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Post by dwbh1953 on Jan 16, 2009 8:27:51 GMT -5
Wow, this board is fairly cooking. The one that chooses is the Oneness, the aliveness because the moment you put in a word like will then separation is created yes? How can the unconditioned make a choice? How could something that makes no distinction between good and evil, which neither interprets nor holds human values decide on any course of action? Cheers, Peter Hi Peter, Still a action is performed this is what I mean by choice. I do see your point Oneness is aliveness always action no reaction so choice out of no choice would be more accurate. Cheers m8 randji |
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anonji
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Post by anonji on Jan 16, 2009 9:44:58 GMT -5
Rather than looking at the objects of awareness, you turn consciousness back upon itself and become aware of being aware. Rather than focusing on thoughts, you focus on the knower of the thoughts, on the conscious subject rather than on the perceived objects, on the seeing rather than on the seen. When awareness looks upon itself, the split between an observing subject and an observed object disappears. Face the seeker and the seeker dissolves. There is just awareness aware of itself. Instantly there arises the joy of self-recognition, the bliss of freedom. You return to the source of all thought, of all seeking and looking, the source from which identity, subject and object originate. This source is you. Here is the Self that you have always been, the eternally abiding presence, our silent undivided being. As far as spiritual development goes, awareness of consciousness is the way through. But awareness may focus on external objects (people, things, etc) as well. In that case, we can know a thing by examining our consciousness after we have absorbed the essence of the object. Patanjali's Yoga Aphorisms ("How to Know God") examines this phenomena. At some point in the journey this process becomes ordinary and uneventful, and the spiritual light-show no longer takes center stage. There is incredible peace and contentment in the ordinary and it seems to me to be an endpoint. |
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Post by dwbh1953 on Jan 16, 2009 10:29:43 GMT -5
Rather than looking at the objects of awareness, you turn consciousness back upon itself and become aware of being aware. Rather than focusing on thoughts, you focus on the knower of the thoughts, on the conscious subject rather than on the perceived objects, on the seeing rather than on the seen. When awareness looks upon itself, the split between an observing subject and an observed object disappears. Face the seeker and the seeker dissolves. There is just awareness aware of itself. Instantly there arises the joy of self-recognition, the bliss of freedom. You return to the source of all thought, of all seeking and looking, the source from which identity, subject and object originate. This source is you. Here is the Self that you have always been, the eternally abiding presence, our silent undivided being. As far as spiritual development goes, awareness of consciousness is the way through. But awareness may focus on external objects (people, things, etc) as well. In that case, we can know a thing by examining our consciousness after we have absorbed the essence of the object. Patanjali's Yoga Aphorisms ("How to Know God") examines this phenomena. At some point in the journey this process becomes ordinary and uneventful, and the spiritual light-show no longer takes center stage. There is incredible peace and contentment in the ordinary and it seems to me to be an endpoint. It is ordinary and uneventful as there is really never a event just Oneness. The sutras have to do with training the mind and as long as one is caught up in the mind then it is impossible to know Oneness. There never was a begining nor ending or endpoint it just IS. You are what you seek is close to the truth but even in this is the assumption that their is a seeker which is false. It is true that there is incredible peace and freedom in knowing who you really are but such realisation comes from being the Oneness you are... not from the mind. The mind is simply the instrument that makes the illusion possible but it cannot know the ultimate Oneness. Peace Randyji |
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anonji
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Post by anonji on Jan 16, 2009 10:37:30 GMT -5
I think if we dissect this any further it will become a head game and counterproductive, so I am going to leave this be. I'll see you in other interesting discussions....
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Post by dwbh1953 on Jan 16, 2009 10:59:12 GMT -5
I think if we dissect this any further it will become a head game and counterproductive, so I am going to leave this be. I'll see you in other interesting discussions....[/quote As you wish for myself there is only one truth and you are that truth, all else is just the mind playing with itself. Actually all discussions are this , for me it makes no difference if they seem productive or not it is all a mind game. Enjoy the day Randyji |
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Post by mysticalstarlenz on Jun 5, 2009 17:53:58 GMT -5
Thought is the collapse of the universe - Amit Goswami
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Post by someNOTHING! on Jun 12, 2009 7:04:21 GMT -5
So, I was sitting there doing what I do best (staring at walls or whatever, drifting this way and that, slipping into this and that), and the question Fear put forth a while back about thought came up. He seems to have this idea that thoughts don’t arise after Awakening or somethingorother. Anyway, I started to think, “What might be said here in the dreamstate that might give ‘him’ something to chew on that might point in a direction where there’s a snag in the veil (or at least cause a snag in the veil), which could help notice the Beauty of that question?” Anyway, after some poking around on this and that, the idea of a “three lock box” came up, with reference to some set of shifting things that come into alignment in which such a happening might take place, thus revealing that strange experience(?) that takes the search to the next door (whatever that might be,,,,who knows?). So, being that I am an idiot of sorts, I decided it might be better that I look that term up before proceeding, so I googled it. And there it was, first hit, Wikipedia, Three Lock Box, where I saw these words describing it. <<So a 'Three Lock Box' to me is within yourself. If you unlock the treasure of your physical, and your mental and your spiritual potential - those three in…>> So, I go to the link, and there it is, a write up on Sammy Hagar’s hit single, “Three Lock Box”, where under the description, there’s a short “Song Info” section. Now, I’m not really the Sammy Hagar kind of guy (no offence Sammy, if you’re out there! IT IS ALL GOOD!), but I thought, well I’ll be jiggered; that dude was on about something too! Excerpt from Wikipedia: Song information • The title track refers not to sex, as commonly mistaken, but to a much more philosophical bent. "It's got to do with deep sea diving, when you look for a buried treasure. The ultimate treasure would be a sunken treasure with three locks on it, because that means it was the most valuable stuff that the queen had on that ship. And you need three different guys with keys to open it, that way no one could steal it. So a 'Three Lock Box' to me is within yourself. If you unlock the treasure of your physical, and your mental and your spiritual potential - those three in balance - you are a real human being and almost godly." Anyway, to use the dream character analogy, Fear, thought is just something done through dream characters. Nothing dream characters think, say or do is the Truth. Or, the equally valid statement might be that everything dream characters think, say or do is the Truth. You could give up trying to figure it out which is which, but for some reason, once you start, it seems hard to stop. Regardless, everything that is seemingly done or happens is the Perfect expression of what IS. Fear’s fear is just something that happens in the dream state; your ownership of it, that is, your thinking that it happens “to you”, is the ignorance, which eventually leads to the questions. Once seen for what that means (or doesn’t mean!! haha),,,,,well, you can then go on and on about it and no one (who thinks they are real) will have the slightest idea what you’re on about, but hey, life is just like that sometimes! Indeed, any sleepwalker trying to “understand” this stuff is just missing the point about Waking Up, but that's Perfect too. Thus, sometimes, when we get the urge in the dream state, we just babble on to see what will happen next. So, here I am, babbling in the dream state, sounding like an idiot. Being that we don’t really exist (because we’re dream characters and Existence simply Is One), we don’t really do the thinking, speaking, and doing, but It’s All happening through these body/minds (which afterall are actually of the same substance of the physical universe, but with some odd peculiar thing called consciousness, which still is pretty cool, if you ask me!!) as "parts" (oh dammm that mind!! haha) of a magnificent whole, pure and simple (as a way of pointing). I know “you” don’t understand this, because you think you’re real and separate. These words I write can never describe the experience of Awakening, Truth, God, or Whatever, but perhaps they can point to something beyond the words themselves since your character seems to be interested in thought. Roll that around a bit, and see if the three lock box opens up through that bit of resistance you seem to be trying to make sense of. For now, the trick to the original question might be that bit about “who does the thinking”. If the truest sense of your answer is “I (the separate self) does”, well OK, but notice that feeling of uncertainty that eventually creeps in….often leads to a question, which goes and goes and goes and changes all the time, depending where you are locked in the dream state. Resistance to what Is is observable. You're looking at a map, trying to figure out where to go without the slightest hint of where you are (which, ironically, is the destination! ooooh boy.) Now, if there’s actually no one entity called Fear there, existing apart from the rest of the dream state (though there Is Always Awareness of All), the idea of thoughts as such has less and less/no place or validity too. The dream state has more and more of that dreamy feel. If and when it does, notice how the thought creates a point of reference in the dream state that instantaneously starts setting up its little illusion that “it exists”, and then just watch that little bugger start shape-shifting into so many “different” forms. Wow, what a spectacle!!  It’s All Good!! Even thoughts!! Wahooo!! But, only if you see it for what it truly Is. One of the cool things about thoughts is that you can think for a while, and then you might become aware that you’re thinking, and then if are more aware of YourSelf Doing the awareness-of-thinking thing (I know! It DOES sound strange!! haha), You’ll see, yep, It Is, Thinking Is Happening in the body/mind thingamabob (which usually causes a shift), or you may notice other stuff Happening, and All the rest. Or, if you so desire, maybe you can just take thought and hang out in Stillness and just go deeper into that for a bit and see what happens. Doesn't really matter from the Awakened perspective. Being Is; thoughts, speaking, and actions are, well, whatever they are.... just Happening...in the dream state...emerging from Being? I guess. I don't know. It just Is. Why the immutable/unspeakable answer to end all questions is so locked away, I haven't the faintest. It just Is |
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Post by souley on Jun 12, 2009 16:00:46 GMT -5
I love your posts someNOTHING. In fact I probably love you too! Waaahooo!
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Post by someNOTHING! on Jun 14, 2009 7:35:17 GMT -5
Hi Souley,
Cool.
Love's a another great thingamabob to rant on when the feeling strikes! What's not to Love?! It's great that things are moving along for you. I remember being in quite a few odd places and with strange company when I was going through this particular time period that you're in. Glad you are already feeling a certain stability in that uncertainty. You sound like a very grounded human being, though I'm sure you have questioned that a lot in the last few years.
Just to tie a few other odds-n-ends together....
1. I can't say I ever noticed you being a non-native speaker of English, which I believe you mentioned somewhere else. Care to elaborate...ever so slightly? Being in the field of language and intercultural development, I'm quite impressed actually.
2. Great Einstein quote. I worked with missionaries in C. Asia at a certain point in my life just a couple of years after Awakening (truly, just do to shear coincidence) and I pondered a lot of this type of thing. What's making people tick when it comes to the deeper questions in life? Hard core medieval worldview here, and corrupt Russian bureaucracy there, and the strange dance in the middle of it all. Plenty of pondering in those days.....!
Hope the transition continues to go well enough for you. Your posts really show a lot of sincerity and honesty and are so refreshing. Thanks!
I may be out of touch again after this Saturday for quite a while. Look forward to hearing more from you. Wahooooo!
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Post by souley on Jun 14, 2009 14:56:35 GMT -5
Yeah my stability has been questioned so deeply that it might actually be real once found.. hehe. About my English, I'm from Sweden and we started to learn English at the age of 9 or something. I believe it's even earlier now for new generations. Then we get classes in that until 18, which is the norm for leaving school. We got internet access when I was about 13, and we have plenty of American/English shows on TV. Of course there is also a certain desire and effort to make the most of my skills and the language! "My" life sure is totally weird these times and I'm probably quite lost. But it is accompanied by a feeling of that this is still making the most of it, how could I ever choose otherwise.. Thank you for the kind words! Looking forward to more posts, however long it might take  |
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Post by candacechil on Jun 17, 2009 17:19:40 GMT -5
Perhaps there is always thought. In an intense experience such as the type that Richard Rose described himself having, there was still thought but maybe you could describe it as exalted thought. Not in any way shape or form the type of thought we are dealing in here, right now, in this conversation. Unspeakable love, is still thought.
But when the enlightened one "returned" to this world or relative plane of experience he is definitely both thinking and using thought.
Another idea is that the thoughts slow down and no longer "rule" the individual. One might say the birth of real thinking occurs along with the prospect of a much higher intelligence.
A person without the light can't think because the mind is so clouded with thoughts about himself and the world. He has not yet examined nor can he his own mind and it's assumptions.
For example, maybe, before enlightenment life was about striving to improve, protect and give to an image of oneself, and, afterwards you find, one was sleepwalking. Because
Without an image to worry about life becomes much simpler. You don't need, for example, a mansion to live in, although it's ok. But simple living quarters are just fine. And before you were blind to this.
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Post by zendancer on Sept 23, 2009 16:57:47 GMT -5
I was surprised to read this thread today and wanted to respond with a few comments. The idea that thoughts do not occur after awakening is totally absurd. Thoughts definitely occur after awakening, but they are not a problem. It is attachment to thoughts and the habit of incessant thought that creates all the usual human problems. The awakened person thinks, but he or she is under no illusion that there is a separate entity doing the thinking. Thinking simply happens. The universe is intelligent and conscious, and, in the form of human beings, it thinks, both before enlightenment and afterwards.
Even plants and one-celled organisms are conscious of their environment and display infinite intelligence. An amoeba finds food because it perceives the world around it directly through its body; it does not have to think in order to find food or eat. A bean plant will find a stake in a garden and start coiling around it even though it has no eyes and no brain. A dog sees and responds to its environment in the same way--directly, in a way that is unmediated by thought. Any human being can learn to stop thinking if he or she wants to; it just takes practice.
I once had a conversation with a professor, and I told him that no thought is necessary for a human being to jump out of the way of a speeding car because there is no time to think. The universe in the form of human bodies is intelligent. It sees and responds appropriately. The professor insisted that this was untrue, but he had never learned to stop thinking, so he had no factual basis or personal experience upon which to base his argument. It was just his idea based on a life of endless thinking. Jet pilots practice what to do in emergency situations because thinking is linear and much too slow to process the necessary bodily actions.
After learning how to not think, it will become obvious to anyone that we are connected to the universe directly, and that 99% of all thought is unnecessary. Thought is a terrific evolutionary gift and necessary for designing rockets to the moon or developing vaccines, but thought is not necessary for going to the bathroom, eating breakfast, or doing most of the ordinary things that people do.
The reason that the Zen tradition begins by teaching people to meditate is because most peoples' minds are a mess. One thought follows another without interruption, and there are no gaps through which the truth might be glimpsed. Consequently, Zen has two similar summaries of the path to enlightenment. One goes something like this: first we see mountains and clouds (we think that things are separate from us). Later, we no longer see mountains and clouds (we attain emptiness and see the world as unified). Still later, we once again see mountains and clouds (now we see both the ground and the figure--in a gestalt sense--but we are attached to neither.
The other summary comes from a famous Zen master who said something like this: "First, my thoughts were out of control. Later (after sufficient meditation), I stilled my mind and experienced the world without thought. Still later (after enlightenment), I let thoughts come and go as they please because they present no problems at all."
For human beings, the process of thinking is like having a graphics generator and a calculator hooked together in the brain. We can look at reality--at what is--, and then , using thought, we can imagine that it is divided into form and void. We can imagine symbols to represent the forms. In his book, "Laws of Form," G. Spencer Brown has spelled out in mathematical detail how we construct an artificial world in our heads that simulates the real world. The problem for most people is that they never penetrate the illusion created by the simulation, and they mistake the world that they imagine for the real world.
If I hold up a book and ask ten people, "What is this?" One person might say, "It's a book." A chemist might say, "It's a product composed of cellulose and various chemicals." A librarian might say, "It's a novel by James Joyce." But notice, I did not ask how it might be distinguished or cognized. I asked what it IS. "Is" is a verb, not a noun. I am not asking what someone thinks about it, or how someone might cognize it; I am asking what it IS, and only someone who has seen through the illusion of a thought-created world will understand how to answer the question correctly.
If anyone thinks that thinking ends after awakening, I suggest that he or she spend some time looking at reality in silence. If thoughts appear, ignore them, and return to looking. With a bit of practice it will become obvious that something far more powerful than the trivial thought-circuits in our brain is contolling our bodies and our interactions with the world.
We do not have to think in order for our blood to circulate. Thought is not necessary for the movement of nerve impulses, or the regulation of blood gas concentrations, or for sensory experience to occur, or for breathing to occur, or for walking to occur, or for talking to occur. Thoughts either arise or they do not arise. We can either know the world directly, through our senses, or we can know the world indirectly, through our thoughts.
Anyone who has learned to stop thinking will be able to do so at will. For example, with sufficient meditation practice, anyone can choose whether to cognize "trees" or simply see what a "tree" IS. After awakening, there is no need to make an effort to control thinking. Thinking is simply seen for what it is--a way of cognizing direct experience. Most people who wake up enjoy mental silence and direct perception, and that is why so many awakened people continue to meditate, take long walks through the countryside (like J. Krishnamurti and others), and go on retreats, but they definitely think whenever thinking is necessary. The only people who don't think on a continual basis are brain dead.
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Post by zendancer on Sept 23, 2009 17:22:33 GMT -5
My bad. The last line in the above post should have read, "The only people who NEVER think are brain dead." The way I initially wrote it could be misunderstood.
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Post by divinity on Sept 23, 2009 17:25:00 GMT -5
I think thoughts are the waste products of the brain and the only way we can stop thought is to croak. As long as the brain is working at all there will be thoughts. I work with Alzheimer's patients whose brains still put out thoughts which cause them to believe it is 1943 and they are calling their children in to dinner...
After one reaches the awareness of enlightenment, one can laugh at one's thoughts.
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Post by zendancer on Sept 23, 2009 18:48:28 GMT -5
Divinity: You wrote, "As long as the brain is working at all there will be thoughts." This is simply not true. I can assure you that it is possible to be highly alert and yet have no thoughts whatsoever appearing in the mind. I'm not saying that you should try to attain thought-free states of mind, but some of us have experimented with this and have direct experience with it. At this precise moment, for example, I am choosing to look around my office without any thoughts appearing in the mind. I can do this at will, and you could, too, if you had practiced some sort of relatively serious meditation for fifteen years.
Are you familiar with the word "samadhi," and, if so, have you ever experienced samadhi? Most long-time meditators have entered that state at one time or another, and with sufficient practice it is possible to enter that state at will. If we are focused on our breath, or a candle flame, or a sound, when concentration reaches a certain point, thoughts will slow down and eventually stop. Prior to entering samadhi something develops called "the off sensation," a kind of skin surface numbness that spreads over the hands and arms and eventually encompasses the entire body. It is as if you were solidifying into a solid block of ice. It is also like being a stone dropped into a deep lake; your awareness descends through the water until it rests on the bottom. It is silent and empty and .......vast. There are no adequate words for describing the experience, but there is pure unified awareness without an observer. There is no inside or outside because it is a unity conscious type of experience. You might remain in that deep thought-free but highly aware state for an hour or two. You do not enter that state through any personal effort and you do not come out of that state through any personal effort; it seems to happens of itself as thought ceases and you become one-with the object of attention. At a certain point, thoughts reappear. As they do, the skin surface numbness dissipates. You gradually return to an ordinary everyday sort of perspective, but it feels like you were a block of ice that is gradually thawing out. When you turn your head during this time, it seems to move in extremely slow motion.
Many meditators distinguish between two kinds of samadhi--relative and absolute. What I have described above is absolute samadhi. Zen people often call it "the dropping off of body and mind." AAR, it is possible to experience thought-free states during ordinary everyday life and it is possible to experience extended thought-free states in absolute samadhi. It just requires some practice.
At one time I got attached to the idea that samadhi was necessary for enlightenment to occur, and I practiced like a madman with the intention of entering samadhi at will (which I finally did). Later, I realized that no such thing was necessary and that there was no formula that would lead to enlightenment. The samadhi experiences were just an interesting diversion along the way. To keep this in perspective, when I first started meditating, it took almost two years before I experienced any significant space between my thoughts. That was because I was an intense intellectual who had spent more than thirty-five years incessantly thinking about everything under the sun. These days I enjoy letting the mind do whatever it wants to do. Thinking or not-thinking, there's no problem. Cheers.
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It’s All Good!! Even thoughts!! Wahooo!! But, only if you see it for what it truly Is. 
