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Post by ivory on Jul 26, 2011 19:59:22 GMT -5
oh snap. i was talking about the guy who started the thread, not you. nice story man robert.
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Post by karen on Jul 26, 2011 20:42:27 GMT -5
Hi Robert. I recall that post about stopping. You mention that no one responded to it. I was curious what response you were looking for? You didn't ask a question in it, nor did you ask for thoughts. I felt like saying "cool man", but it seemed weak.
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Post by gone on Jul 26, 2011 21:09:48 GMT -5
karen- i was actually more curious than anything. i have had the expectation thing teach me enough lessons over the years.
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Post by vacant on Jul 27, 2011 4:44:26 GMT -5
Good post Robert. Actually, it doesn't matter whether one tries to stop or keeps on seeking. There is no individual behind either activity. Stopping just happens for some body/minds. Seeking with enormous persistence can also lead to stopping and/or the seeing-through what's going on (a fool who persists in his folly become wise?). Either way its a mystery when it happens. I, too, am a total fool, and I have no problem with that. It is amazing how much I don't know, and it isn't a result of dementia (yet). LOL. The truth is simply beyond belief, and to find the truth, all beliefs have to be thrown away. Empty empty empty. How wonderful! How unimaginable! Thanks ZD, I really needed to read this today. |
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Post by ivory on Aug 25, 2011 21:51:42 GMT -5
Good post Robert. Actually, it doesn't matter whether one tries to stop or keeps on seeking. There is no individual behind either activity. Stopping just happens for some body/minds. Seeking with enormous persistence can also lead to stopping and/or the seeing-through what's going on (a fool who persists in his folly become wise?). Either way its a mystery when it happens. I, too, am a total fool, and I have no problem with that. It is amazing how much I don't know, and it isn't a result of dementia (yet). LOL. The truth is simply beyond belief, and to find the truth, all beliefs have to be thrown away. Empty empty empty. How wonderful! How unimaginable! ZD, I've been sitting with this post for some time. And your reply will help clear up some confusion. You said, "All beliefs have to be thrown away." Your stance seems to be to attend the actual, ignore thought, etc. But how can beliefs be thrown away if the mind isn't examined and questioned? I remember you talking about "not-knowing" in the Zen tradition. But how does one come to not-knowing simply by attending the actual. Some clarification would be appreciated. |
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Post by enigma on Aug 25, 2011 22:30:56 GMT -5
Looking forward to Zen's response, but I agree that there can be no choice to throw beliefs away. They are beliefs because they are believed and they must be seen through. That's not to say that attending the actual won't reveal the illusory nature of thought.
What many will do, through self inquiry or Neti-Neti or spiritual autolysis or by just looking without having to give it an official name (hehe) is broadening the perspective and looking to see what's actually happening in the direct experience and what has been assumed and concluded, which starts to look a lot like ATA, though maybe it doesn't avoid contemplation.
Unfortunately, this process can go on forever unless the nature of thought itself is seen as imaginary. Everything that can be experienced is happening in the mind over there (pointing to the left) while what is being looked for, and is looking, is over there (pointing to the right).
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Post by ivory on Aug 25, 2011 22:58:50 GMT -5
Hmmm.... Unfortunately, this process can go on forever unless the nature of thought itself is seen as imaginary. Care to elaborate on this Enigma? EDIT: And let's not put too much emphasis on "throw away", that's just a figure of speech. ZD, still want to hear your response. |
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Post by enigma on Aug 25, 2011 23:22:45 GMT -5
Hmmm.... Unfortunately, this process can go on forever unless the nature of thought itself is seen as imaginary. Care to elaborate on this Enigma? EDIT: And let's not put too much emphasis on "throw away", that's just a figure of speech. ZD, still want to hear your response. Welp, beliefs are literally imagined into apparent existence, and there's no end to how many can be imagined, so there's no end to questioning them. It can easily become a method of sustaining the seeking rather than ending it. In the same way that self improvement can go on indefinitely until it is seen that the self that's being improved is only an idea, beliefs can be challenged indefinitely until it's seen that all ideas are imagined out of nothing, with no absolute foundation. |
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Post by zendancer on Aug 25, 2011 23:33:11 GMT -5
Good post Robert. Actually, it doesn't matter whether one tries to stop or keeps on seeking. There is no individual behind either activity. Stopping just happens for some body/minds. Seeking with enormous persistence can also lead to stopping and/or the seeing-through what's going on (a fool who persists in his folly become wise?). Either way its a mystery when it happens. I, too, am a total fool, and I have no problem with that. It is amazing how much I don't know, and it isn't a result of dementia (yet). LOL. The truth is simply beyond belief, and to find the truth, all beliefs have to be thrown away. Empty empty empty. How wonderful! How unimaginable! ZD, I've been sitting with this post for some time. And your reply will help clear up some confusion. You said, "All beliefs have to be thrown away." Your stance seems to be to attend the actual, ignore thought, etc. But how can beliefs be thrown away if the mind isn't examined and questioned? I remember you talking about "not-knowing" in the Zen tradition. But how does one come to not-knowing simply by attending the actual. Some clarification would be appreciated. Hi Ivory: We can either attend the actual or attend thought, so attending the actual IS not-knowing. What would happen if you simply looked at the world without imagining anything? You would "know" in an embodied way what you were looking at, but you would not know with the mind. All distinctions and boundaries would be gone, and you would apprehend pure isness--the world prior to thought. What would you see? It would be perfectly clear, but it couldn't be described because language and ideation would be absent. The mind would be silent. Let's imagine that three men are looking at a tree. One of them is a woodcutter. He looks at the tree and thinks, "That tree probably has 200 board feet of lumber in it." The second man is a botanist. He looks and thinks, "That's a Quercus americanus." The third man is a sage. He looks and doesn't think anything. He clearly sees what is in front of him, but his mind is quiescent, so he sees the living truth. What he sees is a field of being without distinction. The sage is the only one of the three men who can choose whether to distinguish what is seen, and thereby imagine at least two states of being (tree and not-tree, observer and observed, subject and object, etc), or remain free from making any distinctions. Psalms 46:10 (Be still and know that I am God) is pointing to what happens when the mind becomes sufficiently still for the wholeness of reality to be apprehended. If a typical person stops and looks around with the intent of attending the actual, what happens? The mind keeps blabbering away. It imagines what is seen, it names/labels what it imagines, it talks about what it imagines is seen, and it wanders off into all kinds of fantasies and reflections. After several minutes the person suddenly realizes that she is attending thoughts (usually verbal speech or images) rather than what the eyes see. She tries again, but her mind carries her away again. If she persists in attending the actual, her mind will eventually quieten and a degree of mental spaciousness will allow her to attend the actual without her mind carrying her away. Figuratively speaking, she will then be standing on the riverbank and watching rather than being carried along in the river at the mercy of every movement of the current. If one is attending the actual, it is impossible to know with the mind what one is looking at. The actual can only be known through the body. The sage has the freedom to either know or not-know with the mind. Most people do not have that freedom. Is that important? Only to people who want to know the truth and how the truth differs from what is imagined. The sage sees both sides of every issue, as well as the relative and the absolute. She lives in the present moment because she has lost interest in self-centered fantasies about the future or self-centered stories about the past. She has become free of selfhood because she has seen that selfhood is an illusion. She simply does not think of herself in the way that most people think of themselves. She knows that she is both a sinner and a saint, so she does not feel superior to other people. She does not feel in charge of her life, but rather that her body/mind is being lived by something unimaginably vast. She thinks, but she isn't attached to what she thinks. Byron Katie is the only sage I can think of who has developed a set of four questions that people can use to free themselves from thoughts using an analytical approach. Her questions have the same effect as attending the actual and other "pathways" to truth. As far as "throwing away beliefs" that is a figure of speech. What usually happens is that various realizations cause specific beliefs to fall away. We see through a particular illusion, and our prior beliefs associated with that illusion are seen to be limiting or confining. Eventually we realize that all beliefs are limitations, so we drop whatever beliefs remain. I hope this sheds some light on these issues. |
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Post by ivory on Aug 25, 2011 23:42:58 GMT -5
Out of nothing? Or until it's seen that they are all conditioned? I'm confused.
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Post by acewall on Aug 26, 2011 0:16:17 GMT -5
Out of nothing? Or until it's seen that they are all conditioned? I'm confused. Now, Settle and Oberve.  |
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Post by enigma on Aug 26, 2011 0:20:39 GMT -5
Out of nothing? Or until it's seen that they are all conditioned? I'm confused. Conditioned by what? The conditioning is the imagined ideas being spread from one generation to the next. This doesn't actually imply that the conditioning is wrong. Just because you learned it doesn't mean it's not true, so seeing that it was conditioned doesn't really help. All concepts are absent any ultimate foundation, and refer only to other ideas, in the same way that words refer only only to other words. That's what I meant by them being imagined out of nothing. |
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Post by zendancer on Aug 26, 2011 6:52:00 GMT -5
Out of nothing? Or until it's seen that they are all conditioned? I'm confused. Conditioned by what? The conditioning is the imagined ideas being spread from one generation to the next. This doesn't actually imply that the conditioning is wrong. Just because you learned it doesn't mean it's not true, so seeing that it was conditioned doesn't really help. All concepts are absent any ultimate foundation, and refer only to other ideas, in the same way that words refer only only to other words. That's what I meant by them being imagined out of nothing. Precisely. There are various "life training" methodologies that teach about mindtalk and how to clear negative ideas, but the process of clearing can be as endless as other "self improvement methods" unless one sees that the self at the core of all the "work" does not exist. Trying to fix the mind is hopeless. Minds think, and that is their function. They are like graphic generators hooked to a computer. They produce ideas out of nothing and project them on an internal screen. The question that has to be asked is "What is looking at the screen?" Whatever that is can attend the screen or attend the real. Attending the screen incessantly keeps one entranced in an imaginary world. Sometime watch a little child watching. The power of its silent attentiveness is stunning. It has not yet entered the mind's world, so its capacity to ATA is particularly impressive. When you watch a little child watching, you are looking at the still center of the turning world. |
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Post by therealfake on Aug 26, 2011 9:41:27 GMT -5
Good post Robert. Actually, it doesn't matter whether one tries to stop or keeps on seeking. There is no individual behind either activity. Stopping just happens for some body/minds. Seeking with enormous persistence can also lead to stopping and/or the seeing-through what's going on (a fool who persists in his folly become wise?). Either way its a mystery when it happens. I, too, am a total fool, and I have no problem with that. It is amazing how much I don't know, and it isn't a result of dementia (yet). LOL. The truth is simply beyond belief, and to find the truth, all beliefs have to be thrown away. Empty empty empty. How wonderful! How unimaginable! ZD, I've been sitting with this post for some time. And your reply will help clear up some confusion. You said, "All beliefs have to be thrown away." Your stance seems to be to attend the actual, ignore thought, etc. But how can beliefs be thrown away if the mind isn't examined and questioned? I remember you talking about "not-knowing" in the Zen tradition. But how does one come to not-knowing simply by attending the actual. Some clarification would be appreciated. Hi Ivory, Nothing has to be thrown away, or given up, or hidden away in a basement. There is nothing that you need to believe or not believe, know or do or practice. There is only one thing that matters and that is to be true to yourself. You are non conceptual Love, or more precisely an expression of that Love. To be true to that expression, you only need one word, 'Why'... For example, why do you choose to believe in non dualism? Ask yourself Why? Why would you choose to believe that you are ________, or God, or the emptiness, or consciousness, or Love? Are those your beliefs or someone's you've adopted? Why would you attend to the actual? Why would you do that? Is it because someone on this forum believes it, or is it something you believe in your own mind, or is it something you actually 'feel'? Being true to yourself is asking Why you would want to awaken? If that's what you believe you want. If you ask Why and you don't know, that's being true to yourself. Always ask "Why"? The rest of Life will take care of itself. Be true to yourself. Peace and much Love. |
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Post by zendancer on Aug 26, 2011 11:56:32 GMT -5
Ivory: TRF is correct. Always trust yourself 100%. There are many paths to the same realizations, so find one that resonates with you. A Soto Zen teacher might recommend meditating in silence every day. A Tibetan teacher might recommend the repetition of a mantra. I recommend ATA. E. recommends watching. Someone else might recommend self-observation. Ramana recommended self inquiry in the form of "Who am I?" Gangaji tells people to stop and be still. Byron Katie has her four questions (The Work). Tony Parsons tells people that there is absolutely nothing they can do. All of these admonitions or proclamations have worked for some people, so look at the different teachings and find one that resonates with you. Verify for yourself who seems most credible and test whatever approaches seem most reasonable from your perspective. As the Buddha said to his disciples, "Be a light unto yourself." Of course, if you look at all of these different approaches, you'll notice that they all share some fundamental similarities, and they are all designed to help you find answers to whatever existential questions interest you. All of them are designed to help you escape the mind and discover what is true.
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