Hello everyone,

So, given the impressive drop in craving and aversion, and the completely new, overall sense of peace and silence, I think I got 3rd path on my last retreat, 14 years after attaining stream entry, and in cellebration I wrote the text which I think I needed to have read in order to get there sooner. I think 10 years ago would have been totally doable.

There is a PDF attached to this post, as a teaser here is the cover, title, and table of contents.

It is very much a draft, and it's kinda rough even for a draft because I have a surgery tomorrow and I think it will go well, but who knows, so I wanted to put it out there.

If it helps you, all the better. If it doesn’t, sorry for wasting your time

Love,
Bruno





From seeing to knowing the dharma

A commentary on the Bahiya sutta, a parable with an elephant, and a commentary on my favorite writing of Daniel Ingram, which includes eight elephants in total!

Table of contents

1. Preface
2. From Seeing to Knowing the Dharma
3. The parable of the elephant
4. The eight elephants

Best wishes for tomorrow! May the surgery go well and may you benefit many! 

+1  best wishes for your surgery!

I really enjoyed "Seeing to Knowing"  Bruno. I honestly feel more awake/clear from reading it. So good. Like cool and crisp mountain air.

I remember the same zen master interview with Shinzen on YouTube ... I think Shinzen maybe mentions it in his book too... The way I remember it, Shinzen said Rocky Aoki (founder of Benihana) was interviewing a few zen monks and Rocky asked "after all, what IS enlightenment". And they passed it to the senior monk/master... and I think the master said something like "perhaps one could say enlightenment is no longer having the concern about enlightement"  --- for what it's worth. 

By the way, as I was looking now for the shinzen quote... I stumbled on: Kensho = seeing true nature and Satori = to know/understand. ! 

Maybe someone can find it... I'd be interested in seeing it again.

​​​​​​​Hilarious!

I like it.

I do think, that the insight can take different forms depending on what "core assumption" or duality drives the "Looking" (for an elephant, a self). For instance it could be the reverse: Looking for the absolute beyond the relative and never finding it because they're not separate. 

That was the core drive of my quest for instance. It seems equivalent to the looking for a self thing, but it's a different emphasis, and would provoke a difference in expressing the insight (e.g. "there never was an absolute beyond what I assumed to be the relative, "unreal", "untrue" appearances of everyday life and conventional reality: it is conventional all the way through; but if there is nothing that is not "conventional" or relative, there is nothing that is not like that that could be opposed to it to define it, which itself destroys the very idea of conventional VS non-conventional! Look at this ultimate sky! Look at this adorable baby cow over there!....").

I assume there are many types and variations of fixations of this kind acting as core motivators of meditative interest.

edit: ah, I just read the fourth part, nice!

Cheers Bruno!

That was a lovely read. Very clear. Thank you, Bruno.

Just a sidenote, I haven't read the pdf yet, but I just happen to remember that Shinzen anecdote, he tells it in session 10 of the old Science of Enlightenment audiobook ("On working with the thinking mind"), it starts at 27:45 minutes. After Aoki asks the question "What, after all, is Satori?" and Shinzen and the other monk bow out, the Roshi says "Hm... I guess you could say it is the disappearance of the distinction between enlightened and non-enlightened." 

AHA! Thanks Pixelcloud!!!

This is very timely, helpful, and inspiring for me. Thanks!

I t appears I survived

Thank you so much for the merry wishes! Surgery is one of those things that connects me with the frailty of my bodily existence. It makes me feel so vulnerable.

Keeping in mind Nikolai's very useful disclaimer... one thing I thought when writing it is that of course there's no reason why there should only be 8 perspectives on this thing, and I was just reading the Vimalakirti sutra:


Of course words exist, so what does he mean? I think he's referring to a 9th elephant: distinctions. As we conceptualize and make distinctions, we become convinced that two aspects of experience are put on different sides, but actually all that is happening is sensations and concepts arising and passing, perhaps in a particular sequence or pattern. But the experience of distinguishing two sensations (e.g. two flavours, two concepts) is also just a sensation, aware of itself, it's meaning is nothing other than it's own presence right now.

So distinctions don't actually mean what one conventionally thinks they mean. They don't really separate anything, rather, they are just a particular pattern. e.g. The distinction between a car and a bus is just the thought "car" arising after seeing a car, and the thought "bus" arising after seeing a bus. One can do the exercise of looking at cars and buses and check a thousand times that this is all that is actually happening. But for some weird reason, the mind thinks there's something other than just thoughts arising in sequence, it assumes that these thoughts are pointing at something, referring to something, other than themselves. But like Agnostos' elephant, this something else simply isn't there.

This non-existing referrent is perhaps the common theme of dualistic perceiving?

Really nice. Thank you.

One question: How do you relate to Dreamwalkers Grab Bag of tricks/map? Is everything running at the speed of awareness and are all the barriers between sense doors broken?  (https://docs.google.com/document/d/16DpXOTkDOgbmcTy959ap9qfhguClhXiu/edit#bookmark=id.gjdgxs)
That might be something to work on if you don't already have it or maybe, the pointer there about 4th path might be helpful as well. Or it might just be knowing on a deeper level or knowing that even not knowing this would still be perfect.

This is brilliant! I have been struggling with some of the exact things you're talking about here, and it feels incredibly timely.

For the past two years I have considered myself in this territory, and have constantly been looking for something 'around the corner' that I am just missing and need to see clearly. I just need to vipassanize it to the bottom,  to the root, but it's never "here". It's always around the corner. Sometimes I hit a fruition and I'm like, "yes! You did it Jim!" Just for it to crumble in a day.

I will take the advice presented and attempt to know those sensations as part of the whole. Even if this doesn't assist me I still bow to you deeply, dharma-sibling. The writing is keen and humorous.

I'm really happy you liked it. I really think Daniel's post hits the nail in the head. I was searching for something else for so long, it's such a relief not to be doing that. But at the same time it's just normal stuff going on.

Prefacing this with Nick's very useful disclaimer....

I would suggest not trying to see sensations as part of a whole. They are exactly as they appear, no sensation is referring to any other, they are not appearing somewhere, there is no somewhere, there is just the sensations. A sensation which feels isolated is just a sensation which feels isolated, it is not a sensation which needs to be integrated before you become enlightened, or a sensation which needs to be clearly seen as part of something else, or nothing of that sort. Sometimes sensations feel isolated (e.g. tight exclusive 1st jhana), sometimes integrated (e.g. around 4th jhana), they are still just sensations and that is it, there is nothing else to be found. Check once, two times, a hundred times, you will never find anything else other than sensations, there is nothing being hidden from you, there is nothing you're not seeing that you still need to see, it's all right here already, you are seeing your experience exactly as it already is, it's just the mind refusing to acknowledge that what it is seeing is all that there is to see. It bizarrely insists that there is something else. Check again, five times, ten times, notice "just a sensation, just a sensation, fuckin' 100% of the time, again, again, omg there's literally nothing else, is there?". Sensations are just themselves, they are not pointing at anything else, if they appear to be pointing at something else that appearance is just itself a sensation, you cannot "follow it". If you try, there will be sensations of trying, etc.

Your sensations are already enlightened just as they are, confusion and non integratedness and all. You can confirm what I'm saying, just look and see: a sensation, another sensation, it's never, ever anything else. And it will never be: this, just this, is already enlightenment. Remember the bahiya sutta! There is nothing else to be found, sorry if that's disappointing, for me it sure was, at first. Check again, one time, ten times, you're not finding anything else because there simply isn't anything else, this sense that there is something else is a reference to a non existing thing. (and this sense of reference is also just a sensation, appearing to point at something but not really doing that at all) There is nothing other than just this, exactly as it appears! You are already seeing it, now you just need to infer the correct conclusion (omg there's nothing else!), and take it up as knowledge.

Love,
Bruno

In the Vimalakirti sutra, Shariputra ask a highly enlightened godess: what have you seen into, that you speak with such eloquence?

She replies: I have seen into nothing, hence I speak with such eloquence.

--- i.e. there is nothing to be seen into. It is literally impossible to see into anything. There is nothing hidden. Experience is already exactly as it appears.

Beautifully stated. Thank you, Bruno.

Thank you for taking the time to elaborate and share this. I hope it finds, at some point, a more prominent place than just a post a DhO; it deserves one.

A few notes from the tradition regarding the 6th elephant phantome; in a way my favorite one, because it is so multi-faceted, so immediately accessible (like, every hindrance basically) and I've been getting to know it from various angles over the years.

1. Nagarjuna, Mulamadhyamakakarika XXIV.18:
2. Graham Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought (Clarendon Press, Oxford 2002; pg. 267), explaining Nagarjuna:
3. U Pandita sr. saying in a talk: "the fetter of restlessness is the sense of distance to the object" (i.e. something "behind" the immediacy of the sensations)

And then a personal note. It was a tremendous relief in the practice, towards th beginnings, to recognize confusion for what it is instead of pushing the mind into clarity. A parable I have for that (I think I invented it, but might have read it somewhere as well): you are taking a photograph and the objects are blurred; you are adjusting the focus but it is blurred no matter how you turn (that's the seeing); at some moment you realize the scene itself is misty, that it is a feature and not a flaw of perception (that's the knowing); the strain to "focus" drops and there is a relief. This is it; I don't need to look for anything "better".

wow eudoxos a big big yes to what you just said.

 lovely quotations I'll look into Graham priest, thank you for the pointers. I got a commentary by thisht nhat hanh on the heart sutra, which I feel I now understand to some degree, but the commentary is full of things that strike me as conceptual plattitudes.

but these quotes are great, any more pointers to good writing on this matter?

also gosh your personal note... how to say: I know exactly what you mean, and yes you described the seeing vs knowing just right

Great thread! 

Bruno shared his writing with me recently, and it plucked me out of a hole I've been in for a very long time. That "something more" trap. 

Synchronicity indeed!

Disclaimer: my viewpoint may change at the drop of  a hat. 

Nikolaaaaaiiiiiii you little .... good to see alive a kicking!  

Nikolai, I was literally about to send you this document yesterday. I still have my email in my notes and i was asking myself, should i? I obviously didnt need to though. Hope you're well.

Jurica

PS we have spoken about practice via email for a bit, I'm the fellow Melburnian