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[Phaelyn]

Originally Posted by Gem

you probably recognize there is a deeper compulsion over which, lets be honest, you have no choice.

We have a choice to not compare now to any other time. To not put one judgement or interpretation, upon it. To not entertain one idea or belief or conclusion about it. Yesterday Buddha and a thousand angels may have appeared to me and now it's just me and a pile of dirty dishes, and I have the choice to perceive no difference.

[Unseeking Seeker]

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On the topic of teachers ... perhaps if we consider an orientation as open and love enabled, it is not so much about teaching but rather sharing with those choosing pairing. As such, the student in us should remain alive in an egolessly aspect of childlike wonder.

Too often we see the opposite however

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[sky]

Originally Posted by sentient

Beautiful? More like everything having gone to rack and ruin during Soviet era.

I’d like to make a bucket-list visit to this old Petroglyph site:
https://slideplayer.com/slide/5990859/

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I like simplicity

Did you get your DNA done by Ancestry ?

[sentient]

Originally Posted by sky123

I like simplicity

And then of course there is the ability of some to see beauty anywhere or everywhere……
Or humour …. or the devil ….

Originally Posted by sky123

Did you get your DNA done by Ancestry ?

FamilyTreeDNA …

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[sentient]

Originally Posted by Unseeking Seeker

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Too often we see the opposite however

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Well, where is the discussion if I’m not interested in anything you might bring to the ‘collective table’.
If what I am talking about - obviously - is more important.
And if you cannot follow the topic I am presenting, follow my train of thought and with focused attention become dependent on the wisdom pearls I drop – then you are not too bright - aware – are you! heh.

(Know the feeling, but one has got to have at least some humour about it, be able to laugh at the self)

https://www.researchgate.net/profile...permission.png

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[JustBe]

Originally Posted by sentient

Well, where is the discussion if I’m not interested in anything you might bring to the ‘collective table’.
If what I am talking about - obviously - is more important.
And if you cannot follow the topic I am presenting, follow my train of thought and with focused attention become dependent on the wisdom pearls I drop – then you are not too bright - aware – are you! heh.

(Know the feeling, but one has got to have at least some humour about it, be able to laugh at the self)

https://www.researchgate.net/profile...permission.png

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Are you feeling irritable of late.

I have no problem with it just so your aware.

More curiously noticing a few of your more ‘recent’ posts as a little off ..��

[sentient]

Originally Posted by JustBe

Are you feeling irritable of late.

No more than usual.

Originally Posted by JustBe

I have no problem with it just so your aware.

I have no problem with feeling aversion.

Originally Posted by JustBe

More curiously noticing a few of your more ‘recent’ posts as a little off ..��

Just letting you know what my aversion is about.

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[sentient]

I do get the Buddhist preliminaries. How they are aimed at taming the wild mind and how mindfulness practice brings objectivity and insights into the workings of our minds and our feelings so that we can examine them.

And I do get the 3 poisons – that is just how a deaf & blind-ego operates.

But the story doesn’t end there on that one spot, unless we subconsciously believe in this Cartesian body-mind dualism. Don’t quiz me on that, I don’t understand it.

Maybe somebody could explain it to me?

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But what happens, when we experience egolessness?
I thiiiiink, alongside of that – we discover that our animal bodies are basically pure.
The functions of our bodies are pure.
That our basic purity has some innate wisdom in it.

Just for example – you are looking for a new flat, so you go and look at a few.
In one flat (if you listen to the basic purity of your body), you might feel anxious. In the second – annoyed. The third nauseated … then you get to the fourth flat and all of a sudden a sense of peace just comes upon you.

My point is attraction/aversion can also be your basic body, your basic purity telling you something, and by ignoring it, the mind is trying to control it ….. This I think will lead to this Cartesian body-mind dualism (that I don’t know about) numbness equanimity, which is just a re-establishment of the ego.

Also desire – seen from another reference point of view, can be as good as money in the bank, currency to surrender with.

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[Phaelyn]

Originally Posted by Gem

I know people are very fond of their choices, but really there is no choice in the sense that the mind is distracted and wild, and that's 'already true'.

I think at some point we realize none of our thoughts are from us. Even the ones we think are conveying something "true" or wise or some understanding we think we know as fact, as observed, as this glass here in my hand.

So to me, a thought like "we have no choice" has a zillion false assumptions in it. All that exists is now, and now I am perceiving various internal and external data (though the external is in fact a product of the internal... the brain) but we are aware of it coming from a source as outside "us" or the body we are currently experiencing and experiencing through. So we are aware of the difference between our external and internal fed content.

Then we have a certain relationship with this internal and external data being streamed to us. We process it according to a lot of various stuff, habits, conditioning, memory and on and on. Buddhism to me, and Zen in particular, is pointing to a certain way to live within all these givens. We have the word "attached" or the concept of being un-attached....but what does this mean? To me it is the realization (and actualization) in this moment that I am free of my mental interpretative content, but not my own beingness. Not some of it, or partial freedom. Complete freedom from all of it. This is always a possible perception and experience in the now so then choice is always present. Always! I always have the option to identify with my content or not.

Mentally claiming one is somehow lost in mind a lot, therefore, I can't get free by choice is thought being an evil trickster. Again, saying look here, look at me! This is where we know? In ideas or thoughts? Not to me, we do not know from thought, we know from understanding and understanding is non-verbal. Realizing I am non-verbal or understanding makes it a heck of a lot easier to spot the delusions attempted by thought.

The past is a fantasy. A complete delusion. The past does not exist in any real sense, none. There is only the present, the now. Making a statement of "fact" based on the past is just repeating habits and ones conditioning. The past is only imagined and who or what is doing the imagining, thought is. A lot of things are the same moment to moment, year to year and we have a memory and such to keep this stuff in our awareness and understanding.

But while I can know my past, my name, my life "I" am the witness to this stuff, not the stuff itself. I am in various roles, parts in a play. This is all in our understanding and awareness. None of it is hidden or tucked away somewhere "deep" within us. I can talk about it using thought, but thought is not the holder of it, thought is just the conceptual communication, a representation of it. Like looking in a book for quotes. The book is the source. We are the non-verbal knowing, the book, the source, not the quotes, not our thoughts.

A quote from a book is always partial. Just a little fragment from the book. Likewise, our thoughts are just little fragments from what we know, however, thoughts can also just be a bunch of non-sense as we are not always conveying though words, concepts, what we hold as understanding. Many times we are not involved in the output from thought. The brain is doing the heavy lifting, or all of the generating. So a bunch of non-sense comes out and is also a product of thought. That's the thing with thought. It is a tool of the brain that we can use, (understanding) or the brain can use it, produce it on it's own.

Getting into the mechanics is probably not the best route to explain what I'm trying to express here but I'd wrap it up by saying mentally analyzing ourselves as to our "spiritual progress" or states is like asking our jailer to set ourselves free. We are basically in a jail without locked doors. We are trying to figure out how to get free but we ask a recording for the way out. The guards left years ago just leaving a computer program that answers your questions. We ask how to open the door and the program says you can't. All we have to do is walk out but we are fixated on the recording to tell us how. All of our faith is in the recording. It is where we find truth. That recording is our very own thoughts.

Maybe yesterday or last year I was experiencing this or that. I have a memory of it. I can go there with my attention. I can analyze images and thoughts with more thoughts endlessly forever in each now moment. Or I can not listen to one idea and be free in this moment. In some later moment I recognize I am lost in thoughts again, so what! The noticing is the freedom. Now I am free again! We are always growing in understanding and self awareness!

Life comes on it's own like the seasons. It's always a new now, happy, sad, whatever. Doesn't matter what it is. I am on a ride at an amusement park, just relax and see what comes. No matter what is here it is temporary. Impermanent. But we will continue on, witnessing what is. The "easing into the now" being ok with it, accepting it fully without resistance or expectation, that's where our freedom is. To be clear and empty in each moment, at peace, watching the show, but not personally involved in it. Which is to be more present to it, as we are there with what is, and not in mind.

[sentient]

Gem,

This is quite a long time ago when you talked about your meditation school, how every week, fortnightly (?) you would go to your teachers, facilitators (?) and they would quiz you about your progress.

And did they not suggest some more advanced practices, but you declined …..?
Was that the story?

If it was – why did you decline?
To know the preliminaries more in depth? To perfect the preliminaries?
Because you thought that within the preliminaries there is the seed or the kernel of universal truth, which would run through the entire Buddhist path without change?
Because staying with the preliminaries is being/staying humble and humbleness is virtue?

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