My aim these days is to "develop an appreciation of the fundamental properties of clear cognizance" as I was instructed by D. Non-Attachment is one such fundamental property.

Clear Cognizance: just know & know that you know.
Any sense of self, experiencer or doer is just another appearance in Awareness, like everything else.

One huge pitfall here is reifying "awareness" and making it a thing among other things.
Awareness as used here is a synonym of clear congnizance or Emptiness.

A simile that comes to mind here is that "Awareness" to experience is like "wetness" to water. Wetness is not an intrinsic property of water but arises when water is in contact with a solid substance. Similarly "awareness" arises when sense organs are in contact with sense objects without being an intrinsic property of either.

i don't know if I am making sense here or if I am completely off track. Any feedback one way or the other is most welcome.

NOTA: I don't have or ever had face to face contact with a "teacher". My only teacher is the internet & books. Neither do I have any "dharma" buddies in real life. Both of these are the result of my circumstances & where I live. This should be enough to say that I am beyond grateful to this forum & how much i appreciate all feedback.

Rumi in his "guest house" poem says:

Welcome and entertain them all
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture
Still, treat each guest honorably
He may be clearing you out
For some new delight.

I am sorry to say that the great Persian Poet in this often cited poem is completely off the mark. I hesitated before allowing myself to even think this, but it just wasn't going away.

I mean this is beautiful and good advice and may even be helpful but it doesn't go to the heart of the matter which is if I may dare say is as follows:

When I am caught in the ego, there is no inviting of "guests". Not willingly at least. The ego by nature is egotistical! It is intelligent enough to seem inviting but it's always with an ulterior motive.

On the other hand when I am liberated of the ego, I don't need anyone to tell me to be inviting because my true nature is simply love. Embracing anything and everything with equal willingness.

So what Rumi was trying to do? Was he simplifying things for his audience or was his understanding just limited? Whatever happens to be the case, he was certainly a great poet.

The sense of self, like everything else, is a manifestation of & a pointer to our "original mind".
Why do you want to get rid of it?

​​​​​​​The sense of self is as good a Meditation object as any other. 

Radical Acceptance & Radical Letting Go.. nothing to do!

The question of what Rumi was trying to do is actually very complicated, largely because the English version is very different from the original version and was written with a focus that was very different from the context in which it is often presented. There is a great discussion of this here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E79pU6GzNs

But, all that aside, I agree with your take that one does not need to be actively inviting because there is no need to bring agency into it. On the other hand, the Brahmavihara tradition is a key Buddhist practice and that does involve taking a particular mental stance to phenomena, so there is definitely room for such things in meditation practice. 

​​​​​​​In short, there are a lot of ways to come at this, and they are all mostly good. 

Radical Accepting & Radical Letting Go:
this is not a practice or something I aim for or anything..

just inclining the mind a certain way,  Radical Accepting, embracing, loving happens on its own and is immediately followed or should I say simultaneously accompanied by Radical Letting Go..

this simply is the way things are. 

it's unfortunate that this kind of experience that everyone can directly see for oneself is turned into advice by spiritual teachers. They say "you should be more accepting" or "just let go". Like you have a choice. This is what happens whether you like it or not! 

similarly the advice "be in the now" is similarly absurd. How can anyone be "else-when"?

of course we do delude ourselves in myriad ways & this makes "Delusion" the root cause of suffering. At least this is my current understanding. 

SO PLEASE YOU WHO READ THIS:
make all your efforts toward cutting through the delusion of a separate self & see for yourself the true nature of mind. Everything else will fall into place on its own. 

this is why I like Dzogchen the most among all the traditions. I truly think they made a really earth shattering discovery.

i know this place is mostly dedicated to "dry vipassana" burnese style because the "founding fathers" come from that tradition & that is what worked for them. But I am afraid this methodology takes people in a wild goose chase as it is intrinsically "dualistic". At least until the very last stages where it is clearly seen that all maps & stages are simply laughable. 

this is not to say that this methodology is without merits. It really is great in the sense that it gives anyone who tries it something to do & goals to have & signposts on the way. Simply this can be a huge waste of time. IMO.

​​​​​​​HELPFUL? 

Dzogchen is a good beginning and ending practice. Unfortuately, my own experience is that without other practices, it's hard to develop traction and make meaningful progress. Things rarely go as simply as "Everything else will fall into place on its own."

The great thing about the philosophy of dzogchen is that it is easily intellectually grasped and can initially reduce a lot of initial friction in one's life. Things self-liberate, cool! But life is a bit of a trickster and there are deeper psychological complexes and shadow material that really doesn't get fixed by dzogchen... and as a result dzogchen practioners often are guilty of "spiritually bypassing" problems in their life and practice --- until they can't anymore. 

But if it's working for you, great. I just don't think it works for most people.

​​​​​​​Thanks for the discussion!

So the reason a forum or community like this is important is that in the lived experience of reducing suffering through meditation, while one might pick a style of practice, the reality of the journey is that, whatever style you pick, it is the fine tuned pointing out instruction you receive along the way that really makes all the difference. I had a teacher once who said "Dzogchen, Dzogchen, Dzogchen" all day long but no matter how many times he said it I never really noticed any deepening of my practice but when another person was able to provide simple instructions and an environment conducive to deepening practice I quickly overcame the obstacles that had hindered me. 

You might like to say "Dzogchen" all day long too but it's worth pointing out, we aren't actually sitting here saying "Dry Vipassana", none of us are doing that. Many of us are here every week saying "my experience of reality looks, feels and sounds like this" (What style of practice is this?). We take a pragmatic and phenomenological approach to the lived reality of practicing meditation.   

There were many tmes throughout the years that what I was practicing was akin to Dzogchen, but what my practice was called had absolutely no importance whatsoever, what was important was my commitment to practice and the availability of good pointing out instruction.

The phrase dry vipassana is a cop out and seems to almost always be used to denegrate a group of people who in my experience are the most pragmatic, eclectic and helpful of meditation practicioners. 

I also think the idea that the Tibetans invented something with Dzogchen is blatant propaganda. That isn't a slight against Dzogchen itself just the idea that it some how supercedes the Buddhas teaching which is something I commonly hear inferred by Dzogchen practicioners. I don't know why that is or why they think that but I would say 90% of Dzogchen people I meet seem to think the Buddhas teaching is somehow inferior.

It's worth mentioning the person who so often said "Dzogchen" to me had a severe mental break shortly after I went looking for different dharma. Rigidity in practice serves no one. Adaptability, pragmatism and openness seem to serve meditators very well.

You can sit around all day saying "I like Chicken sandwiches better than Lamb" but that's not how you make lunch.

Shargol, Bahiya Baby,

I like a lot of things about Daniel & one of them is his continuous emphasis on the fact that the possible axis of development are numerous. So, yes shamata is a very important axis of development. And yes vipassana is also a very important axis of development. In fact each one of them helps along many areas of life.

Yes, each person is unique and what works for some does not simply work for others. I think that's why all traditions insist relentlessly on the importance of having a teacher to help one navigate a landscape that can often be treacherous.

I can attest to this as I never had a  teacher. Not face to face anyway. So I am beyond grateful to all the people who strive to make the teachings available through writing and other medias.
I started on "my quest" before the internet and used to borrow (paper) books from libraries. I can't tell you the number of blind alleys I went into and finding myself obliged to start again from scratch.

I explored (general) self help first which led me to psychology and when I discovered C G Jung, I told myself this is it. Then I got lost in depth psychology but Jung pushed me to explore alchemy which led me back to my cultural origins and alchemy led me to Sufism. However Alchemy & also Sufism writings are notoriously difficult to penetrate. Take Inn Arabi, he wrote a couple HUNDRED books and one of the most notorious, his "futuhat mekkia" is a few THOUSAND pages. But it's not just the sheer volume of it, every page is brimming with vocabulary and notions unknown to most people. They were surely unknown to me.

Then at some time the internet arrived and started to develop and my English was good enough and I discovered all the other mystical traditions. One great discovery was UG, the other Krishnamurti. I told myself this is it. But UG said things that didn't make sense to me in the end and he didn't really provide actionable advice.

Some time later I discovered the American more or less secular adaptations of the Asian traditions. Some of the people that I thought at one time or another were the real deal included: Shogyam Trungpa, Shinzen Young, Thanissaro Bikku, Culadasa, Daniel Ingram, Kenneth Folk, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Mathieu Ricard,  Sam Harris, etc. Etc. Etc.
I also tried to go to their sources and tried to explore some of the original writings of the Thai forest tradition (Ajahn Shah), the Burmese, the Tibetans, Chan, Zen, etc..

This is in a nutshell how I spent the last fourty years.

Today, i am much less "sectarian". I am most certainly not a Buddhist.

I am a scientist by training as beside this quest I went on and did a PhD in earth science. And i can certainly find myself in any pragmatic, straightforward, down to earth teaching. I find mostly reassuring that the latest western science is rediscovering what the old traditions have been claiming for a very long time. Namely the most important claim of them all that the self is an illusion, just an appearance in consciousness like everything else.

I don't claim any practice attainment. Not by modesty or anything. Simply I just started to understand things intellectually very recently. And i could even be mistaken about that as it's not the first time that I thought I understood and later found out that I didn't.

This short bio had only one aim: to ask for your indulgence and understanding. I am using this place as a sounding board and it's the only place I hang-out in. I am therefore formally asking for advice from each and every person here. Do not hesitate to make your point as clearly as possible and as detailed as time permits.

This is because:
1. My English is not that good,
2. I never had any kind of formal training, I never did any retreats for ex.
3. I  hate polemics because I am just starting to measure the degree of my ignorance despite seeming to affirm things in my posts.

Makes sense ?

Todo, what have you been looking for - seeking - these past 40 years? It seems that you're patient and yet driven toward a goal. What's the goal?

Chris,
That's a very good question, one that I haven't addressed in my previous post.
My quest started and continued for a very long time because of a visceral fear of death. I would literally see my body after death bloated and being eaten by worms and this will sometimes wake me up in the middle of the night. This is accompanied by something like electric jolts that will flow through my spine and explode in my head.
This went on until maybe 12-15 years ago. It wasn't always occurring but it came and went. But since then t haven't experienced it.
A description like the above would have triggered violent electronic like jolts in my spine but it somehow doesn't do that anymore.

When these phenomena stopped, you can say that I had by then acquired some sort of momentum that kept me going. There was also the intellectual curiosity about all this and maybe some taste of what is possible.

So I started being pushed into the "quest" by that fear of death, then I continued because of the momentum acquired and lately it's seems like I am pulled into it. Like I don't have a choice anymore in the matter (as if I ever did, ha).
Anyway, right now, some process is going on. Like i said in another thread I find myself being "mediated" whenever my cognitive load is not high. Also Meditation happens in dreams.

Also I will catch the voice in my head rehearsing some teachings that resonated with me or explaining it as if to someone else or exclaiming that what seems to be conteadictory is not contradictory at all.

Just yesterday I was driving and I literally blurted out: all this is an illusion and actually accompanied my words with a hand gesture. Fortunately I was aline! Then I continued explaining to myself (silently this time): of course all this is an illusion but it's also very real. This multitude is an expression of the One. Nay, it's the One. No there's no one. Etc. Etc.

Make sense? 

Why did your fear of death, a very immediate, sensate fear, not cause you to seek psychological help as opposed to meditation? If I had the same reactions to thoughts of death that you describe, I would have gone to a psychiatrist.

​​​​​​​Thanks!

Well, I can answer that by saying that I just didn't which doesn't answer anything but is nevertheless the truth. 
trying now to disentangle it I might say that:
the episodes were short and never really messed me up. I mean I remained highly functional. First studying and completing a quite challenging PhD, then working as a scientist and having family and children and overall living a very normal life. I mean even my wife never knew or suspect anything was amiss! 

part of it might also be cultural. Where i live people do not go to see psychiatrists like you seem to do in the US where almost everyone has a "shrink"..

part of it is that what seemed to attract me in the beginning was the psychological & philosophical understanding of this. In the preceding post i didn't mention philosophy but I did read around the philosophical aspects of this. A philosopher who impressed me was the French philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville who also had similar experiences. He became an atheist and has an interesting take on "hope".

Also as i said i am a geologist and geology has a very long view of time. Geologists speak very casually about Millions or even Billions of years. But when you think about it no one can begin to understand, really understand what a Million years really is. And peering into that abyss might have played a role for me.

I don't know if this makes any sense to you. But what I can say is that what would have been the very natural thing to do for you wasn't very natural for me and therefore I didn't do it.

​​​​​​​make sense?

Without knowing anything more about you, yes, it makes some sense. 

I will be very glad to answer specific questions if it can help the community here understand better where I come from and maybe help them fine tune any answers/help they might have for me.

Also I am looking for giving a sense of a path that is probably quite different from the path of many people here.

moreover I think that a take on all this from someone who has no formal teacher, never done retreats, doesn't even have a regular practice, doesn't identify with any particular tradition although more or less familiar with most world traditions can be interesting and hopefully of some help to others here.

I hope Todo will forgive me for jumping in on their log but, to me, Chris' question is super interesting. It would never occur to me to talk to a psychologist or psychiatrist about fear of death. I guess it is a cultural thing. To me, that would automatically fall under the heading of spirituality/religion/philosophy, as it is, from my point of view, part of the worry and fear that everyone faces. It may have to do with what country one is in. I have lived in the US and France and noticed that people there often get medical help for a wider range of concerns than in other countries where I have lived. That, of course, also has a lot to do with what is and is not funded by the state/insurance companies. I wonder what it is like where Todo lives. 

 After I hit Publish on my last post, I saw that you already answered my question. Sorry about that!

As you are asking for questions, I will pose one that occurred to me when you wrote about Dzogchen. There seemed to be some contradictions in your stance. Let me start by saying that I don't see contradictions in a stance as a problem. Often a contradictory stance can offer a broader perspective than an entirely coherent stance. 

The contradictions I see arise when I juxtapose Radical Accepting and Radical Letting Go with considering that a particular piece of advice is absurd and liking Dzogchen (or anything else) the most among all the traditions. Similarly, I see a contradiction between cutting through the delusion of a separate self and the process of examining, selecting, and holding views. Who is it, one might ask, who holds the views and urges others to adopt these views? Can such a stance be held without a sense of self?

I also wonder if have you played around with the Jain concept of anekantavada. I find this meshes well with radical acceptance and non-self, but I am aware that some people maintain that the approach does not sufficiently distinguish between what is true and what is untrue and therefore poses pragmatic and ethical problems. 

In short, to what extent are you aiming at a single truth or a unified explanation as the goal of your seeking?  

As I see it contradictions or at least apparent contradictions are unavoidable. This is integrat to what we are talking about & the tools we have to use to talk about it.

In this regard I think the distinction between ultimate & conventional reality has to be born in mind.

As I said the "Seeking", at least in its active phase, is no longer an issue for me. However to answer your question, the way i see things now is that the single most important single truth to realize is the "no-self/true Self/Only God" truth. In a word cutting through the Delusion.
With that solidly in place, desire, aversion, even the sense of self are no longer problematic.

At the risk of shocking some/all:
I don't think any of this has to stop: thinking is not a problem,  desire is not a problem, self is not a problem.
Moreover on the ethical plane, and here I would beg you to bear with me: ultimately there is no good & no evil. The nature of Radical Acceptance/Radical letting go, there is no difference.
HOWEVER, the distinction between good and evil is a VERY important one. You might say that I do again contradict myself. But I can't help it.
This is the nature of things as they appear to me right now.

I hope I didn't just mess things up for some.
In my defense the above is offered with limitless love & only in the hope that it might be useful.

Nota: i never looked into Jainism.

The sense I get is that you are done. That is to say, you do not understand yourself to suffer, or you do not see any suffering that there is as a problem, and that you do not desire to be in any state other than those which naturally arise at the moment. 

I also get the sense that your primary purpose in participating here is to teach.

​​​​​​​Am I reading you correctly?

My take on teaching is that anyone, no matter their level of attainment, can teach or a better way to put is that when one wants to learn one can learn from anyone else. So I see my blundering here as some sort of teaching. At least others can find lessons in it. At least lessons about what not to say or do.

with regard to my claims of attainment: I honestly think that I am just starting to understand intellectually what all the fuss is about. However as i said earlier I went into so many blind alleys over the past fourty-something years that this might be just one of those blind alleys although it seems quite radically different to me.

Moreover my understanding right now is that one is never "done". There are so many axis of development that it simply is not humanly possible to be "done". That said there is some kind of figure-ground reversal (as Shinzen young says) that is unmistakable and can be immediately available whenever one inclines the mind toward it. 

this somewhat convoluted answer is not meant to drown the fish (noyer le poisson), but just to give some of the necessary nuances that the subject entails.

​​​​​​​helpful? 

>> ​​​​​​​helpful? <<

Yes, thanks. 

The culture here centers around describing things phenomenologically and sort of hanging any conceptual descriptions off of that so it is a little difficult for me to evaluate the utility of what you are presenting but it is interesting and I am starting to get a handle. 

Quite a lot of what you say sounds like it might fit with actualism.

​​​​​​​m

I certainly know nothing about "actualism"

​​​​​​​if what i say looks to you like actualism, it's pure coincidence. Which is not unheard of. 

Todo, I very much appreciate your situation, I think. In my case, I seriously researched many traditions in psychology, martial arts, and religion/spirituality from age ~15 to 37 while working in a science-based field. I used my critical thinking and scientific perspective. I did not blindly jump in. This was also important because there were many meditation/martial arts/spiritual cults in the U.S. and I was very wary of them.

I studied many of the same sources you did (I smiled when I read you also were interested in UG Krishnamurti). Lots of daoism, zen, tibetian buddhism, some sufi, lots of martial arts, lots of psychology. I also had a phase of Ken Wilber and associated people. The truth is that I was about ready to give up on the topic because I was drawing two conclusions: 1) ultimately all paths led to a kind of basic sanity and equanimity, regardless of the "special states" that also happened, and 2) ultimately there was no end point called "enlightenment" and even those that claimed such a thing disagreed with each other.

Ironically, maybe three months after I read a Dali Lama book, which was very simple and almost condescending and seemed to be written for a "western peasants", and I decided to give up...  And then I found Ingram's book and >for me< it put all the pieces together. It pointed toward insights that were not intellectual in nature but rather experiential in nature and I had the intuition that very simple practices could yield something that the intellect could not achieve.

Combining Ingrams idea with the concepts of human development found in Spiral Dynamics - Wikipedia and Cook-Greuter's Stage descriptions (apacoaches.org), I could see that there was a developmental aspect to meditation/spirituality that was beyond the intellect.

The way I would say it now is that the intellect is always capable of interpreting past events from a spiritual perspective, even a very high level perspective (one mind, non-duality philosophies etc.). However, this is always backward looking. When the mind needs to be "inclined", it is already too slow. In the moment of living life, the intellect is too slow. What meditation practice develops is an embodied mind-body intelligence that is capable for wisdom-in-action.  And what is interesting is wisdom-in-action is a very individual wisdom, which you can see in all the different styles of wise teachers. But there is a developmental progression that is apparent and it's not to hard to recognize the difference between intelligence and wisdom-in-action.

(One of my favorite sayings is "the priests argue, but the monks agree".)

And I agree with you that there is no "end". Refinement of the mind/psyche/soul never ends. However, the important thing to realize is that there are stages of human development and meditative capabilities/insights, too. For some people, maybe 1 in 1,000,000?, they feel compelled to develop a regular meditation practice and explore what kinds of meditative capabilities are possible. And many times progress in meditation is limited by a person's psychological development, so meditation also catalyzes further progression in the stages of human development, too.

It sounds like you have a very good foundation for developing a personal meditation practice if you want. I do think all the reading/studying that I did made it easier to commit to a consistent meditation practice when I decided to be serious about practice. However, I also quickly learned that practicIe was very different than reading/studying and it was very very humbling. I spend about seven years very seriously dedicated to daily meditation and occasional retreats. I'm now in my mid 50's and very grateful for doing all that work. 

But of course meditation is not essential for living a good life or being a good person. There is the tibetian saying "better to never have started, but once started, better to finish quickly". 

Hope this is helpful in some way! My best wishes to you.

Phenomena arise AND vanish..
not
Phenomena arise THEN vanish..

the "and" means they simultaneously vanish as they arise.

​​​​​​​makes sense? 

Hello Todo

I practiced in the following way.

1. I developed skills of observation as represented by the 7 factors of awakening.

2. I developed additional necessary skills like sampajjana or metacognitive introspective awareness

3. I then developed proficiency in setting up structures of awareness and then observing what happens to 'objects' within those structures of awareness, as well as what happens to awareness itself.

Through the above I developed a direct personal observation based understanding of perception, cognition, and affect. How they work individually and in tandem with each other.

Through this I experientially understood a few things.

I understood experientially, the construct nature of conscious experience. - that which we are conscious of and the faculty of consciousness itself - it is discrete, it 'blinks', it is put together, assembled moment by moment.

So to me, there is a sequence - something arises and then it passes away. But this perception of sequence is also something that arises and passes away.

There is nothing sacrosanct about the perception of sequence except that it is consistent and thus also very convenient.

The meditative 'juice' the Insight with a capital 'I', for me, is all about the understanding of the construct nature of experience. This direct apprehension of the construct nature of experience helped me a lot in easing suffering.

Thank you, 

just so I can get more out of this:
can you, please, explain how this "construct nature" is known & by whom?

​​​​​​​thanks. 

This construct nature is known in the same way as a tickle in the belly is known, and by the same person who giggles.

Haha,
great "zen style answer"

however, as you took your time to talk to me, i assume you want to be helpful,  which i am grateful for. So let me tell you about myself: of the traditions i looked into zen (koan schools)  & Sufism didn't seem to help me. I must have a literalist mind not very much receptive to poetry & riddles. 

so, that said,  could you unpack that answer for me, please make it more simple and detailed as time permits.

who/what experiences the tickle? 
who/what giggles?

​​​​​​​much appreciated. 

When two hands clap, a frog jumped into water, making a sound, heard by the falling trees that no one was there to hear.

This is exactly the kind of stuff i don't find helpful. 
it always baffled me why some people who seem to understand a thing about the practice use this kind of language.
i understood that historically some used it to protect themselves from orthodoxies that often considered mystics as heretics. But why in a forum that claims to be Dharma OVERground? Do some long for it tl return tl its roots as dharma underground? 

i am really, really asking you frankly what does what you wrote mean. I am sure it means something to "you" but how is it supposed to mean to me?
i am going to tell you the only message from this kind of riddles is: "I  understand things you don't & i am not going to let you in the secret" and i imagine others getting the message & laughing among themselves "look at that latest comer here. He doesn't have a clue. Haha."
​​​​​​​
i am here solemny asking everyone here who reads this to help me understand. It will be much appreciated. 

Papa,

further to my message above, I want to be clear about another thing; I am aware of the use of koans by the zen people as a way to confuse the intellect & encourage the student to seek non-conceptual understanding. But it doesn't seem to me to be what you're doing here but I might be mistaken. 

if your message is : "I am giving you this koan & i am asking you to meditate on it & when you do you'll find the answer for yourself" just be forthright about it like the zen teachers do.

There is quite a bit of playfulness in this, and playfulness is a way of modeling welcome.

Also, there is one message that has been repeated by many people when replying to your questions and statements, and that is that the key learning to be done here is not conceptual. It does not make sense. It is not something that can be fully conveyed with language or understood by reasoning. 

This message has been framed as "why not trying formal sitting practice?" and by answering with Zeny words. There is no answer that can be given in the way we would when explaining how hydrogen bonds form, or how central banks increase the monetary supply. It's just not that kind of topic. 

The traditional way to respond to this kind of message is to take up formal sitting practice and see what happens. 

The mind can do much more than reason.

It seems to me he's just mixing some koans together as a joke, it's not that deep.

"When two hands clap, a frog jumped into water, making a sound, heard by the falling trees that no one was there to hear."

Yes,
I got that the "two hands clapping"is an allusion to that famous zen koan,
i got that the "frog" ia an allusion to the most famous haiku by Basho,
i got that the "falling trees" are an allusion to that archi-known philosophical question about wether they make a sound or not.

but i didn't get the joke! Sorry! Maybe it's an insider joke & i am just an outsider,  or am not the kind of person who "gets" jokes, they do exist.
​​​​​​​
i didn't get how this answers my question!
i didn't get how it's supposed to be helpful! 

Thank you very much, 

this is very straightforward & thus very helpful. 

however permit my restless mind to ask a question:
yes, i agree that words are often difficult to come by, that they don't always convey the intended meaning & if they do there is no guarantee that they would be decoded in the right. Ok for all this.

but, what was the Buddha doing when he spoke? What about all the mystics of all traditions who spoke & wrote millions upon millions of words explaining this stuff.

i simply just find easy to answer any & every question with: "just sit" as some zen folk do! Yet all the zen schools utter millions & millions of words pointing, explaining, etc..

so, Chris, 
let's get this out of the way. We are here among people who know the limitations of words. But who also know that there is no alternative to words.
imagine if the buddha had only one message; "just sit", where would be buddhism today! 

so, could we agree on this & move forward in the spirit of the dharma OVERground which i understand to be:
straightforward.. no nonsense.. no hiding behind the "mist" in "mysticism".. just say it as you understand it..

My deepest apologies Todo. 

I now feel your deep frustration which I haven't felt before. 

Yes I was joking but not as an insider to an outsider. It was just "in joking, just the joke, referring back to no one" in Buddha's words. 

Just to clarify; I really know no answer to this awakening thing! I'm serious! If anything I'm just more uncertain and more of a fool. I'm being serious. 

But yes answer to your question about "who giggles?" ponder the Buddha's teaching given to Bahiya "in seeing, only the seen, referring back to no one" etc ... read that Sutta. 

Kenneth Folk explains this further in practical terms; 
one can see what the Buddha means by "in seeing, just the seen, referring back to no one" in a profound moment of Satipathana. Sati (mindfulness) Pa (profound). 
Noting this matter of fact arise-passing experience (sensation) is just like Buddha explained. There can not be the Self in the seeing of a tree or splashing of the frog jumping into water. The "sense" of self only can arise in and of itself as such, a belief, a thought, an impression, some mind image, ... and again even THAT sense of self will not refer back to no one  

Again my apologies for joking. Was meant to add a bit humor to the ovearly serious thinking but was misunderstood Rightly so as I now see the frustration is deep and honest. We all share that experience of frustration with the dhamma. 

​​​​​​​Best wishes Todo! 

Let me give another quick practical example; 

We all know the feeling of biking or driving back home. We think about this or that. Maybe the boss was this or that and I was annoyed etc injustice. Or I just kissed a person for the very first time and im
in love thinking about her/him.  

Suddenly I'm infront of my home realising how fast this 1 hour journey went! I wasn't even aware of it! Seems this body-mind knew perfectly fine how to do THIS without the pondering mind aspect. 

In this case one can clearly see that the thinking mind is not in charge of THIS mind-body perfect expression. The thinking-believing-assuming-judging-dwelling-pondering thinking aspect is just a tiny part in the larger Body-Mind expression. And yet we give it more importance as being the very I the very Self owning All This  

Practice shows this selfing cognising belief that it is not the most important thing in all THIS expression. The sense of self might not like this insight and might rebel against it! Keep up a daily practice. Non heroic but daily. The seeker will get tired and will accept that this practice is not leading to the defeat of the Self but rather integration into the full aspect of this Body-Mind expression. 

​​​​​​​I hope my post is of benefit and is not misleading. 

 Todo, I'm not in charge of what folks post unless they violate the rules. Otherwise, people are free to post what they want. In the case of Papa Che's funny comment, you're making a mountain out of a molehill, as he was clearly joking by combining a bunch of Zen-like comments together. It was a kind of dharma-sarcasm.

Also, there is a very long history in Buddhism that includes both detailed explanations of how to practice and poetic expressions that include why to practice and what to expect from practice. I think it would be wise to accept both as different but complimentary paths to realization.

Could you possibly take a more light-hearted approach and meet us in the middle?

Thank you Papa, Chris,
much appreciated.

What i was pointing at, maybe clumsily, is that when one follows the instruction "in the seen, only the seen", one subtly turns this into something to do. And there is an implicit "I" seeing in "the seing only the seen".

This i think is the case with everyone "doing any kind of sitting practice". There's this implicit "I" meditating, going through jhanas, seeing the three characteristics, etc.

When someone answered that "the one who sees is the one who is tickled & giggles". This appears dualistic to me. They may experience it otherwise & were pointing at something that I didn't get. Hence my question.

Also when you tell me to read the Bahiya sutta & I do, I can still remain caught in this subtle duality.

What appears to me is that when the "true nature of mind " is apprehended directly by itself like the mythical Ouroboros it becomes cristal clear that in "the seen there is only the seen" always has been,  always will be. Cannot be otherwise. There is no need to do anything.

This is the message I've been trying to get across & each time someone comes along they either reply with a joke or tell me "just sit" or worse treat me of being "drunk, or stupid". All this happened here on the DhO. I am not going to give quotes or name names because I don't think it's necessary.

You're absolutely right I'm very frustrated but not by the dharma but by how I've been received on a forum I've been reading (without posting) for i don't know how many years. If you remember the time when Kenneth folk was here & having "slight disagreements" with Daniel Ingram then you know how long I've been here.

Yes I am excited because I finally think i have some understanding & wanted to share in order to receive constructive feedback saying things like "here's what you seem to be getting right.. here's where i think you're mistaken.. here's what you may consider next.. you see what I mean.
Not jokes, not Zen-ny wordsmithing..

I hope I'm being clear. I really do want & need constructive feedback as I have no face to face interactions with teachers or fellow practitioners. My material circumstances prevent me from this, I shouldn't have to elaborate further. 

Todo, that's very clear and helpful, and you're doing fine here. Keep engaging!

"What i was pointing at, maybe clumsily, is that when one follows the instruction "in the seen, only the seen", one subtly turns this into something to do. And there is an implicit "I" seeing in "the seing only the seen"."

Through repeat practice the implicit sense of self diminishes and experience beings to integrate and become simply seen but this is a gradual process. It is through sitting and watching ourself create implicit dualities over weeks, months, years of diligent practice that this sense of a self weakens. It is gradual though it is also sudden and immediate when attainments occur. 

"What appears to me is that when the "true nature of mind " is apprehended directly by itself like the mythical Ouroboros it becomes cristal clear that in "the seen there is only the seen" always has been,  always will be. Cannot be otherwise. There is no need to do anything."

This is the awakened mind. It is hinted at with experience like the A&P but it is not fully understood or even basically understood in a way that reduces suffering. So when a person wants to arrive at this they practice. They practice not by refusing the duality of their experience but directly seeing it and through direct seeing duality starts to untangle. 

To see the seen one must see duality. That is the paradox of meditation and "The paradox of instruction" as a wise man once said. 

​​​​​​​

 I wanted to mention that I don't think anyone called you drunk or stupid. Shargrol said "This is a drunk post and so it is stupid." But they were talking about what they wrote, not what you wrote. They said similar things in other posts to other people on the same day, such as "Does that make sense? I'm drunk posting. :-)" to Geoffrey. Of course, for people who do not know Shargrol, who I don't think has called anyone stupid ever, this would not have been clear. It might have been better if he had written, "My reply is a drunk post and so it is stupid," but, in his defense, he was drunk at the time :-)

I understand that it can be very emotionally engaging to post about one's own experience and understanding on a subject as important as insight. A few months (or weeks, I can't remember) after I started posting here, which was years ago, someone replied to one of my posts with a lot of criticism. They questioned my attitude and my understanding and said a lot of blunt and unpleasant things (I had, I think, unintentionally touched something that was painful for that person). I was so angry and so hurt, that it's hard to describe it. For months I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it. I discussed it with my face-to-face sitting group and my teacher commented that having one's own authenticity and intentions questioned was extremely unpleasant because it is so central to our sense of who we are as a person. That comment didn't help much at the time but my response to that post served as a touchstone for me, for a long time. One of the things that it taught me was that insight/awakening was something that I really cared about. Another thing that it taught me was emotions have a life of their own. Lastly, as I got to know the person who had upset me better, I realized how hard it is to guess at what a person might be thinking when they post something on the Internet. 
 

Oh yeah I remember that post by Shargrol "this is a drunk post and so it is stupid" Yeah he certainly was referring to his own reply! I hate to say it to him but he might be in need for some AA help!  

Our very own drunken master!

Hello Todo

There is an 'I' that meditates. Obviously! And there is no problem with it. There is no problem with duality either.

I think sometimes one may get trapped in languaging. Whereas the purpose of the language is simply to give direction to practice. Actual daily practice.

Also Todo, why do I get a sense in interacting with you that, here on this forum, you seem to be walking around with a chip on your shoulder, daring people to knock it off. Why do I sense a desire to fight under the gentility. Maybe its just 'my stuff'

Todo

I am not trying to be combative, I am not attempting any kind of one-up-man-ship.

I very plainly and bluntly give the following advice to people, and I am giving it to you too. It is entirely your choice to simply discard it.

1. All intellectual understanding is most categorically not Insight

2. All affective benefits of intellectual understanding fade. The excitement fades, the peace or lowering of anxiety fades

3. Intellectual understanding is an imposter. It seduces some people for years before they realize the time they have wasted

4. Only and only structured, systematic meditation practice delivers Insight. Drugs dont, reading doesnt, thinking doesnt

​​​​​​​5. Reading does not constitute practice, thinking does not, discussion does not. Planned, structured, diligent attention and awareness exercises ... that is the way .... the only way!

I watch with delight this long and multi-thread discussion that opens up both the social scene of the forum, clears misunderstandings between people, and leads to the actual questions the forum is for. The ability of a group to go through such with more understanding and listening tells good about the possible realizations. It is so difficult to see how oneself is seen/read by others. 

What would you say Adi, if someone claimed that words ”intellectual understanding” could be replaced with ”meditation practice” in your points 1-3?

im rather allergic to ”only ways” (there are so many of them) so  i propose that the points 4-5 could include the fact that practice itself is also not enough though needed for insight in some form (not necessarily formal form, id hope).

All traditions seem to include a necessary element that is not in a persons power to practice/trigger/control which ultimately leads over to the goal/god/realization. If I’m not mistaken. 

(and I’m not claiming any attainment! I claim only to be a living human with a living wish to be and understand what is. Reading these discussions bt fellow beings invite commenting, so here’s a short one.) 

Hi Kettu

There are lots of people who say lots of things. They dont matter.

Only 'Kettu' and Kettu's direct experience matters.

Where do you think direct experience comes from?

Aloha Adi!

"Also Todo, why do I get a sense in interacting with you that, here on this forum, you seem to be walking around with a chip on your shoulder, daring people to knock it off. Why do I sense a desire to fight under the gentility."

You have a seventh sense! You've got Powers! Good for you. Enjoy while they last.

"There is an 'I' that meditates. Obviously! And there is no problem with it. There is no problem with duality either."

Very true! Indeed! There is no problem with self, ego, or duality.  None at all. Except when one is deluded & then all hell breaks loose!

" I am not trying to be combative, I am not attempting any kind of one-up-man-ship."

No, of course you're not! Except it's irritating to see there are people who don't share your "way", the only way, the unique way, the sole way since the beginning of time & until God inherits the earth.

By the way, I didn't even get what your way is! You say it's "structured, diligent attention and awareness exercises". What is that, pray?
Is it watching the breath?
Noting or is it noticing?
Repeating a mantra?
Doing body scans a la Goenka?
Visualizing gods, demons or dakinins?
Doing red, white or black tantra?
Doing nothing?
Taking the goal as the starting point?
Puzzling over a koan?
Etc.
Etc.

Thanks Adi for the question. 

An answer: From life. Attending fully to moments. Practice is for life, as it is said. 

Mind, Awareness, Consciousness is a chameleon skin that gets "colored" by its environment. In this case the "coloring happens in 6 modalitie, in 3 dimensional space & changes in time, moment-by-moment.

Thoughts? 

Hm, why do you ask? (And did you ask me or in general, I don't know.) Perhaps it would be rude to not write something back, so...

I guess the thoughts come a bit too late to the party, but when the whole is with the thinking (giving time and attention to it, so to say), a curious sensual and emotional relation between thought-process and the whole (of a human being) seems to arise into experience. Sometimes at least. I would like to give that an symbolic image of "hinges of a door". A kind of experiential shift in relation to thoughts. I don't know what buddhism(s) would make of that, anyway.

Coloring as you call it happens to some degree in normal mind but it is fraction of what it could become when nervous system is being run at higher learning rates - which meditation, even typical with methods should cause. To what degree I am no sure - I tried to guestimate it based on descriptions and how it seems to shift (learning rate) in access concentration / jhanas and came to conclusion that by itself without direct volitional tempering it will be much less than what I experienced - where my brain would literally take repeating patterns and apply them to everything, all senses, internal perceptions and all. Say I would take an image and open in image editing program and apply median filter or sharpening mask, etc. and almost immediately I would have the same filter on all my senses. It was about as fun as it sounds - got little tiring after few years so I really started trying to figure out how to decrease learning rates as for these few years I only knew how to increase them.

Anyways, lowering learning rates drastically can mitigate this variability and perception being affected by various things. Not without its own drawbacks though - for example its much harder to visualize and especially whole mind states. I would eventually develop whole procedure with learning rate being parameter changed over time, first increase it a lot and then gradually decrease it - pretty much the same way you train artificial neuron networks.

Other issue with low learning rates is lack of expressiveness of mind and more bland overall experience. To some degree by carefully controlling learning rate I could snapshot given mind configuration but it would still not feel as alive as when learning rates are higher.

Also regarding coloring - even with low learning rates there will still be variability in coloring due to how we are not using the same parts of the brain all the time. In fact our brains constantly shift what is being used. If you take eg. visual perception and focus (central point of focus) this seems to be outward motion - so parts of the brain which are used to process central point of focus will shift to process periphery and those which process periphery will move even more outwards until going out of view - but still being used in perception! Now as you can imagine if there are any differences between how these parts of your brain color things then even if completely having locked in state (near zero learning rate) then differences or shifts in coloring will be experienced.

Eventually I would develop a way to improve perception by using multiple passes of perception done by entirely different parts of my brain which would be triggered in succession one after the other and rather than their consciousnesses pass away I kept these consciousnesses and they would then try to agree on what is the correct and most objective version of whatever it was I perceived. It of course cannot by definition be objective but with enough data and including data from parts of brain which weren't really supposed to run this type of perception (thus kinda being just formatted for this purpose - BTW. this is exactly what fruition afterglow is made out of - newly formatted parts of nervous system running perception) when all are taken together it allows me to gather broad enough range of data points to make perception seem quite objective. Using this algorithm and especially in its super-charged forms gives much better acuity of perception and really the algorithm in question was solely developed to improve my eyesight and just adopted to every aspect of how I run my mind ever since.

BTW. I consider this algorithm as my 4th path and not what here on DhO is called "technical" or MCTB 4th path.
It (technical/MCTB 4th path) can be accomplished by:
- pure luck - it is not impossible to imagine this could happen by chance or with little effort - just exceedingly unlikely
- enough effort put in to it - like with enough effort put in to practices which are known to facilitate such shift - pretty much typical case
- feeling my way around - not really seeing much but having certain basic faculties of perception developed like visualized touch - it still requires lots of trial and error to get good degree of fitting and I did try it that way but frankly I didn't have patience or will and wanted to focus on my perception first and foremost so I gave u
- good enough perception - like how I actually did it - once I could clearly enough see it then it was pretty trivial

Also I developed this perception for my physical eyesight. Come to think about it I developed all the things which I developed only for the purpose of improving my eyesight and rest of the mind got updates as an afterthought

Anyways, long story short or tl;dr version is that:
- amount of moment-to-moment changes in coloring during the course of say day depends on:
-- amount of variability between various part of the brain which are used during the day
-- learning rates in parts of brain used for perception
- it is possible to develop algorithms/way of running perception with error-correction - which also improve acuity of perception

Clear cognizing uproots Delusion, so greed & hatred cannot arise. Isn't this nibbana?

Question to the maps-oriented members here:
Does this fit with the stages?

I'm definitely a map-oriented member... but I'm not sure how to answer your question. A discussion of mapping/stages applies more to a developmental approach where someone is doing a particular practice over time to develop or refine their basic perceptual and/or behavioral skills. 

The basic idea that clear perception undermines confusion is a fairly well-accepted idea and the gradual development of clear perception is an important goal of meditation.

Sure sure, but why does it matter for you personally?

Assuming you were curious to know how mind operates to be able to do cool stuff within it through gained knowledge then it surely would make some sense that you would want more people to do practices to maybe discover more interesting things that way...

But then again in this case you would not care that much for someone's specific practice and wouldn't really care for these practiced being done either but instead their raw intellect and ability to process models in their heads to find interesting points and make interesting conclusions. I bet there would be still some degree of recommendation of doing things in more practical way and even specific practices simply because of knowing they work but everything about the tone of such messages would be totally different...


...exactly this tone would not be present!

Let me ask you this: what actually seduces people for years - and not even "before they realize" but keeps them locked in bs for the rest of their lives under bars made out of crushing shame which would be inevitably experienced should they realize how idiotic their reasoning was for all these years and how much effort they spent doing things in obviously wrong ways. What could I be talking about?


Yeah, thinking bad, makes sense.
Less people who think the more people who agree with those who claim complete knowledge of mind.

Anyways, it makes perfect sense that if we have complete knowledge available to us just by doing some very simple practices then bothering with thinking makes no sense! And here of course thinking mind comes and demands something that sounds like a proof... or at least not like total and utter nonsense. Bad mind, bad thinking! It goes without thinking one can have knowledge and never verbalize it other than e.g. THIS. Its then called "experiential knowledge". Like if you went to Apple store and had glimpse of how it all works. Then if you buy say Mac you immediately can claim you know how everything about it works. So in that case in Mac OS's processes get loaded and executed, how does they do that and how does process scheduler works exactly? Bad thinking, bad! Its not the point to know how processes or scheduler work... its important I have complete knowledge and... it all just works!


Planned by someone else and done without thinking about why this practice and this sensations and never ever asking the questions what about maybe some other sensations. Thinking is bad... thinking it terrible... thinking corrupts, it is unforgivable! We don't like thinking around these parts! THIS parts even!

Shargol,
Good day to you & thank you for taking the time to respond.

The basic understanding i seem to be coming back to & that I would like to refine & make operational in order to make it the foundation of my journey onwards is the following:

Going upstream in the chain of cause & effect that creates suffering seems to reach one factor: Delusion.
Delusion meaning being caught in phenomena & not seeing that all phenomena are simply "fingers" pointing at the moon of clear cognizing. Phenomena (the ten thousand things) are a manifestation of the One: clear cognizing.
Clear cognizing is what makes phenomena "observable".

They are different yet not two.  This is why delusion is our lot as we get lost in phenomena & never see the ground,  the source. This is also why liberation is possible as the source is always shining.

It is possible to "grasp" this truth with the non-conceptual mind.
However, this "grasping" lasts only as long as one inclines the mind strongly toward this realization.

During this time, however long it is, it becomes cristal clear that both greed & hatred cannot arise as clear cognizance has the properties of Radical Acceptance & Radical letting go. No need to do anything.

I am pretty convinced that this view is correct but I have followed so many blind alleys during my life that I guess i am looking for external validation.

Would you say that this view is correct?
Is it possible to correlate it with the "maps"?

Once we get past this hurdle, the question becomes, i guess, "how to stabilize this view, access it on demand & maybe have it as one's default mode of being.
As I see it, this will probably be an asymptote where one can refine it further & further, coming closer & closer to what could never be "finished".

Shargol (& the others), am I being clear  / making sense?
What are your recommendations? Suggestions? 

Hello, Todo!

I have a few questions - can you describe clear cognizing in detail and contrast it with ordinary cognizing? Is there a hierarchy of types of cognizing? Are there better and worse kinds? How do we know which is which? 

Also, how did you go about following the chain of causality? What was/is your method of doing that?

Your answers to these questions will help us figure out how you have arrived where you are and maybe where on a map that might be. You say things that appear on the surface to echo parts of my experience, my path, but you will need to provide details, much more detail, to allow me or others to really understand your path.

Yes, I would say that this view is good enough to start practicing and that is the important thing.

If you sit and calm the body and then observe the mind, it is clear that there is simple perception (sights, sounds, sensations) and there is conceptual thinking. The more that we identify with thoughts as being real or as something that needs to exist or as being "I/me/mine", the more confusion and delusion --- and suffering ---there is.

So one common practice is to sit and be with experience, as it is, and when we get lost in too much thinking or when we feel frustrated or feel bored, we let go and come back to the present moment and be with experience simply as it is. You are right to say "there is no need to do anything" except let go.


Now, the other truth is that "letting go" mostly happens gradually and there are perceptual changes that occur over time. Our perception improves and it is possible to notice even more subtle delusions and let them go too. This is where the maps and description of the stages are useful for understanding what happens over months and years.&nbsp;These maps and stages are generally true for most people, so they won't perfectly describe exactly what happens to you or me when we practice, but it is interesting how accurate and useful the maps are!

(Of course, the maps and descriptions of the stages can also be distracting, like how scholars debate words endlessly. The most important thing is have a simple, consistent, and daily practice and let that experience of reality be your true teacher.)


Even though I've described things very simply, actually doing a daily practice is actually very challenging. At first we think "oh I'll just practice in my normal life", but if that was working we wouldn't be interested in views and practices!  The next thing is we have to develop some discipline and set aside time every day to practice. Even people who are professionally disciplined still have difficulty "protecting" their time for practice in the beginning. After we start consistently practing, delusions start breaking up and it releases new sensations, emotions, and urges in the body which can be unsettling. And after we have done that kind of cleaning up, then things can get (apparently) boring and dull or daydreamy --- but even this is just another stage to work through.


But the nice thing is we don't need to figure this all out in the beginning. If you take things step by step and learn along the way, you'll make much faster progress than someone trying to figure it all out perfectly before starting.

Hopefully, this reply is helpful in some way.

While this is true in some ways, in other ways there are big "jumps" that go beyond our ability to imagine beforehand. So while we should have modest expectations, many people report big changes in their mind. 

It's hard to describe experiential changes in words, which is why one of Daniel's teachers said "Highly recommended, can't say why."

Chris,
Good day,

As i see it clear cognizing is exactly the same as ordinary cognizing. The difference is the presence of delusion or not.

When there is delusion, one is caught in phenomena. Phenomena are "real". Seeing a red apple, the "redness" is there. The person does not question this as it is all there is for them.

When delusion is seen through, phenomena are seen for what they are, a manifestation of a deeper reality. They are also still "real" in a sense. The redness of the apple is still there & what makes it possible is also there.

The view with delusion is a subset of the view without it. The view with delusion is a "poorer" view. One sees only phenomena & is caught there. That is the totality of his reality.

The view without delusion is a richer view. One can see phenomena as they are & one can also see that they are simply a manifestation of a deeper reality.

If I can compare to those ambiguous figures that show for example the two opposing faces or a vase. It's as if the deluded view sees only one of the two, say "the vase". While the view without delusion sees both the vase & the opposing faces.  It is thus richer and more complete without being intrinsically different.

As for following the chain of causality that leads to suffering, i relied mostly on the Buddhist teaching of the three poisons. However looking into it directly it became apparent to me that, of the three, delusion is the most fundamental as the other two cannot arise when delusion is not there. Greed & hatred appear only in a state of delusion.

Clear cognizing is welcoming to everything & anything. To make it extreme, with the risk of shocking, witnessing the killing of an innocent child is perfectly ok with clear cognizing. There is simply no attraction & no aversion.  None whatsoever.
HOWEVER I DO NOT CLAIM IT'S OK IN A CONVENTIONAL SENSE.
PLEASE IGNORE THAT COMMENT IF YOU FIND  IT UNSETTLING IN ANY WAY.
I do NOT prone nor condone any violence whatsoever.
This comment is meant to make a point. If it risks derailing the discussion in any way, please simply ignore it or edit it out. I am perfectly fine with leaving it out of the discussion.
In fact having made my opinions on this matter clear,  i do not wish to discuss it further.  Enough disclaimers, i hope.

Does this make sense to you?

I think it is worth considering the possibility that not all spiritual paths are the same and that more than one type of action or understanding can have benefits. Correct and incorrect may depend on the context. There may not be an underlying universal truth to any of this or, in another mode of framing the statement, there may be multiple, mutually different, underlying universal truths. 

It could be the other way. It could be that there is just one truth and that all spiritual endeavors are either more, or less, perfect attempts to approach that truth but, for some people, in some circumstances, holding the first possibility in mind may reduce stress and enhance compassion. 

Shargol,

This is where maybe i have been most misunderstood here.

I can't find myself in most meditation instructions I see on the web. I don't see myself following the breath or just sitting or noting.

The way I've found myself lately is that I am "being meditated" almost all the time, even in dreams.  I'm being pulled in. If i wished to stop meditating, I  couldn't.
I have to be doing something really cognitively demanding to "have a break". For instance writing these posts to you, Chris & others here on the DhO us not cognitively demanding enough for meditation not to happen.

Right now, my experience is as follows:
My focused attention is on writing this & finding the ideas & the correct words (in a foreign language, mind you).
However, at the same time, my peripheral attention is perceiving part of the room (somewhat blurry), hearing a bird shirping in the distance (cristal clear), feeling some uneasiness in the body as i am slouched, rather than having a better body posture.

Does this quality as meditation? I don't know.

Also i am a very light sleeper and most of my nights are spent between wakefulness and sleep (yoga nidra?).
So all night long, every night, I am being more or less present to what is going on.  Hearing sounds, feeling the body, pondering this stuff, etc.
Does this quality as Meditation? What do I need to make it into Meditation?

I know i might be just being lazy and delusional but this is the way I feel right now. Should I go against everything that seems plainly clear to me just to conform to what spiritual life is supposed to be?

I am aware that highly realized masters during the ages have maintained some sort of practice, but who knows what they were doing exactly & why. For instance I am aware that for Dogen, zazen in an expression of awakening NOT a mean to awakening.

Am I clear?
Do i make sense?

Todo, I believe I understand what you are saying.

It seems true that nothing possibly could be better/different than how the current moment already arises. How could it be? 

And yet, there are lots of stories about people who sat and intentionally dwelled in the current moment and put their mind >into< the experience of sensations, emotions, and thoughts, so to speak. And these stories always talk about big changes in seeing or understanding. 

And lastly, when people "finish" their months and years of practicing, they often say things like "nothing possibly could be better/different than how the current moment already arises".

So the question is, why would anyone practice?


It's very similar to why someone would climb a mountain? I could walk up to Reinhold Messner and say, what is the purpose of all that climbing you did over your whole life if, at the end, here we both are, standing on the same ground, looking at each other in the eye?

And he might say: “I'm primarily concerned with what happens inside a person when they encounter the mountains. When you climb a mountain, you come back down as a different person."


Meditation isn't for everybody, so it's fine to not practice. Mountain climbing isn't for everybody, so it's fine not to climb. There are many ways to live a good life. But if you are wondering if meditation does something that is different than living a normal life, yes it does.


Not everyone wants to meditate daily, really only just a few people. And even fewer people go on multi-day meditation retreats. And that's why this forum exists, for the few people that want to practice and want to discuss practice. 

I notice that your posts often include statements that appear to indicate that you are not welcoming to everything and anything that is said here. For example, you objected to being called stupid and drunk and used expressions that led me to believe you were upset. Would it be reasonable to conclude that clear cognizing is not a state in which you find yourself at all times?

The question to ask is: What causes this dukkha?

We can at times identify with thoughts and it is not only not causing dukkha but even pleasure and at times (rarely but still) pure pleasure - without any dukkha. It also often feels like going in to thoughts and even identification is helping with already experienced dukkha if it is not caused by these same thoughts.

I don't disagree with what you said and imho one should not go and nilly-willy identify with thoughts as this usually makes very little sense. I am just asking about technicality of it because if it is something bad and causes dukkha then why there are some conditions to it and not always it is that bad.

Any thought?

Yes, highly realized masters, average masters, great monks and nuns and laypeople, and average monks and nuns and laypeople all have done some sort of practice... and it can be fun and interesting to do our own experiment!

Afterall, this is the forum associated with the book "mastering the core teachings of the buddha" and mastering the core teachings doesn't mean "studying words", but rather "good practice" 

MCTB.org – The home of the evolving Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha

EDIT: I should also say that there are 10,000 different meditation approaches, so if you are really interested in meditation but don't like mindfulness of breathing or noting practice, there are probably others you might be interested in. 

Shargol,

" I should also say that there are 10,000 different meditation approaches, so if you are really interested in meditation but don't like mindfulness of breathing or noting practice, there are probably others you might be interested in."

Does what I do and described in my previous post quality as meditation in your opinion.  Is it one of those 10.000 different approaches? 
if not what would you recommend?

Martin,

"Would it be reasonable to conclude that clear cognizing is not a state in which you find yourself at all times?"

​​​​​​​Absolutely reasonable! 

You mean jhana?
You need to recognize hindrances - any thing that break jhanas, the so called hindrances - and then what activity happens before said hindrances arise and learn to cause energy which would go to hindrance arising (and in turn breaking your jhana) to support your jhana instead.

Jhana in its most natural form is exactly what you describe.
Typically people experience jhanas through concentration practices in which case they take specific forms caused by the practice. In reality jhanas are more fluid in presentation and multiple various experiences can be classified as jhana. It really is multiple activation of consciousnesses from multiple copies of faculties. If you take eg. experience of hand - it has presentation like it has and while it doesn't change much during the day it actually arises from many different parts of brain. Jhana is making something that uses more copies at once but each pathway is activated less. That would be the gist of it.

The perception I described in previous post is also jhana based.
With jhanas the thing is that each jhanic experience always feels better than previous one and that its impossible to improve it. When it doesn't feel like the best that could ever be it doesn't mean you need different type of jhana but rather hindrances exist to break it.
In fact I like to shift jhanas and from time to time experience different one. Or even its just when it shifts I use it.

Anyways, if you experience jhanic states you are on good track.
The whole point of meditation (if there is one) is to feel like that whethever you want.

I think it could be the foundation of a good meditation practice, for example:

1. each day, intentionally decide to "be meditated" for a period of time, for example 30 minutes. 
2. sit in a comfortable position, eyes can be open or closed, but allow experience to arise as it is and allow it to naturally release.
3. when you notice that the moment is not naturally releasing, intentionally let it go, and return to the present moment as it is. (it is totally fine to not notice right away, this is normal. don't try to be perfectly aware, just be naturally aware, don't strain,) 
4. when the 30 minutes are over, reflect on what aspects of experience are the most sticky? what seems to resist being naturally released? (Don't do these reflections during practicing, instead just practice when practicing and do the self-reflection afterwards.) 
5. throughout the day, notice if this same experiences that are sticky during sitting practice are also sticky during real life? Don't try too hard, just gently pay attention to this when not formally practicing.
6. repeat the next day.

Notice that this meditation practice is very loose and has very few rules: just experience things as they are and let go. But for it to be practice, it needs to be an intentional act, which is why you decide ahead of time how long you are going to do it. And for progress/development to occur, it must be a daily practice otherwise there isn't any traction. Those are basically the two important things that makes it "practice" and not "just being alive". 

Everyone has different preferences for their meditation practice. It's important to start with what seems appropriate or most true. Everyone is different, that's why there are so many of them and not just one "correct" practice! 

What is very interesting is that practice naturally evolves into trying out other methods. It is very very very rare that someone just does one practice. But there is no need to figure out what comes next. The best thing is to allow practice and progress to develop naturally over time.

I'm realizing that "practice" might be the wrong word, the wrong feeling. What we're talking about here is "training" -- training to develop the skill to have clear cognition in the moment and training the skill of letting go/release.

Todo: ”Should I go against everything that seems plainly clear to me just to conform to what spiritual life is supposed to be?”

we all probably need to ”go against” (or over) some things, attitudes or considerations in ourselves to learn or become more (don’t ask me which ones)

But! Please don’t suppose ”spiritual” (or more real, or disdeluded) would need to have a recognizeable outer form.

on the other hand, it could be interesting for you to try a more formal practice if you have never tried. (Sorry if you have and have described it - i can’t remember or read everything) . I’m not going to propose which one, though. Shargrol and others have given you some starting points, or you could take one of your own ways of being and formalize it. 

Ni,

your take on Jhanas is quite interesting but I must confess that I am not familiar with jhanas as they are usually described in shamata practice. 
​​​​​​​i don't think I ever went beyond access Concentration. 

Kettu,

I've never been much of a conformist. You might say even rebel. I came out of age in the "punk era" if that's something that speaks to you.

Waking up I think is one of the most non conformist things you can do. Of course there are more or less conformist ways of doing it.

Shargol, 

"I'm realizing that "practice" might be the wrong word, the wrong feeling. What we're talking about here is "training" -- training to develop the skill to have clear cognition in the moment and training the skill of letting go/release."

Oh, i see!
we might have been talking past each other! 

i absolutely agree that training in various domains should be a lifelong endeavor.  And training in refining sensory clarity is definitely worth engaging in. 

on the other hand I seem to see things slightly differently in terms of letting go. I don't experience it as a skill. Let me explain. Things present themselves to me not in terms of "sticky/not sticky" but in terms of "distracted/not distracted"
when i am distracted,  "i am not simply there" to know if things are sticky or not.
when i am not distracted, things are never sticky & I don't need to do anything for them to be that way. It's just the way things are.
phenomena arise & vanish "at the same time." It's like they are self-effacing.
when I am lazy & just letting them be, they seem continuous, yet self-effacing. 
when I am more deliberate, phenomena arise like rapid fire shotguns: da-da-da-da-da... & each "da" is self-effacing.
but there is no resistance to them arising & no resistance to them vanishing.  Not something i could find anyway. 

it's most definitely NOT a "skill". It's effortless.

thinking about it, maybe things could be called "sticky" in another way. Strong stimuli seem to grab the mind. Say a loud noise happens in the vicinity, immediately the mind "gies" there & tend to stay there for a while.  But for that duration, the loud noise is still self-effacing moment by moment. 

​​​​​​​makes sense?

Shargol,

"2. sit in a comfortable position, eyes can be open or closed, but allow experience to arise as it is and allow it to naturally release."

"experience" doesn't ask my permission to arise or to release. It's what experience naturally does. It's not just that experience is not "sticky", it CANNOT be!
this is where I can't see a need for something "to practice", it's something to recognize! When the figure/ground reversal happens it's self evident.

makes sense?

Punk does speak to me, yeah, though i’m younger

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7ogL1PcxJ0M&pp=ygUSU2lsbWlubsOka2lqw6QgMDAw

Have a blast with gaining upper hand with any delusions. 

Kettu,

thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify things further. As i see it, it's not "delusions" (plural) but "Delusion" (singular,  capital D).

Delusion as I see it is the root cause of suffering. It's seeing only the ten thousand things, like seeing one side of the coin, so to speak. Cutting through "Delusion" is still seeing the ten thousand things & at the same time, seeing also the other side of the coin: clear Cognizing, which is what made seeing the ten thousand things possible to begin with.

​​​​​​​helpful? 

I don’t know really. How is it
for you, in your daily life and training, if that was your choice of words?  

Practically delusions vs Delusion seems for me to rise a question: is it more useful to refine the aim gradually, develope responsibility out of reactivity, gradually, or is it more useful to anchor oneself to unshakeable bedrock under moving ocean of moments? But they, aiming and anchoring - i believe - are needed together. 

Anyway, just my two cents. 

"We will show them our signs in the horizons and in themselves"
​​​​​​​Q41:53

​​​​​​​Are you referring to this "make sense" unquestioned assumption that is never verified about actions being done by what we refer to as self and which is also an observer?

There are more fundamental 'root causes of suffering' issues than that imho but that on experiential and mind levels fit to call it a Delusion.

Though point needs to be made that "self" as it is isn't the only delusion of this type. There are subtler delusions related to attention, focus, etc. and some of them seems to be somewhat separate from self and even have separate attainments.

On the other hand one can also say that more worthy to call it as the fundamental Delusion would be an illusion of separateness or the so called duality.

Ni,
"On the other hand one can also say that more worthy to call it as the fundamental Delusion would be an illusion of separateness or the so called duality."

yes, that is Delusion, capital D. Also called Ignorance. 
Seeing through this, it becomes clear that the other two poisons (greed/attraction & hatred/aversion) fall of themselves. Nothing needs to be done. Certainly not the "cultivation of letting go or of acceptance".

In a sense, nothing ever needs to be done, as everything naturally unfolds anyway. But that does not mean that there is natural liberation from suffering. Liberation requires certain conditions and the establishment of the conditions requires right view, right aspiration, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. 

Yes, all that is nice & good.

however my contentment is that when clear cognizance is directly realized, however one arrives there, attraction/aversion are no longer an issue.

i certainly might be mistaken but this is the things appear to me. It's as obvious & clear as seing redness for a person with normal vision. You just open your eyes & it's there, effortlessly, immediately, nothing to do.

similarly, you look with clear cognizing & "see" that Radical Acceptance is there & therefore aversion cannot be. Also, Radical letting go is there & therefore clinging cannot be.
plain & simple.

​​​​​​​makes sense? 

Yes, but you have already said you do not have it consistently. Everyone feels fine some of the time, and I am glad that you do too. But the clear cognizing you are promoting doesn't seem to have much of a payoff in comparison with the permanent changes brought about by insight. 

[Edit]

I used to work at Charles de Gaulle Airport, where they use long articulated busses to move passengers from one terminal to another, and from trains to terminals. One day, a little boy, getting off an articulated bus with his family, grabbed onto the door and would not let go. "I want to ride the bus again!" he cried. Though his family tried to convince him that there was something even more exciting to ride than an articulated bus waiting for him, he could not be persuaded because, of course, he had never seen an airplane. 

Your enthusiasm for intellectual realization seems similar to me. Come inside the terminal, Todo, there are some lovely things for you to try! :-)

Martin,

Oh yes I definitely want to come into the terminal to see the planes & maybe even take-off in one

in the meantime I have to make do with this. Just to clarify:

Radical Acceptance is manifested by the utter effortless-ness of experience. Before the constructed mind kicks in, anything & everything is welcomed.

Radical letting go is manifested by the utter transience of phenomena. Nothing lasts for even a second & things are released with the same ease with which they were welcomed.

This could be used as the gold standard for realization: if there is the slightest hint of resistance to experience, or clinging  to it, then that ain't clear cognizing.

Makes sense? 

Todo, can you convince me that the "constructed mind" can actually be dropped at will? For extra credit, can you explain how to do so intentionally— in other words, can you explain the process in detail?

FWIW, I agree with Martin. As we discussed yesterday, I think you're missing out on some crucial aspects of your spiritual life, but you seem very resistant to exploring new ways of approaching things.

Hello Ni.

"Why does it matter to you personally"

Why does what matter to me personally?

"you would not care that much for someone's specific practice"

I generally write on these forums in order to respond to people's questions and give guidance to them in case that guidance is welcome . Generally I write topline posts in the form of guides or write comments in response to questions. I do write in a simple straightforward manner which sometimes carries an authoritative tone, and I can totally understand why someone may feel imposed upon. But I find that most people dont feel like that. I think most people understand that it is a matter of aesthetic, personality, and communication style rather than an attempt to impose. I dont really embed myself in anybody else's practice unless I have been invited to do so. In that sense I am a bit like Count Dracula. One has to invite me in I see topline posts as an invitation

"everything about the tone of such messages would be totally different"

Like I said, sometimes simple straightforward language can make it seem as if I am imposing myself on someone. 

"...exactly this tone would not be present!"

Intellectual understanding is an imposter. It seduces people for years before they realize the time they have wasted.  Looks like a very harmless tone to me Hey Ni, Maybe you are reading malintent into my writing. All I can say is, hey man! absolutely no malintent is intended. And ... I stand by what I said hahahahahaha ..... wanna fight?

I am joking. Yes I can see how my writing may have been interpreted by someone new to this forum and finding it unwlecoming or hostile to them. No I dont want to make anyone feel unwelcome.

It is clear to me that the OP has very strong ideas. I dont plan to debate them on their ideas. I just simply dont do debates. I sit on my throne and I issue edicts And I am perfectly OK with those edicts being ignored

And here of course thinking mind comes and demands something that sounds like a proof

Yes. I understand. The proof of the pudding lies in the eating. There is a time honoured attitude of 'Ehipassika'. Come see for yourself. There is no other proof that is available. If someone says, me for example, "Hey man! you cant think yourself into Enlightenment. Enlightenment as defined as the end of Dukkha, here try this instead". This is a statement that is either true or not true. There is no way to prove this except to do 'Ehipassika'. Like I said, I sit on my throne and issue edicts

Thinking is bad... thinking it terrible... thinking corrupts, it is unforgivable!

Ni, I think you are being overly dramatic and are perhaps misrepresenting what I tried to say in my writing to OP.

All the smileys I have typed, makes my comment look mocking. Though I did intend to mock, I meant to do it in a very friendly way.

Chris said:
You "seem very resistant to exploring new ways of approaching things."

Chris,
I acknowledge that I may not have said so explicitly but I can guarantee you that everything you (& others) wrote in reply to my posts is not taken lightly by me or "resisted".

It is very much appreciated & compared to what is already "here" from a lifetime of study. However I don't have to remind someone like you of the injunction of the Buddha himself with regard to his teachings. So I assume that you don't expect me to throw everything i arrived at very laboriously because "some guy" on an internet forum didn't seem to like it.
​​​​​​​
I apologize for the "some guy" part, but I think that is what we all truly are to each other. After all i don't know who you really are & you don't know (probably) who i truly am.

"Todo, can you convince me that the "constructed mind" can actually be dropped at will? For extra credit, can you explain how to do so intentionally— in other words, can you explain the process in detail?"

Chris,
Happy to oblige.
The "constructed mind" as I see it is what happens after the initial pre-conceptual perception happens.

The process in detail is as follows:
A sense organ comes into contact with a sense object;
There is immediately "the knowing of it". This knowing is effortless immediate & totally welcoming. This is "clear cognizing".
At the same time that there is "arising", "vanishing" happens with complete letting go.
This is the non-deluded state. Before any further fabrication.

In the deluded state however, the "immediate knowing"is obscured and the person dwells on the further fabrications that start with liking/disliking and can keep burgeoning endlessly..

Of course, we can disagree on the semantics here & I can imagine you saying that what i called "immediate knowing" is already "constructed mind".
But that would be just a semantic discussion. What i am asking you is to  agree on some definitions & keep the discussion within those bounds. Otherwise we would be using the same words with different intended meanings and nothing useful would come out of it.

Makes sense? 

Adi,

"It is clear to me that the OP has very strong ideas. I dont plan to debate them on their ideas. I just simply dont do debates. I sit on my throne and I issue edicts  And I am perfectly OK with those edicts being ignored."

Adi, if I may impersonate OP for a second. 
OP didn't come here to engage in iddle debate with anyone. Not that OP sees anything wrong with debates. You certainly know as I do that "dharma debates" & even "dharma wars" have a strong pedigree, even here on the DhO.
i personally still remember the numerous debates the "founding fathers" engaged in and which are certainly archived here somewhere.

However strong are his opinions, OP is here to get them challenged for his benefit first but also for the benefit of the numerous readers who don't post. I've been one of those long enough to value the wrestling that happens from time to time on this forum. 

this wrestling & even jostling, if done respectfully, can be immensely beneficial to those involved and to others as well.

hopefully this clarifies where OP comes from & were his stands.

as for you giving "edicts" and being fine with them simply being ignored, i am sorry to report that OP doesn't find this attitude helpful, but if course you are welcome to ignore him.

makes sense? 
​​​​​​​helpful? 

These points are ridiculous Adi! Do you really believe reading, reflecting, and discussing do not constitute practice? What the hell are you talking about ? I don't say this aggressively, I just find these "edicts" mindboggling.

I understand if you dont find my attitude helpful.

I am sure you will find willing debate partners. I am not one of them.

​​​​​​​Good luck.

I actually mean what I said.

​​​​​​​Someone has to read the words you write to be able to put them into practice.

Are you aware of the practice traditions that use reading as foundation? Lectio divina for instance, in christianity, serves as basis for oral prayer, then stages of sient contemplation, etc., that lead them to realization. Or the tibetan traditions that use Lamrims as thematic basis for self-transformation. These guys are serious practitioners. A tsongkhapa tradition style practitioner of the lamrim would do 4 x 4h sessions per day on specific themes of the lamrim, divided into various parts like reading, deeply reflecting on the meaning of the text and examining each point conceptually, to check if it's really true, to check if one really agrees, and then once certainty has been reched, using the feeling of certainty about the specific theme itself as concentration object. Those lamrims cover the scope of the three trainings, and the third part of the lamrim is about shamatha and vipassana itself, so there is something very refined in this style of practice that seamlessly incorporates insight and the other trainings into one whole, which is based on in-depth studying of a text.

Texts can be transformative and yield insight. There is a performative dimension to language that can actually induce shifts of perception: this is sort of how hypnosis works, and e.g. dzogchen texts make use of this performative dimension of language to trigger insights.

Psychedelics can definitely trigger insights...

Meeting specific people can be life changing and lead to insight: shams tabriz for Rumi... 

Discussion and "kalyana mitta" are "half the spiritual life" according to the pali buddha...

Etc. ! 

​​​​​​​?

I would generally agree that reading, reflecting, and discussing do not constitute practice. They are ancillary to the practice and while they certainly can be helpful, reading, reflecting, and discussing by themselves will not achieve what is achieved by meditation, just as reading, reflecting, and discussing music theory are not a replacement for practice on a musical instrument. 

Reading my words may help someone practice. But that is reading, its not practice.

Yes. A similar analogy is to read about tennis, watch games, listening to podcasts on tennis, and .... never playing.

I find this crazy and mistaken, but have it as you please We can agree to disagree ! 


Cheers

Adi,

i am sorry to "debate" you as you made it clear that you don't want me to have anything to do with you. Or that is what I (mis)understood. 

"Yes. A similar analogy is to read about tennis, watch games, listening to podcasts on tennis, and .... never playing."

These analogies/metaphors do not apply here. Playing tennis & thinking/reading about it are two different categories, matters of the mind are of the same category.

just saying,
​​​​​​​certainly not trying to undermine your "highness" edicts.

Yes, to me a better analogy to saying that "reading or thinking can't be practice only specific meditation techniques are" would be to say that only playing tennis is actually training in a sport, while "running" or "ping pong" are not sports.

+1

 I would disagree, Martin, about your musical example. Intellectual learnnig of music theory allows for things to happen in your actual music making that would not have been otherwise possible. Developing these mental models and knowledge can be transformational to your practice. Case in poin t: I've delved more deeply into harmony this year, and spent time working on a textbook, writing scores, harmoniing things, doing functional analysis, analyzing music pieces, etc. This has lead to very interesting results, including a much better ability to harmonize melodies, and an interesting new capacity to find the right chords to music that I've sometimes not heard for years that have spontaneously been popping out, as if the integration of the knowledge was doing itself over several months. This is a direct result of reading texts, internalizing mental models, doing conceptual analysis ("wait, you can harmonize any diatonic melody using the first, fourth and fifth chord? Eureka!"), and not from touching an instrument, specifically. It's more subtle than this!

As Keith Jarret once said: "Music doesn't come from music. It would be like saying babies come from babies." 

 Another Bill Evans quote I like: "Intuition has to lead knowledge, but it can't be out there on its own. If it's out there on its own, it's gonna flounder sooner or later."

Language is more profoundly imbedded in our beings and perception than "symbols on a paper". I remember a guy from my master's thesis committee (which was about meditation and aesthetics) saying "I think meditation is about unlearning your mother tongue", and there is something to that. The very things meditation deconstructs are largely constructed during early child development, through verbal and nonverbal language, IMO. 

While they certainly can be helpful, reading, reflecting, and discussing by themselves will not achieve what is achieved by meditation. Your argument is the same as mine. You say "Intellectual learnnig of music theory allows for things to happen in your actual music making that would not have been otherwise possible." That is to say, intellectual learning of music theory does not achieve what is achieved by playing an instrument, it achieves something different. So we agree in that regard.

In the context of this post, the question is whether reading, reflecting, and discussing by themselves, which is to say, without any meditation, can lead to liberation in the Buddhist/pragdharma framework. If you were to argue that reading, reflecting, and discussing are necessary conditions, I would not disagree, but I maintain that they are not sufficient conditions. For example, do you feel that you could have achieved the insights you have now without any meditation?

Speaking of music, practice and Keith Jarrett, here he is playing Gurdjieffs ”Reading of sacred books”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQPSRcPflrw
(Corrected link)

"do you feel that you could have achieved the insights you have now without any meditation?"

Martin, 
the question here is how you define "Meditation" and what counts/doesn't count as "Meditation".

His Royal Highness of the "edicts" is defining "Meditation" as only his strand of it while there are thousands of different shades of "meditation" as is testified by the many various traditions. 

Yes. I am totally willing to agree to disagree.

As I mentioned earlier, the conditions required for liberation from suffering in the Buddhist/MCTB tradition are samma sati and samma samadhi, more or less as defined in the suttas. 

As you say, there are many other types of meditation out there. I cannot speak to the efficacy of all of those other forms of meditation but I have tried rumination and intellectual investigation and I have observed other people trying those techniques. I have also tried prayer and observed other people trying prayer. What I can say is that samma sati and samma samadhi in the context of Buddhist teaching produce results that those other forms do not. 

Please take this just as the observations of someone who has been fortunate with these practices. I am not arguing that other practices are wrong, or without value. I am just saying that, while I could be mistaken, I believe that they do not usually produce the same results. 

Todo

" you made it clear that you don't want me to have anything to do with you"

​​​​​​​Did I now?

Todo

"His Royal Highness of the "edicts" is defining "Meditation" as only his strand of it"

​​​​​​​Am I now?

Todo, I have a few questions based on your last comment:
​​​​​​​
1. How does one go about separating what you're calling pre-processing from fabricated, deluded, or ignorant "post-processing?"

2. Does the ability to distinguish a non-deluded mind from a deluded mind take place consciously in every instance? Is it the product of choice, or will?

3. Does the person who has adopted a non-deluded view still have delusions?

In Buddhism, there is a fundamental mind process called "dependent origination" or "co-dependent arising," which all human perception is derived from. All of our perceptions are mind-created through this process in its entirety. The process can't be broken artificially into parts and pieces or otherwise interrupted, even though it's not a linear process. We awaken from delusion by deeply seeing this process via meditation. We realize the process, grok it in our bones, from investigation and observation, and that is how delusion is seen through. We don't change the way the mind works. We deeply understand it and awaken from the influence of delusion in our ongoing experience. 

Sincerely, 

Just Some Guy 

Oh, by the way, I also believe that classic meditation, reading, discussing, comparing, and thinking all are congruent and work together in a true practice. You really can't have one without the others.

Hi "Some guy";
Sorry Chris M

"We realize the process, grok it in our bones, from investigation and observation, and that is how delusion is seen through."

There is a strong sense of "doing" here, i am uncomfortable with. My take on Meditation is mostly "non-doing". I expressed this by saying that I feel that "I am being meditated" rather than actively "meditating".
If this makes sense at all!

"We don't change the way the mind works."

As i see it the mind works in at least two radically different ways: the "deluded" & the "not-deluded".
What i am referring to is not changing how the mind works but transitioning from one way (the deluded) to the other (the non-deluded".

"1. How does one go about separating what you're calling pre-processing from fabricated, deluded, or ignorant "post-processing?""

I think of the non-deluded as the realm of "Emptiness is form & dorm is Emptiness". It's immediate. The ten thousand things are exactly clear cognizing.

Fabrication & Delusion starts immediately afterwards with the split between clear cognizance and the ten thousand things & the Delusion of seprateness which leads to likes and dislikes, etc.

" 2. Does the ability to distinguish a non-deluded mind from a deluded mind take place consciously in every instance? Is it the product of choice, or will?"

I don't know how it is for others & I don't know how it evolves over time. For me, right now, I am always deluded unless I deliberately look for the "source". Dwelling there always takes conscious effort & doesn't last long.

" 3. Does the person who has adopted a non-deluded view still have delusions?"

I think the previous answer covers this but just to be clear: I am always deluded, my sense of self is as intact as it ever was. However, i found an enormous relief in the knowing that I can have access to that other perspective on demamd.
My greatest concern wass that this might make me more complacent. However, as I stated earlier "these days I am mostly being meditated" in wakefulness and sometimes even in dreams (not in dream-less sleep as far as I can tell).
So complacency is not an option for me.

Some here have categorized me as a non-meditator (in typical straw man type  argument) and take pleasure in destroying the guy who claims to have understood everything intellectually. This isn't a problem for me as during the last few days or is it weeks i have developed a tougher skin, thanks in no small part to them and that is already a big benefit for me.

I only draw their attention to the fact that I have written here unambiguously that I cannot not-meditate, even i wanted to. But I am not presumptuous enough to think that anyone here really read what I wrote.

Makes sense, Chris M?

Yes, Todo, that makes sense.

You seem to have what I'd call a non-dual perspective, sort of like a Zen (your reference to Dogen's 10,000 things) or a Vajrayana feel to it. Good for you - if it works, accept and celebrate it. That's what pragmatic dharma is all about. We all take different roads, our very own roads, to the top of the mountain.

"take pleasure in destroying the guy who claims to have understood everything intellectually"

Such horrible people!!
​​​​​​​I object!!

Adi,

did you recognize your highness in that one?
God forbid!

Allez, sans rancune! 

Adi and Todo, please stop the back and forth - it's unbecoming and you're both clearly capable of better.

Chris M
Moderator

I hear,
i understand, 
& i comply.

Thank you, Moderator.

I will comply sir.

Thank you, Gentlemen!

No, but this is far from saying that reading and discussing and all that is not part of practice: that is what I find and odd thing to say. While I'm at it, I remember Malcolm saying he got stream entry while/through reading. Bahiya attained everything just hearing a friend tell him something about the sense spheres. Christian monks or sufi brotherhoods got attainments through singing. I'm pretty sure Jarrett attained stuff doing music... Etc. ! Certainly, there are essential elements involving attention, concentration, etc., which are necessary and sufficient, but still, I wouldn't say "only running on a treadmill is doing cardio". Lots of things train cardio. 84,000 paths and all. ! Peace and love.


 

"this is far from saying that reading and discussing and all that is not part of practice" 
 
Indeed. I agree, which is why I was careful not to say that.