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Post by Reefs on Apr 7, 2014 20:51:30 GMT -5
Be still and know that what you're experiencing is an illusion. Why How do you think see that what is experienced is illusion? By letting go of your fake still mind perspective.
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Post by arisha on Apr 7, 2014 21:06:48 GMT -5
What is non-duality? 1) Non-duality is a process/practice. 2) Non-duality is the case. 3) Non-duality is a pointer. Non-duality is just a fake, useless term which describes some fake, useless idea about a fake, useless concept.
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Post by Reefs on Apr 7, 2014 21:14:54 GMT -5
What is non-duality? 1) Non-duality is a process/practice. 2) Non-duality is the case. 3) Non-duality is a pointer. I'd say that the distinction between 2 and 3 is subjective. The difference is at best subtle if the pointer is followed, or stark if it's rejected. From what I've seen in my forum career the rejection can come in the way of over thinking nonduality or a visceral reaction to the perceived implication of individual negation. This isn't to claim that every rejection of the pointer need necessarily fall into one of these boxes, but ... well .. What nonduality points to doesn't touch the individual, but can lead to a perspective on the idea of the individual that some find controversial. In American culture the most common expression of identity is based on an aggregate of history, occupation, association and physicality. Nonduality obviously points away from that. Beyond the common cultural ideas of selfhood there is the question of how the sense of identity fits in with the individual experience of cognition and emotion. Nonduality points away from those associations as well, and towards an absence of association in general. In one good deep breath we can answer the question "Do you or don't you exist?", and it's the one question that can be answered with absolute certainty and with no reference to any sort of relative polarity. It's actually pretty clear. Oneness is the case, but not non-duality. Non-duality is just a collection of pointers. Some might even call it a teaching. I don't call it a teaching because it does not only lack specific doing suggestions but doesn't even cater to the teacher/student divide in the first place. Which means there's no room for practices and processes. And calling non-duality a mere idea isn't correct either because non-duality describes what's actually the case with the help of pointers.
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Post by Reefs on Apr 7, 2014 21:23:58 GMT -5
What is experienced is an illusion because it always appears with an opposite; the experiencer. Neither of these 'two' really are, because they are SO inseparable that what is always more fundamentally the case (and therefore more TRUE) is a single seamless continuum of what I will call here 'pure experiencing', that is OF Reality, BY Reality. What is there that is not reality? The question of there being one or two isn't the issue. They both are and they are as they are...unless one wants to deny it. Again, not saying what they are, just saying that they are. Pay attention to context. Don't mix contexts. An appearance can't stand by itself. It doesn't exist in its own right. It's like the moon, it only shines with borrowed light but not by itself.
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Post by Reefs on Apr 7, 2014 21:28:35 GMT -5
How do you know? Serially, we cannot talk about not knowing in that way. We can't say we don't know if something is what we think it is or not. At that point the cat's out of the bag, the horse has left the barn, the fat lady is finishing up her aria. We already think we know what something is or we wouldn't be talking about how we don't know that. This is where Steve trips up when he implies we can unknow what we think we know, and why Q turns away in disgust at hearing that, and wanders off to watch porn. We can talk about not knowing as a realization about the nature of ideas, but we can't search the skies wistfully and say, 'Golly,I can't say whether it's what I think it is or not'. Not knowing is the state at the precise point between perceiving, and perceiving something. An illusion is a different kettle of fish. Illusion happens when we see something with the mind that is not apparent to the senses. I was pointing out to Tzu how the still mind doesn't come to all sorts of imaginative conclusions about what is being perceived, like 'Dude! There are two separate, volitional persons and I am he as you are he as you are me and we all live together in a yellow submarine'. The choir refrains: btw, that's the cue for a literalist to start quoting from the dictionary ... I've heard the literalists are all on hiatus.
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Post by Reefs on Apr 7, 2014 21:29:59 GMT -5
... imo it's enough to say that nonduality negates the separation between the individual and what commonly appears to the individual as what they're not, and yes, there's no argument for an isolated center of volition without first establishing, by argument, the isolation. For the thinking/feeling mind, the "interconnected Whole" is enough of a meaning for nonduality, and the terminals of the connections are enough to establish that isolation. But really, the objectified "Whole", which is either seen as consequence of or the source of the interconnectivity, and the interconnections, are just pale reflections of what nonduality points toward. "Whole" and/or interconnectness are the presence that masquerades for that subtle and impossible to elucidate absence that the conversation keeps coming back to. That's why I argue so strongly against the idea of interconnected parts. It's not that there isn't a connection, but rather that there are no parts to be connected. Oneness is not a connection between anything, and there is no unification possible because there were never any parts to be unified. It's difficult for me to understand why it's difficult to understand , so I tend to believe there's no interest in understanding. If that's true, there's also no point in talking about it. At least not with those who can't help but personalize everything.
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Post by Reefs on Apr 7, 2014 21:32:41 GMT -5
What is experienced is experienced.. 'opposite' is 'your' interpretation, as a unique experiencer.. the rest of your story about the experience is interesting.. Without the seer, the seen can not be (and therefore is not) seen. Without the seen, the seer can not (and therefore does not) see. Neither can ever stand in the absence of the other. The utter inseparabillity of this pair implies that both are fundamentally of the same one, and are not actually two 100% different, independently existing absolutes. In other words, neither REALLY exist. The same is true of change and changelessness, movement and stillness, form and emptiness, sound and silence, chaos and order, and so on. The 'one', by its intrinsically choiceless nature to effortlessly experience the 'one' (itself, obviously), is the 'cause' of the 'effect' that is apparently 'two ones' The duality of the cause and the effect is what I call the 'final duality'. It isn't real either. Similar to the 'extensions of source' thingy we had in the other thread.
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Post by Reefs on Apr 7, 2014 21:35:47 GMT -5
Without the seer, the seen can not be (and therefore is not) seen. Without the seen, the seer can not (and therefore does not) see. Neither can ever stand in the absence of the other. The utter inseparabillity of this pair implies that both are fundamentally of the same one, and are not actually two 100% different, independently existing absolutes. In other words, neither REALLY exist. The same is true of change and changelessness, movement and stillness, form and emptiness, sound and silence, chaos and order, and so on. The 'one', by its intrinsically choiceless nature to effortlessly experience the 'one' (itself, obviously), is the 'cause' of the 'effect' that is apparently 'two ones' The duality of the cause and the effect is what I call the 'final duality'. It isn't real either. That is mind-play, dismissing what 'is', in favor of the story in your mind.. when you construct 'seer' and 'seen' as players in your story, you can tell the story any way you 'choose'.. in the silent stillness the seer's awareness expands into the whole and 'seeing' becomes a constricted description of the sensing that happens.. There is always the 'part', the experiencer, that is the source of awareness, without which there is none.. there is always the whole, that which the part is, and that which is the part.. the parts interact in an interconnected symphony of Life, of existence.. there is no symphony without the parts interacting.. The 'final dulaity', as you say, is the contrast between that which 'is' and the absence of that which 'is', isness and its absence.. What is actually happening is real, but few people are aware of it.. most are prisoners of the own stories, preferring the story to the happening.. The seeing that is talked about does not refer to the physical sense of seeing.
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Post by Reefs on Apr 7, 2014 21:38:22 GMT -5
That was excellent. Nice to hear the word "enlightenment" talked about so directly. I especially like this: "A sense of separation can still arise—being angry, defensive, worried or hurt. That kind of self-contraction can still arise. No one is doing it. It happens out of infinite causes and conditions. It isn't personal. A natural interest in seeing through this habit and waking up from it also seems to arise here, and that inquiry and exploration can take various forms. All of that also happens out of infinite causes and conditions. No one is doing any of it." So how about practices done to get accident prone?
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Post by tzujanli on Apr 7, 2014 21:43:25 GMT -5
That is mind-play, dismissing what 'is', in favor of the story in your mind.. when you construct 'seer' and 'seen' as players in your story, you can tell the story any way you 'choose'.. in the silent stillness the seer's awareness expands into the whole and 'seeing' becomes a constricted description of the sensing that happens.. There is always the 'part', the experiencer, that is the source of awareness, without which there is none.. there is always the whole, that which the part is, and that which is the part.. the parts interact in an interconnected symphony of Life, of existence.. there is no symphony without the parts interacting.. The 'final dulaity', as you say, is the contrast between that which 'is' and the absence of that which 'is', isness and its absence.. What is actually happening is real, but few people are aware of it.. most are prisoners of the own stories, preferring the story to the happening.. The seeing that is talked about does not refer to the physical sense of seeing. That's right, it's all in your mind, beliefs built on imaginings.. if you understood, you would realize there's no difference between physical, and what you think you know.. but, you're still attached to 'thinking'..
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Post by Reefs on Apr 7, 2014 21:48:42 GMT -5
When the clarity of a still mind's awareness reveals what is actually happening, there is no longer any "prior-to mind", "beyond mind" and "the ineffable", those are let go, seen for what they are: the need to say something about which you know nothing.. When the one that imagines himself to look with a still mind sees separate volitional persons sleeping and dreaming and deliberately choosing and doing all kinds of things and calls that what's actually happening, then we have a brave new spirituality. Then confusion is clarity, bondage is freedom, illusion is actual, false is real and noisy is still. And that's where Tzuth and Andrewism meet.
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Post by Reefs on Apr 7, 2014 21:54:07 GMT -5
The seeing that is talked about does not refer to the physical sense of seeing. That's right, it's all in your mind, beliefs built on imaginings.. if you understood, you would realize there's no difference between physical, and what you think you know.. but, you're still attached to 'thinking'.. The seeing that is been talked about doesn't refer to an imaginary sense of seeing either.
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Post by Reefs on Apr 7, 2014 22:31:07 GMT -5
That doesn't sound 'wide awake'. That's the beauty of it though......I'm unshakable in this regard. Since you are in agreement with Tzu... Can you explain to me how seeing persons sleeping and dreaming and deliberately choosing is looking with a still mind and no attachment to beliefs but just seeing a body lying somewhere or just seeing choosing happening is not looking with a still mind but imagining things, denying the personal and being attached to beliefs? This seems counter-intuitive. Why is adding separate volitional persons to the equation indicative of no attachment to beliefs and why is not having to add separate volitional persons to the equation indicative of denial and attachment to beliefs? Shouldn't it be the other way round?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2014 22:35:09 GMT -5
The seeing that is talked about does not refer to the physical sense of seeing. That's right, it's all in your mind, beliefs built on imaginings.. if you understood, you would realize there's no difference between physical, and what you think you know.. but, you're still attached to 'thinking'.. Everything in your post is the product of thinking, so what qualm do you have with thinking? I sense you have an enormous attatchment to your own solitary perspective and that you would be best served in letting it go. It's pretty obvious by your posts that you are a contrarian and are fixated on your inflated sense of self.
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Post by laughter on Apr 7, 2014 22:51:52 GMT -5
That's essentially what "prior-to mind", "beyond mind" and "the ineffable" are referring to, but notice that boundlessness can never refer to a " something". Once we start talking about "it's nature", by your own reasoning, "what" we're talking about can never be "known" in the sense of an expression of information. The idea of "full" or "partial" simply doesn't apply. To borrow an idea from mathematics by way of metaphor it's often written that 1/0 = ?, but there is a subtle distinction: ? is actually just a practical convenience, and the more precise expression is that 1/0 is undefined. It's nature is capacity and it can be known but naturally capacity has no limits and therefore is wide open. This is a reflection of it and this is wide open as well. A reflection only yes, as nothing is not something. The reference to absence, for example, with the word emptiness, can only ever be indirect.
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