Karl

So you took a course on logic and concluded that you were both the perceiver and the perceived.

Well that is fine except there is something that is beyond both the perceived and the perceiver that is not personal.

The perceiver and the perceived can be fused together (subject and object) into a state of samadhi and then you will realize that there is something beyond subject and object that was there all along, that is timeless, that is unborn, pure bliss, empty clarity,... Call it what you will....

Oh, and mantra repetition is not "awareness of awareness" as the mind is never still.

AYP is the land of the deceived lost souls.

Nope. I was perceived and perceiver prior to the logic course. It resolved to unity after the first month of doing that work. In your words-as far as I can conclude the experience you are alluding to-I remain permanently seated in unity/bliss/samadhi.

I don't believe this is anything particularly amazing, just natural. It's our current society and education that is preventing this happening on a much wider scale, it has created 'Peter pan's'-adults with childlike frontal brain development. This partially explains the constant need for entertainment and emotional highs-iPhone texts, games, toys etc amongst supposedly mature adults. These things are the equivalent of pacifiers. It is the state and its corporations that have taken the place as parents-which explains the culture of expectation and socialistic thinking. It shows in people's dress, art and general behaviour.

It might also explain the egotists that have taken control of governments and the general lack of political statesmen from 1900 onward. Things seems to coincide with the education system that was reformed in the second half of the 19th century. We only need go back a bare couple of centuries from that point in time where people barely lived beyond 40 years of age and who's entire life was spent in hard labour.

It's only theory, but it closely correlates with the state of our modern world. We live longer, but many are not reaching full maturity. The worst of them are strong intellectuals and egotists that have fought and schemed there way into every top position. The result has been a constant stream of wars, materialism, financial fraud on an unprecedented scale. We should be top heavy with the old and wise, but it is ever more the foolish and younger that are dominating the governing classes.

I'm not sure Christianity suggests that morality is from an external source. It seems to me that it has become perverted into a form of control very much like the modern state where responsibility is deliberately abdicated in return for obedience and heaven.

Descartes didn't realise that "I think" is a presumption, an axiom. "I" do not think. There's just thoughts. There's no one thinking (creating) those thoughts.

Yet thoughts exist and someone is consciously aware of those thoughts. If it's not you, then who is it.

Yes you still don't get it.

 

The mind will call something a chair for functional reasons, it helps us navigate reality and discern between two things. This isn't denied. But that is a practical function of the mind which helps us get by, it isn't the actual way things exist.

 

Understanding this teaching has huge implications when you apply it to the way you see yourself and your own ego. The mind creates an illusion you exist as a separate independent entity, but the reality is that you exist in dependence on many causes and factors. To see the reality rather than the illusion means less selfishness, less grasping at life and less grasping at illusions, more realistic outlook with regards to our impact on this world and the environment. Its really a matter of seeing things as they exist or living from a mistaken perspective. 

You were right the first time. I don't get it. Why not just act according to your own values and then everything else follows. Unless you are getting into a karmic sinfulness, wherein you will be punished for being bad in the next life. Though how anyone can determine morals from that perspective is a big mystery.

I can't see how it results in less or more selfishness, as selfishness is, in effect, the action of obtaining the greatest positive feeling whatever that might be. Selfishness would in fact be self preservation for many and so there is a natural tendency to preserve scare resources.

Buddhism appears to be pointless. At least Christianity has basic rules which make sense.

I don't think you understand the teaching. They don't deny that things exist, they don't deny there are consequences for actions, like I say there is no denial of cause and effect.

 

All they say is that the way things exist is different from the way the mind habitually and mistakenly thinks things to exist.

 

The mind sees things as existing inherently, by their own power, but the reality is that they exist dependently upon many causes and conditions. Which is why when you examine things closely you can't find anything to exist by itself, examine a car all you find are loads of parts, nothing you can pin down as "car", the same with a person just a load of parts nothing you can pin down as being the person.

 

So to say nothing exists at all is nihilistic and obviously untrue, but to see things as existing dependently avoids that.

That's just crazy. It's like saying I'm a brain surgeon but never going near a brain to operate on.

The machinations of anyone having to think that way must be awful. I can understand that a chair is just a collection of resonant energy, but I see it is a chair and I use it as a chair and call it a chair. Knowing it isn't a chair in its component material is all well and good, but it makes absolutely no difference to anything if you continue to treat it as an independently existing form which you refer to as a chair.

The Tibetans get round this with their concept of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da]dependent origination[/url] , which basically says that things exist differently to what the mind commonly perceives in that things can't be found to exist by themselves, therefore they are empty of inherent existence, but can be viewed to exist in dependence on many causes and factors, so dependent existence.

 

Due to the nature of all phenomena being dependent on many causes then the principle of cause and effect is not denied, thereby nihilism is avoided, yet the nature of things as being empty and inherently non-existent is also not denied.

How does that work out for them ?

It's a catch all isn't it. If you are dead then you don't know if things exist or don't exist. However, if you are stuck with life then real things happen. It's like a dream state. Not dissimilar from the matrix film idea - if you get killed in the matrix then you die because the body cannot live without the brain. In other words it's a real dream. As Morpheus said "what is real, it is your mind that makes it so".

For all intents and purposes, somebody believing in dependent origination just has to do what the rest of us do until they expire. Kind of pointless.

What's "me" and how could it exist?

 

There are some kind of feelings, but where's the "feeler" of those feelings? There's just random feelings and sensations.

You are asking if you exist ? but if you are asking then you must exist. "I think therefore I am".

No one can prove to you that you exist if you are determined to believe you do not. If you cannot accept the first premise then there is little point in discussing morality and free will as they are both predicated on your existence.

How do you react when you put your hands in a fire, or are threatened with violence ? If your instinct is to withdraw your hand or avoid the violence then you are exhibiting self preservation. That would indicate that there is a self to preserve.

First you need to accept that you exist, if you don't believe you exist, then why ask?

Stronger irony is that you talk so much about reason and logic, but your behavior does not reflect application of both. Single handedly you managed to hijack this thread, and posted so much off topic, despite my warning. I hope you learnt a lesson from the admins now.

 

This is not a forum for display of skills in reasoning and logic, but is forum for those who have "faith" which is a pre requisite quoted by all the Supremely Enlightened humans that we know of. Faith arises as an experience, not by mere reasoning or logic. Do you really want to belong to this forum, without much needed faith ? Answer to your own self, not me, because I won't be reading this thread anymore.

Buddhist takes ball and runs home ? ;-)

I suppose it's hardly worth pointing out that you had to use reasoning in order to make that hypocritical statement as you have metaphorically stuck your fingers in your ears.

Brain hurts.

Not for long though :-)

How can the space between thoughts be a thought? it is impossible. Thoughts arise within something, they don't define what they arise within by definition, thoughts arise within awareness. What awareness really is nobody can really say, but all sorts of things happen when you rest in or wake up as as awareness, including the break down of your limited personality which only exists in the realm of thought and imagination.

 

What you describe as nothing is an experience, Buddhists have written volumous texts trying to describe it, space, emptiness, but as they say anything written about it can only point to it, it isn't the thing itself. As soon as you try to talk about it you are in the past trying to conceptualise a non conceptual experience. Therefore teachers have resorted to trying to point it out through Koans and Parables rather than try in vein to adequately conceptualise the impossible.

 

I'm sure the Buddhists have considered maturation, they have been studying depth psychology for thousands of years.

Because you have the thought 'there is space between the thought'. How would you have noticed the space if you were not aware there was a space ? It would just seem like a continuation of thought.

I agree it's an experience, but it isn't a non-experience, if it were then there would be nothing to reason with. Reason has to have something on which to reason. Awareness must be aware of something. Consciousness must be conscious of something. You are aware of a space between thoughts. Awareness is functioning and noticing that no thoughts are present and registering the lack of thought into memory.

To describe emptiness is to describe something and not nothing. What is the concept of emptiness. Define it. An empty bucket is still a bucket but lacking water. We don't go through life expecting all buckets to remain permanently full, and we must have an empty bucket in order to register the lack of water.

In music there are numerous apparent silences, yet they are entirely necessary in order for music to be music. Just because there is a silence does not mean there is no music being played. It does not suggest all music is emptiness. The spaces are integral to the creation.

By all means refine your thoughts and notice the spaces, but know that something is still aware in order to register the spaces. There is no absence unless there is a total abscence of awareness or consciousness as it would be in death.

Except this contradicts pretty much all the highest teachings of Buddhism like Dzogchen and Mahamudra and many Hindu schools like Vedanta.

 

Consciousness has to be conscious of something yes, but the paradox is that only awareness can recognise awareness. It is possible to be aware during the gaps in thoughts, during the deepest stages of sleep and during stages of meditation when there is no object, this has been verified by many people the world over and can be verified by yourself. In those places there is nothing to be aware of, so no consciousness, yet there is still awake objectless awareness. The reason why we don't go there or deny it because the ego based subject-object separation consciousness can't go there, so you as a separate individual "I" don't exist there.

 

Usually conscious awareness flows out to an object, but what happens if you turn that conscious awareness around to look at what is looking? this can be done right now, it is just doing a u-turn which is the same thing as the enquiry "who am I?" you are just "turning the light around" as they say in the Taoist text the Secret of the Golden Flower. All it takes is turning your awareness around 180 degrees. 

You cannot be objective about a subjective experience. You are aware of the space between thoughts, but this is a thought in itself. You cannot remember nothing, so you must have remembered something.

When I was using AYP meditation this was one of the first revelations. The instruction is to place attention on the mantra and anytime you are off the mantra to gently place attention back on the Mantra. The questions were always around his simple instruction. People were always asking about internal distractions preventing them staying on the mantra. Yet it took time to realise the internal distractions WERE being off the mantra and as soon as this was realised to put the attention back on the mantra. This meant a gradual refinement of the thoughts and moods percolating in the mind.

This can seem like awareness being aware of awareness. It confirms that it is thoughts that are masquerading as false image. In fact this isn't true, it's yet another illusion, but now at least the paradox becomes a concrete reality.

It should be understood that this is, or should be a natural process of age. When young we are indiscriminate consumers of experience. We pack ourselves with all sorts of conflicting ideas, but, at first it doesn't register as an issue because our reasoning capacity is so immature there is no conflict. We can happily sit opposing ideas together because we haven't yet needed to begin to integrate concepts. It's like we need to build a house at some point, but have no idea what a house is composed of and so we indiscriminately collect all sorts of things that don't work together such as dynamite and bricks, or a wrecking ball and a builders plan.

At some point we have to develop reasoning as we once developed our ability to collect experiences and store them by repetition.

I believe that Buddhists have never factored in the process of maturation. It's a combination of natural changes occurring in the body and conscious application of these changes in our environment. We became so used to our early repetitive gathering practices that we didn't get that the rules had changed and that this no longer worked. We seem always mentally behind these bodily changes which makes things confusing and results in mental anguish as we attempt to make sense of those changes. The old saying is that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks probably has some veracity. Old dogs become wise dogs. They are no longer puppies that bite, run, fight and learn in a scattergun way.

Im thinking Karl, that we always Imply a raindrop. From the data in the preconscious.. and cant ever actually see the raindrop itself. If I am photographing birds in flight, I am ready to see them, and take note of ID marks. But if its not your hobby, and one is not prepared, all one assembles is a confused blur. Some folks are just amazing at this. Whether it equates to a snapshot.. that someone could examine later for new info ,that.. I dont know. But I figure some folks could do it, I cant. Just as I am limited when trying to parse memory of past experience, from experience happening in the present. I am not sure its discernable, since a memory is a little slice of reliving an event which has probably been filtered.... but I suppose some folks might be able to hold the data in raw form.

It's a great mental exercise, better than falling apples because it implies a continuous flow in the manner of a wave and not a particle :-)

Tool-lateralus with the Fibonacci sequence over the video which is pretty good if you haven't seen it before. Some classical composers use the same idea.

I like the lady's violin but really, the singer dude should do something different with his hair.

 

Right now I'm listening to some early Faces with Rod Stewart.

You are like someone's dad :-)

Funnily enough he doesn't have any hair. Maynard is as bald as a coot and can be seen with everything from 'metal hair' to a Mohican in the various bands he sings for. APC is currently in hiatus-but it's the best band I have ever seen live-and I've seen an awful lot of bands.

Absurd and incorrect. Aren't you aware that you are aware? It is the easiest thing.

That awareness can be aware of itself is the whole basis for the highest Buddhist teaching of Dzogchen.

Wiki:From The Yeshe Lama:Not recognizing awareness is called marigpa and that keeps you in samsara. It is "ignorance"

From the Nang Jang:You are traveling in the wrong direction, trying to solidify and grasp at thought, logic and reason. The path to realization lies in the abandonment of concepts, non grasping, discovering what lies beyond. It is not an endeavor of solidifying the veils making them even more opaque as you have been attempting to do in this forum.

So, I wasn't thinking to get rid of suffering, or to find the greater truth. I had pushed off from the shore of day to day living in search of something, but without a clue what it was, or the direction I should head. I just had to do what, to some extent I suspect most of us do, and wing it. This felt as if it were a dual life. One life was in a hobby world of spiritual discovery and the other was just everyday life. Over time the appeal of the spiritual life became more important than its counterpart. I even quit my job to concentrate more fully on it.

Anyway, roll forward several years and I discovered that there was never any duality. There wasn't an everyday life and a spiritual life, there was just one life and it was mine. The duality had lay in the way I percieved a seperate 'me' as the doer of each kind of life in a way that created segregated identities. I was 'me' the spiritual explorer and 'me' the everyday working husband. Then I noted multiple 'me' identities which would arise in different settings. By creating the space for inner perception I could watch these individual 'me' identities wax and wane around a fixed point. Yet, there in lay the ultimate duality. How could I be percieved and perceiver ?

It is the duality of the percieved and the perceiver that has to be resolved, it's a paradox. I cannot tell if you have resolved it, but I can tell you that I resolved it. I can tell you I did so by taking a course in basic logic. Everything simplified like an difficult equation resolving itself. Then I knew what I had always known, but now it is all arranged differently. It's like I had a massive amount of information piled up in one big heap that was clogging up understanding. Logic cross correlated everything. I didn't have to go looking at each individual piece of information, my new organised brain did it at lightning speed...."oh you want it all tidied up" said my brain "about bloody time, this place is a absolute mess, I don't know how I get anything done".

Once the paradox is resolved there is peace. I wasn't looking for peace, it came along as a by product. I hadn't known I didn't have peace, until I stopped having war. Then I saw how I was connected to the universe in ways I had veiled or misunderstood. None of this is in any books. All books contain recipes, but they don't tell you how to be a chef.

It was John Taylor Gatto who has given the best parallel. "The meaning of education is to teach you how to educate yourself". In other words you must become both master and student. I had been stuck in student waiting for a master without understanding that I must be master. It's an awesome responsibility, but as my fate is entirely in my own hands, then there is only me. There was only ever me, I just thought there wasn't.

That's the step that ends suffering. How each of us do it might be entirely different. For me, I wish to understand one last thing and that was how some arbitrary study of logic had done this. It seemed too incredible somehow, like turning the last page in an entire library of books and trying to figure out in which book I had read the answer and why I had to continue to the end before realising it. Maybe it was the very first letter of the very first book, perhaps it was walking into the library. Where was it that I discovered what I had always known ?

How can you find what was never lost when you don't know what the thing you thought you had lost looks like ? :-)

I think Buddah got it. "Question everything" because that's all that you can do. That's the best you can do. Ask what, where, when and who before starting to ask why or how. Be like Sherlock Holmes and crack the case by questioning the details before drawing a conclusion. The conclusion draws itself when the facts are revealed. It's no good trying to get rid of suffering because there never was any suffering, so indulging in why and how doesn't work.

We are all just bumping along the best we can. You cannot be my master and I cannot be yours. This is where peace arises. I neither wish to command or be commanded. If I can help then it is by happenstance and not design. I'm simply another featureless book on somebody's reading list. I'm not an active participant, only a passive operator.

This an interesting sub topic, May I just pose a question ? If I look at the sky, then you ask me, if I am aware of it I would say yes. So then I might assume I was aware ,I was aware. But am I not aware of remembering, how it was to be aware of the sky, rather than actually being aware ,of being aware? So how would one know the difference? .... This would make awareness of awareness actually a memory function. And if any ! person reported they had been aware of being aware ,without a sky as subject, they would still have to be reliant on the memory,, to be describing the situation with a cognitive review, again ,, a memory.

On the other hand if one meditated, then they should still be able to have memory , which they could review later,,that supplies, object and reviewer,,just not at the same time. ,but how would one know that they werent cognitive, at the time of the meditation? Moreover ,To assert they werent cognizant at the time , they would have to be aware of NOT being cognitive ,And how the heck could anyone be cognitive of a state of non cognition!

That is precisely it. Awareness has to be aware of something, just as consciousness must be conscious of something.

Your post reminded of me of an exercise in mindfulness that I haven't yet been able to grasp the cognitive significance. In some respects it was an Isaac Newton moment, but I haven't derived any answer. It was watching rain fall. Initially it looks like a long streak cutting through the air and splashing to the ground. Yet, move awareness in time with the falling drop and it becomes visible as a droplet. It got me thinking if I was seeing the droplets and holding them in a kind of time aligned buffer in order to create the streak, or do I see the streak as a whole streak along with the others ? Then it got me thinking did I actually see the droplet, or had i made an inductive leap to imply a droplet that wasn't really visible.

I know that during times of intense stress it appears we can alter our perception speed. We can push ( I describe it as frame rate capture) to higher rates and appear to slow how we normally see time. So, an accident-at least in memory-appears to be slowed down. Also, when I'm waiting for something then time seems to crawl, but when I'm busy it appears to advance at a faster rate. This function is entirely automatic. Yet it appears to be possible to move awareness by volition and capture something moving at a faster rate than normal - like the falling raindrop.

thanks i'll pass on the compliment. i stand corrected this moon shot was actually just a camera on a tripod - DSLR with some type of zoom lens. you can get really good results with minmal equipment, often almost as good as professional gear with a bit (a lot) of trial and error. that's all my mom ever uses is a DSLR in conjunction with a fairly average telescope on loan from the local astronomy club. she's developed techniques for getting the most out simple setups, here's one through the telescope taken with a point and shoot camera.

 

I was looking at going that way using a DSLR on a servo mount. The best I got with a simple point and shoot into the Dob-which I managed to get some colour into ...enlarged beyond good sense, terrible I know :

Why can't reasoning be defined? I propose that the following is a good place to start -

 

1. perception of objects by the subject (here perception means anything that is encountered by the sensory apparatuses)
   
2. categorization of the objects based on perception (in classical Indian philosophy it is called Nama-Rupa  or Label and Form) 
   
3. Ascribe values to the categorized objects (this is good, that is bad,) and forming a map of interrelated values (and objects). That's why over time, ability to reason improves...because we experience more objects and have more empirical data on basis of which the map and rules can be first formulated and then refined.
   
4. Act (or refrain from acting) according the values ascribed to the categorized objects. This is good for me, so I do x, that is bad so I do z
   

That is the essence of reasoning and logic. It is a mechanism via which we survive and interact in this world. What is so hard to define in this?

 

Again, you assume that I am arguing against reasoning. I am not arguing against Reasoning...however the fact that you perceive this as a threat indicates to me that you are being defensive because there might be something to it there.

I was reading your post as asking for proof of reasoning which is what I was alluding to. We can define reasoning.

Another definition could be : Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses.

Where in my first question posed to you did I state that reason is not being used? I merely asked you - What gives you the ability to reason? Since you love logic so much, may I suggest the following course of possible actions?

1. Upon pondering the source of reason, it becomes evident that reasoning (the process) needs to be properly defined. What is reasoning? What does the mechanism of reasoning comprise of? What does it entail?
   
2. You laugh and say, haha..reasoning is self-contained, self-actuated and there is nothing that reasoning is predicated upon. If so, what then does it say about your locus standi?
   
3. You say, "hmm...I never thought about it that way...let me think it over and get back to you"
   
4. you say "I didn't understand your question, can you ask it again, in other words...try and make it more explicable to me?"
   

 

I'm sure there are other options too, but these are the four main options I see (logically speaking)...

Reason cannot define itself. It is an inherent and inextricable faculty of a human being.

You are using the fallacy of the stolen concept. You are using reason, so, now you must ask yourself the self same questions. It is you that is arguing the case against reason, by using reason. Therefore you must find another way.

So you believe you have the same enlightenment as the Buddha or Ramana Maharshi?

Is there any awakened or enlightened person through history in all the wide variety of spiritual traditions that have said they were awakened or enlightened through their reason?

 

The vast majority have suggested going beyond it. I guess Karl is the first one. 

Neither first nor last.

You assumed what I meant, even though I didn't say so. That is the problem with Reasoning

The very action of posting an argument necessitates the use of reason.

my mom has been into the astrophotography for the last several years. here's the moon from the other night from our front yard (through a telescope mind you).

 

Lovely photo. We got fog. I had a hankering to do a bit of AP a few years ago when I bought the Dob, but I could see how easy it would be to end up as a gear head. Got a few blurred pictures of the Orion Nebula, the rings of Saturn and Juipiters moons by sticking the Camera to the eyepiece, but it really needs one of those fancy camera mounts, or a web cam/laptop/image registration software....and the patience of Jove, a tolerance for cold and no need of sleep.