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Post by michaelsees on Mar 30, 2011 14:20:46 GMT -5
Suchness is only a pointer, it's empty in itself and meaningful to the one that uses it.
Michael
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Post by enigma on Mar 30, 2011 17:40:47 GMT -5
Now only once in a while when I go on a solo retreat into the woods will I shoot a rabbit or squirrel(sorry E) for my food only. Michael ;;;;GASP!!;;;;;
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Post by question on Mar 30, 2011 23:24:13 GMT -5
You said that in a whole lot of confusing words, but the end sounds about right (assuming I'm understanding properly). Getting the ending correct is the easiest part, I thought about not writing the ending at all (the part about the collapsing) because it distracts from the process that shows how the conclusion came about, and it is the process that I'd like to have analyzed. Anyone can parrot the ending ("all concepts collapse, all that remains is THIS blah blah blah"), but I see all the time that people say the same thing but actually have completely different understandings of it. Let me try asking another way: Does the earth revolve beneath the clouds, or do the clouds revolve around the earth? From the earth's "perspective" (i.e. - I am earth looking at cloud), the clouds appear to be moving around it. From the clouds' "perspective," the earth appears to revolve beneath it. Maybe I just suck at asking these questions, but it's supposed to work like that painting of a dog that Dali did where its' eye is a mountain-scape and its' body is a wine glass. The picture changes depending on how you look at it. If it still doesn't make sense, stare at the top of a tree on a day when clouds are rolling by quickly. If you can switch between right brain / left brain easily, you can 'make the earth revolve' or 'make the clouds revolve.' Which view is right? Wow, I've never thought about it from within the context of pattern recognition. Thanks. Are you suggesting that actually when one is stuck in duality-illusion then one is not only stuck in beliefs and incessant thinking but also stuck in constantly seeing and experiencing the pattern of duality/thingness/self? And then are you saying that there actually is a seeing/experiencing of a pattern of emptiness? And finally a dropping of patterns altogether? So it's like when we were children there was no duality pattern seen/experienced. But then we grow up and accept various duality beliefs, which become deeply ingrained/unconscious and then those beliefs introduce the actual seeing/experiencing of a duality pattern. The visual information that we see remains the same as always, but a subtle pattern is added over the raw visual information, it adds a specific flavour and structure to perception and eventually we forget how to switch off that duality-pattern that automatically gives a subtle duality-structure to our experience. But it takes effort to maintain the seeing of that pattern and the pattern isn't always seen, but in the times when there is no pattern at all, we don't notice it, because there is no interest in noticing the absence of a pattern. Would that be an accurate speculation?
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Post by souley on Mar 31, 2011 2:01:12 GMT -5
I think you might be on to something question, but I'm not good enough at either nonduality or english to be able to discuss at this level. I just wanted to contribute a very foundational "imagining" that all people do. It's that we all learn to go around imagining that we are looking out of a face, like all other people seem to be doing. It is like we actually see that we are looking out of two eye sockets in a face. One step towards enlightenment (the first step in the Douglas Harding way) is to drop that imagination and see that its just a blank shapeless space that we're looking out of. I don't know if this is some kind of pattern thingy or not, but it is really strange and deeply rooted. When someone tells us we have been bad and makes us embarrassed, we stand there imagining that our face is right up against the criticism, full frontal collision, but thats all imaginary. In reality it is just this space we're looking out of, no receiver. I did some Douglas Harding experiments before really getting into this stuff, and one of the experiments simply dropped this imagining right off, for a short period of time. Poff.. At first I saw that I was looking out of a face, the next second I saw that I was looking out of empty space. I don't know where such imagining fits into your discussion, but it feels deeper then concepts in some way.
All these words are probably meaningless and have to be experienced, I figure it sounds like mad talk:)
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Post by teknix on Mar 31, 2011 3:36:35 GMT -5
Pointers pointing at nothing, ahaha, what the point?
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Post by sharon on Mar 31, 2011 3:59:49 GMT -5
Yes ~ it's good to see clearly that all criticism is imagined and so if it hits something then the universe is reminding you that there is something there that can be hit, basically.
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Post by sharon on Mar 31, 2011 4:00:36 GMT -5
I do think these 2 posts are linked in that when there is an absence of patterns and just clear headless seeing, it is noticed.
What notices ...
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Post by vacant on Mar 31, 2011 6:11:52 GMT -5
ZD you wrote
Nicely put! I had never heard of a "carryover effect" but I also find it to be so. What happens is that the more often I remember to attend and the more the attender comes to remind me to... well the Attender kinda attends me! And that's a pleasing constatation.
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Post by mamza on Mar 31, 2011 11:12:50 GMT -5
Well, I may be wrong about this, but it seems to me that pattern recognition itself is just another set of ideas or beliefs. It's just sort of...organizing them or compounding them. Like making a toothpick tower--all the toothpicks are toothpicks, and even if you build something realistic out of those toothpicks, it's still just a bunch of toothpicks.
But yes, there could certainly be a pattern of emptiness. In fact, I might have had that happen now that I think on it. The noticing of emptiness happens more and more frequently, so mind tries to own it by turning it into a pattern. "When I do this, emptiness is here." If you just stick to noticing, and in the words of ZM Seung Sahn, "don't make anything," there will be a falling away of those patterns.
I would say that this is fairly accurate, yes. There is no interest to the mind in the lack of patterns. No patterns means no way to differentiate between this and that, which is sort of the whole function of the mind. It thinks it's being fired! So it works harder and harder to prove itself useful until it just can't take it anymore and gives up.
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Post by question on Mar 31, 2011 12:19:17 GMT -5
Well, I may be wrong about this, but it seems to me that pattern recognition itself is just another set of ideas or beliefs. It's just sort of...organizing them or compounding them. Like making a toothpick tower--all the toothpicks are toothpicks, and even if you build something realistic out of those toothpicks, it's still just a bunch of toothpicks. That's what I thought, too. I've always thought that patterns are only in the mind. But look at the dancer below. IMO the pattern that the dancer moves clockwise is very distinct from a thought which asserts the same. And a thought alone can't really make the dancer move counterclockwise, the pattern is either seen or it isn't. You see the difference? The seeing of the pattern is a real experience and more subtle that the simple seeing of colours or the hearing of sounds, but real nonetheless. souley: My interpretation of the "looking out of a face" is that it is a pattern. The pattern is a natural result of the body trying to establish a focal reference point towards which it can relate changing conditions, i.e. movement. It makes no sense to put this focal point into right foot or left hand. If our eyes were located in the chest, the that reference point would be located in the chest and we would experience the pattern that "we are" somewhere in the chest. As for Harding's emptiness, tbh I have no idea what he's talking about, I don't see any infinite space from which we're looking out of.
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Post by question on Mar 31, 2011 12:24:10 GMT -5
I've always thought that the whole process is essentially mostly intellectual, restricted to the mind. That as children we accept false beliefs and that those false beliefs serve as a foundation of an entire structure of identity from within which self-ing is constantly perpetuated. Almost like a mind is OS and "self-ing" is software. And I always thought that actual sense-experience is never affected by those delusions, because it's confined to the mind and the mind can't directly affect reality. So the solution for me was always to kind of figure it out intellectually and hammer this understanding into the unconscious until one day the unconscious stops believing false things. Like running a debugger in order to try and fix the selfing program. But this doesn't really work, because even if you can figure out everything the illusory patterns are still being perceived and no intellectual understanding can change that. Pattern recognition is automatic and while we're trying to figure things out, all this thinking is still constantly infiltrated by the subtle perception of a selfing pattern. So the selfing pattern isn't really addressed sufficiently, the pattern isn't seen through. On the other hand, if we actually see how the pattern operates, how it comes and goes, then it's an evidence that is much stronger than just intellectual analysis.
So yeah, this "pattern recognition" thingy opens a whole new context. We constantly see patterns that don't really seem to be intrinsic to sense-perceptions and yet are real enough to be experienced. Usually they all have a purpose and are totally fine. Even the perception of space and time are subtle patterns that are added to sense-perceptions. We can actually notice that the pattern of space and time operates, we can actually see how the pattern is not intrinsic to sense-perception itself.
My suspicion is that when we think that we are a self then what really happens isn't so much that we THINK that we are a self but that we experience a subtle pattern that we for the lack of a better word interpret as the FEELING of a self. People always say that they feel like a self and I could never find that feeling. Or, in other words, something somehow seemed to "feel" like a self, but it wasn't a feeling, and it wasn't an intuition and certainly not merely a thought. Now when I call this sense-of-self a pattern then it suddenly makes total sense to me. Somewhere (I think it was ZD who wrote it. EDIT: probably not, I've skimmed the last chapters of "Pouring Concrete" and the closest I could find was on page 211: "[...] I felt amazingly good, but I did not realize until several hours later that I was finally free.") I read an account of awakening where it was reported that it was noticed that one day something was lacking, and then it was seen that what was lacking was the sense of self. I now interpret this in the way that there was always a subtle pattern of self that was being experienced in daily life, but then, somehow, this pattern disappeared, and the disappearance was noticed as a subtle lack of something, namely the pattern of a sense of self.
Does that make any sense?
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Post by mamza on Mar 31, 2011 18:39:20 GMT -5
I think I understand what you're saying, and it makes sense....but I can't figure out if you're asking something or just stating something.
Yes, and hopefully it becomes possible to see that this pattern of self is completely unnecessary. And at that point, why try and make it or any other pattern happen (or not happen)? The problem is that it can take a while for that to actually sink in to the point where you aren't inclined to make these patterns appear. There's also the possibility that understanding that the pattern is unnecessary becomes the piece of another pattern too, getting you kind of 'stuck.'
Just focus on what's doing the noticing and all the nonsense will disappear. This is the same as attending the actual.
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Post by michaelsees on Mar 31, 2011 18:45:27 GMT -5
Well, I may be wrong about this, but it seems to me that pattern recognition itself is just another set of ideas or beliefs. It's just sort of...organizing them or compounding them. Like making a toothpick tower--all the toothpicks are toothpicks, and even if you build something realistic out of those toothpicks, it's still just a bunch of toothpicks. That's what I thought, too. I've always thought that patterns are only in the mind. But look at the dancer below. IMO the pattern that the dancer moves clockwise is very distinct from a thought which asserts the same. And a thought alone can't really make the dancer move counterclockwise, the pattern is either seen or it isn't. You see the difference? The seeing of the pattern is a real experience and more subtle that the simple seeing of colours or the hearing of sounds, but real nonetheless. souley: My interpretation of the "looking out of a face" is that it is a pattern. The pattern is a natural result of the body trying to establish a focal reference point towards which it can relate changing conditions, i.e. movement. It makes no sense to put this focal point into right foot or left hand. If our eyes were located in the chest, the that reference point would be located in the chest and we would experience the pattern that "we are" somewhere in the chest. As for Harding's emptiness, tbh I have no idea what he's talking about, I don't see any infinite space from which we're looking out of. Hey stop stealing my stuff! Just kidding Question I posted this dancer some months ago. Making her change directions is easy but with practice I can make her stop and be still. Give it a try with enough stillness it can be done. michael
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Post by question on Mar 31, 2011 19:58:32 GMT -5
I think I understand what you're saying, and it makes sense....but I can't figure out if you're asking something or just stating something. Yes, and hopefully it becomes possible to see that this pattern of self is completely unnecessary. And at that point, why try and make it or any other pattern happen (or not happen)? The problem is that it can take a while for that to actually sink in to the point where you aren't inclined to make these patterns appear. There's also the possibility that understanding that the pattern is unnecessary becomes the piece of another pattern too, getting you kind of 'stuck.' Just focus on what's doing the noticing and all the nonsense will disappear. This is the same as attending the actual. This "insight" of mine is just two days old, I'm not even sure if it's valid, it needs more testing. So at this point I'm only asking. If I had to contextualize the pattern thingy I'd have to say that it's just a clarification/noticing and further differentiation of the phenomenology of experience. And in that sense it doesn't necessarily imply the desire to change the pattern or unsee the patterns, just like the noticing that sounds aren't colours doesn't imply a desire to change sounds or try to unhear the sounds. If there is a desire that follows from the noticing of patterns then it's not a desire to see without patterns but to notice the suchness within/as which patterns appear. So nothing really changes in regards to the general strategy, only an added clarification about the phenomenology of experience.
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Post by mamza on Mar 31, 2011 20:26:05 GMT -5
I see. In any case, I think you've got the situation down fairly well as long as you realize it's just differentiation. Now it's just a matter of practicing what I preach.
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