What does awareness mean?

[Marblehead]

The third one I feel is what best describes awareness.

 

Think on it.

Well, okay, I viewed it from a different perspective and have to agree with you.

[Stosh]

It seems the recreational philosophers could not stand the tension and gave in to their penchant for their predilection…

 

The ability of those who have the affinity for the inconceivable depends on the capacity to sustain the tension in the midst of ordinary affairs, without succumbing to intellectualization.

 

Chan states that it is a matter of holding fast, then releasing. The recreationalists always come too soon…

 

Subtle operation isn't a matter of talking, much less understanding. The predilection of recreational philosophers is simply using wisdom to fuel a cheap pastime. Talk is a running sore releasing the tension required to set up the unanticipated burst of energy that breaks through into true wonder.

 

Thetaoiseasy arrived at an abstraction, a singularity— an impersonal resonance …but it still had direction.

 

This direction is due to momentum. True spontaneity is a result of stillness. True stillness. Great power of spontaneous action is the result of great stillness void of intellectualization.

 

It is possible to view this thread as an actual process in terms of a meditation event.

 

There are documents in the taoist and buddhist canons that are guides to arrival of the unattributable light of awareness by going through a process of elimination.

 

As you can see, the intellectual aspect is hard to calm down. It entertains itself much in the same way that our recreational philosophers do on this thread. It is a very difficult habit to eliminate. Yet there is nothing wrong with its activity; just its application. It loves to bounce around and until it is sublimated, it will break the continuity of built-up tension.

 

This habit is an ego-device preventing the organism's entering into enlightening being, the organism's true function. Ego's true function is valid, it just has usurped the identity, which belongs to awareness.

 

The only reason people cannot see their own minds accurately is the fact that ego has taken over the true identity and has obscured the real human by a very simple and effective trick.

 

One must endeavor to see through this.

 

In terms of arriving at a working relationship with awareness, one must a priori, recognize it for what it is.

 

Through a meditative process of elimination, one sees a singularity much the same as that moving chi thetaoiseasy spoke of.

 

When one gets here, one just waits for it to stop on its own.

 

When it does, one gains a bit of space in terms of adapting to ordinary situations without habituation to involving the thinking apparatus in the course of events. After a long time, one's working relationship with awareness reverts to a realization of one's essential totality that pervades both conceivable and inconceivable reality. These are one and the same, yet even after realization, it is a further stage of gradual practice which arrives at its viable expression in the aftermath of seeing essence.

 

This is called "entering the tao in reality".

 

Though awareness does not mean anything; it is our direct link with selfless unity, because it is the uncreate itself. This is the aperture enabling working with essence directly with no intermediary.

 

Since just this is already our capacity, and enlightening activity is just a matter of recognizing and accepting this capacity, the development of a real working relationship with awareness in terms of abiding in our own inherent nonpsychological unity within reality is our purpose within aware being. It is none other than your own mind right now.

 

The only reason to avoid dwelling in philosophical dialectics concerning awareness is that it is not logical to approach true unity by an inadequate means.

 

To ask a question like "What does awareness mean" is really the reason for all the authentic teachings this planet has ever known. Awareness in ts guise as Universal Good is itself the source of religion.

 

If one can recognize what amounts to a bit of wonder that does not wander, this is the real potential that arises in the course of ordinary events, as well as deep meditation states. Forgetting the scattered mind, one awaits the shining mind. This is also a level of meaning in the alchemic term, Refine the self, then await the time.

 

The reason I do not espouse pursuing meditation states (unless they are events of spontaneous samadi), is that reality is not to be sought divorced from ordinary situations in the hustle and bustle of the marketplace. This is where one must be able to avail oneself of real power to match one's potential to creation in the course of everyday life.

 

Even if one knows, if one cannot act on that knowledge, it is as if one had no knowledge.

 

 

 

 

ed note: add "without succumbing to intellectualization" in 2nd paragraph; add 10th paragraph; typo, 17th paragraph

Yep it does look something like a mental game during a misguided physical encounter, ( and a word cloud ).

Pass.

[skydog]

yo

Edited March 20, 2014 by skydog

[dee]

-

Edited March 23, 2014 by dee

[deci belle]

Activated yet not wandering, objectless wonder shines without bias or inclination. Without inside or outside, where is there movement at variance with Complete Reality, as is?

[Boy]

...

Edited April 6, 2014 by Boy

[thelerner]

Beyond schools, deci belle approaches (often) from a poets point of view that moves the subject out of intellects range and into a different, maybe better realm for conceptualizing. imo

[Boy]

...

Edited April 6, 2014 by Boy

[Marblehead]

I hesitate to remind you that the point is to get away from conceptualizing. But yes, I see what you're saying. I'll be more discreet next time.

But then, without objective essence there is no universe, no thinker, no subject, no anything.

 

I don't see the rationale in speaking of something if at first we define that there is nothing.

 

And I actually agree with you in that I think the goal is to observe reality objectively without placing our subjective opinions and judgements upon the Ten Thousand Things.

Edited March 25, 2014 by Marblehead

[soaring crane]

*rationale

[Marblehead]

*rationale

Yeah, I just noticed that after reading what I had typed. It shall be corrected. Thanks.

[Boy]

...

Edited April 6, 2014 by Boy

[Wu Ming Jen]

The shinning mind, Selfless unity what is not awareness.There is no know-er involved. Self awareness the know er is active, limited in perception, right and wrong, alive, dead. True awareness unifies and eliminates confusion.

 

We live in a world of self interest and people make decisions and do things from a very limited perspective. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is a crime against humanity and the entire living universe. What if knowledge was used in interest in all living things.

[Marblehead]

@Marblehead: What exactly do you mean by "objective essence"?

That is a tough question for me to answer with just words but I will do the best I can.

 

The physical universe exists. It existed for about 13.5 billion years before man evolved. The universe didn't need man in order to experience itself. Birth, life and death. The never ending cycles as the death of one thing gives rise to and potentail for new births.

 

An example I use often is that of a tree. Trees exist. They exist without man observing it and saying, "Look, there's a tree."

 

Trees existed a long time before land living, oxygen breathing animals started roaming the lands. It are the trees and other vegetation that exhale oxygen for us to breathe. The "objective essence" includes all the things a tree does between the time of birth and death.

 

Our objective essence is all the things we have done between birth and death. When we interact with others they will place subjective value on what we have done. We even do that. And we also make subjective valuations. This is natural - part of the nature of what we are.

 

The thing is, IMO we should try to see things objectively as often as possible. That would be to say we should try to observe without applying dualistic concepts to what we observe as much as possible. See the tree as a tree. Then, if we like we can sit in its shade if we are hot and tired. Or maybe pick one of its fruits and eat it if we are hungry.

[Marblehead]

The shinning mind, Selfless unity what is not awareness.There is no know-er involved. Self awareness the know er is active, limited in perception, right and wrong, alive, dead. True awareness unifies and eliminates confusion.

 

We live in a world of self interest and people make decisions and do things from a very limited perspective. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is a crime against humanity and the entire living universe. What if knowledge was used in interest in all living things.

I have mixed feelings about this post. Mainly because I know that there is a know-er, a see-er, a do-er, etc.

 

Yes, our perspective is limited, some more than others. But we can interact only with what we realize. If one realizes nothing then there is nothing to interact with.

 

Other than that I pretty much agree with you.

[Boy]

...

Edited April 6, 2014 by Boy

[Marblehead]

 

So objective essence is action/interaction among the living? I don't get it, man!

Not just that, it is everything. The tree has its own objective essence. You have your own objective essence. And I, mine. Others may judge me but there judgements have nothing to do with my objective essence. What is, is. At any monent in time whatever is, is objectively true for that whatever regardless of any judgements upon it.

 

Now understand, we do not even see the totality of most things we observe during our lifetime. In almost all cases there is more to what we are observing than actually gets to our brain.

 

However, to your question, I offer a direct answer: if the living things are acting/interacting according to their true nature then yes, they are presenting their objective essence.

[Boy]

...

Edited April 6, 2014 by Boy

[Marblehead]

So what makes it different from reality/existence/the universe/the "world"?

Nothing. The only thing that has been removed is duality.

[Boy]

...

Edited April 6, 2014 by Boy

[Marblehead]

..and duality you define as acting against one's true nature/adding "ego" to the equation?

Yeah, that's part of it. Also making prejudgements is part of it. But let's not goo too far with the ego as I contend that we do need our ego for survival purposes.

[deci belle]

Beyond schools, deci belle approaches (often) from a poets point of view that moves the subject out of intellects range and into a different, maybe better realm for conceptualizing. imo

 

It is simply using the essence directly with no intermediary. There is no way to work with it unless one has activated the nonpsychological, which is not within the perveance of relativistic perception.

 

It is direct perception of reality as is. This is nothing other than immortalism in the taoist sense, and the Great Vehicle in the buddhist sense.

 

Unless one is willing to let go of self-reflective (selfish is the word, without any emotionalist values) attachment to a speculative relationship with phenomena, one simply lacks the basic qualification to enter into the inconceivability of the Way.

 

The same mentality which abhors stripping itself of an ego-reinforcing intellectualism in the face of phenomena also cannot face the prospect of a selfless quality that also strips phenomena of its speculative potential.

 

In order to acknowledge and assume the function of enlightening unity, one must oneself already have no ulterior motives or conceptual notions pending to create separation where there is none to begin with.

 

Most people would rather die that give up their imaginary concepts and also positively fear that they might just miss out on something— something they don't yet know.

 

When one relinquishes this conceptual fear, they are admitting that there is, in fact, nothing to know— therefore nothing to miss out on. And that, evidently, is too much to bear/bare. This is being totally vulnerable to what is.

 

Intellectualism is basically the dishonest way to hide from reality as is while attempting to observe it /appear to understand (unsuccessfully) otherwise.

 

Another thing the recreational intellectuals fear is realizing anything, which would then disambiguate them from any further speculative pastimes and require the INDIVUAL to assume the totality of his experience without the veil of what passes for (in the sport of recreational speculation) an inconsequential objectivity.

 

Essence must be dealt with directly without intermediary for one to assume its enlightening function.

 

Evidently, these intellectuals are much too selfish to allow that… heehee!!

 

These are people that have never given themselves away totally~ not even to the present. And that is missing out on something …it is all there has ever been without beginning.

[Marblehead]

Evidently, these intellectuals are much too selfish to allow that… heehee!!

This does not hold up based on what Boy and I have just been talking about.

[Boy]

...

Edited April 6, 2014 by Boy

[GrandmasterP]

"Awareness of life happening is not 'Being life'.

Predictably the state of awareness (Buddhist mindfulness) is easily forgotten or mislaid, or it can be overwhelmed by dream thinking or any powerful emotional situation, for instance. The glass box shatters and the place you seemed to be in seems lost again. The dream seeker either starts self enquiring again, for another boost, or it is realised that awareness is just another refuge from within the dream of separation. All of this is simply the expression of Being."

( Tony Parsons)

 

That kinda works for me for 'awareness' and its discontents.

Edited March 25, 2014 by GrandmasterP