Animals came into the discussion to help illustrate the fact that there are many basic functions which clearly don’t require a sense of self-identity. It's a valid and relevant consideration - but I'm happy to move on to your central point. You mention making tea. What actually goes on:

There is switching on the kettle - reaching for a cup - placing a tea bag in the cup - waiting for the water to boil - pouring the water into the cup…

Now, is a functioning body required? Yes. Is consciousness required? Yes. Is some form of mentation involved? Yes. Is some prior/historic knowledge of making tea involved? Yes.

So this involves the engagement of a functioning sentient organism. But none of this entails a self (apart from in the sense of the ‘conventional self’ as explained in my first post in this conversation.)

I think this is where the issue is here. You seem to be conflating simple conscious functionality with a self (see my original point about the self that ‘no self’ refutes.)

I'm walking down the street living in the concept that I am walking, I am going to the train station, then suddenly, I am aware of walking. I am not doing it and I can't stop it. At first there I was identified, I am doing it, it happens because me, and suddenly, no one was doing anything, but walking was there all the same.

I understand that it can be beneficial to bring another perspective to the table, but you can't have an identified monkey that knows it's own species that differs from an elephant and use the monkey peeing as a way of not being identified when peeing.

You see the anchor point / self identified reference is already in motion, it is already in effect.

You can't erase it or turn it on and off every time the monkey wants to eat, sleep or take a pee for it's always there.

You don't have to keep saying to yourself you are a human being every moment of the day, it's built into your perceptional experience in every moment.

I don't think there is the actual foundation of self and what that entails understood by a few who I am debating this subject with.

There is not the understanding of what no self is either. This is why there are responses that don't actually relate to the foundation itself.

It's rather dressing cats up as dogs or humans as animals and giving different perspectives on each, but what's being missed is that everything self aware that is functioning in life as I have described has a sense of themselves as being this or that to certain degrees.

In regards to your descriptive dialogue relating to tea making, there is an awareness of what you relate yourself to being that makes tea and understands the process of making it.

All being self related . What you relate yourself to being is 'self'

You can say self is what you are at the core if you like but what you are at the core that is permanent is not absent from the proceedings.

There is no separate non permanent entity that can be related to a false self or an illusory self.

These illusory and false self references don't exist on their own merits.

What is present is what you are and what you are self identifies within awareness of their experience.

non-self, non identity has no place of this world when experiencing it.

As said you can't function without these senses of oneself, otherwise you would be a zombie not knowing what anything is or what anything relates too.

Your thoughts on a conventional self in regards to functioning refers to what my above line suggests.

A conventional sense of oneself is not separate from that which is a permanent self as you believe to be.

Impermanent self's and permanent self's are just more conceptual ideas and notions that require a reference through identification to that which is both in relation to what you are.

So all I am doing is bouncing back more self conceptualised notions and not relating to anything other than that.

This is why the dreamer is not outside the dream.

The identified self is not beyond the self identified.


x daz x

You set the ball rolling in regards to wanting to walk, you don't lose the self intent to carry on walking because your not watching each of your steps made.

The identification is already there in the first instance otherwise you would not have the intention to walk anywhere. What you are can multi function in many ways, you can walk with one's eyes open or closed, you can do the ten times table in your mind and hear your partner shout out ''look at the rainbow in the sky''. So many things that one can pay attention too or not be it the case, but everything carries on until YOU decide not to or it's because you have walked into a tree.

You have also identified that 'you' need to get your legs moving, you don't need to get my legs moving unless I am to carry you on my back.

This assumed identity that you speak about when experiencing the use of your hand is because it is your hand and your legs, and it is your intent to go for a walk.

This association that is made is because you have identified self in reflection of these things.

You can assume all you like but your legs won't move unless you decide to move them.

You don't have to have a specific answer to what you are, and in that case you have identified what you are as an unknown quantity.

This is why conceptual understandings have to make sense in some shape or form otherwise you wouldn't be able to relate to you or your legs or walking to the train station.

x daz x

You’re missing (or perhaps you just don’t agree with) the essential point.

There can be a functioning, conscious, sentient organism - and all that that commonly entails - without there being a essential-immutable-inner-core. Its conscious functionality is dependently-originated and conditional on innumerable factors - factors that it doesn’t originate, control, sustain or own.

The understanding and application of the process of making tea is not excluded from this. It’s known (when the need to know is relevant) that this particular arrangement of body-mind-personality (which we conventionally call I or me) is instrumental in making tea.

I have no idea what you constitute yourself being while making the tea.

I don't know who can know what needs to be known when it's relevant.

Who needs to know? This impermanent self?

This impermanent self that does not exist on it's own merit.

I have no understanding how this impermanent self which is just a thought of what you are can do anything?

It's just a thought of what you are.

What you are is all there is.

This impermanent self, false self is not an entity that can know anything when it's relevant to know.

Only what you are can know anything.

Your separating what you are up into real and false aspects when there is only what you are present.

I think by the looks of things we are far too apart in understanding what we are and how what we are experiences this world reality.


x daz x

Without having read through the many posts

There is no permanent, eternal, personal self (soul, etc)

There is a thought process, conscious and unconscious, which creates a self.
Thought processes are not stable and subject to continual change. When the thought processes die or end, so does the personal self which is a special process of personal reflection. It is special only in that it relates everything to this self and with that creates separation.

Does consciousness itself also carry knowledge? If it does, I can know how to make tea and be liberated from the human mind at the same time!

Your comments are circular because the belief in an essential-self runs so deep that another possibility cannot be comprehended on any level. This is when the mind must let go - at least for a while.

Just stop… and sit… and wait… and maybe it might dawn. Life is simply happening on its own - no one is doing it… IT is doing you.

But meanwhile, perhaps you are right, we may be too far apart for now. Nice to chat and I’ll see you around.

Enlightenment would not be possible unless consciousness itself contains memories and knowledge. Sure these things exist physically in the brain, but this is like a mirror image of realities that also exist on the non-physical energy level. "Enlightenment" requires a memory of potential now experience which is then realized through a recognition now is not that..... "that" has to be knowledge contained within consciousness itself. Its location could not be the physical brain because the brain can only provide a memory of an experience and not actual experience. A facsimile or mental concept could not trigger actual experience.

Also, if knowledge of experience includes a "blueprint" configuration of energies responsible for the experience. which it seems to do, then a mere movement of the attention or a locking in of the correct memorized assembly of parts, returns one to the experience. The content is not the subject, the configuration responsible for the experience is and the experience itself, the experiencer in other words or "me." That is what is remembered or stored, this is the knowledge born of many insights and experiences.. A memory of the experiencer and its configuration.