I'm also wondering - from the research on Daniel's brain, it does indeed seem like his routing has changed as a result from meditation insofar as his new default state does no longer activate the default network system. Where does that fit into your terminology? 

By the way, Ni Nurta's posts are always welcome in my log. I enjoy our exchange. 

Just want to chime in and say I enjoy reading Ni's posts very much, they are very well written and engaging, even though I don't understand the full extent of them.

I think Buddha just wanted to say there is no solid self in their experience and people in turn made experience called "emptiness" and treated it as solid self replacement. Same old same old... 

Nihilists - the same 3rd fetter of ascetism shining brightly with dukkha through they will surely get liberated... from nice things ;)


I went from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bates_method and https://www.scribd.com/document/56072917/New-Energy-Ways-NEW-Manual to develop my own practices.

One was removing any action from eyes. Zero actions to control them.​​​​​​, no exceptions.
This teaches right focus - and improves eyesight... eventually.

Other thing was silmultaneously perceiving left and right hand. There would be switching but the idea was to have them at the same time so that wouldn't do. Then mind created composite object which would have two hand experiences in it and refering to it would kinda work. I was not satisfied with it do I gently went back to more pure experiences and continued trying to experience them both at once. When my mind would hit certain experience and I would find it relevant I would feel my consciousness kinda getting wider horisontally and then splitting in two and I had two senses of self, one on left and one on right at the same time. That experience is what caused persistent mindstate reconfiguration - 5th jhana. Not "infinite space" but 5th jhana.

On one way I would say to be gentle with it but on other it must be the kind of gentleness which feels like a lot of gentleness and is therefore powerful. Since it is persistent reconfiguration you need to be ready for whatever happens next.

In any way I did these at the same time. Maybe some people do not need the second step - I am a male so you know... we kinda are locked out of synchronized hemispheres biologically.
Focus though - if I use old focus it kinda all stops being perceived so right focus seems to be super important.
That hand practice - it is possible to have both at the same time when pulses of consciousness in brain fire at the same time. I can always use it when I feel something is off and it instantly generates jhanic experience and makes doing jhanas much easier.

Central mind when it takes hold it doesn't require perfect synchronization but still perfect synchronization is preferred.
That other mind can be called "gone mind" or "no mind" or "natural state" - it is special because it doesn't create copies of experiences and cannot refer to these copies because experiences which do arise vanish instantly and have glowing quality to them. That is why body image is gone - it was always a copy in left/right/center minds. Only during A&P it is even possible to dwell in these copies and do something with them, otherwise they get updated quickly. Though what playing too much during A&P and changing experiences of these copies to whatever we wish them to be can cause we all know what.
No copies no issues

Again it is focus thing - and the focus I developed for eyes is the same which is needed for gone mind.
Really recommend also reading linked references. Nothing about gone mind but relevant hints for sure.
Especially that eyesight thing - it feels supreme to have amazing eyesight and be able to read from like really far away. People who see me eg. using computer often comment that it is impossible I can clearly see from those distances, 4K monitor and I can do 50% zoom and still see text despite it being now pixelated so I could just as well have 8K monitor instead and I would still sit meter away, especially after some time of getting used to. It takes continuous practice putting more challenge to eyes - which eyes/visual cortex neurons do themselves so who cares. I do not ever try to focus eyes on what I see and feel them relaxed at all times. It is the same as gone mind - my eyes were my Buddha in which I had no doubt in. And I said something similar in my very first DhO post. I could get gone mind much faster if I actually followed good example. That said do not follow my example but if anything my eyes, they know how to get Enlightened much better than I do

Guys, to experience things which come to through any of your senses you cannot have your noisy mind in the way.
If "I do not understand" is the noise then it prevents understanding.
If "I understand words at least" is the noise it prevents understanding.
If pondering if what I say is 100% true or 0% true is the noise then it prevents understanding.
These things are noise. The understanding is also noise and it prevents understanding!

No mind just is, it doesn't have any understanding. It doesn't even have experiences of body because its only updates of changes of pressure which are relevant - and not even to this mind but because they are pleasant why not experience them? It is possible to go so deep in to it that it is hard to say anything was experienced at all.

Also it cannot notice anything this no mind. Noticing can be streamed to be experienced - and in however form I come up with in left/right minds. It is to be form of mind state visualization.

---------
Mind is lots of pattern matching and experience of that. It is enough to know examples to then when similar events happen in your mind you remember example.
Example: "if I experience something which feels like collision then two (or more) parts of mind are active hitting the same part of the mind - one (no matter which) has to get cessation to stop dukkha from arising".

Collision can be read as dukkha but there are many types of dukkha - even if there is valid dharma term for this type of dukkha then I do see it being useful if English term isn't understood in the context of the mind. Besides I do not read too many dharma texts and no valid term which can be clearly identified as collision comes to mind. It just takes generating collision to get how it feels or taking some dukkha and trying cessation of one of two (or more than one - multi-way collisions are pretty nasty and confusing) consciousnesses which seems to take part in the dukkha and see if that helps. If it does then you have useful term and method to dealing with dukkha.

Parts of mind can be described as something known but then in case of dukkha you do cessation of that thing which might not take part in collision - who does it help? Advice must point nowhere.

Cessation here is good term but keep in mind it can mean different things - in this case any type of cessation will do.

Consciousness - easy thing, no explanation needed hopefully. If it is not clear then mind - bazzilion consciousnesses arising all the time. If it isn't yet clear rise your hand and feel it. Not you seeing it but it, how it itself is. Hand consciousness. Each finger has its own connected to it but not in hand but in the head. Notice how consciousness in hand and in head are kinda the same. Why do they differ in placement if they are the same?

If there is dukkha in your mind - you can practice on that. Lots of dukkha - lot's of opportunity to practice. No dukkha no need to practice apparently.

What I recommend is take good look at your mind, how it works and note each instance of dukkha and when you note enough try to somehow fix it. All day long - the more the better. I during meditation let neurons do whatever they wanted and just kept as mindful as possible. Some formal practices if you spend lots of time figuring how to not do them and how mind should do it are pretty fun. If no mind is the goal you cannot do practices - they have to do themselves!

Hopefully this post was more understandable

-The way I "understand" things. I might quiet my mind when practicing but ultimately thoughts, understanding and not understanding need to all be able to occur without clinging. All recognized as empty but not necessarily stopped from occuring. Thoughts are a sense door. 

-In no mind understanding and not understanding can arise. If what you mean by no mind is the experience of the Arahat and not like some transitory state. I am not an Arahat but this is my "understanding" of things.

- Is this your experience? Are you saying you don't have experience of the body? Or you aren't identified/attached to the experience of the body? Or when one attains to "No Mind" they no longer have an experience of the body?

-This whole first chunk here is dealing with no mind. I just can not make any sense of the above statement, but I have been following thus far.

- This sort of sounds like you're talking about practicing with duality? Am I right in saying that? It seems like a lot of doing to have to generate the collision at all? Duality just happens if you let it
-Also, you're saying things about practicing with Dukkha that intuitively I might think line up with like investigating the three characteristics or perhaps some of these emptiness practices but you don't use any terminology I'm familiar with. So I can't honestly say that I amen't making up any connection to or understanding of what you're saying. 
 
-I understand you, but what are you trying to communicate by saying this? and who are you saying it to?

​​​​​​​---
​​​​​​​
-This is a very interesting statement. How do you know that's true? Will there be Quantum fluctuations arising to note when you're dead?

Ok: I understand some of what you are saying. I don't understand the point you're making. I read through your last message like ten times. I often get the sense that you were implying something that you weren't saying out loud. you do have a style of writing that's a little cryptic, also kind of cool. But it really, really seems like there's a single clear point that you are refusing to communicate. 

What about what you're saying has to do with not believing in emptiness? That's what we're talking about right? 

Do you have doubt about awakening? That's the deep intuitive vibe I get.

What I feel in my body, having read this, is that you don't believe in Arahats.

​​​​​​​.... I hate doing these quotations they're so unaesthetic. 

Agreed!


The first attainment as Stream Enterer was ability to experience Nibbana whenever I wanted. I would still dwell too much trying to sort out mind but at the end of the day I always could experience Nibbana.

This simple trick is what is missing from all the phenomenological descriptions "Arhats" give. Not only from 4th path but from any path. In fact the only mention of Nibbana is moment of fruition itself. Why not this moment or any other. Buddha figured it out, it should be easy to have.


I do not like use of term "awakening" to describe something non spiritual when it is used as general term. This because it is used deliberately to sound more awakened than what is actually realized.

Myself I believe in space-time and access to it being given to those who have keys. I have some keys therefore I consider myself somewhat awakened. I only use them for visual perception on all senses. Some times some other things but I am kinda lazy and know my limits.


Take specific idea in something being somewhere - if it isn't anywhere we can look then anywhere we can look is empty of that thing. There is literally nothing more to it.

One can make emptiness in to nice experience. You can make pointless stories called koans in to mind states if you ponder long enough about them. Anything really... kinda my practices at certain point. Didn't even need to develop that skill as much as make mind less noisy otherwise so whatever is created is more readily experienced. Emptiness - sure it is possible to experience it. Is it totally empty? Only when you treat such composite experience as something total.


The point is that mind is fun and can be developed in various ways to get cool effect.

When you read about 'total elimination of dukkha' the 'point' is clear, isn't it?
That is relief - imho the same fetter which you can divide by ten and arrive at the list we know. Each of the ten fetters originate at desire for relief.

People cannot read no-relief message Buddha made because they only focus on idea of getting relief. That is why they do not ever learn Nibbana imho.


I am whole Samsara. There will always be something arising. It arises all the time elsewhere.

Look at your experience - what do you think "you" experience in the time when you do not experience anything?


Dukkha is confusion and technical issues - I am talking to other people who are my inevitable future. So best practice in non-ascetic ways, mmkay?


I of course meant practicing how to not have dukkha
To not have dukkha it is good to be sensitive for its signs. That said it is best if you do it in a way "I know this is dukkha" even if it feels even more subtle than if would feel for run-of-the-mill mind rather than amplifying dukkha.

Buddha came up with Three Characteristics to motivate people to be dispassionate to lead them to Nibbana. There is nothing deep to them. He knew people are chasing relief and have mind for acetic practices so these kind of slogans will be popular. Also he was right in that these are characteristics of all phenomena... that said anti-3C also are. All dukkha is just unexperienced pleasure. BTW. That thing about unexperienced pleasure - my slogan. It isn't about relief at all. Relief is pleasure you are supposed to experience because you suffer. I say suffering is stupid, there is nothing to gain from experiencing dukkha.

Also why I say in noting it is best to notice 6C.
Also absence of 6C because to be this much sharper - so 12C and 12 is nice enough number that it must definitely lead to super duper Enlightenment
I am not even joking...


Duality is related to collisions but collisions are more fundamental to operation of brain.
Parts of brain generate some stuff, stream it to the mind, mind makes copies for itself. Then you interact with the copies while other parts of brain try to stream stuff for you to update which you do. To many places in brain trying to do operations on the same parts of brain - you get collisions.

You can organize mind in such a way to have the so called 'duality', dwell in your (note: you as a mind) copies and still get no collisions. It is just one way to do it. You could switch used parts of mind fast fast so that any new part of mind has no reference to do with all this stuff so it just interacts with non-arisen parts of mind - other way to do it.
The so called no mind is just one of the methods - and even from it apparently is possible to desensitize yourself or do opposite and detect any collisions.
Nibbana is one of the methods too and related to no mind because mind will fall on it in Nibbana. Normal no mind doesn't need what Nibbana runs on.

Or in other words there are roads which lead to Rome. I merely try to indicate that by describing signs and views from the roads I tried. Isn't Enlightenment about the journey anyways?


When you consciously note you are using training wheels. It is for mind like if you had auto-pilot in a car or other person with other wheel which would drive for you. How will mind learn how to note if you note for it. You as a mind become slave to rest of your mind. Not that anyone should be slave but if you let noting just be your brain will figure it out and do it much better than you could ever have and it will do it being relaxed because there is a lot of brain in brain so workload can be spread in such a way as to not tire any specific part of the brain.

It is the same idea as I described to Linda with eyes. I made resolve to not run eyes. How could I do it differently for noting? It is the easier for skills you know well how to do yourself so formal practices are still useful but at some point you should not do them. I would even say overdoing things yourself isn't helping. There is point at which it is best to leave brain to its own ways - as long as it does what it is supposed to do. Here for Noting it is noticing phenomena in a way which is useful. So the less you focus on specific form and the more on results then the effort brain will put in to results and less to form. If you want form then why not, just be aware there are limited resources and things take time.

Mind state visualization is merely showing brain how to do something and letting it do it. If you read Mahasi Noting leads to some result if you do it for long enough - if you do noting, then let mind do it, then refine it, then you get taste of effects, then you can focus mind on refining effects alongside checking if it is compatible with practice which should give said effects. Then when any part of mind gets the effect you let it fill your mind and you have 4th path. It is mouthful vs simplicity of 'you do practice all day long for years' but I think it is actually faster to do and doesn't violate 3rd fetter. Still takes A LOT effort. Just much less if you know how these things work and do not have thoughts arise "I do not know how to do it! :/".

Stream Enterers is supposed nobility because they do not do not do chores themselves. You train mind to do this stuff for you, this training regime and then you do not even need to dwell in how to do it consciously.

Take your no self mind state. You want it to happen by itself without dwelling in technical details, right? It is form of mind doing what it necessary by itself. You could just as well think "my nice and helpful mind does these practices and all the required step however many are necessary to get itself and me Enlightenment" and after few years of just thinking it you would be Enlightened. One way to do it. It would at least work if you were ready to undergone any changes mind needs to do. Which you would if you focus on that thought more than anything else while trying to be quiet to let mind do its work.

How I attained Nibbana - I read sutta, had no idea what to do but I said to mind "can you support me here?" and mind was 'does it require not listening to music?" and I was "no awakening is good enough to not listen to music for it" and mind was "on it d^_^b". True story.


You could think of it of having such amazing concentration as to be able to concentrate on non-experience of eg. my hand that when I press it against surface I do not experience it the touch. Then when I talk "and I use 8th jhana for vajra-like meditative stabilization I mean I just use 8th in waking consciousness to get vajra-like meditative stabilization in waking consciousness, while doing stuff.

I think of it as brain trick. I didn't practice concentration anyways, just bothered my brain to have amazing concentration for many years and it came up with some place in brain which along with whatever it is my brain actually does just works.

What I use no mind for body experience being gone is mostly the so called "body image" which is copy of experiences made by mind of main consciousness. It is whole layered structure of copies of copies which mind creates as some sort of buffer. No mind has no such buffering therefore only active experiences can be experienced. Things brain works on might stream to no mind for it to experience. It makes no sense to experience body all the time but also if processing is already there it might make less sense to not experience it right away.

Optimizing brain is not about non experience but least activity needed to accomplish task. It feels having changes in pressure is less effort than not having them so it usually is experienced. It is not like I can react to these experiences.


It is something I can experience. I can experience more normal minds too. I could even go to noisy mind and pretend sense of self does actions.
Some things are just more efficient and more pleasant and have less issues/dukkha.

Understanding in experience need not arise to exist and arising of hints there is understanding doesn't mean there is understanding. My observation is that the less I think if I understand the more efficient I become. Like at my work where I need to assemble letters to working programs. No mind and not dwelling on if I understand is definitely the best way to do it. I might ask mind how it understands given part of the code but if I do or not mind will know by itself what to write.

The same is true for all these posts I write. In fact I always feel like my left mind is having the same kind of fun as writing programs and otherwise I feel like no effort goes from 'me' even when I choose to experience me - which I didn't forbid myself because I do not subscribe to limited range models. It is just things go more smoothly when there is less mind in mind so no mind is in fact most efficient type of mind.


Agreed on all but the empty part.
If everything is empty it can as well have solid self in it... why do I suddenly experience silicon and copper?

----
tl;dr
Imho having zero sensual experiences is true 4th path...
I intend to check if I can do that in waking experience. If I do that and do not end vegetable I will while not experiencing anything make topic "I in seeing no seeing, in hearing no hearing..." and then type I eliminated all dukkha and that anyone who clings to their sensual experience so much that they experience seeing that post while reading it is certainly not 4th path

Until that happens I do like everyone else some kind of kindergarten version of cessation of mind

BTW. I asked ChatGPT if any arhat claimed in seeing no seeing and he told me arhat Sariputta said in seeing only seeing... poser.

"The first attainment as Stream Enterer was ability to experience Nibbana whenever I wanted. I would still dwell too much trying to sort out mind but at the end of the day I always could experience Nibbana."

What do you mean by Nibbana here and do you think that's different from other stream enterers?

"having zero sensual experiences is true 4th path"
Why? What makes you think that? How would that even work?

Welcome to the experience of interpreting a Ni Nurta comment 

I've never understood much of what Ni Nurta posts. I assume what Ni Nurta posts here makes sense to Ni Nurta. It's usually cloaked in quasi-medical/neurological jargon. Sometimes it's sort of understandable. Most times, it's not. Like Olivier, it appears to me to be intentional, this ongoing use of obfuscating terminology. For what purpose would be my question. Communication, getting others here to actually understand what Ni Nurta is throwin' down, cannot be the purpose, IMHO. It's just too confusingly worded, English as a second language or not.

I'm pretty sure Ni Nurta would say I don't grok these posts because I'm somehow deficient in the dharma sense - I don't "get it" sufficiently. Maybe so, but if that's the case, Ni Nurta isn't interested in really explaining his meditative process or his attainments in a way that can be understood and followed by poor, ignorant fools like me. So it does me no good, leading me again to the question - what's the purpose?

Chris, you got it wrong. I am still at 1st nana - trying to distinguish physical from mental phenomena

If you read research on brains - like eg. brain in a dish, you will find neurons actually grow connections and move around
If they can move around then couldn't they just move to more comfortable spots?
They love low frequency pulses and hate too much activation.
We have different types of neurons, some have more connections and I call them super-neurons.
One which was in one of my senses of self (it has very specific qualities) went to handle pinky toe of left foot - apparently its how it ends to tell neurons to move to where they will not have to anything. It moved to somewhere in top of my left hemisphere nowhere close to where sense of self happened. Maybe I'll tell him to move to center of the brain to corpus calossum and see what it will do there? Only way to know what that does anyways.

And so the quest to figure out what are these supposed mental phenomena continues...
I mean I just do not know. Mental phenomena... kinda seem to be there but on closer inspection I concluded I only saw physical phenomena so far and why I moved all my efforts to 1st nana to avoid going though insight cycles to just conclude I got it wrong. Will certainly move in my insight stage when I find any true mental phenomena. So far all of them were busted


It is kind of dispassion which causes consciousness not self-reference and instead fall on Nibbana.
At some point after 1st path I kinda experienced most of my experience as Nibbana which was interrupted by self referencing pulses - like part of the brain were not Stream Enterers. Buddha was however great at explaining things so little self observation and realizing at these places how what they do is dukkha, not them and then impermanent and they were like "so what we do?" and I was "look at those who experience Nibbana do - and it was pure dispassion. Not aversion because aversion is relief driven. It has to be figured out case-by-case basis really. If you know technicality of it then its easy to just experience.

Just note if you experience dispassion then this experience of dispassion is not Nibbana. Nibbana is where that specific dispassion is.
In fact in brain there are many consciousnesses and some can do some super fun things and might just not will to share it. That is why all that synchronization and focus stuff I mentioned before is so important. Hemisphere synchronization and focus in eyes are just large targets. These changes can happen in smaller parts of the brain - they can change their focus and synchronize with the mind.

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BTW. I am deliberately not using terms made by other people to avoid silly discussions about if I got the terms right.
Right focus - what causes meditation to flow, do itself and all jhanas arise naturally without effort - that is the right focus.
Synchronization - it is the same as integration. Person should have their mind parts to be able to talk to each-other freely. They do so by arising at the same time. Hemispheres being large target are good to practice how that works. It is literally possible to feel the pulses happening in right/left hemispheres by doing synchronization practices up until they happen at exactly the same moment. Same with any two consciousnesses - rather than one triggering and pushing data to the other so the other makes copy of it, work on it and sends and reply at the same time... and this kinda cause all sorts of effects which cause dukkha to not arise and models about mind are rather complex. These things can be observed.

And if you take it far it can still be observed. Therefore I not only find eg. "non-duality" confusing as a term but do not need it to explain anything.


I kinda intend to figure it out. Some day, no rushing it. Not necessarily during my life-time ;)
I find it as practice opportunity...

I'm happy to accept Ni Nurta is 5th Path 

Just last week, you told us how much more enlightened you were than anyone else here. This seems to be more confusion-inducing commentary. Why?

And just so you know, I'm not upset with you. I usually get a few sentences into your posts and then stop reading for the reasons I've already stated. It's what you do, who you seem to be. Not a big deal. I just felt the urge to chime in here this afternoon, seeing another person struggling to understand what may actually be indecipherable to the rest of us.



So, in simple terms, you're making communication easier for you and virtually impossible for us.

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Hey now, Ni Nurta's post was originally in correspondence with me in my log. He can't help that Dream Walker moved it away from context. I don't have any problem with his post. I appreciate it. I would assume that the purpose was communicating with me, and I enjoy it. What is the purpose of busting into other people's exchange and bashing it? 

I appreciate the inventive phrasings of someone doing his own things. Over the years we have calibrated our communication well enough to understand each other even though we often associate words with very different connotations. I understand Ni Nurta better than I understand lots of other people here. And since this was Ni Nurta communicating with me, he was doing just fine. 

Perhaps I was swayed by an initial impression in one of my first threads I recently started here. I can understand Ni Nurta's posts if I give them more time, and perhaps as a result of becoming more familiar with their worldview, too.

I hope this does not come off as "bashing" the exchange, although it is unfortunate that the original purpose of this new thread was to extend this exchange whilst maintaining the organization of the forum and it has digressed into a conversation about the lucidity of Ni Nurta's posts. Perhaps a different thread, or this issue can be dealt with in PM? My apologies for taking part in this.

​​​​​​​It is good to see some different opinions on Ni Nurta's posts, but the issue still stands that some people want for clarity. We do not want to exclude these people or make them feel excluded from the conversation. At the same time, I hope we can all refrain from making assumptions about Ni Nurta and watching our tone. Ni Nurta is clearly a valued member of this community, and some of us just want to understand more of what they have to say.

Exclusion is a complex matter. I have no issues with people wanting to understand and asking questions for the purpose of understanding. I get it. Several of you have eloquently, respectfully and in a nuanced way expressed a wish to understand. It is when people start to question the purpose of him posting that I think it's over the top. It makes me wonder: if someone can't even comment on a friend's log without a number of people starting to debate his communication style, some to the extent of questioning his motives, then who is excluding who? 

I will offer that part of my trying to understand came from seeing posts here and a post on my own thread that, at the very least, occured to me personally as being somewhat dismissive of other people, their advice and the dharma. 

Why that's complex and why I got involved here is that it was difficult to determine whether that was on purpose or was accidentally being implied by the cryptic nature of the language.

For these reasons some of the points Chris is making are valid. It's important to understand where Ni is coming from if people are interpreting their comments as dismissive, deliberately obtuse, superior, etc. 

Some people are obviously kind of frustrated by it.

On a personal level I'm happy to explore Ni's communication and feel that I have arrived at a better understanding of where they're coming from. That being said, there are obvious dharma related takes, communicated just above in this thread that would be fuel for some pretty serious debates and that I know many would disagree with. 

I do believe getting at that was Olivier's intention. 

If people wish to start a serious debate, on dharma topics rather than a person, we do have a battle ground. Feel free to start a thread! 

If people experience having been dismissed or badly treated, please contact a moderator (or an admin if suitable, for instance if the moderator has been involved) rather than taking it up for debate in other threads. 

To be clear, I'm not taking on the responsibility of reading every post here to make sure everything is in order. If moderation is needed, please let me know! 

​​​​​​​I'm closing this thread now.

Best regards,
Linda Ö, DhO moderator.