stirling

There is a teaching here written in between the lines. What happens when creation is recognized as illusory? Nah. You can actualize the Dao just by being with what is happening without the obstruction of "self". All that is required to do this is meditation. As Robert Thurman once said: When "self" drops away, there is alignment with the Dao. All beliefs are unnecessary. Balance is the emptiness of conceptual dualism. Resting in emptiness is freedom from "failure or error".

If there is alignment with the Dao all dualities are resolved. Where are yin and yang when the mind is quiet and empty? Is it possible to see that the stillness is present ALL of the time? Beliefs are what we construct when we don't know. Why not look from empty awareness and see for yourself where yin and yang are?

In our everyday world we apply pressure to reality, trying to get it to conform to our ideas about how it should or shouldn't be. Pressure begets an equal and opposite pressure as what wants to happen presses back against attachment and aversion. What happens when there is just being? Accepting what is does not create pressure. No yin or yang, just unity. This is all there truly is. All attempts to contrive the body or the world misunderstand this very basic reality.

The "self", "brain"... even "mind" are just contrived, aggregated ideas. Really there is just sensation, that is free of qualities. Awareness, and consequently "Self", is wherever sensation arises.

I typically sit for 40 min, but sometimes it is 20 min, or sometimes an hour. It is definitely good to bring the mind back home as often as possible, for as little as a few minutes each time during the day. However, I'm going to differ a bit from some who have posted here and say that, while sitting for 20 min. a day will absolutely make you a more relaxed and less reactive person, effecting a permanent change is definitely well served by regular sitting times over that 20 minute mark. At somewhere over 20 minutes there is often a deeper level of absorption that allows deeper insight. Occasional retreats are also highly recommended. If your intention is to end suffering and become enlightened, OR dedicate as much merit as possible to enlighten all sentient beings, this is highly recommended.

OK... so here I am again anyway... It seems like you are trying to negotiate some kind of hope. You need to understand... samsara is hopeless, as Pema Chodron would say. What I mean here is that there is no hope of a "person" attaining enlightenment that will make any sense to you in any philosophical way. Hope is a belief in a future event. The only real moment is now. The way to position yourself is to seek to enlighten yourself in THIS moment. This is NOT meant abstractly. It is entirely possible. There is no need to wait lifetimes, or suffer further. Pure Lands are an unnecessary contrivance. Know that enlightenment always happens NOW and is AVAILABLE now. There is no future moment when it happens, as strange and nonsensical as it may seem. This is not metaphorical. This is not some philosophical conundrum. Drop all of that. Dedicate yourself to bringing yourself back, again and again, to this moment experienced in emptiness and awareness. Let go of false ideas, hopes, beliefs and goals - they are just more suffering and only embed you further in the quicksand of samsara. Nirvana is a perspective shift. You suddenly see things as they always have been. It was never a mystery. You have always been home. NO person is ever enlightened. Nirvana is the end of the myth - the self story you have always told yourself. Once seen and understood it cannot be unseen. Helping other beings occurs naturally by being in alignment with the unity of what this always has been. The Bhumis are (mostly) successive clarification of the initial awakening, and are generally not discussed for a good reason... they cause confusion. Less reading and more practicing. P.S. If you MUST read, try Ken McLeod's "Wake Up To Your Life" (also available as an audiobook).

It is worth reading this part again and thinking a bit about it:

Oh.... it's nothing like that TT! I just feel I've said what is going to be beneficial here, and have probably elaborated enough for now.

In the Tibetan traditions one receives "pointing out" instruction, also called "introduction to the nature of mind". Once recognized, and with increasingly less effort over time, the student can learn to rest the mind in the "nature of mind", which is none other than enlightened mind, albeit at a more shallow level than someone who has had the experience of enlightenment/awaking itself. It is the experiential "introduction", training and ability to find it again, and eventual familiarity which generate any faith, rather than intellectual ideation. The Wisdom itself, as you suggest, comes with insight. We will have to disagree on this point, but I believe you should pursue this all as you are driven to. It would be suggestion to hold all beliefs lightly, without any artificial certainty, or solidified opinion until there is Wisdom. All clinging becomes an impediment. This is where the idea of "Beginner's Mind" comes from: - There is no real map precisely because it IS the unknown. There are things we can renunciate if we are taking the path seriously. I personally have attempted to work within the Bodhisattva Vow, 5 Precepts, and the 8 Fold Path. One can certainly take on further austerities, but in my experience they aren't necessary. It's fine to maintain an interest metaphysical ideas, but again, hold them lightly... what you are really looking to understanding will not be clearly definable by any subject/object (meaning conceptual) idea. Period. That Wisdom is the end of seeking and questions, and renders all other ideas about cosmology, practices, or system moot. I feel I might have overstayed my welcome on your threads, so I'll bow out. Feel free to ping me if you care to. Sincere best wishes.

Ask yourself, when the mind is still... is there "faith" of any kind present? If you are looking from emptiness, the answer will be an emphatic "no". It's worth looking at the page of translations carefully. Variations on that theme are there yes, but not all of them. Further, notice that Mind is capitalized. My understanding is that this is because we are not referring to "mind" here, the realm of thoughts, beliefs and faith, but rather the realm of Wisdom, vs. "wisdom". Definitely. I am not suggesting throwing out the raft, rather not clinging to it as suggested by the Buddha. Forming faiths or beliefs (clinging) about the raft is isn't ultimately helpful. Holding beliefs and faith lightly is the suggested path. The Middle Way is the one that eschews austerity and attachment to practices or beliefs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Way Holding it all lightly, without reification or belief - the teachings, the idea of a "path", the "self" is the Middle Way.

Faith is a belief - a thought. Faith and other thoughts don't have any reality of their own, ultimately, and cannot be relied on. What we are looking for here is to drop faith and beliefs, to let go of the need for some cosmology. If you want to have faith, have faith that what you are surrounded by has never been separate from you, and can't help but love what it isn't separate from. If you must believe, trust that this thusness will catch you when you let go. There is no duality to go through - that it is also a belief. When the mind is quiet and empty where is your duality? Where are you beliefs? Where is your "self", and where is "other"? Look carefully! This information is NOT hidden. It's right here. https://terebess.hu/english/hsin.html#23 Buddhism is NOT a belief system, it is (at its center) the incitement to try - to be bold, and let go of your ideas about how to "do" enlightenment and instead just LOOK. Ultimately, like all such systems, Buddhism itself is dropped when understanding arises. We are not looking for something new to believe in, but rather an UNDERSTANDING of how things truly are. Ultimately, properly understood, how things are makes a nonsense of all beliefs, faiths, and cosmologies: At its heart it is very simple. The understanding has no real definitions, or edges. It can't be shared, only pointed to.

I'll add another tool I would suggest leveraging: Surrender. Let go of the idea that "you" are going to restore or shift anything. Accept this moment, however lacking in the qualities you desire, as it is. The qualities you are hoping to "restore" are the natural qualities of enlightened mind, and are thus always present underneath the control you might try to exercise over life situations.

Seems to be freely available and out of copyright: https://stillnessspeaks.com/sitehtml/unknown/impersonallife.pdf

If the goal is to be a happier, more relaxed person, 20 minutes a day can be helpful. If the goal is to see how things are and finally be rid of delusions and dukkha I would say 30+ minute sits are more productive. Meditating DOES stir up your shit... all of your painful feelings will come up. All but the most painful feelings and obscurations can be effectively processed and let go of in meditation. Those problems are the gold, really, but it can definitely be overwhelming when you are in the thick of a raft of personal issues. Taking on what you can handle makes sense. I wasn't sure if you were working toward a fictional equilibrium or not, but thought I'd warn against it anyway. As I say, and without a huge amount of information, it appears you are on the right track. Bows.

Whatever state you are in is fine. What is important, until insight, is to keep awakening to this moment. Realize over and over that you are lost in your story, however subtle and slight dukkha might be, and bring the mind back to stillness. Ultimately, there is no balance that needs to be retained by you. Realizing no-self is realizing that the "balance" was never up to you. Trying to balance is another trap - another thing to do. There is ultimately nothing to do, and no "self" to "do" it. There is just what is happening, and watching thoughts arise about it. Just relax and bring the mind home as often as possible. FWIW it sounds like you are on the right track.

There is nothing cosmic about samsara. Samsara is YOUR product. It is caused by dukkha (best translated as "struggle", vs. the common "suffering"). You create your struggle moment to moment by living in your delusions about how things "should" be, or you hope the "might" be, created by the thinking mind. Reality, as it is, is free of delusion. Things are simply as they are. The dukkha is always YOURS - your construction. If you meditate you can notice that when the mind is quiet and empty the dukkha drops away. When the thinking mind engages in your story and its tales about your misfortunes, attachments and aversions, there is samsara. It is really very simple. On, off. The universe IS on your side - it is a unity you have never been separate from. Even what you think of as dukkha is there to point out where you are stuck - your attachments and aversions... what you struggle to accept just as it is. This is a KINDNESS. It is the very core nature of love and compassion. Waking up from samsara is what is what you most need. All dukkha is delusion perfect for pointing out your obscurations.

From my perspective it is the obscurations of the asker that limit the quality of the answers. There is really on one Wisdom (prajna) and it is always right here, right now. There isn't really anything hidden, IMHO.

I'd love to chat about that. To clarify - you are not separate from the oracle, your car, or a marble. What surrounds you is constantly pointing toward the attachments and aversion that obscure insight... your non-dual nature. When I say mirrors I mean that which is mirroring your obscurations back to you. By definition, the dharmakaya is the "teaching body", one edgeless, seamless, limitless, infinite mirror.

Meditating off and on (definitely on now) for about 25 years. "Method" is Dzogchen/Zazen/Open Awareness. In these practices there is ultimately no technique, there is just letting "doing" drop away until the mind has become still. There is resting in an awake awareness, eyes open or closed. Meditation is still, panoramic, empty of subject/object. Sensations, "mine" or what is happening "outside" arise and fall where they are and do not belong to a sense door, or an object. Perceptually time is still, space becomes flat, and "self" and body drop entirely away. Afterward there is a deepened awareness. Things retain their deeper stillness. Sight is 180 degree panoramic and sharpened. If I can manage to sit multiple times a day I can keep this deeper stillness with me all day, and sometimes into sleep.

Remember that oracles are merely mirrors - they don't REALLY tell you anything you don't know. They are really a sort of crutch... an abstraction, in the same way that looking at a rock through a microscope isn't really experiencing the rock in the same way that holding it is. I'm with Virtue - learning to identify your instinctive reading is most important, meaning the answer that arises without thinking about it and comes with an "aha" feeling. What do the more direct mirrors of your external world tell you about your attachments and aversions? This is really the key.

I'm glad to hear you feel you are avoiding unnecessary turmoil, Mr. T. What you are going through sounds about right after getting some wisdom about how things are. Hang in there! The suffering in a "Dark Night" is proportional to how much clinging and aversion we have as the processing happens. It sounds like you are aware of how to bring forbearance to... uh... bear on difficult situations which is arguably THE most important Bohdisattva skill. Forbearance isn't avoidance, it is recognizing that difficult situations (all situations) are impermanent and just hanging in there as they do their things. In forbearance, however, remember that the stillness is RIGHT there! 🙏🏼

Pema Chodron often says, "Life is hopeless", which I find hilarious. She doesn't mean that things always turn out badly, she means that hope is a construction of ideas about a future that benefits you. That projected future is based purely on your speculation using limited information available in the present. How could it ever happen as you envisage it? I am saying: be careful about mourning something that hasn't happened... just have the feelings as they arise and let them pass naturally. This is all that is really happening anyway. The middle way is to eschew unnecessary suffering instead of enduring austerities. You should definitely take the middle way.

There is a moment where you cut your hair, or there isn't. As you say, the conditions will be ripe to do what happens WHEN it is that moment when things happen. Don't overthink these things. Like everything else, there is no need to worry about it. When the thoughts arise, try adopting the attitude: "It will be interesting to see what happens next" and drop it, instead of getting lost in it and the anxiety that arises. In Buddhism the thinking mind is a sixth sense, no more exalted than any other sense. Our mistake is that we have exalted intellectual thought and think that this is somehow what we are, or how we will understand reality. It isn't. We are the awareness that WATCHES things arise and pass, INCLUDING our thought processes. In Zen we watch the exalted thought process until it runs out of steam, like a sugared up toddler or a jar of muddy water that is shaken and shaken by the movement of thinking. What happens when the toddler falls asleep sitting up, or the jar of water becomes clear? Awareness - clear, clean, still. This is what "you" are. This is what it ALL is. It looks just like this moment.

You are imagining how things are based on ideas. This is the CENTER of samsara in ALL aspects. Stop. You have never had an idea that was true. What IS true is this moment... its beautiful stillness... NOT your thoughts about it. It is easy to get carried away by what you THINK things are... again... it's samsara. Don't suppress emotions - HAVE them, but see them as they are, impermanent, arising and passing away. Emotions, thoughts, stars, cats, bowling balls, you name it - they all arise and pass where they are and are not what "you" are. You are the awareness that watches them, and Mr. Turmoil arises and passes from thought to thought too. Enjoy the people and experiences you have. Know that they, and you, are precisely where they should be doing just what they should. Relax. Watch the dance. Let go of what you are clinging to, or what you are averse to in your thoughts. Allow the mind to settle as often as possible. That's the path, really. You are doing FINE.

I can't for the life of me fathom how I didn't read this, but in looking again I feel I must comment. While what you say is (in a way that I can't explain to you) conceptually true, appearance both exists AND don't exist. Ultimately the content of this dance is empty of intrinsic reality, but it is FULL of unity reality. If you were to see things completely as non-dual reality you'd see that NONE of this goes away, and all of it is more sweetly beloved and loving than anything you encountered before as it is wholly and completely what "you" are. There is no real way to explain this, but to see it, and deciding on what it really means or looks like with conceptual ideation almost always leads us to intellectual nihilism. Back away from the idea that you can truly understand this emptiness conceptually, and instead hold the intellectual idea lightly, knowing that it is only experientially possible to fathom. I am married. I have kids. I have pets. They are in my life and out moment to moment, and I cherish them more than I EVER have, KNOWING precisely how they are.