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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2020 8:42:05 GMT -5
It is not possible to watch yourself thinking or perceiving an object. As soon as you try to become the witness of what you are thinking or seeing you will momentarily experience only awareness. If that is so then the world including mind ceases to exist. It disappears, perhaps only for a fraction of a second. You cannot sit back and observe a thought because you are completely absorbed in it. If you have the intention to observe a thought and wait for a thought to arrive, then as soon as a thought appears you will immediately forget that you want to observe it because the thought will take up your entire attention. After the thought disappears you will be reminded that you want to observe the thought, but it is too late. The reminder appears automatically because you have planted that intention in your mind in the same way that if you plant a reminder to meet someone in 5 hours time, the thought to look at your watch will occasionally appear spontaneously in the mind without constantly having to look at the time for 5 hours. The fact that the intention to observe the thought comes back after you have already been absorbed in the thought doesn't matter because the intention to observe the thought is not what actually happens. The intention simply takes you back to the source which is awareness and which is thought free. Now I agree with this argument. In other words when you observe a thought, you are in it. The observation can only come after, as a memory, but if you can't separate subject and object while thinking, how can there be peace? This is why atma vichara is about seeking Self by rejecting all thought, shifting attention away from objects persistenly, at first back to the I-sense, then eventually that too fades and there is only Self, silence. Now Ramana stipulates that you can do this with a little practice while performing any job or task, so the notion that you can't reject thought while performing tasks or that you can't perform tasks in silence, mental silence, is a challenge to him. I can post the quotes if you like. There is a connection between thoughts and vasanas, the one feeds and supports the other. The primary one is "I am this body", therefore separate. There are thoughts that constantly feed this notion. I would say most thoughts feed this notion. These are the self referential thoughts people here speak about.
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Post by laughter on Jan 7, 2020 17:55:23 GMT -5
It is not possible to watch yourself thinking or perceiving an object. As soon as you try to become the witness of what you are thinking or seeing you will momentarily experience only awareness. If that is so then the world including mind ceases to exist. It disappears, perhaps only for a fraction of a second. You cannot sit back and observe a thought because you are completely absorbed in it. If you have the intention to observe a thought and wait for a thought to arrive, then as soon as a thought appears you will immediately forget that you want to observe it because the thought will take up your entire attention. After the thought disappears you will be reminded that you want to observe the thought, but it is too late. The reminder appears automatically because you have planted that intention in your mind in the same way that if you plant a reminder to meet someone in 5 hours time, the thought to look at your watch will occasionally appear spontaneously in the mind without constantly having to look at the time for 5 hours. The fact that the intention to observe the thought comes back after you have already been absorbed in the thought doesn't matter because the intention to observe the thought is not what actually happens. The intention simply takes you back to the source which is awareness and which is thought free. Now I agree with this argument. In other words when you observe a thought, you are in it. The observation can only come after, as a memory, but if you can't separate subject and object while thinking, how can there be peace? This is why atma vichara is about seeking Self by rejecting all thought, shifting attention away from objects persistenly, at first back to the I-sense, then eventually that too fades and there is only Self, silence. Now Ramana stipulates that you can do this with a little practice while performing any job or task, so the notion that you can't reject thought while performing tasks or that you can't perform tasks in silence, mental silence, is a challenge to him. I can post the quotes if you like. There is a connection between thoughts and vasanas, the one feeds and supports the other. The primary one is "I am this body", therefore separate. There are thoughts that constantly feed this notion. I would say most thoughts feed this notion. These are the self referential thoughts people here speak about. No, it's actually quite possible to be aware of a thought without being absorbed by it. This is a sort of metaphorical distance. The word detachment applies, and detachment can be either healthy or unhealthy, and it has a material context, and a spiritual context.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Jan 7, 2020 18:44:38 GMT -5
Now I agree with this argument. In other words when you observe a thought, you are in it. The observation can only come after, as a memory, but if you can't separate subject and object while thinking, how can there be peace? This is why atma vichara is about seeking Self by rejecting all thought, shifting attention away from objects persistenly, at first back to the I-sense, then eventually that too fades and there is only Self, silence. Now Ramana stipulates that you can do this with a little practice while performing any job or task, so the notion that you can't reject thought while performing tasks or that you can't perform tasks in silence, mental silence, is a challenge to him. I can post the quotes if you like. There is a connection between thoughts and vasanas, the one feeds and supports the other. The primary one is "I am this body", therefore separate. There are thoughts that constantly feed this notion. I would say most thoughts feed this notion. These are the self referential thoughts people here speak about. No, it's actually quite possible to be aware of a thought without being absorbed by it. This is a sort of metaphorical distance. The word detachment applies, and detachment can be either healthy or unhealthy, and it has a material context, and a spiritual context. laughter is correct, possible but not easy. The following is a preferred order of observation. 1st, objects or sounds, zd's ATA-T. 2nd, bodily sensations, observing tension is a good start. 3rd, bodily movements, for example, walking, facial expression, gestures, tone of voice. 4th, thoughts and emotions are about equally difficult to observe. Difficult, but not impossible. How possible? Attention is separate from thoughts, feelings, bodily actions, sensations. Likewise awareness.
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Post by laughter on Jan 7, 2020 21:51:53 GMT -5
No, it's actually quite possible to be aware of a thought without being absorbed by it. This is a sort of metaphorical distance. The word detachment applies, and detachment can be either healthy or unhealthy, and it has a material context, and a spiritual context. laughter is correct, possible but not easy. The following is a preferred order of observation. 1st, objects or sounds, zd's ATA-T. 2nd, bodily sensations, observing tension is a good start. 3rd, bodily movements, for example, walking, facial expression, gestures, tone of voice. 4th, thoughts and emotions are about equally difficult to observe. Difficult, but not impossible. How possible? Attention is separate from thoughts, feelings, bodily actions, sensations. Likewise awareness. In a spiritual sense, the end of self-inquiry is certainly near when "observation of the mind" becomes effortless.
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Post by satchitananda on Jan 7, 2020 23:16:51 GMT -5
No, it's actually quite possible to be aware of a thought without being absorbed by it. This is a sort of metaphorical distance. The word detachment applies, and detachment can be either healthy or unhealthy, and it has a material context, and a spiritual context. What you describe is impossible. If you are absorbed in a thought you cannot, while being absorbed in the thought make a decision within that absorption of attentiveness to the thought, to detach yourself from the thought and look at the thought so as to be the witness of that thought. It is dissolution and cessation of thought, not witnessing thought, that leads to Transcendence.The one thought principle of practice which takes a special thought such as mantra or attention to breath or some other bodily sensation or something which fades and dissolves to reveal pure awareness which is Transcendence is the correct practice. This is the principle of the 112 practices of the Vijñāna-bhairava-Tantra for instance: "12. ‘Cessation’ (nirodha) [of the mind] was taught by previous [masters] through the yoga/method of renunciation [of the mind and senses] and arduous practice. Here I will teach a cessation that is [comparatively] effortless. 13. Focus the mind upon something that then dissolves. Because it is not grasping anything else [other than the dissolving object], the mind comes to rest in one’s Self. 14. It is similar to the case of a powerful thunder-clap gradually fading: when it dies away, the mind, due to being [totally] focused on it, comes to rest. 15. One should give oneself to one-pointedness [i.e. meditate] on any enchanting (manohara) sound that comes into one’s hearing, until ceasing it brings about the cessation [of mind]." This principle also applies to atma vichara "self-inquiry" advocated By Ramana Maharshi where the principal point of attention is the question, who am I. The question dissolves in order to find its source. The question itself is transcended. The basis of transcendence is to experience finer levels of an object until it is transcended and what remains is pure awareness, the source. You cannot separate your attention from the thought through will. The opposite applies by initially absorbing yourself in the thought but then experiencing more subtle levels of that thought until cessation, dissolution, until it disappears leaving awareness alone. If you hit a gong your awareness will be with the sound of the gong. As the sound of the gong starts to fade your awareness will be with the fading of the gong. When the going fades to an almost imperceptible sound, the awareness will still be with the sound and when the sound finally disappears what will remain at that specific point of cessation? It will be Awareness by itself! Read these words carefully and understand because your attempt to try and divorce yourself from your thoughts and become the witness is doomed to fail and will only lead to strain and frustration, whereas thinking a thought is the easiest thing you can do. To go from absorption to transcendence is a process of allowing the mind with fading and cessation of object to become quieter with that object and to reach it's natural state of least excitation which naturally leads to Transcendence. This is natural whereas trying to separate yourself from the thought is unnatural. It is going against nature! In this practice two kinds of samadhi are experienced. Firstly there are thoughts coexisting with increasing conscious awareness. As the object begins to fade the mind will become quieter together with object so this is samadhi with thoughts, because the value of thought exist together with the value of silence or increasing silence, but there will come a point when the object is completely transcended and there is no thought, only awareness. This is samadhi without thoughts. It is a very natural process. If you think you can separate your attention from the thought while you are thinking the thought, you are just fooling yourself because what happens is that you begin by having the intention to witness your thoughts. A thought appears and you become absorbed in it. As soon as it passes, the intention to witness arises because you have planted that intention just like reminding yourself to look at the clock occasionally before that important appointment. That intention to witness is too late because the thought has come and gone, but because the intention arises again you have a new thought which is actually the memory or repetition of the thought you wanted to witness. But that doesn't matter! In fact what I have described is the actual practice that one should be doing. Instead of trying to become a witness one should just put the attention on the object and keep going back to the object every time you forget you should be attending to the object. So for instance in the practice I did for many years, transcendental meditation, you would put the attention innocently on a mantra, but you would keep forgetting, which is normal. So every time you remembered you should be putting the attention on the mantra that would be the green light to go back to putting the attention on the mantra. There was no trying to divorce yourself from the thought, to separate or detach yourself from the thought, to be the witness, but to simply go back to it when you remembered that you had forgotten to put the attention on this object and that by itself led to transcendence because continually putting the attention innocently and effortlessly on the object results in the experience of finer and more subtle levels of that object until like the sound of the gong or the fading of a thunderclap, there is dissolving, cessation, nirodha, and what remains is awareness. That's how you get to be the witness. Exactly the same principle applies to atma vichara. This initial question, who am I, has to dissolve into its source.
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Post by laughter on Jan 8, 2020 0:05:08 GMT -5
No, it's actually quite possible to be aware of a thought without being absorbed by it. This is a sort of metaphorical distance. The word detachment applies, and detachment can be either healthy or unhealthy, and it has a material context, and a spiritual context. What you describe is impossible. If you are absorbed in a thought you cannot, while being absorbed in the thought make a decision within that absorption of attentiveness to the thought, to detach yourself from the thought and look at the thought so as to be the witness of that thought. It is dissolution and cessation of thought, not witnessing thought, that leads to Transcendence.The one thought principle of practice which takes a special thought such as mantra or attention to breath or some other bodily sensation or something which fades and dissolves to reveal pure awareness which is Transcendence is the correct practice. This is the principle of the 112 practices of the Vijñāna-bhairava-Tantra for instance: "12. ‘Cessation’ (nirodha) [of the mind] was taught by previous [masters] through the yoga/method of renunciation [of the mind and senses] and arduous practice. Here I will teach a cessation that is [comparatively] effortless. 13. Focus the mind upon something that then dissolves. Because it is not grasping anything else [other than the dissolving object], the mind comes to rest in one’s Self. 14. It is similar to the case of a powerful thunder-clap gradually fading: when it dies away, the mind, due to being [totally] focused on it, comes to rest. 15. One should give oneself to one-pointedness [i.e. meditate] on any enchanting (manohara) sound that comes into one’s hearing, until ceasing it brings about the cessation [of mind]." This principle also applies to atma vichara "self-inquiry" advocated By Ramana Maharshi where the principal point of attention is the question, who am I. The question dissolves in order to find its source. The question itself is transcended. The basis of transcendence is to experience finer levels of an object until it is transcended and what remains is pure awareness, the source. You cannot separate your attention from the thought through will. The opposite applies by initially absorbing yourself in the thought but then experiencing more subtle levels of that thought until cessation, dissolution, until it disappears leaving awareness alone. If you hit a gong your awareness will be with the sound of the gong. As the sound of the gong starts to fade your awareness will be with the fading of the gong. When the going fades to an almost imperceptible sound, the awareness will still be with the sound and when the sound finally disappears what will remain at that specific point of cessation? It will be Awareness by itself! Read these words carefully and understand because your attempt to try and divorce yourself from your thoughts and become the witness is doomed to fail and will only lead to strain and frustration, whereas thinking a thought is the easiest thing you can do. To go from absorption to transcendence is a process of allowing the mind with fading and cessation of object to become quieter with that object and to reach it's natural state of least excitation which naturally leads to Transcendence. This is natural whereas trying to separate yourself from the thought is unnatural. It is going against nature! In this practice two kinds of samadhi are experienced. Firstly there are thoughts coexisting with increasing conscious awareness. As the object begins to fade the mind will become quieter together with object so this is samadhi with thoughts, because the value of thought exist together with the value of silence or increasing silence, but there will come a point when the object is completely transcended and there is no thought, only awareness. This is samadhi without thoughts. It is a very natural process. If you think you can separate your attention from the thought while you are thinking the thought, you are just fooling yourself because what happens is that you begin by having the intention to witness your thoughts. A thought appears and you become absorbed in it. As soon as it passes, the intention to witness arises because you have planted that intention just like reminding yourself to look at the clock occasionally before that important appointment. That intention to witness is too late because the thought has come and gone, but because the intention arises again you have a new thought which is actually the memory or repetition of the thought you wanted to witness. But that doesn't matter! In fact what I have described is the actual practice that one should be doing. Instead of trying to become a witness one should just put the attention on the object and keep going back to the object every time you forget you should be attending to the object. So for instance in the practice I did for many years, transcendental meditation, you would put the attention innocently on a mantra, but you would keep forgetting, which is normal. So every time you remembered you should be putting the attention on the mantra that would be the green light to go back to putting the attention on the mantra. There was no trying to divorce yourself from the thought, to separate or detach yourself from the thought, to be the witness, but to simply go back to it when you remembered that you had forgotten to put the attention on this object and that by itself led to transcendence because continually putting the attention innocently and effortlessly on the object results in the experience of finer and more subtle levels of that object until like the sound of the gong or the fading of a thunderclap, there is dissolving, cessation, nirodha, and what remains is awareness. That's how you get to be the witness. Exactly the same principle applies to atma vichara. This initial question, who am I, has to dissolve into its source. What can be noticed about streams of thought, and verified by any practitioner willing to try, is that any given thought is often and usually premised on the one that came before it. You might think, for example, "ah, nice green grass", in March after the snow has melted, and that reminds you of a Shamrock Shake, and you start craving sugar. "Dissolution" certainly applies to the witnessing state, no doubt, but first, this tendency of the mind to flit and dance from one interest to the next must be noticed, as it's happening. Witnessing thought can happen in many ways, and one of them is described by a cloud/sky metaphor, where your mind is the sky, and the content are the clouds that pass through it. If you notice that craving for sugar, you might start driving toward your favorite bakery, or, you can instead, just let it pass. And just, drive straight. It is the purposeful withdrawal of interest in the content of a thought as it arises that leads to this dissolution. Attention, in and of itself, is pure, and unadulterated. Interest, on the other hand, is always a product of conditions and conditioning. Thoughts that arise, but that are treated gently - not ignored, not suppressed, as that leads to the opposite - but are simply left to be as they are, will glide on by, and dissipate, just like a cloud on a hot, sunny, summer day. Trains of thought are also like a fire. The interest is the fuel, and your attention, the oxygen. It's certainly possible to suck all the air from one given conflagration, but gasses and fluids eventually flow to their lowest points or greatest extents, so it's just shifting the issue elsewhere. Instead, by maintaining awareness of the interest burning in any given state of mind, without feeding the flame with any further interest, you allow them to die down naturally, of their own accord. It helps to set aside time, deliberately, each day, to do nothing but this practice. As each thought arises, and is left to pass, the metaphorical space within mind starts to grow. After awhile, you might develop enough detachment to inquire and notice aspects of the thoughts and emotions that arise. Are they valid? What is their basis? Is any one given thought, really true, after all? Of course, attention to the body and perception as this is going on, in a relaxed and open posture, facilitates the witnessing. Once the mind begins to settle, over time, it can grow naturally quieter. This is ultimately a process with many depths to it, as the inception of thought has a certain horizon. If the mind is quiet enough, one can start to notice the subtlest of movements, and become aware of even the initial sparks of interest that lead to the very inception of a thought as it is happening. There is nothing of yourself that can remain hidden from you at this horizon. Other methods of meditation that involve concentrating attention on a single point, like, say, something visual or audible, or the breath, are of course interesting and valid in their own right, just different from the process I've described. To pronounce one particular practice as the correct form of practice is to invite your reader into a cage. This is the work of Pharisees, unable to enter heaven themselves, and so shutting it's gates against others who would pass them by and enter without them. Is that line about "divorcing yourself from your thoughts" your own words, or did they come from someone else? Nothing I've written makes that suggestion, and I'd certainly never recommend that. Witnessing is a process - to chase a noun of "the Witness", is folly - and what one can come to realize in this process is the relationship of what they are to that process. But that does take, a quiet mind. It is quite possible to attend a thought without being absorbed by it. And to declare that this is impossible is similar to denying the possibility of the color gold, by one who hasn't seen it, but can't believe the description. The process you describe of maintaining attention on a central point of focus - such as the breath, for example - but inevitably losing it from time-to-time, is certainly seems to be a universal of any practice of meditation. Those instants of noticing how the mind has strayed are gifts, and if one maintains a gentle and self-forgiving orientation to that noticing, then the gates to heaven will swing wide. I would recommend no specific initial focus, but instead, make the sky your roof, the whole world your home, and the entirety of eternity the playground of your mind. Just sit. Just be.
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Post by satchitananda on Jan 8, 2020 0:25:15 GMT -5
Is that line about "divorcing yourself from your thoughts" your own words, or did they come from someone else? Nothing I've written makes that suggestion, and I'd certainly never recommend that. You used the word detachment and I used the word divorce which essentially means the same thing. No, it's actually quite possible to be aware of a thought without being absorbed by it. This is a sort of metaphorical distance. The word detachment applies, and detachment can be either healthy or unhealthy, and it has a material context, and a spiritual context.
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Post by satchitananda on Jan 8, 2020 0:29:44 GMT -5
Those instants of noticing how the mind has strayed are gifts, and if one maintains a gentle and self-forgiving orientation to that noticing, then the gates to heaven will swing wide. I would recommend no specific initial focus, but instead, make the sky your roof, the whole world your home, and the entirety of eternity the playground of your mind. Just sit. Just be. That sentiment on the face of it sounds reasonable enough, but it's lackadaisical. It lacks the necessary discipline to make real progress.
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Post by laughter on Jan 8, 2020 0:31:44 GMT -5
Is that line about "divorcing yourself from your thoughts" your own words, or did they come from someone else? Nothing I've written makes that suggestion, and I'd certainly never recommend that. You used the word detachment and I used the word divorce which essentially means the same thing. No, it's actually quite possible to be aware of a thought without being absorbed by it. This is a sort of metaphorical distance. The word detachment applies, and detachment can be either healthy or unhealthy, and it has a material context, and a spiritual context. Please re-read the entire paragraph, in context. Gaining perspective on the content and dynamic of mind is not an act of attempting to sever oneself from the process. I hope you might find the elaboration on the topic to be helpful in explaining the distinction.
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Post by laughter on Jan 8, 2020 0:35:31 GMT -5
Those instants of noticing how the mind has strayed are gifts, and if one maintains a gentle and self-forgiving orientation to that noticing, then the gates to heaven will swing wide. I would recommend no specific initial focus, but instead, make the sky your roof, the whole world your home, and the entirety of eternity the playground of your mind. Just sit. Just be. That sentiment on the face of it sounds reasonable enough, but it's lackadaisical. It lacks the necessary discipline to make real progress. People and paths are all different, and certainly the appearance of discipline and effort might have a role along the way. But ultimately, what can be realized, is an effortlessness borne of the recognition that one is not other than the process, which is always happening anyway.
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Post by satchitananda on Jan 8, 2020 0:36:05 GMT -5
You used the word detachment and I used the word divorce which essentially means the same thing. Please re-read the entire paragraph, in context. Gaining perspective on the content and dynamic of mind is not an act of attempting to sever oneself from the process. I hope you might find the elaboration on the topic to be helpful in explaining the distinction. But you are divorcing yourself from the thought if you're trying to be the witness or observer of it.
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Post by satchitananda on Jan 8, 2020 0:37:43 GMT -5
That sentiment on the face of it sounds reasonable enough, but it's lackadaisical. It lacks the necessary discipline to make real progress. People and paths are all different, and certainly the appearance of discipline and effort might have a role along the way. But ultimately, what can be realized, is an effortlessness borne of the recognition that one is not other than the process, which is always happening anyway. I recommend an effortless approach, but at the same time a disciplined one. The two shouldn't be confused.
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Post by laughter on Jan 8, 2020 0:42:28 GMT -5
Please re-read the entire paragraph, in context. Gaining perspective on the content and dynamic of mind is not an act of attempting to sever oneself from the process. I hope you might find the elaboration on the topic to be helpful in explaining the distinction. But you are divorcing yourself from the thought if you're trying to be the witness or observer of it. There is no witness, only witnessing, and the simple distinction between the thought, and the thinker, illuminates an empty spacious room .. that is the ground of your being. And all thoughts are ephemeral, so there's no need to divorce what is here one minute, and gone the next. The space of the process of witnessing simply puts this all into perspective.
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Post by laughter on Jan 8, 2020 0:44:49 GMT -5
People and paths are all different, and certainly the appearance of discipline and effort might have a role along the way. But ultimately, what can be realized, is an effortlessness borne of the recognition that one is not other than the process, which is always happening anyway. I recommend an effortless approach, but at the same time a disciplined one. The two shouldn't be confused. How could a true and direct notice of the infinite possibly escape the interest of a seeker who encounters it? Anything else, that requires coercion, is simply not .. that.
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Post by satchitananda on Jan 8, 2020 0:48:39 GMT -5
But you are divorcing yourself from the thought if you're trying to be the witness or observer of it. There is no witness, only witnessing, and the simple distinction between the thought, and the thinker, illuminates an empty spacious room .. that is the ground of your being. And all thoughts are ephemeral, so there's no need to divorce what is here one minute, and gone the next. The space of the process of witnessing simply puts this all into perspective. You say there is no witness only witnessing but then say there is a thinker, so why no thinker but only thinking? it would be more accurate to say there is a witness because the witness can exist without having anything to witness whereas the thinker is I and that definitely arises. The witness is passive and uninvolved and untainted by what is witnessed.
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