Self Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness

[jonesboy]

Originally Posted by sentient

A little bit about energy.

Everything is energy – yes.
But the qualities of energies are different.
And there are different realms or should one say ‘octaves’ of them.

If one is clairvoyant, clairaudient, clairsentient and if this happens regularly, it becomes important to know where ones visions, impressions, feelings and thoughts are coming from.

A vision you see where another person says something in it may look and feel very similar whether it is a ghost-spirit showing it to you and whether it is one you telepathically receive from a living – but there is a subtle energy difference. Hence the Middle World (living) and the Lower World (ghost realm) difference can be discerned - through their differing “Energy Signatures”.


It has been said that: "Your level of evolution has to do with the vibration of your energy field".

Ever met an Elder or a ‘Guru’ whose mere presence made your awareness shift?
Like stepping in from everyman’s fight or flight street to an entirely different atmosphere - one of calmness, centeredness, stillness, belonging, connectedness, spiritual alignment, spiritual insights - that come pouring in ….

One may not recognize it as energy first, but when you hit the street atmosphere again, you really notice the difference in energy vibrations.

Every day with respect to the Guru.

The above is more what happens when one opens the 3rd eye.

All such seeing is a local mind translation of the light. Beyond seeing is being and knowing.

The qualities of energy is more based on ones level of realization. For example going from Chi to Shen is based on ones level or as one clears away more **** you go from Chi to Shen. I am sure Sky could talk more on the topic. I am not very informed on Taosim.

It isn't that there is different energy, higher or lower, it is more our obstructions that create such distinctions.

[running]

Originally Posted by Rain95

The Buddha taught that the fire of anger can burn up everything we have done to bring happiness to ourselves and others. There is not one of us who has not sown seeds of anger in one's heart, and if those seeds are watered, they will grow rapidly and choke us and those around us.
Thich Nhat Hanh

Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law.
Buddha - Dhammapada

"The instant we feel hate and anger we have already ceased striving for the truth.”
Buddha

It should be obvious that Buddhism teaches hatred and anger prevent happiness, love and compassion. They are opposites, not the same. That is according to Buddha, The Dalai Lama, and Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist Authorities.

Hate and Love



There is no spiritual tradition that teaches Love and Hate are the same.
Buddhist teachings do not say they are the same.

ok. following along to your thoughts on hate and love. dualism and etc.

this is very simple stuff that is like basic 101. bliss is non dual as is silence. that is what one wishes to open to. both of them wash away the mind and emotional body. within the mind and emotional body is duality. beyond duality is bliss and silence. non dual.

one lives in a paradox whom has opened up to non dual consciousness. because as i said earlier that which you didnt nderstand. you dont lose your mind or emotional body. you do gain nondual bliss and silence. thus a paradox. but have no fear bliss and silence are the main driver to ones living experience.

[Rain95]

Originally Posted by running

ok. following along to your thoughts on hate and love. dualism and etc.

this is very simple stuff that is like basic 101. bliss is non dual as is silence. that is what one wishes to open to. both of them wash away the mind and emotional body. within the mind and emotional body is duality. beyond duality is bliss and silence. non dual.

one lives in a paradox whom has opened up to non dual consciousness. because as i said earlier that which you didnt nderstand. you dont lose your mind or emotional body. you do gain nondual bliss and silence. thus a paradox. but have no fear bliss and silence are the main driver to ones living experience.

Yup well said. In an "enlightened" self aware state we can still use thought in a certain way, still know the difference between love and hate and on and on. As you said, we don't lose our minds. Really nothing is taken away, what changes is the relationship between what is present, thought, memory. awareness and all of that and it seems to be a new thing is added, the awareness of what I am not and through that, a closer relationship with what I am. One looks through opened eyes.

I put "enlightened" in quotes there because a lot of people believe in super hero religious figures, so to them the word represents something like a God power. That is not what enlightenment really is. But that's why a lot of people believe only long dead historical figures achieved it. It's easier to deify a long dead person than one you can visit and talk to. Everyone is enlightened to varying degrees. Everyone is also in varying and changing levels of delusion. By everyone I mean everyone! The so called "Gods" or iconic figures as well.

[running]

Originally Posted by Rain95

Yup well said. In an "enlightened" self aware state we can still use thought in a certain way, still know the difference between love and hate and on and on. As you said, we don't lose our minds. Really nothing is taken away, what changes is the relationship between what is present, thought, memory. awareness and all of that and it seems to be a new thing is added, the awareness of what I am not and through that, a closer relationship with what I am. One looks through opened eyes.

I put "enlightened" in quotes there because a lot of people believe in super hero religious figures, so to them the word represents something like a God power. That is not what enlightenment really is. But that's why a lot of people believe only long dead historical figures achieved it. It's easier to deify a long dead person than one you can visit and talk to. Everyone is enlightened to varying degrees. Everyone is also in varying and changing levels of delusion. By everyone I mean everyone! The so called "Gods" or iconic figures as well.

i couldn't possibly agree more. super powers people may or may not experince. more likely flashes of such during the awakening process. i have had moments of super powers in reading the script of a lot of things. that is a kinda trap. for me it gave me some insight on how nobody has any super powers. that it is simply a script. in a script are actors. none of which is better or worse than another. now what i feel is an insight it just my personal perspective of an experince. but did drive me more to what is important. that is opening up more to the bliss and silence. that is the thing that doesnt come and go. actions and reactions of life are always changing and come and go. trying to know what is around the corner is just in a sense another trap. in that there is always going to be another thing around another corner.

[Rain95]

Originally Posted by jonesboy

I would agree Theravada does not teach about non duality.

Yea different Buddhist schools or sects are into their own thing. Like there is the Zen saying, "Not two, not one." Meaning even non-dualism is a view, a thought, a mental position. So drop that too.

So in this Zen teaching, proclaiming light and dark are the same thing is as bad as proclaiming they are different. The point being why proclaim anything at all? The point being stop focusing on the mental world, your beliefs and thoughts. Be in the here and now without interpretation.

Whoever wrote the Lankavatara Sutra, and I don't know if was one writer or many as having hundreds of translators was not uncommon in those days, but this one passage seems to state the same understanding as the Zen quote:

Then Mahamati asked the Blessed One, saying: Tell us, Blessed One, how all things can be empty, un-born, and have no self-nature, so that we may awakened and quickly realize highest enlightenment?

The Blessed One replied: What is emptiness, indeed! It is a term whose very self-nature is false-imagination, but because of one’s attachment to false-imagination we are obliged to talk of emptiness, no-birth, and no self-nature.

So in this Lankavatara Sutra quote, the writer is saying all of these terms and concepts, emptiness, no-birth, and no self-nature are from false imagination. Here again, many Buddhist teachers say to abandon all teachings, the true and the false, meaning live it, realize it, stop philosophizing, be here and now empty of all mental images about now.

If one is living simply in the now, where is all this stuff about everything being the same? About light being dark? It doesn't exist and if it does exist, one does not pay attention to it or make it phenomenal.

That's the thing, how do we "know" something? There are two ways. We can know something conceptually, mentally, or we can know it as a lived experienced thing. So a Zen monk can walk into a cafe and have somebody who hates monks in the cafe yell at him. So the monk experiences hate. Then the cafe owner who loves the monk asks the hater to leave and hugs the monk. Now the Zen monk is experiencing love. The Zen monk returns to the monastery and his Master asks, What happened in town? The Zen monk says nothing much. I walked, looked, listened, felt, drank, hugged, walked. The Zen monk is not really naming anything, thinking about anything, he is just being present in each moment as it is without any interpretation or expectation or desire. Each moment is what it is.

Did this monk experience hate and love? Yes. they both were expressed in the cafe by others towards him. They exist, they are reality. Did the monk know what they were.... see here what do we mean by "know?" Did he experience love and hate? Yes. Was he aware he was experiencing them? Yes. Did he prefer one to the other? Yes and if he felt he was in physical danger, he would react. Leave the cafe, run away, or if he was skilled in martial arts, he would put the hater on the floor and subdue him. But yea, thinking about it much, no reason to. The monk prefers inner silence to inner talking and thinking. He knew what they were as experience, what they were conceptually did not matter. The experience is not held onto conceptually. When one moment is over, and one is in the next, nothing is carried over, past into present. Each moment is brand new, fresh. Nothing from the past is present.

This is where the teaching comes from everything is the same. Is it moment to moment experience. One does not interpret mentally what something should be or is. However, one "knows" as a living intelligent alert and awake being what is happening at all times. One also acts and reacts fully from this knowing, from the inherent qualities of love and compassion. If this monk saw a child in danger, he would instantly act to help the child. The monk is alive and lives fully. The monk loves his family, his friends, his fellow monks. He is kind and helpful towards them. He fully knows the difference between love and hate, dark and shade and on and on. The "sameness" refers to his state of being at all moments. Detached, free within and without, without conflict within or without, not troubled or tortured by thoughts within or life without. Fully present and aware of here now as it is, not with how thought makes it. These inherent qualities of the monk are experienced within and without, and that is the "sameness" that is talked about. Continuing presence and awakeness. The same unconditioned awareness or essence that resides in all as potential experience.

Maybe someone saw the monk experience hate and love and so they asked him, "Is love and hate the same of different?" The monk may answer, "I am awake." Fully present in the now. The only reality is now. The thought and thinking, the interpreting, conceptualizing, giving some kind of reality to a thought or idea....not done. The monk sees a person asking him a bunch of words with nothing in the present to link them to.

Also from the Lankavatara Sutra

in the case of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, masters and disciples, who have ceased to believe in both being and non-being, there is no means for binding.

Nothing to bind or connect the question to. The person is asking the monk to focus on thought and thinking, on memory, The monk has no interest in doing this. He has found a better way to live moment to moment.

[jonesboy]

Originally Posted by Rain95

Yea different Buddhist schools or sects are into their own thing. Like there is the Zen saying, "Not two, not one." Meaning even non-dualism is a view, a thought, a mental position. So drop that too.

So in this Zen teaching, proclaiming light and dark are the same thing is as bad as proclaiming they are different. The point being why proclaim anything at all? The point being stop focusing on the mental world, your beliefs and thoughts. Be in the here and now without interpretation.

Whoever wrote the Lankavatara Sutra, and I don't know if was one writer or many as having hundreds of translators was not uncommon in those days, but this one passage seems to state the same understanding as the Zen quote:



So in this Lankavatara Sutra quote, the writer is saying all of these terms and concepts, emptiness, no-birth, and no self-nature are from false imagination. Here again, many Buddhist teachers say to abandon all teachings, the true and the false, meaning live it, realize it, stop philosophizing, be here and now empty of all mental images about now.

If one is living simply in the now, where is all this stuff about everything being the same? About light being dark? It doesn't exist and if it does exist, one does not pay attention to it or make it phenomenal.

That's the thing, how do we "know" something? There are two ways. We can know something conceptually, mentally, or we can know it as a lived experienced thing. So a Zen monk can walk into a cafe and have somebody who hates monks in the cafe yell at him. So the monk experiences hate. Then the cafe owner who loves the monk asks the hater to leave and hugs the monk. Now the Zen monk is experiencing love. The Zen monk returns to the monastery and his Master asks, What happened in town? The Zen monk says nothing much. I walked, looked, listened, felt, drank, hugged, walked. The Zen monk is not really naming anything, thinking about anything, he is just being present in each moment as it is without any interpretation or expectation or desire. Each moment is what it is.

Did this monk experience hate and love? Yes. they both were expressed in the cafe by others towards him. They exist, they are reality. Did the monk know what they were.... see here what do we mean by "know?" Did he experience love and hate? Yes. Was he aware he was experiencing them? Yes. Did he prefer one to the other? Yes and if he felt he was in physical danger, he would react. Leave the cafe, run away, or if he was skilled in martial arts, he would put the hater on the floor and subdue him. But yea, thinking about it much, no reason to. The monk prefers inner silence to inner talking and thinking. He knew what they were as experience, what they were conceptually did not matter. The experience is not held onto conceptually. When one moment is over, and one is in the next, nothing is carried over, past into present. Each moment is brand new, fresh. Nothing from the past is present.

This is where the teaching comes from everything is the same. Is it moment to moment experience. One does not interpret mentally what something should be or is. However, one "knows" as a living intelligent alert and awake being what is happening at all times. One also acts and reacts fully from this knowing, from the inherent qualities of love and compassion. If this monk saw a child in danger, he would instantly act to help the child. The monk is alive and lives fully. The monk loves his family, his friends, his fellow monks. He is kind and helpful towards them. He fully knows the difference between love and hate, dark and shade and on and on. The "sameness" refers to his state of being at all moments. Detached, free within and without, without conflict within or without, not troubled or tortured by thoughts within or life without. Fully present and aware of here now as it is, not with how thought makes it. These inherent qualities of the monk are experienced within and without, and that is the "sameness" that is talked about. Continuing presence and awakeness. The same unconditioned awareness or essence that resides in all as potential experience.

Maybe someone saw the monk experience hate and love and so they asked him, "Is love and hate the same of different?" The monk may answer, "I am awake." Fully present in the now. The only reality is now. The thought and thinking, the interpreting, conceptualizing, giving some kind of reality to a thought or idea....not done. The monk sees a person asking him a bunch of words with nothing in the present to link them to.

Also from the Lankavatara Sutra



Nothing to bind or connect the question to. The person is asking the monk to focus on thought and thinking, on memory, The monk has no interest in doing this. He has found a better way to live moment to moment.

The sutra directly refutes what you are saying. My quotes do as well.

As far as the different schools.

The Buddha gave different teachings based on ones capacity.

Higher level teachings for those people ready for them. If not you get a lot of confused students who want to skip the basics and think they are already there.

Also, Buddhism is an evolving system. As you have new enlightened teachers to tend to get new methods of practice.

If you didn’t get new enlightened people from your system it wouldn’t be very good now would it.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Rain95

Yea different Buddhist schools or sects are into their own thing. Like there is the Zen saying, "Not two, not one." Meaning even non-dualism is a view, a thought, a mental position. So drop that too.

So in this Zen teaching, proclaiming light and dark are the same thing is as bad as proclaiming they are different. The point being why proclaim anything at all? The point being stop focusing on the mental world, your beliefs and thoughts. Be in the here and now without interpretation.

It is consistent with Buddha teaching on being/non-being, and I think other asian Buddhist traditions also regard nirvana as 'beyond' being and non-being.

Whoever wrote the Lankavatara Sutra, and I don't know if was one writer or many as having hundreds of translators was not uncommon in those days, but this one passage seems to state the same understanding as the Zen quote:



So in this Lankavatara Sutra quote, the writer is saying all of these terms and concepts, emptiness, no-birth, and no self-nature are from false imagination. Here again, many Buddhist teachers say to abandon all teachings, the true and the false, meaning live it, realize it, stop philosophizing, be here and now empty of all mental images about now.

Yes, that is the basic essence of the thing.

If one is living simply in the now, where is all this stuff about everything being the same? About light being dark? It doesn't exist and if it does exist, one does not pay attention to it or make it phenomenal.

That's the thing, how do we "know" something? There are two ways. We can know something conceptually, mentally, or we can know it as a lived experienced thing. So a Zen monk can walk into a cafe and have somebody who hates monks in the cafe yell at him. So the monk experiences hate. Then the cafe owner who loves the monk asks the hater to leave and hugs the monk. Now the Zen monk is experiencing love. The Zen monk returns to the monastery and his Master asks, What happened in town? The Zen monk says nothing much. I walked, looked, listened, felt, drank, hugged, walked. The Zen monk is not really naming anything, thinking about anything, he is just being present in each moment as it is without any interpretation or expectation or desire. Each moment is what it is.

Did this monk experience hate and love? Yes. they both were expressed in the cafe by others towards him. They exist, they are reality. Did the monk know what they were.... see here what do we mean by "know?" Did he experience love and hate? Yes. Was he aware he was experiencing them? Yes. Did he prefer one to the other? Yes and if he felt he was in physical danger, he would react. Leave the cafe, run away, or if he was skilled in martial arts, he would put the hater on the floor and subdue him. But yea, thinking about it much, no reason to. The monk prefers inner silence to inner talking and thinking. He knew what they were as experience, what they were conceptually did not matter. The experience is not held onto conceptually. When one moment is over, and one is in the next, nothing is carried over, past into present. Each moment is brand new, fresh. Nothing from the past is present.

Good summary.

This is where the teaching comes from everything is the same. Is it moment to moment experience. One does not interpret mentally what something should be or is. However, one "knows" as a living intelligent alert and awake being what is happening at all times. One also acts and reacts fully from this knowing, from the inherent qualities of love and compassion. If this monk saw a child in danger, he would instantly act to help the child. The monk is alive and lives fully. The monk loves his family, his friends, his fellow monks. He is kind and helpful towards them. He fully knows the difference between love and hate, dark and shade and on and on. The "sameness" refers to his state of being at all moments.

Yes - the stable equanimity of mind regardless of experience.

Detached, free within and without, without conflict within or without, not troubled or tortured by thoughts within or life without. Fully present and aware of here now as it is, not with how thought makes it.

That is the essence of meditation.

These inherent qualities of the monk are experienced within and without, and that is the "sameness" that is talked about. Continuing presence and awakeness. The same unconditioned awareness or essence that resides in all as potential experience.

Maybe someone saw the monk experience hate and love and so they asked him, "Is love and hate the same of different?" The monk may answer, "I am awake." Fully present in the now. The only reality is now. The thought and thinking, the interpreting, conceptualizing, giving some kind of reality to a thought or idea....not done. The monk sees a person asking him a bunch of words with nothing in the present to link them to.

Also from the Lankavatara Sutra



Nothing to bind or connect the question to. The person is asking the monk to focus on thought and thinking, on memory, The monk has no interest in doing this. He has found a better way to live moment to moment.

Well, as I said before to consider hate (aversion) as the opposite of love is a bit of a misnomer, but in Western thought we are conditioned to think in nouns and love and hate have become imagined as 'named things' to us, but in Eastern thought things are considered as verb, 'actions', and in action there is reaction - for example, the boy falls in the river: does the monk react to save him or does he act to save him. Oh these 'actions' and 'reactions' are mere arbitrary definition. In the volition itself it is the very same 'dynamic'.


In the deeper sense of love, which we should term as 'metta' so that we don't mistake our strong preferences for 'love' - that is the nature of the outpouring, and we may say 'defilements' are obstructions, the 'fermentations' are distorting, and can rightly posit adverse and craven reactivity as opposed, yet the same, and consider the cessation of these the 'way' to purification of defilements, but we cannot rightly consider these as the defining opposite of love or metta. We can only say that the purification of these clears the obstructions that hinder its full expression, or IOW, self-expression, in day to day life.

[sentient]

A little bit about love (and here's something I had prepared earlier)

Connectedness on Soul-level
For me 'Soul-level-connectedness' means "Oneness" or "One Spirit" experience.

Ever had a situation, when you have looked into the eyes of another, and seen y-o-u-r-s-e-l-f ..... looking back .... at yourself ....in the f-o-r-m- of another person; - thus instantly recognizing your very own most innermost soul & spirit essence standing there ...... in the other person's form?

When that happens, there is a sense of a silent communication dawning upon you both, like a "Holy Spirit". You know each other's innermost, without a word needed to be spoken about it, a state of such "obviousity" (things being too obvious and too intimate to talk about) ... that you do not want to "name" the situation but just live the enchantment of it.

In that, there is a sense of unconditional love, that just "IS"; - unconditional love, that is given and received without there really being a giver nor a receiver of it.
A sense that - just because we exist, we are valid in this Universe, no other "credentials" needed.

When you feel this "oneness" with someone, it is like .... since eternity, you have never been apart, nor shall you ever be. Oneness cannot be gained or achieved nor can it be possessed, but Oneness is there for all times for us to recognize it.

Also in that "oneness" there is a sense of a "Cosmic Joke" about separateness and appearances, because for oneness .... all that form separateness ..... really is .... just a joke.

But then again when you feel/experience that boundary-less "oneness" with another person, within that "boundarylessness", you do draw a "taboo boundary" of respect. Respect of the other persons physiological and psychological difference to you, and the free and independent will of the other person. Thus making boundaryless oneness sacred, but also the form reality ...sacred.

In "oneness" you do realize your multidimensionality.
The "boundaryless oneness" is a spatial dimension, existing within its own "boundary" of laws and non-dual conditions, and the "form reality" existing within it's own set of boundary of dual rules.

Experiencing oneness with someone, enlarged .... is to experience the Collective Oneness .... i.e. "One Spirit" with a tribe ... or a group.
From there it is just a hop, skip and jump to experience the "Oneness of A-l-l Phenomena" or what others have called an "I AM" .... state, or "Cosmic Consciousness" or "Unity Consciousness".

*

So ‘love’ to me is just very simple & 'naked' openness …. prior to putting/projecting aggression, passion or ignoring into that unconditional space.

I find that narcissists always talk about love and the more they speak about it the more abusive and confrontationally aggressive they become – they become like Moses’es fresh from the mountain with stone tablets: “thou shall love and how thou shall love ….. meeeee”.
Yet these “Moses’es of love” do not see their own contradictionary behaviour.

[sentient]

The above post was my expression of my meetings (mostly) with Indigenous Elders.

I am not sure – (since I have never had, what I consider ‘Nondual’ experience with Buddhist Lamas or Monks) – whether this “somatic experience of beholding one’s beloved from the empty open state of being that is free from concepts, agendas, and territoriality” - is talking about the same thing, but it is a good talk anyway:
https://www.dharmaocean.org/episode-...nship-part-ii/

Plus it nudged me to think about a Narcissistic Personality Disorder relative of mine’s (who has highly developed psychic abilities) - Alzheimer's in a new light.

*

[jonesboy]

Originally Posted by sentient

A little bit about love (and here's something I had prepared earlier)

Connectedness on Soul-level
For me 'Soul-level-connectedness' means "Oneness" or "One Spirit" experience.

Ever had a situation, when you have looked into the eyes of another, and seen y-o-u-r-s-e-l-f ..... looking back .... at yourself ....in the f-o-r-m- of another person; - thus instantly recognizing your very own most innermost soul & spirit essence standing there ...... in the other person's form?

When that happens, there is a sense of a silent communication dawning upon you both, like a "Holy Spirit". You know each other's innermost, without a word needed to be spoken about it, a state of such "obviousity" (things being too obvious and too intimate to talk about) ... that you do not want to "name" the situation but just live the enchantment of it.

In that, there is a sense of unconditional love, that just "IS"; - unconditional love, that is given and received without there really being a giver nor a receiver of it.
A sense that - just because we exist, we are valid in this Universe, no other "credentials" needed.

When you feel this "oneness" with someone, it is like .... since eternity, you have never been apart, nor shall you ever be. Oneness cannot be gained or achieved nor can it be possessed, but Oneness is there for all times for us to recognize it.

Also in that "oneness" there is a sense of a "Cosmic Joke" about separateness and appearances, because for oneness .... all that form separateness ..... really is .... just a joke.

But then again when you feel/experience that boundary-less "oneness" with another person, within that "boundarylessness", you do draw a "taboo boundary" of respect. Respect of the other persons physiological and psychological difference to you, and the free and independent will of the other person. Thus making boundaryless oneness sacred, but also the form reality ...sacred.

In "oneness" you do realize your multidimensionality.
The "boundaryless oneness" is a spatial dimension, existing within its own "boundary" of laws and non-dual conditions, and the "form reality" existing within it's own set of boundary of dual rules.

Experiencing oneness with someone, enlarged .... is to experience the Collective Oneness .... i.e. "One Spirit" with a tribe ... or a group.
From there it is just a hop, skip and jump to experience the "Oneness of A-l-l Phenomena" or what others have called an "I AM" .... state, or "Cosmic Consciousness" or "Unity Consciousness".

*

So ‘love’ to me is just very simple & 'naked' openness …. prior to putting/projecting aggression, passion or ignoring into that unconditional space.

I find that narcissists always talk about love and the more they speak about it the more abusive and confrontationally aggressive they become – they become like Moses’es fresh from the mountain with stone tablets: “thou shall love and how thou shall love ….. meeeee”.
Yet these “Moses’es of love” do not see their own contradictionary behaviour.

Such boundaries and rules are all of the local mind.

Reality and ones awareness are one and the same.

All of it can be found within.