I haven't really been practicing much. I got hit by inspiration and had to spend as much time as I could making music for awhile. My inclination to practice and actually do good practice has returned. I think it's important to let myself do regular life stuff from time to time because I pushed pretty hard through the first couple paths and that involved some "heroic" and rather alienating doses of meditation. It's good to cut loose and shake a few tail feathers.

So... I will start a new log in hopes that I might stick with it. 

In practice and more and more throughout the day I notice the self activity falls away and there's a softening of the heart and an opening of the senses. The thing I enjoy the most about it is that my heart, breath, chest all come to rest and just do their thing. I tend to practice in this state because I can just be with the world and my experience in a very natural "just right" kind of way. It is also easy to see the selfish activity that remains. Mainly just a certain looping narrator that picks up and falls away over and over and also sometimes an urge to strategise and schedule. Sometimes it's like watching a movie when the audio glitches out and isn't in time with the image. Or like... the ridiculousness of having some voice in my head narrate shit to me that I already know, have already cognized, sensed, experienced. ... The absurdity.... THE AUDACITY !!! 

I'm really just working with that edge. Being as open and restful as I can without ignoring the remaining dissatisfaction. (Soften, include, relax). There's a strange tension to practice in some sense, in the juxtaposition of great restfulness and the annoyance of subtle dissatisfaction. I'm not trying to avoid this but as I said, soften, include and even lean in a little. 

If this thing I'm pointing at is natural mind, or whatever, what's interesting about it, is that it's so real and obvious and normal that it can be super tempting to be like "well, hey this is it" but the more I "supress" or ignore dukkha the less I can be in this natural way of being. 

Yeah... the juxtaposition is interesting. 

Woooo Bahiya 2 Baby !!!!! Lets go !!!!!!!!!!!!! 

​​​​​​​That brings to mind Daniel's Kazzo player. 

Omg. You guys are killing me with the log names. XD  HAHAHAHA

Slainte, for your new log!  

A warning... We're working out our dilligence with salvation here so there will be no messing, no shooting the breeze and absolutely no "joking around" on this log. Very serious, very uptight, very dry meditation discussion is all that's allowed. NO FUN !!! NO RAMBLING NONSENSE !!! NO COMEDIC CHARACATERIZATIONS OF EGOIC PROCESSES !!!

This goes for you too Bahiya ... !!!

HAHAHA

​​​​​​​

Doing 40 or so mins a day
Will bump that up to 2 sessions per day soon. Naturally inclining toward more practice which is good. 

There are periods of restlessness and clarity. The periods of restlessness are tough. The mind is scattered, obsessing over motivation, inspiration, creativity. Very difficult to concentrate. 

The periods of clarity are nice, for obvious reasons, but interesting because it seems I can see the root dilemma, the backwards self referencing process, this activity that takes like a slice of experience and starts winding up fantasy's around it. At first clarity was so interesting on its own I only saw this process obliquely. Now I'm starting to see it more clearly. I just watch it stop and start. Contract and relax. This is the edge that I need to practice at. Light touch, vigilant senses

Practice at this point seems to be all about gentle, consistent concentration. Just staying tuned into the groove of insight. I don't know how else to say it. 

During periods of clarity the three characteristics are sort of already there, through all the senses, just kind of implicit in the experience so it's really just about letting that continue to occur. No interference mostly but subtly keeping an eye on the self referencing back tracking fabrication machine. There between my eyes. It's spooky man. That subtle realization that you're looking at a reflection, like realizing youve been talking to a hallucination. 

I feel ready for this next leg of the journey. A few months ago I was not ready. I was a bit apprehensive, a bit avoidant, a bit lazy. It's time now. 

Sounds really good. 

It's really hard to talk about this phase of practice. Something deep is figuring this all out, but there is also a need for "me" to participate by formally practicing which allows us to stumble on the kind of quality data that fuels the developing understanding. And yet, what is formal practice at this stage? It's barely more than intending to be aware of how attention works within awareness for a pre-determined amount of time. But if we don't lend ourselves to practicing like this, it's really unlikely we'll wake up. Habits of mind are so strong...

There is clinging and there is resistance... and there seems to be a hint of what it would be like to be beyond this grabbing-onto and this pushing-away. The trick --- as always --- is to look directly INTO this grabbing and pushing away rather than search for something that must be missing. The answer is in the dukka itself, there is a misunderstanding somewhere in there. Enlightenment is realizing the misunderstanding in dukka, rather than realizing an understanding outside of dukka.

That's why those dukka-ish "no clarity" sits are really important. Awareness is still there even though there is apparently no attention. We "know" there is no clarity, awareness knows there is no attention. This is perhaps most spooky of all, because we personally identify with clear-knowing and feel that "I" am lost when there is no clarity. Very interesting, what is making this assessment? I am lost. What is I and what is lost? Where is the problem I think I'm having?

When we first start practicing, we are so identified with the body that if there is discomfort or disturbance, we think "I'm not meditating well". Then the body relaxes and becomes tranquil and we think "now I can really pay attention to my mind, I'm learning to meditate well!" The knowing mind can become so strong that the body can be in turmoil (e.g. in the midst of turbulent reobservation or in the midst of a nasty inter-personal argument), but as long as the knowing mind is strong we say "I am meditating well" and "I am fully present". The last stage is nearly impossible to describe because the body can be in turmoil and the mind can be completely confused, but there is a growing realization that awarness itself is still there and even in this chaos "I am still meditating well!, even though we couldn't explain why we still think so.  

The enlightened mind is really good at being home in uncertainty.

It's also really important not to assume there will be constant progress. Somedays there will be deep juicy sits and you can just soak in jhana. Somedays there will be diamond-like clarity and you can vipassina the heck out of the subtlest sense impressions. And other days you just need to sit through a bunch of noise. My teacher at the time used the metaphor, "sometimes you feel good and you put on your pack and grab your rifle and go hunting deep into the mountains... and sometimes you go down the street and buy some hamburger meat at the grocery."

All of these are important experiences to soak in. The good, bad, and ugly experiences all leave an hard-to-describe impression which gets refined into wisdom/awakening. And the mind seems to evoke what is needed in sort of a shadow psychology way --- we unconsciously get attracted to what we superficially don't want to experience because somehow know deep down we need to to experience it to gain power/wisdom. To face our overblown fears. To crumble our false persona. (Which evokes the fear-of-annilation instinct, which is spooky and eventually funny -- how many times do we have to experience "I think I'm gonna die?!" in meditation??? )

​​​​​​​“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.” ― Mark Twain
​​​​​​​
This can get pretty humbling at times, we can feel like a beginner meditator all over again. 



Best wishes!!

p.s. if you haven't read "Seeing that frees", it might be a good time for it. I personally don't like the "voice" of the writing, but the content is very very very good. Jump around to the sections that seem to draw you in -- don't try to read it from front to back. 

(as always, just my opinion and people pay me.... well nothing... for my opinions. Which is about what they are worth.    )

Practice is continuing to pick up. A number of decent length sessions everyday. 

I guess the crux of practice now is attention. In the earlier stages of meditation you sort of use attention to be aware of or "attend" to awareness (aware of awareness). Then third path is when you start to recognize oh I'm attached to attention and maybe can afford to loosen my grip on it a little. Now it's like noticing I don't need to pay attention to be aware and that chronic attending actually creates suffering.  Further I find that I can practice and have the sense of attention fall away which is what I think caused some of the earlier fireworks I experienced with this path but I notice now that when attention drops off what remains is the oddest dukkha. It's like a nebulous tension. It's I suppose somewhere in the head but is also kind of impossible to point directly at. It can be missed if things have more of an A&P type hue or if I'm basking in something nice but it is there.

The only thing I feel I should add to practice is a little metta.

I have read seeing that frees but I will flick through some chapters. I do find when I read it I tend towards over saturating experience with emptiness which can be nice in a jhanic way and useful when mind is busy but I've been more inclined to a "just be with it" style of practice. I know there's some things deep into the book that it may be useful for me to reread. I will keep flicking through. 

Adi Da used to talk about divine ignorance. Ignorance is obviously a tricky subject when you're talking with Buddhists but there is a sort of "ignoring the impulse to chronically attend to things" that allows one to become more immediately aware. 

Emptiness can be a bit God realm. I try work with it the way a drop of dye hits a body of water. One can be tempted into seeking emptiness and when practice becomes seeking emptiness it feels like it's missing the point of where im at. 

​​​​​​​I feel the edge I'm working at is a super subtle intention to include everything, a tacit or implicit recognition of emptiness/3cs like the body mind can be allowed to just do that itself without direction. I don't have to direct the investigation at all. This is where the falling away of attention occurs. So then I notice what still judges the experience. What still tries to start up patterns of activity because it has determined that something is wrong with experience. Noticing the subtle difference between attention dissolving and attending to no attention 

A lot has happened since I last posted. Some really well defined path cycles, some nuclear world melting states, I found myself having to really square up to SENSUAL DESIRE (sex teehee), I was looking at the roots of craving and reactivity etc etc etc. 

The usual shite. 

Anyway ... I was practicing recently and I was struck by the question what does it mean for suffering and impermanence to arise without a self. Then I saw a dependent link between the three characteristics. If impermanence then suffering and no self and all the various permutations of that. 

Which seemed significant but in many respects is actually just the same insight I've been having throughout this path. It just fractals and deepens as my mind seems to clear up. 

It often seems that I'm debunking the notions that permanence, satisfaction of self can be found. Like I'll have a meditation session where it's immediately obvious that there's no self or permanence but something is looking for satisfaction. And on a different day it might be a different characteristic. 

There is this thing that I see the Buddha talk about in the suttas. This restraining of the senses. As though the mechanism of mind that attaches to things can just be withdrawn. I suppose this is basically an equivalent idea to Adi Da's divine ignorance. 

Practice is good but very subtle. It isn't always obvious that anything is happening. I don't feel I need to change anything or add anything to it. It really just feels like I'm letting something ripen. 

I have to say the combination of some attainments, regular exercise and disciplined regulation of sexual energy makes life a joy to live. Adi Da's approach was always very full package, encompassing almost all aspects of life. It really took me until third path to start maturing in some of these other areas of development. I have really come to understand why he would emphasize things like fitness, health, community and proper reverence for and relationship to sexual energy. 

The body is complicated and having it function well is just good, no matter how enlightened you are. Craving always leads us to degeneracy. Whether you crave sex or abstinence, money or love. Craving holds us back from expressing ourselves wholeheartedly. It contorts us into shapes of chronic discomfort and disease. 

​​​​​​​... It's weird coming to terms with my capacity to be aware without being attached to or invested in sensations 

Impermanence comes naturally to me. Self is a little more pervasive but easy to debunk. I am a whore for pleasure though. I noticed these process that like scan my sensations to determine "is this nice" and it's funny to just start seeing through that because its happening so often 

I've spent my whole life craving something that doesn't exist. 

​​​

Yeah, I had realizations that were funny, elating, and horrendous, all at once.

+1

I can still viscerally recall when I realized that the human realm was the realm of desire... Wow -- and fuck!! All my hopes are desires   But then, oh yeah... Desires never satisfy in the end. ("I want a car! Okay, I got a car now I want an XYZ!") Okay, I get what you were saying buddha, let those desires arise and pass, don't cling...


(By the way bahiya, I can see that your insights/observations are getting very granular at this point --- that's a GREAT sign. Once you start seeing how all these threads get woven together, you also get a sense of why the whole spiritual quest gets unravelled. And then you have that "whoa" moment.)

Impermanence has something to do with our relationship to time 
Suffering has something to do with our relationship to the senses 
No self has something to do with our relationship to space, or location, "point of view" 

​​​​​​​It's this point of view that wants to be debunked now. 

So yeah, something kind of clicked with this desperate seeking for an impossible reality and practice moved on. At first I was looking at the self and that sort of evolved into investigating this need to be doing something moment to moment and then noticing "hey, I actually don't need to do anything moment to moment, there doesn't need to be a persistent agent engaged in activity, I don't even need to know what to do" 

I sort of flip in and out of realizing that. I had already seen it earlier. I think it was an Insight that led to some of my earlier holy shit experiences but now I'm investigating it in a much more day to day type of way. 

It's becoming clearer that suffering is caused by a chronic search for things to suffer about. Lol.

It's painful to admit I don't know how to do things that it's purposeful for me to do. I am compelled in certain directions and the self scrambles for like activities to busy itself in order to seem like progress is being made toward some goal. That obviously works like if I need to be fit I can go work out but there are situations where what you're after is a bit more ineffable and the means of acquiring this ineffable thing are obscure and I'm like coming to terms with this kind of ultimate unknowability. There are things I dont need to do. Things I do need to do that I can't know how they'll turn out and things I do need to do that I can't actually know how to do and things I need to do that will never get done. 

Nice, yes this is the classic "conceit" and "restlessness" flavor of fetters that becomes much more in-your-face when sensitivity is developed. An "I" always seemingly needing "to do" something, yet in a millisecond this dynamic is obvious as (very mild) dukka -- yet why do I keep falling into the habit? Even just chilling can feel kind of contrived if it yet another something that I need to do...

There is a general feeling of circling the drain --- like it's all heading somewhere as things slow down. This whole path seems to have been described and the inherent intelligence of the mind has led here... but what is next? More discipline?, maybe but that seems contrived and draining. Just living life?, maybe but there is obviously something still to get/understand. Keep going?, maybe but what is next?  Ugh, there's the "wanting something that is next" thing again. FUCK, I just did that loop again of wondering/wanting/desiring and going through a mini-dukka-loop to wind up where I started!!

The human realm truly is desire and it becomes more and more daunting how much of a tautology desire it is. But desiring to understand desire is the clever trick that allows the transcendance-and-inclusion of the human realm in the psyche... And this is a big part of seeing the conceit fetter. You could say that all the other fetters were also desire, but conceit is sort of a very granular version of desire.  Conceit is sort of "the seed". 

Time is also an interesting tautology and understanding "the time view" is a big part of seeing the restlessness fetter. I found a lot of relief from Burbea's "seeing that frees" sections on time near the back of the book. "there is no present moment", it's a fabricated idea/view we stuggle to maintain --- whoa. That's in part why we cannot "rest in the present" -- even maintaining "the present" is ultimately contrived and creates (very mild) dukka. Restlessness is sort of "the water"

It takes a lot of faith to keep trusting in the inherent intelligence of the mind and give it time to figure it out. It can be good to hang around/have conversations with people you know "have it". For me it was, what is it that Hokai has that I don't? I understand what he understands, but I know he has something that I don't. Same thing with Chris, he's done and we can have dharma conversations for hours... and I know he's done but I'm not. This also was also really a riddle when I did a short retreat with Ajahn Viradhammo - Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, he's seen it all, studied with the great teachers of our time, but he's totally normal and yet he's clearly done, what does he have that I don't have...

But the heart/mind figures it out. We have definitely been making things complicated for ourselves for a very long time... but in a very smart way that has led us through all this development and insight, so we can't complain... yet do we have to keep complicating things? Is there an easier way?

Basically yes. That's awakening. Fundamental ignorance is sort of the soil, there is no place for the seed and water to get planted without any soil. In what does conceit and restlessness exist, where is it? 

And yet even after awakening there is still weeding and gardening to do. It's just that you aren't confused about it anymore.

This moment-to-moment need to do is indeed a curious thing. I notice it when I am having a particularly unwell spell and I am too unwell to think, which is distressing (not the unwell part, the not being able to think part). And then I remember that there is no need to think. Nothing needs to be solved. In most of life, there is no need to boot up an agent to, as you say, go out and search for suffering. The world keeps spinning on just fine without my agency. 

Riffing off of that quote from shargrol: In mid-2010, I was sucked into wondering what some people could see that I couldn't. Then this:


<Posted on Kenneth Fok Dharma, now part of Awakenetwork.org>

Unconfused uncertainty. 

Ok, so

I was continuing to practice when I realized just looking directly at suffering would cause 99% of it to stop. It feels like opening the aperture on a camera lens and all of a sudden there's a lot more light in the picture. 

I went through a kind of funny process of just seeing all these things in my life that I was attached to and realizing I just didn't really have to give a fuck about them. As in, I didnt have to have any default invested attachment in any of them and that by withdrawing that attachment it sort of reempowers me to deal with them, or not, in a more sane, humorous, playful way 

Following on from this I came to the realization that "every moment was suffering" and I could start to see the ways the ego was trying to gratify itself moment to moment. There was a lot of seeing all three characteristics here in a way that showed me suffering flowing impermanently and without self from moment to moment and then that all sort of resolved itself and what is left is a strange clarity which I am still exploring. 

Yes, every moment has an element of suffering inside it. That's because of attachment to something, but it's something that's not obvious to almost anybody. One way to investigate this is to wonder: who, or what, is doing the suffering? Who, or what, is gaining clarity? Is this just about deciding not to care, or something different, much deeper? Does deciding have anything to do with anything? What is doing the deciding?

Just stirring your pot a bit.

I am struck by the notion that recognizing there is suffering is the path to the end of suffering. 

Yes, thank you for stirring it up. Inquiry into whose doing what has already been super fruitful but it's also one of those things I find hard to directly look at until one day I'm looking up and it's looking straight back at me lol

I can see the "deciding" ​​​​​​​

I can see the seeking

Something wants this to be something else

I don't know who, it's really just some process

It feels like cycling lately but not through paths but layers of mind where there's some fundamental insight and then a new layer of mind is revealed and it takes a while to see what about that layer requires investigation and the state of mind requiired to see it gets more and more refined. 

Literally, making decisions, its just a flicker. Just this instantaneous flicker tha happens sporadically not a chain of thought just a flick, like switching on a light. 

The last little self contraction due to ignorance/not-understanding the nature of desire... and pure "seeking" is basically the purest, most distilled version of desire, a kind of desire-without-object...

Desire is a funny dynamic of "having an absence"... which begs the question: is it actually possible to have an absence? what do you have? 

so this last stage feels like the snake eating it's own tail: seeking to seeing the seeking, desiring to seeing the desire.

It's so hard to pin down, so hard to prevent spinning out into a bunch more discursive thinking about it. It's important at this stage to go directly where it seems to lead and trust the natural intelligence of the heart/mind. It's the simplist thing that's important here, not the thougths about it, but that "knotted" aspect, this tiny knot.

But eventually you realize you didn't have the problem you thought you had.

I want to weigh in here to emphasize shagrol's comment: In my experience, there was no way to use intent to trigger this last realization. It's a product of the matrix of our life - all the connections and influences that surround us. Having a deep curiosity about what's missing and letting the mind seek that level on its own seemed to be a big part of the untying of the knot. And it really is a small, insignificant knot but once untied, it has cosmic import.

Thank you guys 

Hi Shargol,

 I was interested to see that you have done a retreat with Amaravati. Was that an in-person one or online?  I visited there about a year ago and had a chat with Ajahn Amaro and I was very impressed.

​​​​​​​Conal

Let's not to fill up Bahiya's thread, happy to discuss in a separate thread... But quickly: Viradhammo and Passano gave weekend retreats in Wheaton, IL at the Theosophical Society -- which is where I saw/retreated with them. Here's some links to the talks they gave to the general public earlier in the week: 
Ajahn Viradhammo: Awakening to the Way Things Are (youtube.com)  - recommended!
The Buddhist Path of Serenity and Insight with Ajahn Pasanno | Theosophical Classic 2012 - YouTube

I got really curious about intention and decision until I could really clearly identify that layer of mind and relax it. Then the sense of agency started to vanish, things happen of their own accord and the mind feels weirdly splayed out. I found this unsettling at first but then mind realized it could see the 3c's without, I dunno, me needing to be active in that process. Since then there is lots of energy, I am once again oscillating between stunning clarity and persistent, dogged, selfishness but that selfishness drops away when reality is allowed to just be itself and that being itselfness is happening deeper and deeper, like dye soaking deeper into a fabric. Sometimes the self whirs up but the whole system recognizes that it's really just a pretty cheap imitation of experience and the bodymind is then content to let it fall away. 

I find myself doing a lot of walking meditation, the basic bodily activity stuff has been agencyless for awhile and so walking meditation helps seep the mind into the stream of "letting it do itself".

The ego in some senses remains very captivating it has basically solved all of life's problems, has cultivated an elegant multi level plan for arriving at the ultimate satisfaction of all possible desires and has an infinite supply of energy, charm and brain power to execute this. 

Usual shite but... We are slowly learning that maybe life is just better without all the "noise" / "fuss" / "palaver"

I had a very funny cessation/fruition 

Whatever we call it when it's not a path moment. 

​​​​​​​I was walking when at the end of the street I saw a series of faces and these faces were a number of different people across a series of different timelines. I was looking into each of these faces as this epic tangle of realities, lives, stories all converged around a single point and in a moment of ghastly and embarrassing awkwardness completely failed to resolve themselves.

At first I was applying attention to the deconstruction of the self. Watching the play of thoughts, emotions memores, sensations and investigating them. Then I turned attention on itself and continued the deconstruction on a subtler and more meta level. I watched the mechanism of abstraction, the generation of delusion and the dukkha that underlay it. 

​​​​​​​Now... We have to let mind handle the deconstruction, mind has to figure out, mind has to meditate... Mind has to meditate me. Because... "I" am the problem. 

That's what's revealed at this level. 

Because there isn't an observer persay watching mind and then being distracted 

​​​​​​​There is simply mind and I am the distraction. 

Ok friend 

I suggest a deep, long-term investigation into what you meant when you posted this. What is a distraction? What is being distracted? Why are some experiences distractions, and others not? 

(IOW: There may be deeply held, long-standing assumptions about your reality buried in your comment.)

Yeah,

I got a glimpse of something. I see now how I was wrong. 

During practice today I understood for some amount of time that this whole thing was just parts, parts that are themselves whole and parts of greater wholes. There doesn't have to be any agency at all anywhere. It's not required. The distraction I was tripping over is just more parts. It has as much rite to arise as anything else. The distraction can know itself as it arises. 

It was specifically accepting that last point that flipped me into seeing the world in this strange, hive mind, inter-relational way. Fucking weird and exhausting and stunning. I guess it's no self seen deeper, all the way through. 

I wrapped back up into my self after some amount of time. Will continue to explore deeper. 

I find meditation kind of exhausting lately. Yet, it doesn't feel like I'm putting much effort into it. The last week or so it feels like every time I hit the cutting edge there's something rapidly tiring me out. I keep saying "I ought to spend a whole day in practice" but I get a bit overcooked around 40mins in. 

​​​​​​​I would have thought I would be a stronger meditator by now lol. 

Does one experience ever "touch" an other experience? But is one experience ever unrelated to any other experience?

A good definition of emptiness is that no thing is exactly what it seems and no thing is completely unrelated to how it seems. 

​​​​​​​Sometimes all enlightenment leaves you with is yourself and you still don't understand what you are. "Not knowing is most initimate".


​​​​​​​KOAN:

Dizang asked Fayan, “Where are you going from here?”
Fayan said, “I’m on pilgrimage.”
“What sort of thing is pilgrimage?”
“I don’t know.”
“Not knowing is most intimate.”
Fayan suddenly had a great awakening.

​​​​​​​—PZI Miscellaneous Koans Case 62 & Book of Serenity Case 20 

In the same vein as shargol's last comment, and in answer to your last comment, Bahiya - you said:
​​​​​​​

​​​​​​​You can stop trying. Just sit, or lay down, and just be. We reach a point at which our striving becomes that which hides the insight we're seeking. Maybe you're there, maybe not, but you can test this.

I love this!

I hate it!

Ok so...

I was exploring not knowing and not trying. Then something opened up inside my brain and I could feel a lot of the self contraction release. Then the mind became mirror like and collected, collected the way a pool of water can be both vast and collected together despite being made of lots of little drops. 

I notice some intention pop up around maintaining deep meditation and I'm gently relaxing past that.

I notice also how I dont necessarily need anywhere to rest. The effort that has been going into finding some lasting state of satisfaction could cease and I'm working with relaxing into and beyond that compulsion. 

There are other things too I noticed like vapours of intention that arise but they're not really that big a deal. I feel I've developed a good grasp of the phenomenology or even physicality of the process of intention and how self sort of bootstraps itself with intention and attention. 

I flip in and out of the mirror mind throughout the day, the contraction when it knots itself up has such a distinct, such a deep physical component to it that I have started practicing greater degrees of awareness throughout my day to day life. 

Today I had this massive like trauma response. I saw this intensely neurotic and rather familiar narrative take hold and just take my whole psycho-chemical body on a joyride of suffering. I would flip into mirror mind and be free of the compulsive narrative yet still saturated in the pain of it and it was, like, horrifying, the self indulgence of it. How are these stories, mind patterns, so compelling? Gnarly. 

Overall practice is good !! Intense but good. Finding myself able to relax into longer sessions again. 

​​​​​​​I pray this time I don't forget that I do not know what any thing is.

That does sound good.

There can be a state-like experience where "the mind" becomes beyond transparent -- i've described it as the difference between looking into a perfectly clean glass aquarium (where the fish and plants are crisp and clear) to suddenly being in the aquarium (nearly the same view but somehow everything is "here"). One of my teachers called that "natural mind".  Sometimes there is more awareness of motion parallax.

"What is awareness?" can be an interesting inquiry in the midst of natural mind.

Much like Stream Entry, no one knows how to find awakening, or knows when it will happen, or will know it happened until afterwards. So in a big way, the pressure is off: you aren't expected to know what to do. Yet like Stream Entry, it doesn't mean you quit and stop looking. Intention and intuition is very important, yet it is definitely not the same as intention or intuition.


It's also very traditional to mention some verion of this:

it's too close, so we overlook it
it's too accessible, so we strive past it
it's too simple, so we don't trust it
it's too good, so we can't appreciate it

Mirror mind is like standing at the precipice of the mountain. There is clearly void in front of me, around me, above me but below is still the mountain. 

I felt in practice there was a capacity or a growing willingness to take a step off, like I could thoroughly relinquish agency. 

This led to experiencing things as I had described before. Everything as parts or perhaps like my body mind transitioning from a chaotic democracy to a totally decentralized autonomous system of governance. 

So then I started seeking that experience and I started to notice all this aversion, greed, etc. So I got really honest with my self about my tendency to try and create perfect experiences. I started to notice how expectation played a role in all of this. You expect x but things are like y so you try to do z. Dropping expectation helped. Dropping the thing that was practicing not knowing / not doing and then... I guess I started to see and genuinely get curious about the who. 

Because sometimes the who shimmers (which is rad)

But mostly I notice the who way back in the recesses of the system just gently impressing upon everything.

Sometimes just locating the who causes it to shimmer. 

Other times there's a little bit of gristle to chew over. Subtle tight heart gristle for awhile and then shimmer (nice !)

​​​​​​​In the latter occasion it's minutely frustrating that I don't know how to do the shimmer in the former it's just kind of funny that it has happened without me really understanding how or why. 

I just want everything to shimmer forever but I'm not sure forever or everything... OR I... have any tangible substantiality. Which is also really funny. 

​​​

"Mirror mind is like standing at the precipice of the mountain. There is clearly void in front of me, around me, above me but below is still the mountain. "

Really?!  
Oh will you just shut up! Where is this "you" standing anywhere in all "this" ??? What void??? How do you know its "void"??? Void my hairy ars!

Best wishes! xoxo

One way to cut through this whole business of having to let go of or release into this 'void' is to forego our substantialist views altogether. Easier said then done, but its very easy for the mind to get jammed into this kind of posture, to feel as though perched on this precipice with every part of the 'view' still bound by some kind of spatial metaphor and thus essentialist expectations. You can have all the concentration, all the clarity at your disposal, perched ready to let go, but if the view, the framing of it is still substantialist/essentialist in some subtle way, you're scripting yourself to let go into a really existing void. 

You're clearly having moments where this framing eases up, and shargrol's aquarium metaphor describes this well. What allows you to be in the water, with the fishes, to pop the mind's bubble, is the easing up of the framing. The reason things appear brighter, lively, shimmery, is that the energy used up by the framing is freed up for the rendering. 

Dependent origination is the view to end all the mind's sneaky substantial/essentialist framing, and I find that contemplating it directly can be helpful. It can shift you out of the trap of spatial conniving, into something more temporal, fluxing, unpredictable, in which any sense of being perched, being awareness, or releasing into anything is clearly impossible. When this is, that is. Things arise based on causes and conditions and cease upon their cessation. No self, agent, or persisting spacial dimension anywhere to be found.

ps. I haven't really read much of the log.. just decided to chime in spontaneously. I hope it's helpful!

Knowing is dependent on identification. If knowing is empty then identity is empty.  ​​​​​​​

​​​​​​​

The experience is the experiencing and the experiencing is the experience.

Experience/experiencing does not come with a label.

​​​​​​​We use noting/labeling because we need to fix the habit of incomplete experiences of living in a world of nearly 100% I, me, mine and experiences dominated by secondary reactions of greediness, avoidance, and ignoring.

When we can mostly experience we can notice. And we have mini-moments of clarity and start noticing the greediness, avoidance, and ignoring is unhelpful and so it begins getting dropped naturally. 

In time, when greed, aversion, and ignoring all momentarily drop away, we get mirror mind/natural mind. We've had flashes of this all along, but now it's nearly constant. But we instinctually  want to say mirror mind is I, me, mine at first and get more of it, but the experience of mirror mind naturally shows how creating an identity is unhelpful so the remaining identificiations with flavors of experiencing begins getting dropped naturally. But it feels like reaching the top of the mountain yet somehow needing to climb further... or take a step off the mountain and drop into a void.

When the last knot of I am the experiencer, it is me that experiences, this experience is mine is seen clearly, there is experience as experiencing and experiencing as experience.So close, accessible, simple, and good. We realize the truth of this was never untrue.

We might still doubt it for a while or the full consequences of it may be unclear for a while. Sometimes it takes "no practice" practices, or nonmeditation, for things to fully untangle. But then it's home.

And yet mist drops as dew and dew rises as fog and weeds grow and flowers wilt and civilizations come and go and life goes on.

Practice right now is just sitting honestly with suffering. I realize that I've been doing all this practice over the years to prove something. I felt inadequate in my heart and concocted strategies in order that I might accomplish something. For years it seemed like every path led me to more and more grief until i stumbled into serious meditation which actually helped me but it also became a mechanism through which I could strive. 

Something about relaxing with this seems important right now. I did some investigation of dependent origination and I did some exploration of emptiness, both were fruitful and no doubt will continue to be, but when the mechanisms of avoidance are seen as empty where else can one go but here, to the reality of ones fundamental suffering. 

No more tricks. Just this. 

I don't say it enough but all your advice is so helpful. Thank you everybody. I am so grateful.

Straight ahead! ...or something(?)

It has been years since I've read Tilopa's Song of Mahamudra. 

"The Void needs no reliance; Mahamudra rests on naught.

Without making an effort, but remaining natural,
One can break the yoke thus gaining liberation.

​​​​​​​If one looks for naught when staring into space;
If with the mind one then observes the mind;
One destroys distinctions and reaches Buddhahood."
What was fairly esoteric to me many years ago now seems like very simple reasonable practice instructions. 

What had stood out then and what has been ringing in my ears all day:

"Do naught with the body but relax"

Which is excellent advice and advice I have been given many times because:

"Whoever clings to mind sees not the truth of what's beyond the mind.
Whoever strives to practice Dharma finds not the truth of Beyond-practice."

I haven't much to say at the minute, I just wanted to leave this here for any others who wander out this way. 

This makes me wonder just which mind is being referred to 

Ok I'll do a real update while I'm here. 

So there was this mirror mind thing but it seemed mind just grew clearer and clearer yet somehow some fundamental issues was not resolving. 

Then practice moved into the heart and at times fear, greed and aversion seemed to dissolve. 

Then I would go through periods of noticing fear, greed and aversion in great detail. This process heated up and got more intense until it eventually passed. 

At that point I was tired of efforting, even though a lot of efforting seems out of my control. 

So then I started practicing with "do nothing but relax". 

I also have noticed developing over the last few weeks this increasing capacity to let the center of attention sort of destabilize.

So I relax, I let everything decentralize and I allow sensation to just be where it's at, which makes it all brighter. It takes a very deep relaxation to arrive at the brightness. I guess this is Mahamudra or whatever. It's not just a wide or vast, the breadth of it isn't super important, I think what's important is the decentralization, the non centering and relaxation allows everything to start being known right where it's at. I guess, I don't know, I'm still just touching these things. 

​​​​​​​That's it really. I try to catch any attempts to strive after practice but sometimes they just happen. Sometimes mind is clear and practice is good, sometimes I'm obsessing over some thing stupid, but these things just happen.  

Facepalm... For lack of a better way to put into words something I've just realized: Mind is a conception.

​​​​​​​Or there is something which seems to be mind that is a conception. 

​​​​​​​No-mind...

Q: From all you have said, Mind is the Buddha; but it is not clear as to what sort of mind is meant by this "Mind which is the Buddha".
A: How many minds have you got?
Q: But is the Buddha the ordinary mind or the Enlightened mind?
A: Where on earth do you keep your 'ordinary mind' and your 'Enlightened mind'?

... or some ... thing? 

What is mind? 

​​​​​​​>Kyosaku< 

I see that there is no lasting no-self view 

There's a process of attention which creates seemingly solid states like holding patterns which give rise to projection and rumination. 

Desires are holding patterns like chronic fixations in attention and because of this there is tension and thus there is a need for release, because of this need for release there is an expectation about the potential for release at some other point in time. Desire requires a payoff. The necessity of a payoff is suffering. 

When attention is seen as impermanent desire arises but is not fixed. There's nothing for desire to latch on to thus no need to sate the desire. 

Last couple weeks were tough. I got really stuck on attention. Let's see whats next. 

Addendum:

It's this:

When I am practicing I can really see this, I've seen it before but now it's becoming more obviously the case, everything is interrelated yet none of the particulate matter behind everything, or even the waves of things themselves, ever really touch. 

I'm super busy lately but should have a chance to do some deeper practice soon. 

Yes! 

Well... If I can make the effort to spout off about politics I can make the effort to update my log. 

So... Basically I went through a phase of really practicing with emptiness in a seeing that frees kind of way. I was really exploring the exercises towards the end of that book and I guess I was really noticing attention and the activity of attention and the tension of attention. 

Practice felt at that time very jhanic lots of really "pure" refined states of experience. 

Then that faded and I just got over all the views and no-self experiences.

There was a while where I was noticing the no selfness of everything. 

Then I allowed myself to just be with the reality of experience in a really raw and analogue way. I had some interesting experiences like a strange heart opening, swooning, sighing kind of thing would happen and this led to something very hard to describe but I guess I came to experience the simple, truthful, honesty of just this experience. 

So where I'm at now when I practice things can get very "Ahh yes, just this experience". The narrativizing completely stops. It's like you're really focused on a point in the night sky and then attention falls away and that point is just another glimmering patch of starlight. This isn't just strictly perceptual or to do with shape. It's not the difference between first jhana and fourth but the difference between a solid and a gas or a wall and an open window. 

So I basically just practice until the simple starlight thing happens. I can't game that or do something to make it happen it just happens or it doesn't. 

When it isn't happening I think a lot of what I see is the position and shape of the self sort of fluctuating in opacity like there's a literal middleman in experience that creates a here and there and that has something to do with attention, see previous post, and as that attention becomes diffuse everything starts just being the truth of what it is until there's this glimmering swoon, a deep breath, and something has vanished.and things just are the way they are. 

It still wraps itself up when I stop meditating and then I go right back to worrying about the state of the world or speaking about politics on the internet. (God forgive me, I am a lowly and undeserving sinner. Punish me father for I fear there may be no limit to my iniquity and only the righteous justice of your hand might save me from my wickedness.)

So I'm just kind of exploring this. When it happens it's fucking so right but when it's gone the world is just a dream again and y'know dreams can be nice too. 

​​​​​​​My internal, ugh, I don't know like... Guidance... Eww .. says just be with it. When its not right just be with that when it is right just be with that. There's really nothing else to do now. 

​​​​​​​It's like the self is a hologram made to seem real by attention but when attention flickers the self flickers.
​​​​​​​

  



Good stuff, but of course this approach can never completely drop the original tension of investigating itself...



Honest question, how did you "do" that?



Is this the "difference between looking at the world through a glass window and looking through the world through an open window" immersive experience?



Good stuff, but maybe there is still a tiny bit of restlessness and/or conceit?

You've already 99.99% seen that a self can't "exist" outside of experience... but it feels like there is still a inexcapable constant of a little bit of self-reflexive judging? (Not saying judging goes away or that you'll never have political views after awakening, but let's just keep it to the self that judges practice....) You probably know what I mean, that self-judging that doesn't quite go away for long...

It's so so minor, but because it's so ubiquitous, it's so annoying!   Suffering much much less, yet still noticing it more.

In a way, you are clear on space/emptiness, but....

One thing that REALLY helped me out at this stage was reading the part of Seeing That Frees that talks about time and how there isn't a "present moment". I can't do the write-up justice, it has to be read. When you realize that all moments are still a fabrication, that there can never be a present moment, then anything contained in that moment can't be the same kind of problem it was before. For me, this was the last little bit of ignorance (ignorance about the nature of time) that kept the whole delusion in place. Without a solid present moment to "believe", it took away the endless quest for the perfect moment --- and the endless and relentless self-judging about whether I had achieved the perfect present moment. 

After awakening, you'll find yourself in that raw and analog way... but the rawness is gone. That's my hunch at what you'll find. Not radically different from now. You'll still be you, but you'll know how seriously to take you.

 

The hologram is apparent awareness, apparent attention, and an apparent belief in a centerpoint of time. Ironically, it's all hologram all the way down, so trying to find the "perfect moment of the hologram" is a little bit of a fool's quest --- but only the fool's quest can lead to the wisdom of the sage. No other way.

When the time is right, you can explore "no distraction, no control, no practice" which is:

1) allowing yourself to settle into raw and analog, even letting attention itself go in and out of intensity, so that "no distraction" even includes the experience of being distracted -- your mind still knows.

(if there are fireworks at this point, you just have to go through all of that)

2) if there are no fireworks, then realizing that after 15-20 minutes of raw and analog, the mind naturally starts having preferences -- usually more clarity or more calm or more knowing -- and the judging has re-established itself again. Now intend to let it go and have "no control". 

3) for the last 5-10 minutes, then have "no practice". Drop any sense that there is such a thing as practice. Exhale and say/feel I'm done. Just sit with having no practice.


This kind of practice isn't to achieve some particular endstate during sitting. As you can sense, awakening is beyond your control and probably won't happen when you intend it. You won't walk off the top of the mountain when you decide to.

It will hit you like a bird pooping on your head, shocking you out of your old view... and you'll realize that awakening isn't something you gain and even calling it a loss isn't quite right. You realize that the great matter of life and death wasn't what you thought it was, like the original premise was wrong.

Yeah I was definitely still dealing with some restlessness/conceit.

No distraction... really helpful. You know you mentioned this practice before but I may not have been ready to learn its lessons. Where did you come across it?

I have played with this over the weekend quite a bit.

When I started with no distraction it instantly clicked. I saw no distraction as this very subtle intention that's useful to practice with but then ultimately transcends itself when you realize that "no distraction" is a distraction and also "distraction" is not really a distraction. 

Then with control the same sort of thing you're working this subtle intention that eventually leads to seeing that "no control" is a form of control and the sense of control is not in control. 

Then with no practice, everytime I get there, there's this immense sense of freedom and rest. These are comical intentions to work with you know, the self refuting logic of them (hah), the paradox of them I think I mean to say and when you get to no practice the joke of it all is very clear. It's really quite silly, practicing no practice. Helpful though.  

"No distraction, no control, no practice" was given to me by Hokai when I was working with him. I looked it up and it also appears in Ken McLeod's Wake Up To Your Life on page 416 as "No distraction, no control, no work"... but I like Hokai's version better. No work tends to be seen as "just rest in experience"... which is technically correct but can create yet another practice of "trying to rest in experience"... (Hokai used the framework/progression of WUTYL and refined it to his sensibilities at the time I was working with him ~2013-14.)

Nonmeditation is also a pretty good way to say it and this is discussed as a stage (with three substages) in Clarifying the Natural State by Dakpo Tashi Namgyal on p95.

Heh, both of these references are a few pages from the end of both of these books... so I'm sorry, your time is almost up!  

What Is Enlightenment? | HuffPost Life

Enlightenment and Cat Poop | Hardcore Zen

Continuing to practice with this. 

For awhile I had to always start with no distraction and work through. Then as restlessness in daily life started falling away I found myself more often able to start at no control or drop right into no practice. 

For the most part no practice isn't actually a practice, it usually just happens after I've spent some time in the previous two. Usually the heart just swoons and everything swan dives and the world is just nice and where it's at, non dual I guess. 

In that experience I see things such as:

Time is dependent on location. Location is the point at which attention and intention meet. Where there is no location there is no time.

I suspect this is centrelessness. 

Overall things are good. Life is less restless. Life is also really fucking hectic so practice tends to be two steps forward one step back. Find myself reading more Zen stuff. 

Barcelona here I come  

I'm rooting for ya, Bahiya.

Thanks John, the feeling is mutual

Another relatively inconsequential update just to say that there are some rather userful diagnostic tools towards the end of Clarifying the natural state. 

From the end of Simplicity and its Enhancements

"At some point after this, you will experience the pure and uncontaminated yoga of realizing all the phenomena of samsara and nirvana to be of One Taste, the Mahamudra of being free from accepting and rejecting them as with or without the conceptual constructs of arising and ceasing, empty or not empty and so forth."

Or how it seems to me: Simplicity gives way to One Taste when the search for emptiness is relinquished. 

It lays out these stages of One Pointedness, Simplicity, One Taste & Non Meditation and I think it's all quite insightful. It's all relatively short and yet quite a useful tool for reflection at this stage of practice. Particularly now that I'm practicing several hours a day, I want to keep a relatively high standard but I don't really have much bandwidth for dense reading, so it is useful in that regard. At this point everything is very post lexical, your experiencing undefinable things and I personally have little capacity, interest or desire to be defining them myself, I'd rather just sit, so I'm glad someone went to the trouble of writing this all down. 

"The lesser One Taste is when you have realized that all thoughts and perceptions are of one taste in being the Mahamudra of mind essence. However, you still retain a bind: the conviction of savoring and clinging to that."

They know me too well

XD

​​​​​​​For clarity's sake, can you explain what stage of practice this refers to?

Sure, when the subject object-split begins to dissolve, when the sense that there's a controller of the body, thoughts and of meditation itself begins to drop away and as no control/no practice becomes the default mode of experiencing the world. 

I don't know what "stage" that is in a maps sense, I just mean stage as in this must be some kind of stage of meditative development as it is happening to me and seems to correlate with what's being discussed in clarifying the natural state.

I am beginning to get the impression it would be impossible for me to define
As in even the idea that there are stages is kind of funny now that I think about it. 
The idea of stages is symptomatic of an implicit cognitive bias towards progression, it's a worldview, or a Sankhara I suppose.
​​​​

Mind the cow Bahiya!!! Stop petting her calf!!! 

It's only Karma, let it be.

Without stages one might logically infer that there is no attainment
​​​​​​​ 

​​​​​​​There goes that gong again

Also check your messages 

The attainment of non-attainment

the practice of non-practice

man this stuff is so strange, who invented this meditation stuff??

I'm sort of at the same non-stage. So it's always interesting to check in on your log. The Anagami thing deepening, more layers of subject/object surfacing and dropping, for me it's kinda like approaching a singularity, where all sorts of dualisms start to break down (well, duh). All the partial insights into the depths of anatta, all sorts of craving and clinging surfacing, twisting, struggling, relaxing, dropping, all turning out to have the one taste, all the phenomenal display doing it's momentary thing. Kinda funny to see that sensations don't touch, that there is no bond tying them together, and some process still trying to pull back - from itself. Like a (k)not that insists on (k)not yet seing it was never tied. And then writes about it on the DhO. 

​​​​​​​So yeah, who came up with this stuff? 

"who invented this meditation stuff??"


Let me have a stab at it; 
the seeker? The dog chasing its tail? 

​​​​​​​I don't know!  

the self creates an idea of the greatest self (the enlightened self or even the not-a-self-self) and searches for it... and the seeking doesn't result in greatness and it negates any solid sense of self -- a kind of poetic justice.

(I remember someone from the early DhO days saying something like, I don't like this zen stuff, the joke of the story is always me.)

One really does develop a great appreciation for the Mahayana. Took me by surprise. 

I started the first log because I was fucked up, I keep at it because it helps and I know there's people lurking that may find it useful now or in the future. If they can parse through my nonsense. Don't be a stranger

Same goes to any other lurkers out there. It is a community and sometimes I suspect a slightly larger community than it appears on the surface. Don't be afraid to say hi. If yall out there are anything like me if we did a hangout no one would turn up

It feels like I can sit here and not put anything on it. 

Not in some profound crystal clear way. There are thoughts, sometimes thoughts arise as a natural flowing part of the mindstream, at other times they're more embroiled or restless but there's no more judgement. It can just carry on. 

I'm lying on my sitting room floor with my head on a bean bag. Sort of meditating, sort of thinking about writing postcards for Christmas, something I have never done, the nextdoor neighbour is mowing their lawn, there is dukkha pockmarked throughout me. None of this is perfect yet none of it requires judgement. 

​​​​​​​Throughout my body there is a growing, pervasive, natural sense of compassion.

​​​​​​​I am very talkative lately. I think that happens when I up the practice hours lol, forgive me. 

There is nothing there! And yet there is nothing there but not in a continuous manner.
Is the whole view fake? And even if I conclude it's fake, how can I verify that? 

And if something is there in a continuous manner than what is that? Can there be something continuous without myriads of things being shaded by ignorance at the same time? 
But if nothing is there and yet not in a continuous way then how can ignorance be?

please do ignore my rambling Need me some coffee!

yeah there is this idea in optimization called SGD. It must stand for self gradient descent

Be careful about leaving so many half dug rabbit holes everywhere, because if you're not paying attention, you might trip and fall and hurt yourself! On your own hole too! How embarrassing would that be?

When falling, fall
When tripping, trip 
​​​​​​​... When digging, dig 

And what do we do when we fall? We pick ourselves back up again and try again.

Just being again.
Just this.
So nice, yeah? So why the question to the next thing...

It's not always nice. 

Sometimes when falling it's best to stay falling if one can manage it. 

​​​​​​​It's all this picking things up and trying that gets us in such a mess to begin with. 

Fall out of the light and into the dark, fall through the dark and out into light. 

​​​​​​​In time we realize it's the falling that's nice... 

"​​​​​​​In time we realize it's the falling that's nice... "

You are an adrenaline junkie, bahiya babe!  

I'm just running out of places to cling 

 

Over the past few weeks I have been observing various aspects of the sense of control, how I seek to control things, how habits of control start up and tick away under the surface. 

Overall practice is very clear and open, for a time there were many "non-dual" experiences but I've let go any need or desire for them. Instead I just sit with and notice the play of dukkha across an open, inclusive awareness. 

Sometimes I notice the freedom and doneness of no meditation, sometimes I do not, I do not savor it nor try to recreate it. I just let it arise and fall away as a natural movement within practice. Meditation isn't actually happening anyway but I notice there's a thing I can put on experience that makes stuff feel very free and nice. 

Today I experienced dukkha regarding an event on the weekend. I don't want to go because I want to meditate and do nothing for the day. I just sat and experienced this rather inane dilemma play out in my body, awareness tends to stay wide open as dukkha arises, it doesn't really contract around thought patterns or discomforts much anymore. I sat and watched for awhile until I saw that this hypothetical future point didn't have any substantiality. Then in the same manner I experienced a number of more nebulous points of dukkha and practiced with them in the same way. 

There has been a lot of unpeeling the need for meditation to lead anywhere or achieve anything. It's easy to practice, I feel I could sit for 8 hours a day if I didn't have other obligations, I wish that I could.

​​​​​​​It's obvious that whatever awakening will be is right here, in some non heroic ordinary way. All the magical displays of fireworks have lost their appeal though they remain beautiful to look at. 

I was asking myself:

What is it that's so nice about the no meditation experience? 

What is it that reintroduces dukkha?

What is it that lurks behind experiences that have more obvious dukkha? 

What is this dilemma? Why don't I want to go to Renfaire with my friends? Why am I so bothered by choice? 

(what's he got that I ain't got huh?)

The man on the podcast discusses the implications of retrocausality on free will 

Oh...

Would this all be a lot nicer if I stopped pretending I had free will?

Facepalm

Try this one; 

how can the sense of Dukkha go through time? 

"Re-introducing  is likely due to some causal stuff contacting the sense doors and then triggering a reactive response but why does Dukkha keep going through time? 

What makes this Dukkha appear as such? 

Dukkha certainly seems to have an unpleasant feeling and some sort of bodily sensation that is perceived as unpleasant. 

So why that sense of Dukkha (dread) going through time? "This is happening and is not stopping. This is happening to me and feels very real. 

Beware Im having a flu and am self-medicatiing with hot whiskey tonight! 

I just had a persistent assumption that I needed to make some kind of decision about reality and that that decision has some massive existential significance 

​​​​​​​

This is funny, or at least I think I will find it funny in retrospect. So I'm exploring no agent, no decision, no choice, feels super free and interesting... Somebody walks through the kitchen and just drive-by pokes me right in the ego and I'm like there's no choice to be made about any of this but boy howdy that person just really hurt my feelings, there is clearly a rather large ego/self here reeling at that remark... Life is funny like that. 

"The Teacher" is never far,

It's funny how small this is, yet so pervasive in almost every consideration we have, and therefore how huge this assumption is. Both very very tiny and very very big. (A classic Zen question, "how big is it?") 

Even if we're mostly calm and unbothered/untraumatized, there is still "the great matter of life in death" as they say in Zen apparently hanging over our head. And to the extent we haven't seen this great matter clearly, we seek some kind of awakening that will get rid of the haunting of this great matter of life and death, to get away from it.

But as we get beaten into us through practice, the way "to get away from" is "by going through".

I think it's fair to say that awakening is viscerally resolving this matter and truly percieving it as the assumption that it is. But you simply can't make it into a intellectual exercise -- the heavens will SMACK YOU THE F**K DOWN if you try to pretend you have somehow moved beyond the real terror of the great matter of life and death on this earth. 

Which leads to your next post...

Right, I can't insight my way out of tangling with Morality and there's some moral stuff I have to deal with.

​​​​​​​Dealing with it doesn't lead anywhere, if doesn't need to lead anywhere, that's not the point, it just has to be fucking dealt with. That's life. That's the world. 

​​​​​​

This is very very funny to me!   It is so exactly how it goes. If there was a way to laugh your way to enlightenment, it would be by seeing this time and time again, throughout the day, and having a joyful AND RESPECTFUL laugh at the self. 

The problem is it is very easy to have the ego get bruised and feel like a victim and then develop a spiteful and cruel sense of humor... which tends to carry around the "hurt" into the future. It's so important to know what kind of laugh you are laughing.


One last kind of pointing out thing:

There are a lot of fire metaphors in the buddha's teaching and I think the idea that it was because buddhism  emerged within a proto-hindu culture that already had fire metaphors... but anyway, at one point this kinda clicked for me...

The buddha said the world is on fire with greed, aversion, and delusion. And that works really well with the felt-experience of friction of dukka, how there is this gritty, abrasive quality to life --- especially if we try to avoid it or go around it. Life can wear us down and burn us up. The early stage of practice is all about getting real and see the fact of this. Just facing the truth of the difficulty in our life and getting early insights into how some of our approaches to thinking/living make it worse. At some point we can't look away any more and we becomed real meditators.

In the middle stages, dukka actually does burst into flame and is a kind of light to our practice. It shows us were to look, what to consider, what to investigate, what to tease apart. Discomfort and insults really do show the way, and hopefully we're given what we can tolerate and grow from at any time --- but of course life and practice is a mixed bag and we get what we get. And sometimes apparently huge set backs result in huge steps forward.

In the later stages dukka is nirvana, or to say it in the fire metaphor: what we thought was an burning is actually a burning-out. Even with intense experiences of dukka, an escalating burning is actually an escalating burning out. It's not burning into the future, so to speak, it's extinquishing itself. Where does the fire of an experience "stay" in the mind? It really doesn't stay, except as a memory of sorts. And that can be useful for ongoing learning and development, but it isn't quite they way that dukka stays. But reality is percieved as nirvaning, a kind of burning out that leaves no remainder.

When the nirvana-ing of experience is your center of gravity, your day to day and moment to moment experience, I think you're fairly well cooked. Where any one person wants to draw the line at the level of perfection required for officially trademarked awakening is always a fun intellectual debate and a conundrum for the meditation traditions. To me it seems like there is an experience of fundamental unknotting the heart that is unlike the others that proceeded it and is worth acknowledging to youself perhaps. (It's funny no one else really cares and they shouldn't because no one can do the practice work for someone else.)

But it is also true to me that the ego gets bruised forever on this earth. But it's more funny and helpful than hurtful and damaging, so there isn't any ill will toward it. In a way, this terrifying "great matter of life and death" has been resolved. But then then the ego DOES gets bruised again and life DOES smack you down. So are we ever done? Hard to say. This what makes the so-called spiritual path so funny, it seems to dump you right back to where you started. Obviously the entire world is different, but it is still the same.

So it's hard to get egotistical about awakeneing, even though people have managed to do just that too. (It easier to get egotistical if you find enough lazy-yet-ardent people willing to turn over their autonomy and responsibility to a  you as a cult leader. But who wants to be a cult leader and hang around with people like that? No wonder cult leaders wind up lashing out at their followers.)

But I like the way Ken McLeod describes the after-effects of unknotting:

"The upshot is that you are a part of the unfolding of life, rather than apart from it. You know contentment, peace, freedom, understanding and compassion, but they are not anything like what you thought they would be. They don’t seem special in anyway, and yet they are. You place less and less value on having certain experiences. It’s more important for you just to be there and to do the best you can, in ordinary situations, and in difficult ones. You stop looking for something different. Life itself points a way and you take it."

Amen. Well said.

Been having some experience of experience as experience. Nice, though I reckon I still need a little time to cook, it's like really thoroughly seeing the object disproves the illusion of subject and thus neither subject nor object ever possessed any substantiality. Somehow including everything leads to nothing. Often Dukkha is Nirvana but... sometimes it's still just Dukkha.

There is some savouring and still some seeking after a deeper realisation in which to rest, fortunately there's nothing to be done about this. 

There is an old saying "First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is", which in many respects I never really understood, I still do not, but I will say this: The first mountain appears to be still where as the last is known to be flowing. The first mountain stands and the second mountain walks. 

Obviously reading Dogen. 

I had written some longer notes but they seem somewhat irrelevant now. I was largely just practicing with, noticing the arising of, the sense of control, which was at the time very important though seemingly less so now. 

Will continue with the non-meditation. Sorry for the vagueness, not sure what to say, but often after making a post I stumble upon more words that need to be said. 

Reading Dogen is like reading something written by Quantum Mechanics (not something written about it). This is not a man who would be suprised by entanglement or retro causality. 

Similar as pixel cloud I have also been lurking in your log and might or might not be at a similar not place in not practice. It's usually ;) interesting and inspiring to read. Thank you. One random thing I started to explore last week is tantric sex practices. Alone or together with someone it's an interesting time for delusions, thoughts/images about something to reach or do to arrise. Sometimes in a very quick manner. Realizing that it was wrong about it's ideas orgasms gave my mind more thoughts about what else it could be wrong about. Keeping awareness of both myself and my partner and staying as relaxed no matter what happens/remembering there is no relaxation and contraction is a great challenge for myself.

Good luck, and I recommend Antarctica no cows there this time of the year, hehe.

THIS: "The face of a lover we have yet to know."

I was a student of David Deida, among others, for many years. I'm not really drawn to sex these days, not enough to pursue relationships anyhow. My art and heart are elsewhere but who knows maybe I just need to get laid. 

​​​​​​​It was healing for me to practice tantra. I really committed to it for some time but ultimately.i kept coming back to just knowing that I was suffering and I needed to wake up and absolutely no coordination of sexual experience was ever going to satisfy me. 

​​​​​​​Practicing relaxation in sexual experiences with an attractive partner is a good practice up until a point. Beyond that point it's just art. For me, when it comes to insight, nothing beats sitting on my own and just experiencing reality.

​​​​​​​... And when it comes to art nothing beats picking up some old six string box and howling at the moon. 

​​​​​​​(I like had the connections, opportunities, hutzpa to become a qualified sex guru AHHHHH Can you imagine. So funny to me now. Christ on a bike, save me, forgive me father I am a lowly despicable sinner, a foul and wretched thing, the very devil himself would blush if he knew the extent of my machinations)

I got out of the tantra racket because they were sitting around cross legged but their dharma was weak, for the most part, not up to my standards. Except for Uncle Bubba but he was mad of course.

I'm going to blather now:

I'm not sure this is true - the nothing to be done part, that is. There is something we all assume to be true that isn't. It's been with us, part of our being, some might say, for as long as we can remember. If you're told what that thing is, you'd probably say, "Well, duh!" And you'd be right... from a certain perspective, but that perspective includes the assumption. It's a sneaky little bugger. It's special in more ways than one.

This is meant to be a kind of koan (and I see you're reading Dogen). Anyway, this may not be helpful at all, so take it for what you're paying for it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah

Yeah... That's the thing 

Because the savouring and seeking that remains isn't itself a problem 

It just happens to like cover up or distract from the problem 

And the problem is a bit nebulous but... There's just something wrong  

And I need to not avoid that. 

​​​​​​​Tis hard to pay for priceless advice. One can only hope to pay it forward. 

A good walking around/sitting non-practice practice: ask "Resistance?" like dropping a stone in a mine shaft and quietly listening for how the body/mind responds (or not) to the question.

It can also be good to check-in on whether you are a human/buddha or are actually in the deva realms (superior, maintain what I have) or asura realms (inferior, achieve something more). I still fail at this one not infrequently   But I credit it as one of the best practices for establishing cracks in the sense of centerpoint. "If I wasn't superior or inferior, what would I be?    ....oh!"

> I like had the connections, opportunities, hutzpa to become a qualified sex guru AHHHHH Can you imagine
Very cool, lmao. Maybe, something to go back to after awakening. Write that sex tantra book with strong dharma .

> I got out of the tantra racket because they were sitting around cross legged but their dharma was weak, for the most part, not up to my standards. Except for Uncle Bubba but he was mad of course.

Who was Uncle Bubba? I love mad people . Yea, I read two books so far and the dharma didn't seem that strong so I just applied the dharma I took from other places to sex + some tantric tech for sex. If you have any good sources for tantric tech on sex or for transforming sexual energies I would be interested from an art perspective.

> I needed to wake up and absolutely no coordination of sexual experience was ever going to satisfy me. 
Definitely not. And momentarily my mind still thinks in sex that it wants things to be different than they are, so for me it's good practice. I am also doing random things like some tantric exercise while observing flickering images at 180 frames per second. I should also try there 6 realms there for sure.