The path from suffering to liberation

[RyanWind]

Originally Posted by kingfisher

One true response to each moment.

I'm reminded once again of the zen guy who said that "afflictions" remain in the enlightened state, only our course of action is different than before.

Yes, the freedom is not in what is there, it is in what we do with it.

[Gem]

The person whoever they are, is the way they are, and the sense of self may have aspects ranging from the existential presence of your conscious awareness, and/or the personal things which make up the unique individual. From any person's standpoint, 'this' is the case, as it is, right now, and its for any person to be quite still, and be in introspective inquiry, for if there is a truth, it can exist only presently, so this is where the attention need be (and it actually is).

Sure, fire may fall from the sky and annihilate the body, or some monstrous trauma make deep scars on the mind, or the whole life is plagued with terrible torment which one can not bear to endure for a lifetime. The human condition is right messed up innit, but as one would imagine a tempest ripping bow from starboard as shredded sails whip like 9 tails in the tearing gale, one also knows that only a few metres below the swell there is a soft calm. It doesn't make the surface more bearable, but expands the bigger picture.

In this metaphorical sense, be with that that slightly deeper bit more quiet and, let the attention just be. Not to do, like, concentrate or anything, more like when you let the day go with a big ol' sigh.

Just take a load off for maybe 5 seconds and be here; then I feel like someone is listening. We typically don't listen particularly well. Distracted with our own lot, wondering what the hell my point is, thinking all nature of nonsense, dreaming up a wise ol' answer for this thread - all good, it is as its, the attention is here, and it's slightly peaceful.

About having attention. As a metaphor: you're a passenger in a car on pretty rough road and you have to thread a fine needle with cotton. It requires your attention, so you give it attention and want to put that floppy cotton through the minute needle eye. You realise it's really hard, wot, with the vehicle bumping around an' all, so you get focused on it, not because you're trying to concentrate, but because that attention is simply necessary to get it done. In this example it doesn't matter if the thread goes through - it's just to illustrate something about attention. Not really trying to pay attention is it More like your attention is needed, and you can.

Probably by now, if you notice, you might feel a slight betterment in calm than when I first started talking - maybe the contrary - and I made you more agitated than before, like, 'This bloke is talking cr4p!' In either case, at least you are conscious of what's going on with yourself right now just as you are.

[RyanWind]

To me, it all comes down to what you identify with. It's similar to two people arguing about the contents of a book. That's an ok thing to do, but you can also throw the book into a trash can. Somebody can walk up to you with the book and say, "Look here....." and you say, "Whatever, I don't care...."

Is there really something to overcome or is it just you think there is? You can deal with the idea something is there to deal with, or you can just forget the whole thing.

The one that imagines there is something to deal with is the creator of the something to deal with and the one who makes an effort to find a solution.

One can grow tired of being a person with a view and just be. Not be a person, just be. Whatever the mind conjures up ...don't care, whatever....leave me alone....not in the sense I have to do something about it or that it is bugging me....in the sense of I have nothing to do with it...it doesn't belong to me.....it's not a part of my experience or reality.

See the word ignore can have two meanings. Like say somebody is pestering you in your room so you ignore them. That is one meaning. The other meaning is I don't care if they are there or not. I have no relationship with them at all. Zero. Since they have none of my attention, there is nothing there to respond or react to.

Buddhism is not telling you how to solve a problem, it is saying to drop that which has problems. Flipping this around to state the same thing from the opposite side...where is the problem if nobody is there to have an opinion about it?

[Gem]

Originally Posted by RyanWind

To me, it all comes down to what you identify with. It's similar to two people arguing about the contents of a book. That's an ok thing to do, but you can also throw the book into a trash can. Somebody can walk up to you with the book and say, "Look here....." and you say, "Whatever, I don't care...."

Is there really something to overcome or is it just you think there is? You can deal with the idea something is there to deal with, or you can just forget the whole thing.

The one that imagines there is something to deal with is the creator of the something to deal with and the one who makes an effort to find a solution.

One can grow tired of being a person with a view and just be. Not be a person, just be. Whatever the mind conjures up ...don't care, whatever....leave me alone....not in the sense I have to do something about it or that it is bugging me....in the sense of I have nothing to do with it...it doesn't belong to me.....it's not a part of my experience or reality.

See the word ignore can have two meanings. Like say somebody is pestering you in your room so you ignore them. That is one meaning. The other meaning is I don't care if they are there or not. I have no relationship with them at all. Zero. Since they have none of my attention, there is nothing there to respond or react to.

Buddhism is not telling you how to solve a problem, it is saying to drop that which has problems. Flipping this around to state the same thing from the opposite side...where is the problem if nobody is there to have an opinion about it?

I think it is best to come to who you are just the way you are now. I question if in this moment is there anything anyone can do about it? Of course this personality is here with all its facets, so it's a fact, this is the way it is at the moment. After the fact of it, then the notion of having to be better, and change, and so on might emerge. In in itself not a bad thing, but I wonder if the action on it is coming from a hesitation where some sort of expectation and obligation compels the will power to erupt, or is it in action immediately where the arising thought and the activity are unified as though there is no gap between the mind's arising and the bodily expression. It's the question of time. The issue of the moment. The difference between acting based on what is remembered and known or 'just doing it'.

People might argue that 'just doing it' would mean killing and raping at every temper and passion, but I claim that these are enacted from reactions, and 'reaction' implies the past, what has already gone by, and therefore these are not 'just doing it'.

People are always saying 'it's your choice', like I see in the mirror that I am too fat, so I decide to go one a diet. But what if I looked in the mirror, and immediately on sight I was actually transformed more fundamentally, and at the same moment my whole thought surrounding food underwent a radical change? Like in that moment I realised something deeper about myself, and it passed away in the moment I recognised it, to never be thought again!

It's the very nature of thought to be momentary. There the issue of habitual repetitive thoughts that one associates with themselves more strongly, like affirmations that give to persona some sort of solidity, but what is this person other than the whole of the past path that led to 'here' - where I'm at right now? What am I to do? There was trauma and horror along with happy times and all such was formative of me, but it is now gone, yet somehow constitutive of the fabric of the universe itself.

That said, what we are immersed in is a transformation. A person 'just as they are' is a fact, but it has no particular substance of form, it is within the universe of change and can be seen to be. The idea is to be here in the midst of change, not as a solid object, but as a persona who is endemic to the fluid itself, formed by it, forming it, whatever, but essentially trans-forming.

[Jeremy Bong]

Gem,

I think the best way to solve the issue is to write more and to forget more/most of them. When someone write more he put his intention on positive thinking to write it well and forget what trouble his mind.......

[RyanWind]

The problem is in language itself. A lot of "guru" and enlightened types from 5000 years ago to now have said this same thing about how it can't be written about or spoken of, all words can do is point. Even then, the words themselves have no importance.

If anyone tries to understand this stuff, they have to think about it so are moving in the wrong direction. That's the whole point. Just being means not paying any attention to thought. It's something you arrive at when you put away the other way of being. But once you are there, there is nothing to say about it. If you say anything about it, you are thinking.

There are no words to describe it because words belong to the "person" who is not doing it.

I can write a long post describing it but then the second I write the last word and hit "post" I have absolutely no relationship to, or interest in, anything I wrote. If I do, I am identifying with thinking again.

Our minds tell us a lot of things. What makes us free is having the ability to let all of that go. Our natural state is one of inner and outer peace.
If the mind asks... "what do I do?" the person who has found it doesn't care about this question. This question is like the flower on the lawn down the street from where they live. It is there but it has no connection or effect on them.

It's easy to see someone ranting on tv and think, bla bla bla,,,I have no interest in this stuff.... then turn them off......really, you just do that to yourself.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by RyanWind

The problem is in language itself. A lot of "guru" and enlightened types from 5000 years ago to now have said this same thing about how it can't be written about or spoken of, all words can do is point. Even then, the words themselves have no importance.

I keep saying that same thing.

If anyone tries to understand this stuff, they have to think about it so are moving in the wrong direction. That's the whole point. Just being means not paying any attention to thought. It's something you arrive at when you put away the other way of being. But once you are there, there is nothing to say about it. If you say anything about it, you are thinking.

Still there are thoughts which we are aware of. I think the difference is putting the thinker before the thought, when thought is not different from the perception of it. When the thought appears it is due to interest in it that it does so, and when one loses interest in it, it goes away again. Just being is it like 'this is the way it is', and there are no requirements attached to that.

There is no anxiety, agitation or disruption involved in the freely wandering mind but it is called the monkey. In fact, the monkey is grabbing at them, clutching and so on, and this related to desire/clinging/craving. On the other hand, people become adverse to their thought and resistance/avoiding/aversion, and that is the dynamic which sustains dukkha.

There are no words to describe it because words belong to the "person" who is not doing it.

I can write a long post describing it but then the second I write the last word and hit "post" I have absolutely no relationship to, or interest in, anything I wrote. If I do, I am identifying with thinking again.

Same here, I think ti, say it, and then it's over and I don't think that anymore. Sometimes I get a bit obsessed with a theme though.

Our minds tell us a lot of things. What makes us free is having the ability to let all of that go. Our natural state is one of inner and outer peace.
If the mind asks... "what do I do?" the person who has found it doesn't care about this question. This question is like the flower on the lawn down the street from where they live. It is there but it has no connection or effect on them.

Eggzakry. There isn't anyone doing anything - there is the immediate conscious awareness of what is, whatever that happens to be.

It's easy to see someone ranting on tv and think, bla bla bla,,,I have no interest in this stuff.... then turn them off......really, you just do that to yourself.

If a person is engaged in their thought, there is no secondary notion that it has to switched off, so I suggest, don't even think thought needs to stop, just let it be as it is - as it really has no effect on you anyway.

[RyanWind]

Here are some things that make no sense to me. Maybe somebody has an idea or answer.

#1. Sleep. Where do we go? Why can consciousness be turned off? If we are eternal conscious energy... how is it that we totally black out for a third of our lives? We take it for granted and don't really question sleep but it is the weirdest thing ever. It's like unplugging a computer or robot every night.

#2. Seems to me what we are talking about is the addition of a entity. Really normal conscious becomes a higher awareness when this new thing becomes present. This higher observer that is observing the observer or thought/person. So where is this seer when it is not present as higher awareness? If it is "our true selves" why does it come and go? How can we become unconscious? Here again, it is like something is being turned off or leaving the body.

And the really odd thing....we are not the thing that comes and goes, since we black out, become unconscious and unaware etc.

[sky]

Originally Posted by RyanWind

Here are some things that make no sense to me. Maybe somebody has an idea or answer.

#1. Sleep. Where do we go? Why can consciousness be turned off? If we are eternal conscious energy... how is it that we totally black out for a third of our lives? We take it for granted and don't really question sleep but it is the weirdest thing ever. It's like unplugging a computer or robot every night.

#2. Seems to me what we are talking about is the addition of a entity. Really normal conscious becomes a higher awareness when this new thing becomes present. This higher observer that is observing the observer or thought/person. So where is this seer when it is not present as higher awareness? If it is "our true selves" why does it come and go? How can we become unconscious? Here again, it is like something is being turned off or leaving the body.

And the really odd thing....we are not the thing that comes and goes, since we black out, become unconscious and unaware etc.

I don't think consciousness is turned off, rather turned down during sleep.
Read about ' Sleeping Consciously ' it's interesting.