I did not choose to wake up this morning, I did not choose to be conscious, I did not choose to be born, I did not choose to have these feelings. Even the sense of a seperate self arose causally, and so it is not under its own power. It began causally and it will end causally.

Putting the sense of seperate self in the context of before and after highlights the fact that nobody chooses when enlightenment happens. The sensations which imply subjectivity can arise as easily and lightly as those sounds in the distance of people talking which are so clearly not under my control.


- Martin

Yes.

However, the flip side of that coin is that the sensations that make up the message, "You can do it," can cause the arising of the sense, "I can do it," which can lead to the specific techniques and actions and conditions that do it, meaning that pragmatically, while all empty conditioning, the conditioning part is as important as the emptiness, and so conditions and messages that support the emptiness practicing, investigating, going on retreats or just practicing really well in daily life can make the thing happen more faster and more often, and I will claim definitely faster and more often than the message that it will happen when it happens.

Hi Daniel,

You said in one post that there came a point where you were seeing effortlessness and centerlessness in real-time, is that something I should be aiming for by seeing the emptiness of the striving in the present (is it something that needs to be dropped at some point?), or is continuous striving and investigation more effective and somehow leads to that anyway?

Thanks
- Martin

Sorry for the belated reply: working a lot.

I would start simply and work up, as it is hard to take on the whole thing at once.

The Vipassana Jhanas and insight stages progress as they do, so work with their natural pattern of unfolding by simply practicing to see what you can see as it is and see how that goes.

Daniel