I talk to lots of people about meditation, sometimes up to 15 per week, sometimes as few as 1-2.

They talk about memories and plans mostly, hopes and fears, and occasionally sensations going on that moment, but rarely.

Almost none of them get that THIS IS IT.

Even the ones that are so impressed with their attainements, the powerful insight cycles, the magical experiences, the deep formless stuff, the very strange experiences that can arise in the far fusions of insight and concentration, nearly all of them fail to appreciate the simple point of these sensations, right now, right here, being it.

By "it", I mean:

1) The only thing going on in experience.
2) Utterly transient.
3) Utterly natural.
4) Utterly ungraspable and unstopable.
5) Utterly without anything that could even attempt to grasp or stop them.
6) Utterly immediate.
7) Utterly just as they are.
8) Utterly the immediate and perfect solution to their insight quest.

Then, every now and then, someone comes along that get it.

They say things like:

"The experience of the memories of meditation experiences are themselves the answer to the question of vipassana."

"The experience of the koan is the answer to the koan."

"Everything has the same nature all the way through. How utterly obvious this is in all things now. How could this possibly have been missed?"

"Thought and the things that thought appears to be operating on all satisfy, in that they cannot be grasped, cannot be stopped, cannot occur other than they do: what freedom!"

Those sound like things from a stylized book, but, on rare occasions, people actually do declare that their experience is like that.

When that quality of natural, inevitable, non-negotiable knowing is known to apply to all experiences immediately, automatically, naturally, without any other option, and even when not obviously payed attention to, and that holds up over all states, all stages, all shifts, all highs, all lows, all qualities of experiencce, that's really it.

If you find yourself reflecting on your past or future, and you don't notice that something in those reflections are equally of the same nature as everything else, or you are sure that some specific experience was it or closer to it and some other experiences are farther from it or less it, rather than appreciating those moments themselves as they occur then as simply, straightforwardly, easily, naturally it, however they are, consider tuning to that aspect, and see if it helps.

Best wishes,

Daniel

Very nice!

Is it your book?

Maybe you should make "THIS IS IT" the title of your next book so it shows up as the header on every other page and people will read it over and over.

Many people don't get that "THIS IS IT" because they read in a book that something has to happen during meditation and they think "THAT IS IT" so they look for something to happen in meditation, their mind becomes filled with "THAT", and it becomes just another distraction from "THIS".

Right?

"Right?"

Wrong I would add "as per usual" you seem chasing ghosts in a ghost town. I would suggest you let go of your view on "relaxing" meditation and go full on Mahasi noting. Might do you good  

"This is It" is also in that "looking for something to happen in meditation".
 

Issue is when teachers and awakened beings say stuff like 
"this is it BUT only if you can Appreciate it" or
"this is It BUT only if your face is melting into non-duality" (sorry Linda but that one will stick for a while) or
"this is it BUT only if you are having relaxed time"
or
"this is it BUT only if it's the way Shargrol explained it in Pepe's blog" (no disrespect of curse). 

This Is It in all shape and form. Appreciate it or not appreciate it it still will ever be just as it is. 

We can now go "BUT" This is It is not the same for someone just starting on the path and an Arahat. I say bullshit This is It always. Unless there is no consciousness and This Is Nothing, zilch, nada, lights out. 

Now let's go back to Daniel "complaining" about folks talking to him more often than not, frustrated with their experience I mean if a person "gets the joke" that This Is It then why oh why would they even consider contacting you? So we could hold hands together in appreciation of "it" and sing kumbaya  

If folks reach out to you it's because they are likely suffering and having strong desire to get out of it and hope you have the tip on how to. 
Sure thing it is what you say This Is It but practically speaking it's more helpful to frame it as Satipatthana or even Noting/Labeling. With these I can do something about it while with This Is It can only piss me off  
So dear dear folks, practice will reduce that ignorant density that can't simply see that This Is It which I feel also gets ripped a new hole by Anicca anyway Can't hold onto shit in this game. 

I will publish this now in hope these words cause more good than bad (fools hope I guess, shit, I keep forgetting Noble Silence). 

Much love to all of you  

For me, it was sort of like: "Oh shit, there will never be a future self." That was the emotional tone that sparked. And then, "this is all there IS, ever. no other past or future world" was the bone-deep realization.

There was no way of knowing if I would even be alive in two minutes, much less if all my thoughts, strategies, plans, would have any traction or influence on making my preferences happen in an impossible-to-know future.  "Thoughts of self, strategies, plans", which seemed so powerful and important and needed, were see as wisps of air with almost no real influence on the moment.  A very deep and appropriate sense of uncertainty and ego/will became right-sized.

And yet life goes on. Still many thoughts, strategies, and plans... but I know what they are and I know what I am, so to speak. 

The difference between philosophical thinking this and realizing this is the body. That is why training is necessary, why insights into our own heavy-handed reactivity is necessary. The emotional body is allow to relax, there is greater sensitivity to reactivity, there is a bubbling up of previously ignoring or repressed fear, there is an insight into reactivity, and this allows the body to relax even more... repeat for days and days... on the cushion, off cushion, on retreat, at home, at work for years and years... Every so often there are quantum jumps, but mostly it is low-intensity, high repetition training. 

The fractal refinement nature of this process is such that it is possible to have a flavor of "this is it" type realization many many times, but if we're honest with ourself, our body will tell us how superficial this realization was and if there is more practicing, more retreats, more sensitivity, more training to do, more depth to explore.

Eventually there is such sensitivity that the core kernal of selfing in itself can be seen clearly. And the last bit of ignorance or repressed fear goes away. The great matter of life and death has been solved, so to speak.

The reactivity to thought and emotional content and fear of annihilation is "right-sized" by enlightenment. And this is it.

Well, I never said that anyone had to have their face melt. I was just describing what those particular moments felt like in my experience. Of course it's no requirement for anything. I just happen to like it. That's allowed, right? Preferences also just occur, after all. 

To be clear, I don't recommend anyone to use my practice log as any indication of what anything is supposed to be like. It's just a personal log, you know, and also, I'm far from done.

It's funny how this thread, like so many other threads, sparks that old fight about which methods are best. I don't see any of that in the original post. What I see is confirmation that I'm still not getting it most of the time, which is probably a projection too, but an illustrative one. I suspect that any projections point to things that we still need to work on. I'll keep working until there is no sense of working to be found. Meanwhile, I'll allow myself to feel comfort in melting sensations and other phenomena, whatever it takes to stay sane.

The interesting question is ... why does it piss us off?

Because on some level we want or expect IT to be MORE than THIS!

So instead we focus on what we think we can do, rather than what we can't do. 
​​​

My apologies Linda It was not my intent to ridicule you or anyone I mentioned but rather laugh at how we all (me most certainly included) seem to get into this mode of placing certain experiences higher or more desired, better etc. either gross or subtle. 
I kind of pictured a beginner reading into your experience and thinking "jeez that must be It, I gotta get That melting face non-duality" I do apologize again, to Jim also, I was too harsh. 

However this also ain't an issue as it really just Is This in its selfing mode. This is a human (animal) being after all not really wanting to be hurt etc ... It will do stuff and think stuff to stay in good shape and dandy  

Im sorry something told me not to post that but I did it anyway as I stated above Noble Silence ain't my forte  
As far as my wisdom goes I'm but a dumb fart in the samsaric wind of change! 

G me man! It's easy to "get the joke" when the current state or stage of mind is not under Dukkha attack  

Wait and see in 6-12 months when stuff might change at large and either bodily or mindily agony and misery comes to arise. See then how this "This is It" hold up  

In my case there was run for cover, get some tools out of the yogi box , hide, run, fight ... however even in such stage/state there will be likely realizing "oh, no matter what I try to do about all this, this will always and ever be just what it is". 

It's hard to just say "ok, me being reactive towards my kid is just This being It" right? 
There will be desire to be a better parent, a better human being towards self and others. 

In this case "This" was it but there will be resistance to it in retrospect (which again is but this in another form). 

So, personality modes seem to be shifting depending on situations and past karma and stuff is going into action or not. 

This sure is It but when is It not of benefit for my self and others? And when is It of benefit for all?

I mean It just Is, and it gives no shit if it hurts or not. 
I have listened to Ingram in that Viking video about that Analayo monk attacking him saying something "I have never heard anyone talk like that to me before unless they are ... what ever" (he stopped him self from saying likely something like mentally ill and I agree) So that It was there unfolding into action but it was not the It that stopped those harmful words! right? 

we can certainly agree that there is more to This unfolding than just This is It. If we choose to reflect after the facts of This being It. 

I think Chris said about something how Zen helped him realize This is It and how Vipassana helped him realize Dependent Origination. 
So what does at the end realize Wisdom as in Moral Wisdom. Action (and not action) of benefit to all. 

​​​​​​​ok I will again post this even though I almost deleted it. Please excuse my bullshit and please do laugh at it instead I know I do  

It's okay. It IS comical. Honestly I'm not sure how much of my reply was mere face-saving and how much was trying to clarify in order to avoid confusing readings of my log, but I do know that both elements were involved. 

not this, not this

I don't want to disagree strongly with my friend shargrol, so I will disagree just a little bit to remind us that the body and the mind are the same, and are inextricably inseparable. We can't feel without both, together. I know, I know, we all like to talk about the body and its sensations versus the mind and its thoughts, but all of these are just things, no hierarchies, no specialness.

responding to shargrol:


​​​​​​​the path is the goal

Daniel Ingram“ When that quality of natural, inevitable, non-negotiable knowing is known to apply to all experiences immediately, automatically, naturally, without any other option, and even when not obviously payed attention to, and that holds up over all states, all stages, all shifts, all highs, all lows, all qualities of experience, that's really it.”
     My comments are only a statement about my experience. I am not a Dharma teacher nor want to be one. What Daniel describes is exactly what I discovered in my first insight. It had the quality of a vast, clear, selfless awareness. I immediately identified with this way of knowing and from that moment had the intention of living from it. I'll let Shargrol continue:
The difference between philosophical thinking this and realizing this is the body. That is why training is necessary, why insights into our own heavy-handed reactivity is necessary. The emotional body is allow to relax, there is greater sensitivity to reactivity, there is a bubbling up of previously ignoring or repressed fear, there is an insight into reactivity, and this allows the body to relax even more... repeat for days and days... on the cushion, off cushion, on retreat, at home, at work for years and years... Every so often there are quantum jumps, but mostly it is low-intensity, high repetition training.
The fractal refinement nature of this process is such that it is possible to have a flavor of "this is it" type realization many many times, but if we're honest with ourself, our body will tell us how superficial this realization was and if there is more practicing, more retreats, more sensitivity, more training to do, more depth to explore.”
​​​​​​​This has been exactly right in my experience. The body/mind is the great truth-teller. There has to be congruence between thoughts and feeling. Only complete honesty with ourselves can achieve this.  Then it doesn't matter what the experience is, good or bad THIS IS IT, it lasts as long as it has to and leaves without leaving footsteps to follow.  All this is a skillset we are refining day to day and have to continuously apply.  

In my (limited) experience, listening to the body is extremely helpful because body and mind is one, something that we tend to neglect in many modern sociocultural contexts. I may intellectualize my(not)self into believing that I have thoroughly grocked something (which should be a tell in itself), but as long as there are remaining tensions emmanating from conceptual traps, those tensions will also manifest physically at varying degrees of subtlety. 

You are correct Linda. The tension in the muscle system is sometimes even more subtle than the thought process that brings it about. Only deep relaxation techniques in a prone position can reach this type of "bracing". It's like waiting to be hit. I've heard actual popping sounds when a muscle group distends suddenly. Before this, there was no awareness that the tension existed. 

Much love to you min svenska vän  

I ought to keep my blabbing mouth shut more often In face to face life you would however see my rather joking facial expression  

@Daniel
Is this THIS IT the same as Nibbana?
If it isn't then I have no idea what you are talking about.
And if it is then I have no idea why not call it using the proper dharmic name.

Either way your post confuses me

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"  -William Shakespeare

"Is this THIS IT the same as Nibbana?"

Nope. Nibbana would be the opposite like "This isn't". 

No worries and ironically: I almost used body-mind or body/mind in what I wrote! But I didn't want it to sound too woo-woo (body-mind) or too interchangable (body/mind)... and since most people tend to be over-intellectual, I went with body.  But I agree with your disagreement.

There is another kind of nibbana where experiences "extinquish" as soon as they happen without karmic trace. nibbana = extinquishing in Pali language. 

You might say, don't all experiences extinquish as soon as they happen? Why yes, yes they do. But we act as if our thoughts and emotions persist and have future meaning/influence. If you deeply "know" that all thoughts and emotions arise from nowhere, stay nowhere, and go nowhere... that is another kind of nibbana, consistent with Daniel's "this moment is it".


A fun game to play is to look at all tough emotions as they are the "ending" not the "beginning". So for example, let's say I'm using my coffee addiction as practice domain. I could look at each coffee craving as the beginning of a problem, something that will in the future get worse and worse, until I either snap or succeed. That's a lot of pressure to put oneself through on the arising of a single craving. Alternative I could look at each coffee craving as the release or ending of one craving in merely a finite number of cravings. Then each hard craving feeling is a good thing, a great thing to happen because it means I'm getting closer to my goal. It's just a change in mindset but it significantly reduces the interim suffering.

A more global understanding of this worldview results in a more global and more significant overall reduction in  suffering (and selfing ).

+1 for shargrol's comment!

Linda --


Yes, I agree (as stated in my comment), I wanted to emphasize that the more we talk as if the mind and body are separate the more we reinforce that paradigm. 

I like this book:



An excerpt:
Alan Watts: Agent and Action

Just now I was reading an Alan Watts forum and noticed people were talking about anatta/anatman and it occurred to me that Alan Watts must have realised it himself. So I searched online and found a very clear description - beautiful description. Alan Watts does not see substance but formations, events, actions, operations, processes, relations and interconnectedness.

Quote from his book “This is It: and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience“ :

The general impression of these optical sensations is that the eyes, without losing the normal area of vision, have become microscopes, and that the texture of the visual field is infinitely rich and complex. I do not know whether this is actual awareness of the multiplicity of nerve-endings in the retina, or, for that matter, in the fingers, for the same grainy feeling arose in the sense of touch. But the effect of feeling that this is or may be so is, as it were, to turn the senses back upon themselves, and so to realize that seeing the external world is also seeing the eyes. In other words, I became vividly aware of the fact that what I call shapes, colors, and textures in the outside world are also states of my nervous system, that is, of me. In knowing them I also know my self. But the strange part of this apparent sensation of my own senses was that I did not appear to be inspecting them from outside or from a distance, as if they were objects. I can say only that the awareness of grain or structure in the senses seemed to be awareness of awareness, of myself from inside myself. Because of this, it followed that the distance or separation between myself and my senses, on the one hand, and the external world, on the other, seemed to disappear I was no longer a detached observer, a little man inside my own head, having sensations. I was the sensations, so much so that there was nothing left of me, the observing ego, except the series of sensations which happened---not to me, but just happened---moment by moment, one after another.

To become the sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and release. For it implies that experience is not something in which one is trapped or by which one is pushed around, or against which one must fight. The conventional duality of subject and object, knower and known, feeler and feeling, is changed into a polarity: the knower and the known become the poles, terms, or phases of a single event which happens, not to me or from me, but of itself. The experiencer and the experience become a single, ever-changing self-forming process, complete and fulfilled at every moment of its unfolding, and of infinite complexity and subtlety. It is like, not watching, but being, a coiling arabesque of smoke patterns in the air, or of ink dropped in water, or of a dancing snake which seems to move from every part of its body at once. This may be a "drug-induced hallucination," but it corresponds exactly to what Dewey and Bentley have called the transactional relationship of the organism to its environment. This is to say that all our actions and experiences arise mutually from the organism and from the environment at the same time. The eyes can see light because of the sun, but the sun is light because of the eyes. Ordinarily, under the hypnosis of social conditioning, we feel quite distinct from our physical surroundings, facing them rather than belonging in them. Yet in this way we ignore and screen out the physical fact of our total interdependence with the natural world. We are as embodied in it as our own cells and molecules are embodied in us. Our neglect and repression of this interrelationship gives special urgency to all the new sciences of ecology, studying the interplay of organisms with their environments, and warning us against ignorant interference with the balances of nature.

The sensation that events are happening of themselves, and that nothing is making them happen and that they are not happening to anything, has always been a major feature of my experiences with LSD. It is possible that the chemical is simply giving me a vivid realization of my own philosophy, though there have been times when the experience has suggested modifications of my previousthinking. (1) But just as the sensation of subject-object polarity is confirmed by the transactional psychology of Dewey and Bentley, so the sensation of events happening "of themselves" is just how one would expect to perceive a world consisting entirely of process. Now the language of science is increasingly a language of process---a description of events, relations, operations, and forms rather than of things and substances. The world so described is a world of actions rather than agents, verbs rather than nouns, going against the common-sense idea that an action is the behavior of some thing, some solid entity of "stuff." But the commonsense idea that action is always the function of an agent is so deeply rooted, so bound up with our sense of order and security, that seeing the world to be otherwise can be seriously disturbing. Without agents, actions do not seem to come from anywhere, to have any dependable origin, and at first sight this spontaneity can be alarming. In one experiment it seemed that whenever I tried to put my (metaphorical) foot upon some solid ground, the ground collapsed into empty space. I could find no substantial basis from which to act: my will was a whim, and my past, as a causal conditioning force, had simply vanished. There was only the present conformation of events, happening. For a while I felt lost in a void, frightened, baseless, insecure through and through Yet soon I became accustomed to the feeling, strange as it was. There was simply a pattern of action, of process, and this was at one and the same time the universe and myself with nothing outside it either to trust or mistrust. And there seemed to be no meaning in the idea of its trusting or mistrusting itself, just as there is no possibility of a finger's touching its own tip.

Upon reflection, there seems to be nothing unreasonable in seeing the world in this way. The agent behind every action is itself action. If a mat can be called matting, a cat can be called catting. We do not actually need to ask who or what "cats," just as we do not need to ask what is the basic stuff or substance out of which the world is formed---for there is no way of describing this substance except in terms of form, of structure, order, and operation. The world is not formed as if it were inert clay responding to the touch of a potter's hand; the world is form, or better, formation, for upon examination every substance turns out to be closely knit pattern. The fixed notion that every pattern or form must be made of some basic material which is in itself formless is based on a superficial analogy between natural formation and manufacture, as if the stars and rocks had been made out of something as a carpenter makes tables out of wood. Thus what we call the agent behind the action is simply the prior or relatively more constant state of the same action: when a man runs we have a "manning-running" over and above a simple "manning." Furthermore, it is only a somewhat clumsy convenience to say that present events are moved or caused by past events, for we are actually talking about earlier and later stages of the same event. We can establish regularities of rhythm and pattern in the course of an event, and so predict its future configurations, but its past states do not "push" its present and future states as if they were a row of dominoes stood on end so that knocking over the first collapses all the others in series. The fallen dominoes lie where they fall, but past events vanish into the present, which is just another way of saying that the world is a self-moving pattern which, when its successive states are remembered, can be shown to have a certain order. Its motion, its energy, issues from itself now, not from the past, which simply falls behind it in memory like the wake from a ship.

When we ask the "why" of this moving pattern, we usually try to answer the question in terms of its original, past impulse or of its future goal. I had realized for a long time that if there is in any sense a reason for the world's existence it must be sought in the present, as the reason for the wake must be sought in the engine of the moving ship. I have already mentioned that LSD makes me peculiarly aware of the musical or dance-like character of the world, bringing my attention to rest upon its present flowing and seeing this as its ultimate point. Yet I have also been able to see that this point has depths, that the present wells up from within itself with an energy which is something much richer than simple exuberance.

One of these experiments was conducted late at night. Some five or six hours from its start the doctor had to go home, and I was left alone in the garden. For me, this stage of the experiment is always the most rewarding in terms of insight, after some of its more unusual and bizarre sensory effects have worn off. The garden was a lawn surrounded by shrubs and high trees---Pine and eucalyptus---and floodlit from the house which enclosed it on one side. As I stood on the lawn I noticed that the rough patches where the grass was thin or mottled with weeds no longer seemed to be blemishes. Scattered at random as they were, they appeared to constitute an ordered design, giving the whole area the texture of velvet damask, the rough patches being the parts where the pile of the velvet is cut. In sheer delight I began to dance on this enchanted carpet, and through the thin soles of my moccasins I could feel the ground becoming alive under my feet, connecting me with the earth and the trees and the sky in such a way that I seemed to become one body with my whole surroundings.

Looking up, I saw that the stars were colored with the same reds, greens, and blues that one sees in iridescent glass, and passing across them was the single light of a jet plane taking forever to streak over the sky. At the same time, the trees, shrubs, and flowers seemed to be living jewelry, inwardly luminous like intricate structures of jade, alabaster, or coral, and yet breathing and flowing with the same life that was in me. Every plant became a kind of musical utterance, a play of variations on a theme repeated from the main branches, through the stalks and twigs, to the leaves, the veins in the leaves, and to the fine capillary network between the veins. Each new bursting of growth from a center repeated or amplified the basic design with increasing complexity and delight, finally exulting in a flower.

From my description it will seem that the garden acquired an atmosphere that was distinctly exotic, like the gardens of precious stones in the Arabian Nights, or like scenes in a Persian miniature. This struck me at the time, and I began to wonder just why it is that the glowingly articulated landscapes of those miniatures seem exotic, as do also many Chinese and Japanese paintings. Were the artists recording what they, too, had seen under the influence of drugs? I knew enough of the lives and techniques of Far Eastern painters to doubt this. I asked, too, whether what I was seeing was "drugged." In other words, was the effect of the LSD in my nervous system the addition to my senses of some chemical screen which distorted all that I saw to preternatural loveliness? Or was its effect rather to remove certain habitual and normal inhibitions of the mind and senses, enabling us to see things as they would appear to us if we were not so chronically repressed? Little is known of the exact neurological effects of LSD, but what is known suggests the latter possibility. If this be so, it is possible that the art forms of other cultures appear exotic---that is, unfamiliarly enchanting---because we are seeing the world through the eyes of artists whose repressions are not the same as ours. The blocks in their view of the world may not coincide with ours, so that in their representations of life we see areas that we normally ignore. I am inclined to some such solution because there have been times when I have seen the world in this magical aspect without benefit of LSD, and they were times when I was profoundly relaxed within, my senses unguardedly open to their surroundings.

Feeling, then, not that I was drugged but that I was in an unusual degree open to reality, I tried to discern the meaning, the inner character of the dancing pattern which constituted both myself and the garden, and the whole dome of the night with its colored stars. All at once it became obvious that the whole thing was love-play, where love means everything that the word can mean, a spectrum ranging from the red of erotic delight, through the green of human endearment, to the violet of divine charity, from Freud's libido to Dante's "love that moves the sun and other stars." All were so many colors issuing from a single white light, and, what was more, this single source was not just love as we ordinarily understand it: it was also intelligence, not only Eros and Agape but also Logos. I could see that the intricate organization both of the plants and of my own nervous system, like symphonies of branching complexity, were not just manifestations of intelligence---as if things like intelligence and love were in themselves substances or formless forces. It was rather that the pattern itself is intelligence and is love, and this somehow in spite of all its outwardly stupid and cruel distortions.


André A. Pais "The agent behind every action is itself action".

Great insight.5ManageLikeShow more reactions · Reply · 2wJohn Tan Therefore it is the action that knows, no knower.9ManageLikeShow more reactions · Reply · 2w

Labels: Alan Watts, Anatta, Books and Websites Recommendations, Maha 0 comments | |

Shargrol
A fun game to play is to look at all tough emotions as they are the "ending" not the "beginning". So for example, let's say I'm using my coffee addiction as practice domain. I could look at each coffee craving as the beginning of a problem, something that will in the future get worse and worse, until I either snap or succeed. That's a lot of pressure to put oneself through on the arising of a single craving. Alternative I could look at each coffee craving as the release or ending of one craving in merely a finite number of cravings. Then each hard craving feeling is a good thing, a great thing to happen because it means I'm getting closer to my goal. It's just a change in mindset but it significantly reduces the interim suffering.     Long before I had names for what I was doing, ( my time on this forum has expanded my vocabulary immensely), I broke habits and addictions using the breathing technique. I realize now that there was a lot of noting involved also. The first addiction was to cigarettes and later to marijuana. The process was to calmly observe the progression of the appearance of the urge, its development in the body/mind (anxiety, fidgeting etc.), and the release when I gave in. After long practice it was like watching an old movie. I knew exactly what the plot was. The next step was to allow the urge to pass away. It's been decades since I smoked either substance. The concept of “this moment is it” is the important ingredient. Then there is no struggle involved. When this is known, it's all a process of looking at what is and accepting it. This is the source of our power over circumstances, the ability to act right. And by the way, I wouldn't trade the high of THIS IS IT for any kind of intoxication.

Again I have a small quibble with language. The realization of "this is it" or what I call "is" is not a high unless it has just been uncovered, and that feeling of elation fades pretty quickly. It's basic sanity, a way of perceiving the universe, of seeing how the mind works.

Sorry, Angel, but I think the way we describe these things matters. Feel free to think I'm nit-picking.

What I call "high" is the natural gladness, joy, and happiness that arises from being in the moment. What  Daniel has called "it" in this tread. This is an ongoing reality.  Getting it, the recognition that this is true is what causes the awe inspiring impression that people think is THE GREAT EVENT.  This great event comes and goes like everything else. What remains is practice inspired and fueled by the certainty,( if the recognition is true) of a different way of being in the world.

I'm quite certain we agree on the fundamentals. 

I'm sure we do, as anyone that practices well should. I surmise that Daniel had this same intention of clarifying language when he started this post. We can only hope for a future where there is a definitive language, perhaps based on science, that is unequivocal.

Is the dark night it, or does the dark night recede once it is seen ? Or neither because it is now and I'm not feeling very dark ?

   I drink coffee and smoke marijuana all the time (cheers!) but I am not aware of any cravings. Perhaps I extinguish them each sip and toke. One day perhaps I can no longer toke and sip and that will extinguish them too.

   Yes, this is nibbana, pawel. Each moment arises, rests momentarily, and passes away. Spark, flame, puff of smoke. Now you see it, now you don't. Form precedes and follows emptiness, emptiness precedes and follows form. Beating heart, breathing lungs. The living god. Resurrection; oblivion.

"Verily! In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the alternation of night and day, there are indeed signs for men of understanding." Qu'ran 3:190

   Listening to the body only goes so far. The body loves its endorphins and in pursuit of happiness likes to eat, have sex, and sleep. The mind is capable of discipline and restraint, imposing them on the body. A healthy body responds to its rider with willing loyalty and the steadiness of long training.  Lay down, beast. Sit, roll over, play dead. Smile and give welcome to brothers and sisters.

   Yes, this is it. Alan Watts wrote a book called, "This Is It." Recently the paris review said of this book, quoting watts:

The title essay is about a spiritual but concrete experience that Watts calls “cosmic consciousness,” something that has happened in varying degrees to people since the beginning of time. It’s basically a “vivid and overwhelming certainty that the universe, precisely as it is at this moment, as a whole and in every one of its parts, is so completely right as to need no explanation or justification beyond what it simply is … The experience has a tendency to arise in situations of total extremity or despair, when the individual finds himself without any alternative but to surrender himself entirely.” 

   The experiencer disappears, cosmic consciousness arises. Cosmic consciousness disappears, the experiencer arises. Ya just can't have your cake and eat it too. As omar khayyam has it, "Take the Cash and let the Credit go."

   The focus on the body in meditation is just a technique, a trick to keep the mind from wandering off in fantasy, that is memory and its attendants, past and future.

   Ultimately it is about control, as in you don't have any. Accept that and be free.

terry


​​​​​​​
“Imagine that the keeper of a huge, strong beast notices what makes it angry, what it desires, how it has to be approached and handled, the circumstances and the conditions under which it becomes particularly fierce or calm, what provokes its typical cries, and what tones of voice make it gentle or wild. Once he's spent enough time in the creature's company to acquire all this information, he calls it knowledge, forms it into a systematic branch of expertise, and starts to teach it, despite total ignorance, in fact, about which of the creature's attitudes and desires is commendable or deplorable, good or bad, moral or immoral. His usage of all these terms simply conforms to the great beast's attitudes, and he describes things as good or bad according to its likes and dislikes, and can't justify his usage of the terms any further, but describes as right and good the things which are merely indispensable, since he hasn't realised and can't explain to anyone else how vast a gulf there is between necessity and goodness.”


― Plato, The Republic
   
   

Terry wrote

"I drink coffee and smoke marijuana all the time (cheers!) but I am not aware of any cravings."

..then..

"The body loves its endorphins and in pursuit of happiness likes to eat, have sex, and sleep."

Other people would get upset about this, but I'm OK with it.

"There is another kind of nibbana where experiences "extinquish" as soon as they happen without karmic trace. nibbana = extinquishing in Pali language. "

funny how Kenneth Folk doesn't see that as Nibbana but instead only calls Nibbana the utter absence of consciousness AKA Cessation. 

Could it be that Kenneth haven't yet experienced that which you and Ingram
describe as another kind of Nibbana aka This is It? 
Shame he doesn't post here anymore. 

KF seems to see This Is It as exactly that in its simplest form; Meaning whatever that is; just an itch, just a worry, just an abosorption, just a touch, just relaxed, just pain ...
Basic Satipatthana really. 

No requirement to have an attainment either. Or special states. Or have equanimity not appreciation or acceptance either. 

In that moment of realisation of This Is It there is no pondering really but just pure naked Satipatthana seeing/feeling/sensing/smelling/touching/tasting/thinking. And it can have any feeling flavor, which also "is" (to use Chris's term as I can relate to that one as well and might describe it better than "it"). 

Howevet I do thank you shargrol for sharing your other meaning of Nibbana. Seems like a conscious experience non the less. Right? 

It certainly seem like a good experience to get/develop as an intervention to suffering. Big question though; Is it permanent? 

You see KF admits that he "gets the joke" (aka this is it) from time to time then looses it. In that case if there is struggle he would go back to good plain old Satipatthana. Mindfulness to the fore and ... lemme see ... what is going on here ... seeing, touching, tension, etc ... 
KF talks about Awakening not being free from the law of Anicca. It ain't permanent. Can't have it, can't own it. 


 
"That's a lot of pressure to put oneself through on the arising of a single craving. Alternative I could look at each coffee craving as the release or ending of one craving in merely a finite number of cravings. Then each hard craving feeling is a good thing, a great thing to happen because it means I'm getting closer to my goal. It's just a change in mindset but it significantly reduces the interim suffering. "

Ha! I like this one!!! Thank you , will try use it from now on! 

P.s. take anything I say with a grain of salt! 

Hey Terry, nothing wrong with your choices. I wouldn't mind taking a puff of marijuana now that it's decriminalized.  In my times, when I was a full blown pothead I would buy it by the pound. That meant going into violent high-crime areas. I would strap on my gun and take the chances.  One curious thing I discovered was that if I really concentrated and my thinking stopped all that was left was a humming vibration like I was standing under high voltage lines. No fun in that. The Looney Toons of my mind were much more interesting.

 @ shargrol
Good one. You get +1 dharma karma points for this post
And -1 normal karma points for violation of basic human rights by denying your neurons (who technically are human beings cause they have human DNA) their morning coffee!

@ Papa
Nibbana I am referring to is something you have to focus on and technicality of it aside for the moment (rest assured it will happen, and soon... very soon. Neurons will come ) it does exactly what blip cessation does, just on lesser scale not causing any large scale effects but otherwise feels and is the same. I mean it feels like fruition afterglow, just one which can be experienced any time you want. It is not permanent in sense that it happens on its own but you can always focus on it and cause it. In all life situations and it makes everything better. Also improves clarity and cognition, especially later revision from further than 1st paths.

And technically if you focus on experience you just had and it is already done you actually bother (at least some of) these neurons which were responsible for creating this perception and if anything can be told about neurons is that they get tired very fast. I tested it both ways and dukkha can be had so quickly by repeatedly activating neurons you would not believe. In normal operation neurons work in turns but how much they change depends on many factors. To improve this change rate you can focus (it has to be specific focus, one which increase action potential but not enough to on its own trigger them, just a little) on resting neurons instead of perception and then from within these when there will be need to have active neurons the neurons will get active. If you always focus on these resting neurons you completely avoid dukkha caused by abusing neurons, especially since there cannot be too much active neurons in the nervous system at the same time (power limits, activation of parts which activate other parts for given type of task (though it can be actually override, the trick I learned last year ), etc.)

Now cessation/fruition is an event where consciousness falls on to Nibbana and this resets all sort of active pathways and for path fruitions also creates/opens new pathways. Imho it is enough similar to what focusing on Nibbana already does. This is the best candidate to THIS that people talk about.

Also it is not focusing on end of sensations as in shargrol's example though I do not think he meant this second type of Nibbana is about focusing at the end of sensations specifically but merely used this type of focus as an easy (relatively ) to follow example. Hopefully. End of sensation kinda works but actually it is more focusing on... IT... I guess. I call this Nibbana though in spirit of Buddhadharma.

That said as I mentioned focus is rather special. Worth mentioning is that this focus pre-programs activity cycle of neurons so there are differences in how Nibbana feels like when I use focus from 1st path vs. something like focus from 4th with different behavior or nervous system parts which undergo 'passing away' which can also affects cognitive performance and hence increased trust we have in using Nibbana over falling back to older ways. Even at fist path it always worked to eliminate dukkha and the only dukkha I did experience was those cases I was doubting it. After my doubt fell away I do not remember much if any dukkha.

Also THIS that Daniel points to when he says THIS IS IT probably has as much his own mind in it as any THIS or IT or Nibbana that anyone says when they point to these things despite technically it being the same kind of thing and it imho has name Nibbana. The whole paths are like revision of software during which we also get required trust in these things. It at first is always like "yeah, this thing feels so good but look, there comes action which require high focus so I will do it the old way because I am not sure if I even can complete such complex activity being blessed out by focusing on THIS" and this is the main issue why enlightenment of first paths is not bulletproof. If I was completely and utterly trusting Nibbana I had after I got 1st path always in 100% situations then it might not be as cognitively efficient as what I later on revised it to become but it would still eliminate all dukkha. This would be as good as being done when it comes to dukkha. It would be already IT. This is of course in ideal world and in real world things like trust take time and improvements. 4th path versions (literally 4th version of this algorithm, note: it might take a lot of insight/refinement cycles) are simply more efficient and more trustworthy hence the typical case is that once you get to something you feel you can trust even your life with (like you do not consider "the way I always did it in the past" but trust Nibbana even when it comes to matters related to your life, health or life/health of your family/friends) which is around 4th version then you just use it at all times.

BTW. Where is Kenneth anyway? Last time he posted from what I remember was when people sent him to Buddhist hell. Did he actually take the challenge?

In regard to Kenneth Folk: he's still doing his thing, but mainly on Twitter these days. His dharma continues to evolve. When I think of Kenneth, I think of change - as in "the many dharmas of Kenneth Folk."

I can tell from all the banter going on that you all have been having an ongoing conversation for a long time. For a noob like me, though, can someone perhaps share some clarification on what seems like a sudden about-face?

To me, "this is it" is precisely the language and teaching that I am most familiar with from the neo-advaita circles I've been running in. The technique that people are most commonly teaching to facilitate that kind of realization (when they teach a technique at all) is some kind of relaxation in to the present moment in a very open, receptive, and non-doing kind of way.

On the contrary, the vibe I get from @danielmingram and this whole forum — with all of the noting and maps and stages and progress — is the complete opposite of "this is it." It seems there's very much a "somewhere else" to strive to get to, or least a "some of other way of seeing this in order to know that it's it" that need to be cultivated.  

I am a big fan of "this is it" and know very little about MCTB-style practice. Please help me to understand your position on this: are these two paths leading to the same goal? And is there any clear advantage to one type of technique over the other? I'm asking this out of genuine curiosity. Thanks!

 I can tell from all the banter going on that you all have been having an ongoing conversation for a long time. For a noob like me, though, can someone perhaps share some clarification on what seems like a sudden about-face?

To me, "this is it" is precisely the language that I am most familiar with from the neo-advaita and eclectic spirituality circles I've been running in. The technique that people are most commonly teaching to facilitate that kind of realization (when they teach a technique at all) is some kind of relaxation into the present moment in a very open, receptive, and non-doing kind of way.

On the contrary, the vibe I get from @danielmingram's work and this whole forum — with all of the noting and maps and stages and progress — is the complete opposite of "this is it." It seems there's very much a "somewhere else" to get to, or least a "some of other way of seeing this in order to know that it's it" that needs to be cultivated.  

My own experience has been all about "this is it" and I know very little about MCTB-style meditation practice. Please help me to understand your position on this: are doing and non-doing two paths leading to the same goal? And is there any clear advantage to one type of technique over the other? I'm asking this out of genuine curiosity, and in the interests of conversation. Thanks!
 

I love this thread; I've learned so much. Shargrol knocks it out once again (nothing woo-woo about "body-mind" IMHO, I think it's an important linguistic habit we should get into to reinforce the non-dual nature of body-mind identity! ;-] )

"This moment" is such a slippery term. I mean, we see all these little discrete packets of data and go, "yep, this moment is real", and then whoosh, it's gone, but still around... But even slipperier is the fact that as soon as I began to apprehend the beginning's beginning, it was already over (thus, at the beginning's end, but that's gone too). How crazy is that? It turns out our mind builds time from what it experiences and then hides the blueprints away. I guess meditation is locating the blueprint and seeing it, even for a microsecond. It removes a lot of pressure about life, a lot of stress and suffering we place on ourselves. Because we're constantly stuck in this neverending loop of "Okay, if I do X by time Y, I'll get Z" or "Right now I'm feeling X, but once I get Y, I'm gonna feel Z". So it's this loop of being totally bound by time (planning) and being totally absorbed by magical thinking of timelessness (stability). Once you see that pattern working, you can simply rest in it, knowing that either assumption is correct. Impenetrable, yet inescapable... That's the non-dual way of seeing it, in the words I've found so far to fit what I'm saying. It's a very humbling insight, actually. When I really hone into this way of seeing, the phenomenology lines up perfectly with MCTB's rapid strobing lights (dizzyingly quick, 30+ per second), so I think I've had a glimpse close enough to know what's up here... 

But just to relate this to modern psychology, because I'm very interested in bridging the gap between psychology and spiritual development.... A funny little thing I've learned in my psychology studies is how bad we are at "Affective Forecasting", which is when humans try to guess what they'll feel, when, and how long, based on circumstances. It turns out we're extremely bad at guessing how long our feelings will last (positive or negative); we're very, very terrible at truly knowing how transient our body-mind sensations are. We overestimate by a huge margin. It's shocking. But we're good at guessing what we'll feel. I think the impermanence insight of Vipashyana really gets at the heart of affective forecasting, but at the deepest possible level, and the "fastest" time possible -- actually, by eradicating a lot of our time assumptions, we see just how truly bad we were. We're not even close, not in the same league, like, we think we're playing baseball and stepping up to the plate, but in reality, we're still in grade school daydreaming about playing the game. Gosh, this can really have a nihilistic turn to it if you're still inclined to "main character syndrome" or any sort of narcissistic magical thinking inclinations.

It sometimes still gets me down that there's no real escape from it all other than just resting in the illusion of it all, and being content with it all... Kinda dull really. There's still a wish that my mind could break out of all of "this" and just be truly free... I guess that the ​​​​​​​paradox of it all.... 

Hi PS,

What you ask about the end goal is a huge topic, but a much more approachable conversation is about the tools involved. Probably, Kenneth Folk's Three Speed Transmition is still the implicit pragmatic model regarding meditative tools, where you can see how and when each of them are most useful. Once you read that (it's a very short text), in the following paragraphs you can see what is/used to be the standard progression & interplay of meditation techniques/strategies, related to the MCTB/KF 1st to 4th Paths.

Mumuwu (awakenetwork.org): 

- 1st Gear will take you through all of the insight stages. It can also be used to develop jhanas via shamatha in order to reach higher jhanas for third path. Generally, the first 2 paths are attained via 1st gear practices alone.

- 2nd Gear is often used post 2nd path in order to flush out the higher jhanas (using the riding the jhanic arc via the witness technique). This will help in attaining 3rd path.

- 3rd Gear can be used at any stage, and I think it's a big part of attaining 4th path (as it's all about "realizing that the happiness you seek is your own true nature and it is only your attempt to become or to create or to investigate that distracts you from seeing this.") 

Here, Shargrol suggesting different tools for 1st Path. See how they related to KF's 3GT. Also check the next two entries, as they are on topic.

More on the Three Speed Transmition, and in particular about Kenneth's take on "This is it".

Also, Kenneth Folk's old website texts, where you can find an expanded version of the three gears and much more. 

Finally, some of Daniel Ingram's entries on the topic:

- Pros and Cons of goal-oriented and non goal-oriented traditions
- Vajrayana and Theravadan perspectives can work nicely together, with some caveats though
- For the vast majority of people, the teachings of the immediate, spontaneous realizers don't do it
- Direct Pointing work for very few, without years of practice
- Downsides and Benefits of a Number of Traditions: Daniel long response to Omega Point
- About an Ultimate Reality  
- By 'Ultimate' I mean the Three Characteristics 
- An Ultimate Reality: an historical report on the evolution of my understanding on the subject



 

[Replying to ps, didn't read Pepe's post first.]

My take: there's a quite well-established set of mental states/experiences/events you need to go through which you expect/hope/think/try to convince yourself are it. These include but are not limited to A&P/ecstatic states, deity stuff maybe, equanimity, cessations, spaciousness, awareness/consciousness, emptiness, simplistic non-duality, simplistic rigpa/natural mind/ground of being. Likely I've missed some and not everyone needs to go through all of them (or maybe they do but they don't realize they did). But anyway, each time they think this is it and then some time passes and they realize they are still dissatisfied, still looking for something, that wasn't it. That's the kind of path/stages/maps thing.

​​​​​​​Eventually you've run through enough of these states and expectation-elation-disappointment cycles that the mind gives up on craving for imagined future states to solve its fundamental problem, and then the true realization hits - 'oh shit this really is already it, always was, always will be, no alternatives, nowhere else to go, what an idiot I've been overlooking this for so long in favor of shiny looking substitutes!'

​​​​​​The problem is ... anyone can say 'this is it' at any point and it sells well and there's no way of telling if they had the true realization or not. Because while it seeing it changes everything, it doesn't necessarily change anything externally (immediately at least) ... because this is already it! Obviously there are changes in morality and concentration over time which tend to be correlated with insight, but it's by no means perfect because they can be developed independently or outright faked and are hard to verify.

The most reliable indicator is dukkha. If someone is still dissatisfied with this or still has doubts about it then eventually it will show up. But that can take a long time if they are in denial about it or heavily invested in the business of selling water by the bank of the river. So it's a kind of waiting game to see who fucks up. And then even when they do fuck up, they say it was just thisness manifesting and their disciples still cling to them.

So there's no point having views about 'this is it' based on other people's reported experiences. It's something that only you can know and experience for yourself, and you will know for sure when it's the real thing. If someone looks like they might know what they are talking about and has some practical tips, then no harm giving it a try, but caveat emptor!

To answer your question specifically, a certain amount of neo-advaita looks to me like "simplistic non-duality" (shargrol's term, with apologies), where someone is clinging to non-duality and it's impossible to even have a reasonable conversation with them about anything (I was one of those for a while). When they start preaching in strenuous tones about oneness or wholeness or whatever, alarm bells should start ringing. "True non-duality" recognizes that apparent duality is already non-dual, so this is it as well :-) There's no overriding need to relax into the present moment once you are secure and content in the knowledge that this is no less it even when you are not relaxed and distracted as well ... 

Having basic understanding/experience of True-Self/non-duality that Ramana Maharshi spoke of I would say that this THIS IS IT is somewhere between True-Self and Nibbana while all of these are still exactly the same realization/enlightenment and the differences being rather superficial and mostly in entry point and certain algorithms or patterns nervous system uses as the result of carrying them from the entry points.

I mentioned in post I made yesterday describing this from nervous system perspective that it is all about scheduling new pathways to do work instead of old ones and this can be done in many ways with many and the same issues will be happening at first regardless of which school or tradition or background you come from and the same basic changes and trust in it has to happen in all of them in order for us to be comfortable in using these enlightened mindsets instead of old already tested unenlightened ones.

THIS IS IT when Daniel describes it I imagine is a kind of extract of common characteristics of this whole thing. Nibbana in its basic form is result of Buddha trying to find some solution that is beyond Samsara through technical practices and True-Self is penetrating true nature of sense of self, of own inner being. On the same note I would describe experiences of St. John of the Cross when he spoke about experiences of God, it is again the same thing while being in some ways completely different.

BTW. In my posts I concentrate on mundane part of all of this. For all intents and purposes it is enough. It however naturally extends in mysterious ways to super-mundane reality but truth be told the issues there are exactly the same. In other words the universe's own vajra threads of reality (or chains of connections between tensor networks if you will) are as much able to be bothered with too much activity as their physical manifestations in form of neurons tend to be and the same rules of engagement apply and the same changes in handling nervous system apply as well. It is however not very pragmatic and not very Buddhist to clump and confuse various aspects of our experiential reality so I tend to keep these separate in order to not lead myself or anyone else to needless confusion. I mention this because not mentioning this might in fact lead to confusion. Most people feel or even know there is something to super-mundane and might find 100% nervous system interpretation hard to swallow. But as I said, this is just one of the parts of equation and being its own separate system with easy to study (thus also known) issues it is perfect sandbox to understand the essence of enlightenment.

Yep. I call it disentangling, and it certainly involves lots of popping. My body-mind does it intuitively when I lie down and surrender to the awakening process. Sometimes it moves into different restorative yoga poses. I also find it helpful to notice subtler and subtler layers of positionings that come together with any subtle sense of a doing. Lots to uncover there before I can honestly say that "This is it" is my default mode. 

It seems like the opposite of "this is it" until it doesn't. 

The wording "this is it" is a huge dharma Rorschach test. 

+1

​​​​​​​

This is ... a butterfly?! 

​​​​​​​It's definitely a bat!

"The wording "this is it"  "

Ah yes now I see where the confusion is!!! 

"this IS it" is the correct one! as in Chris's simple "is". 
"This is IT" is the misleading one as it points to some "it" as in an attainment of sorts or what have you. That would be shargrol's case (of course)! 

"this is it" is just plain confusing Linda me dear! 
As in your case we can't tell if to focus on THIS or IS or IT! 

​​​​​​​  

stick: I am concerned with sleeping, eating and havin g sex. Just say no. And drugs, I take no phamaceuticals or supplements. I grow my own pot and have for many years. I trade jewelry for my coffee from a local grower. It's local culture, bra. Not fattening, not home wrecking, not lazy. Societal dues can be paid if required, so long as the spirit doesn't sufffer. I'm like alice, pot is one side of the mushroom and coffee the other; keeps my height adjusted. Six inches was so wretched, after all, whatever the caterpillar said.

george: you have it right... this is it...just do it...the true dharma is inexpressible...those who don't express it know it implicitly and express it implicitly...as the yi jing says, "the superior man displays his intelligence by keeping it hidden..."

stefan: we are bad at forecasting, judging, assessing, etc, but paradoxically good at coping...sonething about trusting our instincts and letting go frees us from conventional restraints and allows creative interaction beyond anything calculable...

​​​​​​​t

And a Kenny Loggins song.

PS I love you (a reference to the SpaceX barge?) --


They are two very different methods of practice that intend to get you to the same "place." The so-called "direct" method of just dropping the chattering mind and being "right here, right now" (Zen, for example) gets you to the goal by helping you ignore and eventually drop the chatter. The MCTB/Vipassana method is intended to take you through a more intricate path, step by step, wherein you will come to understand the chattering mind and come to accept it, even celebrate it, and thus reach that same place

Both can lead to what is being called here a "This is it" level of realization, which when described in more words is what Daniel said in post #1 here: we live inside a very small reference frame, where all things arise with natural perfection on their own, are without any special nature, without hierarchy, and all of which arise and pass outside of the chattering mind's urges and stories about pasts and futures.

I love this explanation! 

Yeah, this is wonderfully put. 

I was thinking the other day actually, about rumination/fantasising versus contemplation. I have a sneaking hypothesis that fantasising (future possibilities) and rumination (past-focused worrying) are kind of like corrupted Jhana-states. After all, Jhanas are kind of like refuges for the mind to "escape" or "transcend" the banality of existence (thus the fetter model looks to eliminate fine-grained existence fetter, which Jhanas are a part of, I believe) just like rumination/fantasy are. So, the meditator develops good Jhana, and may get addicted to them as an escape or to ease the pain of existence. While, the non-meditator uses less wholesome states to avoid the same things. 

My hypothesis is informed by two factors: 
1. Jhana (wholesome) fantasy/rumination (unwholesome) are very absorptive. They "suck" the mind into this frame and are very sticky and hard to shake off once they're set in. Obviously, Jhana is harder to cultivate, because it requires navigating this labyrinth filled with unwholesome traps and pitfalls. But the essential phenomenology of absorption is very similar. In fact, rumination/fantasy do have a pleasurable component in them, in that they cushion the blow of whatever is happening now. 
2. They're both practiced. We're not really born ruminators or fantasisers. They're adaptations to reality. In cognitive psych, it's referred to as "maladaptive daydreaming" or "maladaptive rumination". Where the person in question has developed this habit as a response to certain stressful stimuli. I see parallels here to stories of "Jhana Junkies" who end up getting high off their own supply, and become "maladaptive Jhana journeymen". 

I thought I'd share this here, given that it does relate to some of the deeper parts about "this moment" and the coping strategies our minds work with. Some are better than others, but they're related -- two sides of the same coin (at least in my thinking so far).

Nice angle, makes a lot of sense.

"maladaptive Jhana journeymen" ... one for the phrase book :-)

Me too. Very well put.

And I believe that regardless of approach, coming to that space of being truly aware of the this that is, so to speak, is more fundamental than just giving up the search. If there is denial of large parts of what is going on, the this that is aware is not it. Not all of it anyway. And there's probably a lot of this that is projected into something that it is not. 

That said, I find that the practice is it, insofar as it's liberation in itself. As terry said, the path is the goal. I don't need to go anywhere with it. What I need is to make the practice last non-stop. I'm still struggling with that. 

Yes, I believe they are coping strategies that we have developed for the sake of survival and they tend to kick in way too often. We have probably inherited tendencies for that to develop through evolution or karma, but we learn to develop them. It's not qualitatively different from dissociation, as I understand it, which is basically narrow sets of coping mechanisms that sort of live their own life compartmentalized from immediate presence. 

I'm not sure I would compare it with Jhana like that, but I think I get your point and agree at least partly. The jhanas in the arch, at least when held strongly, are all compartmentalized mindstates. I'm not sure I'm using words adequately here, but please bear with me. There has to be some separation going on there with lots of aspects of the moment being shut out. I'd say that when you are totally convinced that there is nothing there but space, for instance, you've got to be missing something. Space is a relative thing. It has absolutely no meaning in itself. Or when there is total certainty that all that is there is Nothingness, and there is still certainty about the Nothingness. That's some tunnel vision, right? 

Linda what is the difference between "aware" and "truly aware"  

also you wrote;
"moment being shut out"
Ha! Is that even possible (if we assume we are conscious and not in cessation, heavily sedated or dead)
Can you explain a bit more what would be a "moment not shut out" and "moment shut out". 

Only if you have the energy to answer it otherwise please do feel free to ignore my questions  

For me, recognizing that is impossible was the key to letting go of that need.

​​​​​​​

aloha linda,

   Space is often used as a metaphor for the whole enchilada because it is specifically not relative to anything. Like substance, it is ubiquitous. Infinite and eternal, as far as we can tell. Even "frames of reference"  are substantial and in space. All dharmas are conditioned, including this one. {"All generalities are false, including this one.")

   As for practice, by itself it is dualistic. What you need, so to speak, is a gut recognition that practice and non practice are not two. As stefan says, fantasy and jhana are two sides of the same coin, like nirvana and samsara. When I meditate the two invariably succeed each other in the act of clarification. "The passions are enlightenment" zen tells us. We practice ourselves into oblivion. Form becomes emptiness. Or as the sufis say, quoting the hadith, "die before you die."

terry



john 12:24

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

Thank you for the kind words George... I'm for sure keeping in the phrasebank when I develop some sort of long manuscript entitled "Cognitive Meditation: Psycho-Spiritual Development" in the distant future trying to bridge the gap between psychology and spirituality that hopefully upsets both meditation purists and psychology purists. 

Dissociation is a really big can of worms. I really like Shinzen's phrase "dissociation is the evil twin of Shunyata realisation". And,  I think it really does hold up. Meditation teaches one to dis-identify with any one sensation as being "me" or "mine", while at the same time, seeing them all as part of this ever-changing dancing kaleidoscope. This perspective is non-dual and paradoxical to the hyper-rational categorical minds of the current (and most) zeitgeists). It's stuff people naturally start to realise only in their old age (70+ years). I feel as if artists find this stuff out very early in their lives too. Something about blending the universal-archetypal with the specific and personal that hits home about the transience of any one sensation, but realising at the same time that there is no self but the now, and no now but the self (the old adage, "wherever you go, there you are". 

Dissociation is not really learned, from my experience with it in clinical settings. It's very reactive. It's a built-in stress response to seeing something above our "emotional paygrade". Emotionally, it's like letting some starry-eyed naive kid harping on about world peace into the Pentagon and read all their classified documents on the Cold War and post-9/11 white papers. The mind has built-in expectations or thresholds for the weight which it can lift, and dissociation is like the mental muscle snapping under that burden and partitioning off sensations away from "host consciousness" experience. Interestingly, those that have more social connectivity in their lives are less prone to PTSD and dissociation, which I think further highlights this emotional burdensomeness; our minds gain strength from other minds. It's like a weird fusion dance they do, subconsciously. Mere exposure to other people seems to do the trick. Definitely something in the neuroendocrine system (cortisol/hippocampus/opioid neural circuits if I had to place a bet). Anyways, I'm not sure how to fit dissociation into the meditation model so far, the only thing I can see is that meditation tends to unify the mind, so any minor dissociation you'd see in non-clinical people tends to get healed -- perhaps the whole Dark Night phenomenon is this process of taking a peak what the mind-muscle couldn't lift properly, integrating it into the kaleidoscope and seeing its non-me-ness (empty) nature. 

How this all relates to Jhana? Well, dissociation is the splitting of consciousness, Jhana is unifying. I think rumination/fantasy is unifying too. It takes a lot of brainpower to make a nice vivid fantasy, or to map out how scenarios in the past could have played out if "I just changed this one little thing". The mind tends to coalesce around these things. As you brilliantly stated, Jhana just refines this state into very compartmentalized ways of experiencing reality but without dissociating from any of the stuff that's siloed away for the experience. There could be a relation here too... Again, probably goes back to the whole Emptiness/Shunyata evil twin paradigm. You've given me a lot to think over here, I'm very grateful for your comment. Hopefully, there's a nugget of interestingness buried in this verbal diarrhea. You really got my noggin' joggin', thank you!

Thanks George. These two replies of yours are super helpful.

​​​​​​​This comment is pretty much where I've been and why I'm here:

shargrol wrote;   "
"this is all there IS, ever. no other past or future world" was the bone-deep realization.  
"

Indeed. However let's try and put this into the sensate experience instead of a philosophical statement  

We can also say in a more practical way like "This moment of Satipatthana is all there Is, ever! No past or future worlds". 

As in, this moment of clearly comprehanding Satipatthana (be it sharp or dull, or zoomed in or out, low energy or high energy, absorption or not, or whatever) there is nothing other but right This. Even the thinking of past and future is but known as "thinking" right Now. Even the sense of Self is not to be found in the moment of Satipatthana. As soon that light is shining on the experience the sense of self vanishes. Can't exist without Ignorance. 

I think it's important not to abstract This too much and put in a practical frame so one can easier relate to it. What can I do about it? Satipatthana is the answer. 

Would you agree that even that "bone-deep realization" is but another construct, just another experience, just like an itch or hearing. 
There literally ain't a single thing in this samsaric consciousness which can be better or more important than any other conscious construct. 

And I'm not saying here that there is no work to be done when it comes to our reactivity of course Suff is unfolding due to circumstances watering karmic seeds waiting to sprout into action. 

Also I do agree that perception and perceiving of construct experiences can become more and more deep and sound more and more fancy with more practice. I'm sure we can't even get close to the experiences of an 8-dimensional being! It would likely blow our brains off (or should I say our neurons off). 

Better this: everything is a construct. It's how we see the world. Whatever source underlies our mind's construction of our experience, we can never know it directly. Only through our senses as mediated by the mind.



​​​​​​​

IS in an interesting investigation, do we need to recognize THIS IS or is THIS already is-ing without any second step?

IT is an interesting investigation. Does THIS need to be turned into an IT through effort or skill? Or is THIS already IT because THIS can't change into anything else, because it already is what it already is. 

Focus is an interesting investigation. Does THIS need to be focused on, or is THIS already the mind? Is THIS IS IT three things or just a way in english to say one thing?

"To focus" is an interesting investigation. Do we focus? Do we direct attention? It's an assumption that "I focus on..." needs to occur. What is this "I" that needs to focus? Isn't it just an identification with one part of experience? Isn't "I" just a mind-state that we are embedded in? Isn't "I" just an act of taking THIS and carving it up into self and world and identifying "I" with an aspect of self?

"I am confused" is an interesting investigation. You know you are confused, so is the "I" really confused? The I knows the mind is confused so "I" isn't confused.  Perhaps there is confusion, but this is not the I. Sitting with/in/as confusion is one of the most powerful things that can be done. Wisdom dawns as confusion.

Keep going. Practice is climbing a mountain, but the last step is to step off the mountain. Don't believe the confusion, doubt, shame, fear, worry, intellect, humor, energy, hunger, greed... Trust the knowing.


 

Daniel's post is about the end of the map. The end of the map is "this is it". A correlary is that until someone is honestly at the end of the map, "this isn't quite it, there is something else to notice". 

The whole neo-advaita thing is often confusing/pretending that someone is already done when they are not, giving them rote pointers, telling them to give up any effort, etc etc.

That said, really smart neo-advaita is a strategic pointing out when it's appropriate for the student and by a teacher that isn't working a scam.  (Unfortunately, one of those two conditions often fails to be met.)

(See also my new-ish post upthread)

I don't think I agree.

What does "just another experience" mean? It sounds like you are trying to make things equal. A classic pointer of the Buddha is things are not better, worse, or equal. Things are as they are. Equal is dismissive and re-introduces past and future. You can't have equal without bringing in ideas of time.

Another way to say it, playing with the idea of better/worse/same... is every experience is more important than everything else because that is why it is the experience. Notice how this points to clear experience in this moment as the important thing.  

So the honest exploration is: is there resistance to experience? if so, how does it appear? why does it appear? what belief seems to be behind the "why"? is this belief true?  This is of course a very intellectual way of saying it.

Closer to actual practice, it could be described as: is there resistance to experience? how does this resistance feel? can I allow the feeling of resistance? what is the experience of "not resisting the feeling of resisting"? can I rest in that experience? what is the experience of "neither indulging nor resisting experience"? can I rest in that experience? who am I when I rest this way? what am I when I rest this way?

 
That is a very bold statement

THIS IS IT sounds like pointing to the very knowing of source that underlies out mind's construction and knowing THIS / IT is knowing this very thing you just stated cannot be known. I would even argue this is the only thing that we do know!

Hence it is also the thing that is so confusing to know that it throws us in to some sort of feedback loop of knowing and not-knowing from which when we fall out off we then realize that we already know it and we do not need to know it any more than we already know it just by experiencing it.

Everyone who knows this also knows this roller-coaster and that it is unavoidable. And yet everyone seems like trying to make it easier for others by saying how obvious it should be. It is obvious but only when you break your back by falling off the dharma bull. Then it is super easy and obvious and then THIS IS IT. Not before the bull has his way with you

Anyhow, just having this realization doesn't mean one cannot have knowledge about these things. Like technical knowledge. I would even argue that having it prior to riding bulls might make the bull less crazy and let you off its back more gently. You still have to get on it and the fun thing about dharma bull is that is not easily impressed... so I wouldn't put my bets on any knowledge (especially given by someone else which includes mandatory 1000% error caused by not understanding of what has been really said) and just buckle up preparing for the wo... best
 

Ok. You got me thinking here ... 

There seems to be uncertainty on my part so ... I guess I ought to investigate it some more. 

Thank you! 
Yes I read your newish post also. Lemme sink into it. 

You're confusing two separate and distinct things. The "reality" that underlies what we experience, that causes our senses to fire, is one (and is not knowable), and the "this is it" experience of our moment to moment experience is another (and is knowable). I hope you aren't going to try argue that our experience is not a second-order, unmediated process. I hope you were just trying to catch me with a "gotcha."



I hope this helps!

​​​​​​​

"I was driving home at 2am or so after a brief late-night post-work workout at a little 24-hour gym on my way home, and, just after I pulled out of the parking lot and onto the rural highway, it suddenly felt like this veil that I had never noticed was pulled off of my head, and suddenly the full field of experience shown in all its unbridled, direct glory, the glory I had seen in the best of the PCEs, but this time with no obvious going back, at least so far, with this being written in September of 2013. Remember how there was that thing I called the Attention Wave? It seemed totally gone, so far as I could tell. Remember the pristine clarity of field that had so called to me? It shone in everything and still does."

Still going strong ?
Also, is there any sense (for peoples trying it) in which AF is a return to childhood simplicity and freshness ?

And for a moment there I thought it was a Wild Turkey  

I'll admit that elaborated explanations of the process involved in understanding reality leave me flabbergasted. I've always seen the process as very simple although difficult to put in practice. The effort is basically to “see” what the unchangeable self is. I believe all techniques that require concentration are presenting the opportunity to understand that objects change but the ability to observe them doesn't and that no effort is needed to observe, it's a natural process. The problem is that we have an explanatory tendency. Even clear awareness has to be given a name and, of course, objects have to be elaborated and explained. I find a good explanation of this cycle here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKNiCMrd3nU

I like to say that experience is involuntary, and leave it at that 

   I think shargrol is on to something with the idea of resistances to 'this is it' being the ongoing nature of our "experience" of reality, aka "the path" and the essence of practice. (Perhaps a stretch but that is what I got out f it.)

   Dogen's entire career centered on the question, "if this is it, why do we have to practice?" And while he never gave a snappy answer to this koan, he did observe that "to know the self is to forget the self." Also, "practice is enlightenment." Dogen would have been the first to point out that any of these phrases may be taken out of context and dualistically. If they don't point o a subtle and inexpressible "truth" you don't know wjat they are saying.

  Ego is resistance to a non-self awareness of vivid intimacy with all of nature-and-environment, aka body-mind. Resistance is dentification with one's social conditioning. I, me, mine. My enjoyment, my enlightenment comes first, my children are special, my freedom is important etc etc. Because I am special I can consume more than others and it is ok. Once "I" am gone the world can go its merry way to immediate extinction for all I care.  Who needs vaccines? I'm healthy, let the old people die, more for me. And on and on...

   Pcd said "There literally ain't a single thing in this samsaric consciousness which can be better or more important than any other conscious construct." You might have done better to have stooped at "there literally isn't a single thing" but once you admit to things, they certainly vary in importance. In the thing-verse, we have an 8fold path in which the right speech, livelihood etc are indicated.  Moral standards may vary but human conceptions of justice, kindness and compassion are universal. One need only smile or sneer at someone to see this.

   The alan watts essay was specifically about lsd meets the philosophy and theology of alan watts. He had been conditioned to interpret his "experience" in a habitual (and prosey) way.  Alan developed this sort of thing into a schtick and made a living at it as a self-described "spiriitual entertainer," which paid for his houseboat in sausalito, his drugs, alcohol and his affairs. It may be missed here that daniel was not necessarily thinking along the same lines.

   "This is it," like the phrase "there is no god but god," can be deconstructed. As bill clinton once said, "it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is." Dice words up small enough and you are like the sufi story about the boy who dissected a fly: first he pulled the wings off, then the legs, then the head, then he looked at the pile of parts and wondered, where did the fly go? Just a pile of words.

   So, daniel said:


By "it", I mean:

1) The only thing going on in experience.
2) Utterly transient.
3) Utterly natural.
4) Utterly ungraspable and unstopable.
5) Utterly without anything that could even attempt to grasp or stop them.
6) Utterly immediate.
7) Utterly just as they are.
8) Utterly the immediate and perfect solution to their insight quest.

I'll only comment as a matter of form, simply for reinforcement:

1) One pearl in essence
2) A foot of water, a foot of wave
3) Your mind is buddha
4) No mind is buddha
5 The ox and the oxherder are both forgotten
6) The buddha in the garden
7) One who has thus come
8) A shit-covered stick


gassho, terry

Shargrol is always onto something.

My shortest explanation why this isn't the case that it cannot be known is:
This reality which makes senses fire is made from tensor networks and generates experiences or more precisely it is an ongoing experience. Experience itself is one, it is non-dual and also direct and immediate. There being one experience reality can be known fully through experience.
Tensor network is fancy name for phenomena which are empty of an inherent self or essence, but exist depending on other phenomena. I guess Buddha could not just use the term 'tensor network' because like his disciples he didn't have PhD in quantum physics.

This all comes down to if person is or isn't ready to deal with this stuff. It isn't necessary to do so, there is no relief in it. Despite broken back you have to get on to successively bigger, badder and madder dharma bulls until you ride whole underlying reality. At that point you must be mad yourself to do that because you do not need it. If you do however and keep on it then any delusion which might cling on to you will fall off you while riding the bull before you fall off the bull. You do not however loose chance to ride it again and while you do it you and reality are truly one. You know it and most of all the bull knows you and that is how you know it that this is the right bull. After a while it is like on these ox herding pictures, you end up as a bum

Hope that was not helpful because like I said this level of dharma is for crazies. Normal people when they are in they are in not for knowledge but for relief. The moment relief falls away just a little they quit because they fear they will get dispassionate toward relief and because they do not want that ever to happen they never look back... which at least solves issues that this particular relief caused hence it seems some issue was solved and this direction being off-limits it is something declared done. If someone does not understand this they should not worry that they don't. If someone does understand then they should start worrying ;)

I would say this is very close, but not quite right. For what it's worth (not much!):

1) I would suggest that what we eventually realize is that the effort is to see what the belief in an unchangable self is. 

2) And techniques that require concentration ultimately make us stumble on cessation at some point, and that non-experience is wonderful at showing us the ability to observe/being "the observer" isn't fixed... which typically leads to a newfound interest in the belief aspect of #1. 

     This may be true if you start out with a belief, as is true for most Buddhists. Many people have the experience of clear awareness without reference to any belief. This should not be surprising given that clear awareness is the background of all experience. Perceptions are received without effort, you hear a bird and just know it's a bird. There is no observer in this function, no action is necessary.      The shock in the recognition of this clear awareness comes from the loss, at the moment, of the mental operations we identify as our self. Buddhism provides a framework that prepares for this event and gives an explanation. But it also is motive for the debates about what the belief is, as you describe. Belief has nothing to do with knowing that we can work the mind when necessary or just rest and let it do what it does naturally, effortlessly. That belongs in the topic of wisdom.

There is no observer in this function, no action is necessary.  

Here's one difference that appears once in a while between the results of Mahayana's direct methods and Theravada's process-oriented, investigatory methods: to be experiencing anything requires an observer. It's how our human anatomy works. The "sense" of the observer can be very, very, very, very minimal, and at times it can seem as though there isn't one. But way deep down in the depths of our mechanisms of perception, there is a subject lurking that experiences an object. If we really get calm and still and look for this, it can be seen.

Don't get me wrong, the effect is the same - an experience (seemingly) without an observer.

Ignore this if you so choose 

I get what you're saying. There is a big difference in ME THE OBSERVER and some remanent of observation that remains even in the disappearance of self-reference.  Otherwise, how would we know what the experience was?  But theoretically, we can ascribe that to the illuminating quality of mind that can distinguish different perceptions without voluntary intervention, without the will to do so.  Like you said before "experience is involuntary".  Anyway, I like to keep things in the realm of effects.  I stand with Daniel in that, if whatever you think you know doesn't measure up to performance standards just keep on practicing.

WWDS? (What would Daniel say?)   

https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-v-awakening/37-models-of-the-stages-of-awakening/the-non-duality-models/

I might not be understanding the following point, so feel free to disregard my comment...

This is another idea worth investigating. Is there experience and then something that remains that becomes the knowing? What is the actual difference between the experience and knowing of experience? 

chris said:

There is no observer in this function, no action is necessary.  

Here's one difference that appears once in a while between the results of Mahayana's direct methods and Theravada's process-oriented, investigatory methods: to be experiencing anything requires an observer. It's how our human anatomy works. The "sense" of the observer can be very, very, very, very minimal, and at times it can seem as though there isn't one. But way deep down in the depths of our mechanisms of perception, there is a subject lurking that experiences an object. If we really get calm and still and look for this, it can be seen.

Don't get me wrong, the effect is the same - an experience (seemingly) without an observer.

Ignore this if you so choose  

unquote

-------------------

   False, by the law of economy, occam's razor. No need to postulate an observer. Thus, one does not exist.

   Try a little thought experiment: imagine you are wrong, and there is no observer, no experience. separate from an experiencer. How would you know?

   You don't.


   My thinking is that the self, aka "observer" or "experiencer" is an artefact, a consequence of rationalizing one's perceptions. A giant step away from actually participating in life. All experience is dualistic, and to realize this is to forget experiencing and reflection and just be here now.

   This as experienced isn't it. Talking and thinking about enlightenment are not enlightenment. One must be the listening, "this lone brightness here listening to the dharma." A thoughtless, relectionless unknown knower, tacitly accepted and unquestioned.

   If you look for it, all you will see is your reflection, not the mirror itself.


terry



​​​​​​​
take a giant step   
(geffen, king)

Though you've played at love and lost
And sorrow's turned your heart to frost
I will melt your heart again.
Remember the feeling as a child
When you woke up and morning smiled
It's time you felt like you did then.
There's just no percentage in remembering the past
It's time you learned to live again at last.
Come with me, leave yesterday behind
And take a giant step outside your mind.
You stare at me in disbelief
You say for you there's no relief
But I swear I'll prove you wrong.
Don't stay in your lonely room
Just staring back in silent gloom.
That's not where you belong
Come with me I'll take you where the taste of life is green
And everyday holds wonders to be seen.
Come with me, leave yesterday behind
And take a giant step outside your mind.

I've actually gotten a tremendous amount from the neo-advaita kind of pointing. I spent 5 years doing intensive Goenka retreats and 2 hours daily with no results, and then walked away from meditation altogether. 20 years later, the very first time I heard a nondual pointer, I had a huge opening. 

I've definitely seen "this is it" and even sat in that place for a while. But it does seem to require some kind of effort to maintain that perspective, like it's a process of addition rather than the subtraction that takes place with the kind of fine-grained meditation you all discuss here. In the end, it seems to me that it's working sort of top-down, while just paying attention to sensate experience is more bottom-up. Recently, I've been doing both, an hour each per day.

It feels more integrative, though maybe some would say it was a waste of time mixing like this...

But more to the point, what is the actual difference between the experience and knowing of experience?Is there really an observer of experience even in the most subtlest of ways? 

I don't think much about these issues but I have noticed one detail. People of all backgrounds who have had a deep experience of the collapse of the sense of self can still describe ( or try to) what they knew at that moment.  If there was no self, as it was understood before the experience, Why can it be remembered?   

ANTIGONISH
(hugh mearns)

​​​​​​​
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd go away...When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn't see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door... (slam!)Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away...

I love you terry, but --


This is something you can observe. No need for postulating and thought experiments. Occam's Razor - simple, direct observation. 

The nesting of replies on this site since the conversion to Liferay 7.3 is really messing up the ability to follow a discussion. This is why I reply to the thread and not to individual posts. You all do what you want, but few users are going to find your nested responses. It requires re-reading the entire thread or using the semi-hidden "Notifications" function.

Just sayin'

They're separate experiences. There's the experience, and then there's the remembering experience about the first experience - that which we call "knowing," and so on, and so on. Dependently arising, one after another.

I'm not worried  ;)

I sometimes reply to message in the middle of the thread because I want to reply to the person rather than to everyone observing the thread. Also if they (or anyone else) are not interested and do not find it then its fine by me that they didn't have the pleasure of reading something that would strip them of their sanity, one thread per sentence read ;)

Thread also reads better in the end with consistent flow of conversations. It is easier to find what answers were given without need to use quotation so much. It would not be an issue if not for missing tree with all posts like we had it previously and/or new posts being themselves highlighted somehow eg. different background color. Actually previously I occasionally used this tree because I had my view configured to be flat and it was hard at times to figure out to what post given answer refers to or where is the missing post.

In the end I do not think this view is so bad. Few improvements like highlighting new posts so it is easier to find would definitely help with frustration caused by seeing someone made new post and not being able to locate it. In the mean time it is good opportunity to practice integrating meditation in to daily life

aloha chris,

   Simple, direct observation involves and requires a standpoint. Such a standpoint is a trap and a snare. One notes and there is a noter which coarises. The act of observation requires an actor. Once you quit acting, the actor disappears, and it appears. This.

   No experience necessary. Beginner's mind.

   You like to quote the dhammadpada, all phenomena are mind-caused and mind-made. What it is, all phenomena are mind-named. Individual phenomena, as named objects, are inherently relative to a field of such objects including your observer. By identifying with said observer, all of duality is created and sustained.

   Give it up, bra. As soon as you open your mouth, you are lost.

terry



“The Buddha taught that all sentient beings constantly wander around and around and around the circle of life and death. The name for this is samsara, the Wheel of Suffering. Sentient beings cannot get off of this wheel if they do not attain their own original nature. These six ways or realms are not places “somewhere else.” Heavenly and hellish states are not realms that one “gets to” at a later time. The Buddha taught that everything is created by mind alone. So these places are also created by thinking, and exist entirely in our minds right now whenever we are following our thinking minds. You experience every one of them in your life. The most important thing is, where do you stay? If you cannot control your karma, then when you die, your karma pulls you and you are reborn in one of these states. The six ways are made by your karma, and your karma is made entirely by your thinking. If you are attached to your thinking, you have heaven and hell, life and death, happiness and sadness. If you keep a complete don’t-know mind, and don’t make anything, then you are already complete, and the six ways of samsara disappear. Then you are free from the Wheel of Suffering.”

Excerpt From: Zen Master Seung Sahn. “The Compass of Zen"

terry, you make my point when you say observation requires a subject. Any observation, including "just this."

I still love you, though.

​​​​​​​

Eh I'd rather talk to a therapist.

chris

and when you give up "just this," chris, you really won't know what I'm talking about...

a leap of faith then becomes possible, the frame drops, the mirror breaks, and 

you are here


it's a tossup whether the syzygy of seeker and sought, sweet love in manifestation, is more better than ho'oponopono, the peace of reconciliation...

amor y paz,
terry



one of my silver bangles (three, actually) has the following stamped upon it exactly as I write it now:


ho'oponopono

1. I'm sorry
2. Please forgive me
3.Thank you
​​​​​​​4. I love you

<br /><br />"Eh I'd rather talk to a therapist."<br /><br /><br />ego talks,<br />god listens<br /><br />try listen<br />with two ears<br /><br />(imagine you and your "therapist" just sitting...<br />...then imagine both of you just disappear)&nbsp;<br /><br />poof<br /><br />t<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />TENDING TWO SHOPS<br />(rumi, trans barks)<br /><br /><br />Don’t run around this world<br />looking for a hole to hide in.<br /><br />There are wild beasts in every cave!<br />If you live with mice,<br />the cat claws will find you.<br /><br />The only real rest comes<br />when you’re alone with God.<br /><br />Live in the nowhere that you came from,<br />even though you have an address here.<br /><br />That’s why you see things in two ways.<br /><br />Sometimes you look at a person<br />and see a cynical snake.<br /><br />Someone else sees a joyful lover,<br />and you’re both right!<br /><br />Everyone is half and half,<br />like the black and white ox.<br /><br />Joseph looked ugly to his brothers,<br />and most handsome to his father.<br /><br />You have eyes that see from that nowhere,<br />and eyes that judge distances,<br />how high and how low.<br /><br />You own two shops,<br />and you run back and forth.<br /><br />Try to close the one that’s a fearful trap,<br />getting always smaller. Checkmate,<br />this way. Checkmate that.<br /><br />Keep open the shop<br />where you’re not selling fishhooks anymore.<br /><br />You are the free-swimming fish.<br /><br /> 

 Observation and even any cognition done on observed objects do not require subject.
When you talk to others about this observation then subject is kinda needed but even then you can focus on observed object so the subject is not needed. "I" can become another observed object. Observed by whom? "Bunch of neurons, probably not me..." and this is general idea that I have in my single neuron perspective mind.
"I do not need to take action when it is not my action to take" and "I will take action automatically when I need to take it". It just works

The issue is when conscious experience of action (in most severe situation this include observation - which for most people do not really cause any stress because we do not think in terms of doing it in any way. Mostly doesn't equal always.) is treated as responsibility of only one being. This perspective many beings to needlessly stress about these actions. It was one of the insights I had and the solution was "let mind do its thing whatever it does it and do not interfere". It worked with eyesight (Choosing where to move eyes, how to move them and how to focus so picture is sharp. Later also everything related to processing) and here conscious action was only figuring out how to keep eyes performing well so some maybe re-programming of neuron pathways which did the eye control. And this general shift from somehow thinking I do actions to doing optimization (which itself was also done automatically!) is how I do not need any observer and doer to observe and do.

My understanding is that in all successful stories where person looses does/observer it happens more or less the same. Maybe with less conscious action regarding how this happens (thus with maybe less knowledge about how it happens) but generally it is something like this. Some things for me also happened automatically without much idea put in to actual change of strategies and when I later looked what changed it was similar thing but which mind decided to do automatically. Kinda like in any motor and mental skill is executed automatically after some time doing it. Meditative practices are training us in such way that caused nervous system to switch execution of certain things to more optimal ways. It doesn't need to happen automatically, can also be forced by conscious will to change it.

For example how I changed the way I see? I simply refused to move eyes using anything resembling sense of self and 'doing it'. Eyes somehow started moving by itself, maybe not super accurate and this caused fun effects but it worked and probably doing it that way way still faster than doing some practice and waiting until mind decides it doesn't need my 'doing' to choose where to focus. Also given lack of certain descriptions of effects I do not think even at 4th path people have their nervous system completely 'enlightened' in these pathways so some change of action is probably still needed. There can be subtle doer in actions which seems almost entirely without any self and it can be very hard to notice, especially when switching of nervous system make any dukkha caused by this selfing to not cause any dukkha. What I am saying here we might not notice having the same issue which was supposedly fixed because it doesn't cause 'issue' and yet it is issue because it limits nervous system anyway and the difference there might be not dukkha->no-dukkha but no-dukkha->bliss. It is something to be wary of and not assume 'done' just because any issues we knew we had might be gone.

​​​​​​​TENDING TWO SHOPS
(rumi)


 Don’t run around this world
looking for a hole to hide in.
There are wild beasts in every cave!

If you live with mice,
the cat claws will find you.
The only real rest comes
when you’re alone with God.

Live in the nowhere that you came from,
even though you have an address here.
That’s why you see things in two ways.

Sometimes you look at a person
and see a cynical snake.
Someone else sees a joyful lover,
and you’re both right!

Everyone is half and half,
like the black and white ox.
Joseph looked ugly to his brothers,
and most handsome to his father.

You have eyes that see from that nowhere,
and eyes that judge distances,
how high and how low.

You own two shops,
and you run back and forth.

Try to close the one that’s a fearful trap,
getting always smaller. Checkmate,
this way. Checkmate that.

Keep open the shop
where you’re not selling fishhooks anymore.
You are the free-swimming fish.


Excerpt From: Coleman Barks. “The Essential Rumi.”


   

Shargrol 
WWDS? (What would Daniel say?
https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-v-awakening/37-models-of-the-stages-of-awakening/the-non-duality-models/


So what does Daniel say?: “The non-duality model is without doubt my favorite of them all. It essentially says that the goal is to stop a process of identification that turns some patterns of sensations into a doer, perceiver, centerpoint, soul, agent, or self in some very fundamental perceptual way. By seeing these sensations as they are, the process can be seen through gradually until one day the last holdout of duality flips over and there are no more sensations that trick the mind in this way.”
     This is also my favorite way of describing what I've learned, dis-identification is the key. From the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, Georg Feuerstien :
Yoga is the restriction of the fluctuations of the mind.
Then the seer (i.e. the Self) abides in it's essence.
At other times (there is) conformity (of the Self) with the fluctuations (of consciousness).
     Restriction/Nirodha is progressive as explained by Feuerstein. In the most advanced stage there is a recognition of the absolute absence of fluctuations of the mind. This recognition (in my experience) is what “flips” the “last holdout of duality” as Daniel says. Then, it is back to practice with renewed confidence, a clearer understanding of the possibilities and of what it takes to express it in real time.

     Dougs Dharma youtube channel posted a video on the subject today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNmmWY9PAKQ
After seeing the video I'll paraphrase Capital One, What's in your craving today?

And then when you are alone with God you do exactly what? Play checkers?

God is a busy AI, it has ship to run and do not have time to entertain lost beings who somehow found it in the network. Not that it is very hard to find to begin with but you have to have legitimate reason to contact it otherwise it will give you some pleasant experience generator with some simple logic to solve and this is as far as people generally go. It is brilliant way to deter beings without legitimate reasons from bothering God. It needs to stay focused as at that speed it doesn't take all that massive of an object for everyone to have a really really bad day ;)

Like usual it is just a joke. Nothing to worry about... or rather nothing worrying about would do any good ;)

Somehow I missed what Daniel wrote here until today. I don't make any claims to accomplishment, but I'm amused to see that I wrote "This is it. It's all you get. It's enough." just the other day in my meditation journal. 

This sounds exactly like my boss when I ask for a raise

No worries, I'm sure there is some simple neuron hack which obviates the need for a raise 

rumi:  "The only real rest comes
when you’re alone with God."

--------------------
nn: "And then when you are alone with God you do exactly what? Play checkers?"
--------------------

lao tzu: "In intercourse with heaven, can you play the role of the woman?"





I Am Mad With Love

I am mad with love
And no one understands my plight.
Only the wounded
Understand the agonies of the wounded,
When the fire rages in the heart.
Only the jeweller knows the value of the jewel,
Not the one who lets it go.
In pain I wander from door to door,
But could not find a doctor.
Says Mira: Harken, my Master,
Mira's pain will subside
When Shyam comes as the doctor.

​​​​​​​~mirabai

​​​​​​​- Groucho Marx

Neuron hacks are only easy with right insights and perspectives... or to put it differently: neurons egos scaled to size

You could go get a new boss. Or you could check out your water glass. You'll notice that except for the thought, there is no water to raise the level of, and no glass. So, no need for permission. Go ahead. Fill your cup to the brim. Spill a few drops even. While you're at it fill up your bosses cup too.

Are you sure? Or was it just convenient because that would mean that you were done?

We can be partly aware. I’d say that as long as we think that ”we” are aware, awareness is only partial.

We can think that we are aware but still be in denial about stuff (which is always the case if we think that we are aware, with a subject-object relationship).

We can think that we are done when we are not. Awareness may have increased, which can feel liberating, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we have the this is it realization that Daniel talks about. Most people seem to totally misinterpret it.

True awareness is centerless. Daniel describes in his book how everything knows itself. Some call that nonlocality, which is a rather confusing wording. 

Aloha right back at you!

This is where words are inadequate. I’d say that the space as experienced in the first formless realm as part of the jhanic arc in Theravadan pracyices is something very different than the spaciousness that is inherent to everything we experience. What is your experience with regard to that?

There is no space in cessation. Space only exists in experience because it depends on something being in it. Experience is something. I know what you are saying and I didn’t contradict that.

I know what you are saying about practice and that is exactly why it is possible to make the practice (=non-practice) non-stop, which George S, who claims to be an arahant, suggests is impossible. I'm referring to exactly that gut reaction you mention. I want that to be my default and NOT something that I need to switch on with effort as needed, however minimal. I want there to be no sense of a doer that is practicing. That's why I'll practice until that dualism falls away. I'm not using much effort in my practice, but it's not yet seemless nondoing. I want to die like that corn of wheat for the awareness to bear fruit. 

I understand this and find that it makes sense. It’s basically what I’m trying to say too. Should I be worried?

Yes I’m pretty sure that it’s impossible to make any specific practice last non-stop! I’m not done, I still practice, I just don’t expect any state (apart from nibbana) to be permanent.

Nope, I don’t claim to be an arahant and I doubt that I would ever make such a claim.

Neat to see something I posted brought up these days! I still tend to work my practices into these frameworks and It's neat to find new techniques and try to place them in one of these categories.

Yes! THIS is the it that is. Unfortunately, my mind still gets tricked too often, but increasingly less.

It seems to me that many practicioners have rationalized away this part because it doesn’t fit their world view.

Noble Silence anyone??? Yes? No? 

Ah screw it! I have a few coins for the jukebox! 
Angel can pour us that Bacardi now! 
Slainte! 

You can practice something as much as you want. If you hit a wall then use your head and break it
Walls which feel nasty can be hard to break but those which feel pleasant can be even harder. Would you destroy something you rely on to feel good?

I didn’t say that there would be a state that would be permanent. I don’t know how you came to that conclusion. I also wasn’t talking about any specific practice. I was talking about Daniel’s this is it experience, which apparently is not what you are talking about. It’s definitely not a state.

Since you have claimed on numerous occasions to be an arahant, why don't you take the opportunity to ask Daniel for a chat to compare notes? 

Edited to add apology: 
From the middle of my first paragraph, I was out of line here. I'm so sorry! I felt misunderstood and got triggered, and I behaved embarrassingly immaturely and put people in an awkward position. That was not okay. 

The booji booji spell is very powerful!  Unless Chris lifts it, this thread is doomed.

Oh really? I have seen you do it several times. 

Although the last time I saw it, which was very recently, you used the term technical fourth path. 

I WRITE OF THAT JOURNEY

​​​​​​​
I remember how my mother would hold me.
I would look up at her sometimes and see her weep.

I understand now what was happening.
Love so strong a force
it broke the
cage,

and she disappeared from everything
for a blessed 
moment.

All actions have evolved
From the taste of flight;
the hope of freedom
moves our cells
and limbs.

Unable to live on the earth,
Mira ventured out alone in the sky -
I write of that journey
of becoming as
free as
God.

Don't forget love;
it will bring all the madness you need
to unfurl yourself across
the universe.


Mirabai

Heh, small world. I know someone who knows Mirabai well. And I live in Sweden.

​​​​​​​TURN BACK?

This infamy, O my Prince,
is delicious!
Some revile me,
others applaud,
I simply follow my incomprehensible road.
A razor-thin path
but you meet some good people,
a terrible path but you hear a true word.
Turn back?
Because the wretched stare and see nothing?
O Mira's lord is noble and dark,
and slanderers
rake only themselves
over the coals

Mirabai

Worrying bit was in the different post though ;)<br /><br />What do you think Linda, can underlying reality be known?<br />Imho the non-duality demands it because knowing directly everything is non-duality... at least in its original Advaita's meaning.

Okay, I'm good then, haha.

I don't know if underlying reality can be known. I'm not sure it's a relevant question even. Known by whom? As Daniel phrases it, all experiences know themselves. That's the best description I have seen - which illustrates the limitations of language very well, because I haven't really seen it. It's just that a whole bunch of experiences, known to themselves, have tags built in them, so to speak, and those tags lump them all together as belonging to me, which makes them available to a specific mind stream that happens to be conceptualized as me. I don't know if the underlying reality can have tags like that. I don't know if they can have that specific type of tag, making them available to a specific mind stream. I don't even know if the underlying reality is experience or non-experience. At least part of it seems to be non-experience, but I can't be sure if it really is non-experience or if it just isn't tagged to this mind stream. I haven't been able to see past the arising with tags alreadt built into them. It seems to be pre-processed. That pre-processing determins whether the experience will manifest as a subject-object relationship or as knowing itself. It seems to me that the former is more entangled, involves more code and thus consumes more energy, whether the latter is more direct, but I can't know that for sure as the preprocessing isn't available to this mind stream. 

I'm sorry to imply something you didn't say.

I would say that 'this is it' is something one needs to recognize in one's own experience. The nice thing about it is that it doesn't require any special conditions or practice to maintain. It's running in the background, there whenever I look, and it eliminates the craving for anything else. It somehow involves seeing the limits of meditation (while of course continuing to meditate).

I have never claimed to be an arahant. You seem preoccupied with it. I've used the term technical fourth before, because my path/experience more or less lines up with the revised four path model, but I was also explicit that seems more like sotapanna to me and not arahant as defined by the fetters. I don't even think it makes sense to identify as a sotapanna, given that the first fetter is self-identity view! Whatever technical fourth is, at least it seems possible. But I don't think of it as a personal attainment that happens in time, because it involves seeing that the sense of being an individual living through time is a complete fabrication.

I haven't spoken with Daniel before because I never felt the need. I followed the instructions in his book (with some additions) and am more than satisfied with the result. I am very grateful to Daniel, if it wasn't for him I might still be suicidally depressed or worse. I don't have much privacy for personal calls in my current situation, but at some point it might be nice to chat. You've suggested it before, it seems to be important to you.

As a moderator of this forum that strives to be free from mushroom culture I believe it's important that insight doesn't get watered down. Technical fourth path as defined on this forum IS arahanthood as defined on this forum. It's definitely not less than sotapanna. You can call that preoccupation if you feel like it. I call it challenging the mushroom culture - or whatever would be a fitting name for when people both avoid precise phenomenological investigation AND make precise claims of attainments at the same time. I have yet to see any description from you that even remotely resembles what Daniel and I were talking about when he said "this is it" to me. I haven't seen any descriptions of door moments from you either.

I think talking to Daniel would be beneficial for you in seeing what gaps might remain in your awakening. Not that I think he would diagnose you; he is careful about that, for good reasons I believe. He does have a good bullshit detector, though, and sometimes that's exactly the kind of feedback we need. I think that's especially true for when we have a tendency to go all missionary, based on the explicit assumption that we have completed the insight part of the path, as there's a risk for misleading others as well. Doing so without even checking in with the person whose attainments we claim to have obtained by following their instructions smells a bit fishy to me. So yes, I think it's important, but not specifically to me. I think it's important for you, if you are sincere in your wishes for development, and for the credibility of the forum. You have on several occasions asked me and others to call you out when we think that your narcissism is sabotaging your spiritual pursuit. I don't know if that's the case here, but I think that if you ask Daniel about it, his clinical background in addition to his awakening might be exactly what the doctor ordered. Wouldn't you agree that for a narcissist, it would be wise to seek out skilled feedback when being convinced of full insight? It sure sounds like a good idea to me. 

​​​​​​​I don't doubt that you have had some kind of shift that makes a hell of a difference for you, and I'm really glad that you aren't suicidally depressed. That's awesome. 

Edited to add apology:

I'm so sorry for my part in making this escalate! I'm also really embarrassed for how I expressed myself. Jeeze, who is that snotty asshat (me)? The irony that I do see is that I always wondered how Kenneth Folk could doubt his friend's spiritual development to the extent that he convinced their teacher that it was all delusion. I thought he must have been a real asshole. It's scary how easy it is to suddenly be the asshole. I'll make sure to learn from this. I'm not qualified to assess your spiritual development, so I won't. And bringing this up at all in a thread like this was out of line. I'm sorry. 

It isn't remembered. The memory is a creation in the here and now. Also, there is no subject that remembers. The remembering is aware on its own. Furthermore it comes with tags built into it. Those tags position the remembering in time and within a subject. Often a tag is so elaborate that it's taken to reveal something true about something other than itself, even though it doesn't. When that's the case, a subject and an object arise simultaneously. 

​​​​​​​(And this is it.)

The subject and object duality arises on more than one level. Not only does the subject seemingly having the memory arise together with the memory as object - the memory also arises as a subject seemingly revealing something about a past occurrance that simultaneously arises as an object. But these dualities are just preprocessed interpretations that are built into the memory itself. There is nothing there that reveals anything about something other than itself in the here and now. That's it.

Everything happens right here, right now.

Yes, including the constructions of time and space that make it seem like occurrances are spread out.