Anattā (no self)

[Gem]

Originally Posted by 7luminaries

Gem, hello there. Like Janielee, you mention some very good points.

In that your "right meditation" is expanded to include how we are in the world at large -- our being and doing day-to-day, I completely agree.

Simple experience is fundamental, and I include in that the most elaborate forms of energy work, done for healing &/or meaningful insight -- often one and the same. These too are done simply in service of lovingkindness and equanimity, via healing and support and affirmation. But chasing experience for thrills or in order to feel good all the time is a form of addicition, which many would not want to acknowledge. And yet it is irrationally driving much of their lives, just like any addiction or its fear of want or lack.

Fair point, well said.

There is a fundamental imbalance, lack, and disconnect at centre when the experience is chased or sought or craved at the expense of simply being and doing with lovingkindness and equanimity (the two of which I often call authentic love).

Just gotta be careful of desire getting out of hand.

And that, as you've implied or subtly suggested, is directly tied to the lack of stillness at centre, and/or to the lack of focus on this in our doing and being.

Peace & blessings
7L

[Rain95]

Originally Posted by Gem

Sounds like refinement to me.

Yup I really went missed the mark there. But then all posting and writing tends to do that. I myself feel there is no relationship between living it and thinking/writing about it. That's my guess why Buddha and Jesus never wrote anything down. You can't even get close to it in a description or any wording. I wonder if reading/writing/thinking is in fact a denial of it. Probably is.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Rain95

Yup I really went missed the mark there. But then all posting and writing tends to do that. I myself feel there is no relationship between living it and thinking/writing about it. That's my guess why Buddha and Jesus never wrote anything down. You can't even get close to it in a description or any wording. I wonder if reading/writing/thinking is in fact a denial of it. Probably is.

Yes I also find there is no connect between text and the insight. The insight isn't similar to what I thought the text was talking about.



We are so used to disagreeing on this forum. Agree or disagree is the basis of dialectic here, so I just want to clarify that I'm not in disagree when I comment on your posts. You make excellent points, I think they conform with to Buddhist philosophy, and your narrative on 'practice' all lead toward the nuance of 'what meditation is'.



Ardent awareness, free of craving, with understanding of impermanence - as the satipatthana says. I listened to JK's discourse on meditation on you tube (excellent) and I've heard Tolle (so similar to mine I hate it heehee), Adrayshanti (what is with that guy?) and more, and it seems to me they say very similar things. Others will listen and hear how adyra doesn't agree with JK and how Tolle is in contradiction with Nisargadatta - but that is only due to catagorising it all into the agree/disagree dialectic format.


For me personally, It isn't tremendously important. I will have a smoothy for breakfast, do heavy squats at the gym, and go to mum's house for a sacreligious Easter celebration with the clan - (and what's the deal with that egg laying rabbit, anyway)?

[sky]

Originally Posted by Rain95

Yup I really went missed the mark there. But then all posting and writing tends to do that. I myself feel there is no relationship between living it and thinking/writing about it. That's my guess why Buddha and Jesus never wrote anything down. You can't even get close to it in a description or any wording. I wonder if reading/writing/thinking is in fact a denial of it. Probably is.

If there is no relationship between ' living it and explaining it ' I wonder why Buddha bothered to teach...

[7luminaries]

Originally Posted by janielee

Agreed, communities and Sanghas are important, but the overriding assumption in these forums (not with you), I have noticed, is that there is equivalency between novices and the inner Gnosis and realizations of a true teacher.

Thanks for your kind comments.

JL

JanieLee, hello and very welcome. I think that many are so impacted by their experiences (here, let's say positively), that it may take many years to gain perspective on them.

To be able to put them in context and say, ok, that's another experience, perhaps different to the others...or perhaps more of the same. Or, more fundamentally, it's in this way or for this reason that an experience or set of experiences has had some real and meaningful impact. And then to realise how all the others have too. It's just perhaps we were in need of healing and balance in certain ways...so some may have been more impactful or centreing than others.

Just to step back and get perspective. So that you understand everyone and even you yourself are different from one to the next and one moment to the next. But that what actually is universal, in the end, is the human need to centre and to be and do lovingkindness from centre (equanimity).

So...when the focus is on largely on one's own experience at the expense of what remains (authentic love, One) or what is universal, then it's where we are the journey. Meaning, our individual experience can illuminate these universals more fully for each of us. They can connect us more fully within ourselves (so to speak) across the seeming distance between the unique (one) and the commonality (One). But perhaps only when we come to the place on our journey where we are able to apprehend that.

Where we can say, my experience is no more important that your experience...so, if I demand that it be so, then I cannot seek your highest good equally to my own. And yet -- I'm asking you to prioritise my highest good by elevating my experience over yours. Because insisting on the importance of my own experience without other considerations, full stop, is how I currently roll. If that's the case, the lack of parity is obvious but often we lack that perspective on ourselves.

It seems like a given. But I think it's often not so until it is so. And so we may focus on experience and illumination as if our experiences and we ourselves are wholly apart from all that is. Which is simply not so and never was. But I think it is common enough to use these insights to separate until we are healed and centred enough to realise that connection and unity have never meant violation, assimilation, or annihilation of any one instance of individuated consciousness (or, "self").

What are your thoughts? These are just some general thoughts and I may not be specifically addressing what you've seen or encountered.

Peace & blessings
7L

[7luminaries]

Originally Posted by 7luminaries

Simple experience is fundamental, and I include in that the most elaborate forms of energy work, done for healing &/or meaningful insight -- often one and the same. These too are done simply in service of lovingkindness and equanimity, via healing and support and affirmation.

But chasing experience for thrills or in order to feel good all the time is a form of addicition, which many would not want to acknowledge. And yet it is irrationally driving much of their lives, just like any addiction or its fear of want or lack.

Originally Posted by Gem

Fair point, well said.
Just gotta be careful of desire getting out of hand.

Gem, agreed.
And that's a valid point. I was thinking a bit more on how it is some connect deeply via doing but have trouble with being, or presence, outside of doing. They may also relate to the world through other work or action, aside from energy work -- this is a very extroverted way of being.

Energy work is (IMO) deeply grounding, but I also focus on balance and healing and presence. It's not about a thrill. Aside from a gradual moving toward greater transparency and presence, which is deeply affirming.

But for some, being and introspection are difficult not only due to preference or custom, but because as we all know, it can be hard or painful. It can be exhausting and it requires real strength, fortitude, and courage. Also, like most things in life that matter, it's not a 1-time thing, did and done. It's not simple and it's not black-and-white. It requires an ongoing commitment and focus and presence. None of these things run on autopilot, and they don't just spontaneously arise (unless you are "there" and all this is already a part of your conscious, intentional toolkit -- so still not autopilot). Though we can strengthen our focus with steadfast intent and yes, the simple doing of it.

I think you also touched on the other aspect. Desire. If we have a lot of fire in our constitution -- high energy, but volatile and imbalanced, energy work is super easy, all things considered. But...unless we are balanced and kind, it's not only largely self-serving but it's also ultimately self-consuming and by its very nature, uncontrollable in and of itself. That's the nature of fire.

There is a saying that darkness cannot conquer darkness, only light...and hatred cannot conquer hatred, only love. It applies to fire as well.

Fire cannot conquer (balance, transcend) fire...only love (lovingkindness and equanimity) can do that. Without those things, fire will destroy and consume. From an elemental sense, water and earth will transcend and balance fire. But spiritually, these simply represent the grounded and centred aspects of what is, whilst fire represents the desire to be and do and consume and acquire...necessary in small amounts but ultimately uncontrollable and destructive without the structuring, balancing context of lovingkindness and equanimity.

Peace & blessings
7L

[Rain95]

Originally Posted by sky123

If there is no relationship between ' living it and explaining it ' I wonder why Buddha bothered to teach...

There is no relationship between reading about professional Tennis player matches and the experience and being of the actual professional player playing a match as well. The professional tennis player is living it, with no reference to "ideas about it," no "thinking about it," they are present in it, moment to moment, as each serve comes to them at 100 miles an hour, the sounds of the ball hitting their racket, their breath, how their muscles feel as they move and strain, the automatic body memory bringing the head of the racket to meet the ball, the in the moment awareness of strategy, where to return the ball where the opposing player will have the most difficulty to return it..... each moment new, ....alert awake aware fully present....

Buddha did not teach, he described what he was, what he was experiencing, and listeners did not get what he was, what he was experiencing, they got a description of it. It is up to the listeners to move from that to the experience, to become that thing Buddha was. To find and be what the description pointed to, the actual moment to moment living of this new way to be and see.

This moment right now is empty of our invented content. This emptiness can be what our experience of now is. And by the word "emptiness" I don't mean an idea, I don't mean a concept, I mean an experience of now, whatever now is, without us adding or experiencing content our thoughts or conditioning brings into it. This takes a present right now awareness and awakeness that does not move into, or refer to, manufactured content from our minds.

What is every word posted here? It is manufactured reality, manufactured content. It is drawing on a white board, pen to paper, chalk on the sidewalk. It is creating something out of nothing, and what is the relationship between one mesmerized by their created content and one who is living free of such things? There is none.

[7luminaries]

Rain - hello there!
Everything you say is true about the nature of language. But it's also true that anyone seriously walking their paths and engaging with others will also use language. It is subject ultimately to all these limitations and subjective understandings.

And yet, I think that to equate anyone's journey to only words on a page OR only individual experiences is, either one, wholly inadequate. In either sense. We don't experience human incarnation in a vacuum. We form and reach the fullness of our humanity in community and cannot attain even the barest levels if isolated in our formative or other critical times.

Every interaction -- whether with language, with self, with others and with the world more generally, requires some combination of translation/illumination (apprehension), presence and communion.
No one way is necessarily more or less privileged as I see it...rather they are all opportunities for engagement, presence, apprehension, and communion.
IOW, I think it's a rather complex topic and it's risky to simplify too much.

Meaning...
No one is going to be that thing that Buddha was, and it's not going to happen from just action (reading, meditations, experience), nor just from teaching, nor just from listening or not listening, nor from muscle memory, etc., etc. Along the whole of our journey, surely there is a place and time for all these things.

We are each going to have to find our way and be our own realised self. And I don't think it had to do with Buddha's words or actions. Or with his practice or his illuminated transmission (which everyone got or didn't get and their impressions of it varied greatly, as well).

He was his own thing. Everyone is their own thing, and not what Buddha was.
And that's why he hesitated. Because all he could really offer were his realisations on interbeing, the universality of lovingkindness and equanimity, and realisation of the emptiness mainly for awareness and to avoid misdirection (do not dwell there). All of these really boil down to Be. Love. Now. (Ram Dass). But the being is doing, engagement, and presence, if it is also Love and Now. Meaning, it is all the things we are and do in this moment. Not just any one of them.

So in order to use himself and his teachings and experiences for what they were -- one man's journey -- he did convey those things.
For this reason...I think it's hard to say you can learn without learning, or change without changing, or do without doing, or be without being. Some things will be easier for some and at some times and places, but it's those others where we stretch and experience emotional discomfort and vulnerability which will be ultimately the most rewarding, the most healing, and the most transformative. That's something everyone has to accept and process at their own pace. And these things are different for each of us.

There is a place for all of that, such as it is, if I am conveying my meaning.

Peace & blessings
7L

[sky]

Originally Posted by Rain95

There is no relationship between reading about professional Tennis player matches and the experience and being of the actual professional player playing a match as well. The professional tennis player is living it, with no reference to "ideas about it," no "thinking about it," they are present in it, moment to moment, as each serve comes to them at 100 miles an hour, the sounds of the ball hitting their racket, their breath, how their muscles feel as they move and strain, the automatic body memory bringing the head of the racket to meet the ball, the in the moment awareness of strategy, where to return the ball where the opposing player will have the most difficulty to return it..... each moment new, ....alert awake aware fully present....

Buddha did not teach, he described what he was, what he was experiencing, and listeners did not get what he was, what he was experiencing, they got a description of it. It is up to the listeners to move from that to the experience, to become that thing Buddha was. To find and be what the description pointed to, the actual moment to moment living of this new way to be and see.

This moment right now is empty of our invented content. This emptiness can be what our experience of now is. And by the word "emptiness" I don't mean an idea, I don't mean a concept, I mean an experience of now, whatever now is, without us adding or experiencing content our thoughts or conditioning brings into it. This takes a present right now awareness and awakeness that does not move into, or refer to, manufactured content from our minds.

What is every word posted here? It is manufactured reality, manufactured content. It is drawing on a white board, pen to paper, chalk on the sidewalk. It is creating something out of nothing, and what is the relationship between one mesmerized by their created content and one who is living free of such things? There is none.

' Buddha didn't teach '.....

There is a relationship between everything Rain, Buddha called it ' Cause and effect '

Should we not refine our Self to the middle way?
That between sensual self-indulgence and self-mortification.

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^^^^