Originally posted by Bodhi hut:
AEN..
I think you misinterprete what i wrote...pardon me to say...very
therotical from your replies...what you wrote I do know..just that
i putting in a more lame statement..but it made us more understand
in a theorotical manner..thanks.
It's not theoretical -- you can find it directly in your immediate experience.
It is an immediate presence/awareness without which there could be no seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, or even thinking.. before thought, what you see and hear, the pure sensation you feel, that is manifestation of pure awareness/is buddha-nature.
Hence, all sentient beings have the same Buddha-Nature -- without Buddha-Nature there would be no sentient beings, because all functioning of sentient beings are the manifestation of our Buddha-Nature. It is as Padmasambhava said -- the source of all samsara and nirvana... or as Huang Po says, source of everything and which, whether appearing as sentient
beings or Buddhas, or as the rivers and mountains of the world
which has form, or as that which is formless, or penetrating the
whole universe, is absolutely without distinctions, there being no
such entities as selfness and
otherness.
That ever-present presence/awareness is your buddha-nature/true Mind. Buddha = awareness, and is none other than your own Mind (not the conceptual 'mind').
It is an all-encompassing primordial awareness, like an empty mirror reflecting, and one with all its reflections/all forms.
But due to attachment to external forms and conceptual thoughts, that ever-present nature is temporarily obscured like clouds of ignorance covering up the sky (buddha nature). But this nature can never be lost no matter where you are or what birth you take, even in hell -- it is uninterrupted, everpresent.
An article by Ken Wilber:
There are many things that I can doubt, but I cannot believably
doubt my own consciousness in this moment. My consciousness IS, and
even if I tried to doubt it, it would be my consciousness doing the
doubting. I can imagine that my senses are being presented with a fake
reality—say, a completely virtual reality or digital reality, which
looks real but is merely a series of extremely realistic images. But
even then, I cannot doubt the consciousness that is doing the watching
. . . .
The very undeniability of my present awareness, the
undeniability of my consciousness, immediately delivers to me a
certainty of existence in this moment, a certainty of Being in the
now-ness of this moment. I cannot doubt consciousness and Being in this
moment, for it is the ground of all knowing, all seeing, all existing.
Who am I? Ask that question over and over again, deeply. Who am I? What is it in me that is conscious of everything?
If
you think that you know Spirit, or if you think you don't, Spirit is
actually that which is thinking both of those thoughts. So you can
doubt the objects of consciousness, but you can never believably doubt
the doubter, never really doubt the Witness of the entire display.
Therefore, rest in the Witness, whether it is thinking that it knows
God or not, and that witnessing, that undeniable immediacy of
now-consciousness, is itself God, Spirit, Buddha-mind. The certainty
lies in the pure self-felt Consciousness to which objects appear, not
in the objects themselves. You will never, never, never see God,
because God is the Seer, not any finite, mortal, bounded object that
can be seen.
This pure I AM state is not hard to achieve but
impossible to escape, because it is ever present and can never really
be doubted. You can never run from Spirit, because Spirit is the
Runner. To put it very bluntly, Spirit is not hard to find but
impossible to avoid: it is that which is looking at this page right
now. Can't you feel That One? Why on earth do you keep looking for God
when God is actually the Looker?
Simply ask, Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?
I
am aware of my feelings, so I am not my feelings—Who am I? I am aware
of my thoughts, so I am not my thoughts—Who am I? Clouds float by in
the sky, thoughts float by in the mind, feelings float by in the
body—and I am none of those because I can Witness them all.
Moreover,
I can doubt that clouds exist, I can doubt that feelings exist, I can
doubt that objects of thought exist—but I cannot doubt that the Witness
exists in this moment, because the Witness would still be there to
witness the doubt.
I am not objects in nature, not feelings in
the body, not thoughts in the mind, for I can Witness them all. I am
that Witness—a vast, spacious, empty, clear, pure, transparent Openness
that impartially notices all that arises, as a mirror spontaneously
reflects all its objects. . . .
You can already feel some of
this Great Liberation in that, as you rest in the ease of witnessing
this moment, you already feel that you are free from the suffocating
constriction of mere objects, mere feelings, mere thoughts—they all
come and go, but you are the vast, free, empty, open Witness of them
all, untouched by their torments and tortures.
This is actually
the profound discovery of . . . the pure divine Self, the formless
Witness, causal nothingness, the vast Emptiness in which the entire
world arises, stays a bit, and passes. And you are That. You are not
the body, not the ego, not nature, not thoughts, not this, not that—you
are a vast Emptiness, Freedom, Release, and Liberation.
With
this discovery . . . you are halfway home. You have disidentified from
any and all finite objects; you rest as infinite Consciousness. You are
free, open, empty, clear, radiant, released, liberated, exalted,
drenched in a blissful emptiness that exists prior to space, prior to
time, prior to tears and terror, prior to pain and mortality and
suffering and death. You have found the great Unborn, the vast Abyss,
the unqualifiable Ground of all that is, and all that was, and all that
ever shall be.
But why is that only halfway home? Because as
you rest in the infinite ease of consciousness, spontaneously aware of
all that is arising, there will soon enough come the great catastrophe
of final Freedom and Fullness: the Witness itself will disappear
entirely, and instead of witnessing the sky, you are the sky; instead
of touching the earth, you are the earth; instead of hearing the
thunder, you are the thunder. You and the entire Kosmos become One
Taste—you can drink the Pacific Ocean in a single gulp, hold Mt.
Everest in the palm of your hand; supernovas swirl in your heart and
the solar system replaces your head.
You are One Taste, the
empty mirror that is one with any and all objects that arise in its
embrace, a mindlessly vast translucent expanse: infinite, eternal,
radiant beyond release. And you . . . are . . . That . . .
So
the primary Cartesian dualism—which is simply the dualism between . . .
in here and out there, subject and object, the empty Witness and all
things witnessed—is finally undone and overcome in nondual One Taste.
Once you actually and fully contact the Witness, then—and only then—can
it be transcended into radical Nonduality, and halfway home becomes
fully home, here in the ever-present wonder of what is. . . .
And
so how do you know that you have finally and really overcome the
Cartesian dualism? Very simple: if you have really overcome the
Cartesian dualism, then you no longer feel that you are on this side of
your face looking at the world out there. There is only the world, and
you are all of that; you actually feel that you are one with everything
that is arising moment to moment. You are not merely on this side of
your face looking out there. "In here" and "out there" have become One
Taste with a shuddering obviousness and certainty so profound it feels
like a five-ton rock just dropped on your head. It is, shall we say, a
feeling hard to miss.
At that point, which is actually your
ever-present condition, there is no exclusive identity with this
particular organism, no constriction of consciousness to the head, a
constriction that makes it seem that "you" are in the head looking at
the rest of the world out there; there is no binding of attention to
the personal bodymind: instead, consciousness is one with all that is
arising—a vast, open, transparent, radiant, infinitely Free and
infinitely Full expanse that embraces the entire Kosmos, so that every
single subject and every single object are erotically united in the
Great Embrace of One Taste. You disappear from merely being behind your
eyes, and you become the All, you directly and actually feel that your
basic identity is everything that is arising moment to moment (just as
previously you felt that your identity was with this finite, partial,
separate, mortal coil of flesh you call a body). Inside and outside
have become One Taste. I tell you, it can happen just like that!
(Source:
Boomeritis, Sidebar E: “The Genius Descartes Gets a Postmodern
Drubbing: Integral Historiography in a Postmodern Age”. More to be
found in The Simple Feeling of Being, a collection of Ken Wilber’s
inspirational, mystical and instructional passages drawn from his
publications, based on his experiences.)