Openness
-
1) It was abundantly clear that everything happened on its own.
2) It was abundantly clear that everything was known where it was, by itself, and not by any separate watcher, Subject or Self.
3) It was abundantly clear that all of the sensations that once appeared to be Self, Doer, Awareness, Consciousness, Controller, Watcher and the like were themselves just more qualities, more textures, more aspects of this empty, causal, transient, fluxing, ephemeral, rich, interdependent field of manifestation.
When that essential insight held up after all sorts of other things continued to change, that was truly something, as nothing had withstood so many changes like that.
Then we get into the various models of awakening...
There are many criteria for arahatship if you look around in the texts. I have poured through them and I believe I have found them all.
The one that is the most relevant for my practice and why I use the term is one of the classic ones, that being "in the seeing just the seen, in the hearing just the heard, in the thinking just the thought," etc. It is a perfect fit.
- daniel ingram -
The realisation of no-self and the characteristics should lead to a gradual dispassioning. Attachment, desire is 'self'... In meditation, when 'self' is dissolved, the whole lot of attachment, imagination, ideas pertaining to self also all drop... this will result in a kind of release/bliss. When there is release, 'I/you/self' is not there to experience it.
....Actually the universe (and consciousness) is holographic. Everything is simultaneously occuring. There is no distance, time, location. Beings experience events based on conditions that they are 'attracted/attached' to.
Under normal circumstance, Beings' focus are binded to their thoughts. The thoughts form their solid-looking physical reality. However, what appear to be solid is not solid at all. It is a mere optical illusion. In actuality, everything is occurring in a timeless manner.
To see the timeless, holographic reality, the 'agents/conditions' that create this illusion have to be disconstructed. The conditions that create the illusion of physical solid reality includes our mental pre-assumptions (subject-object division aka duality) and the sense of a self.
For example, our mind can understand that space is infinite and without an end. However, our individual personhood does not seem to be able to see onto infinity. One of the spell that create this limited condition is the attachment of the focus onto thoughts about the past and future (imagination).... and the sense of an individual self. When awareness is aligned into the direct Present moment (Now), no thinking about past and future... the sense of a self can momentarily cease and awareness will have an awakening that it has never experienced before. Awareness will understand its all-pervading presence... just like space has no border.
- simpo -
More posts from simpo (who speaks from experience):
'No-self' is not about someone having a self then the self dissappear. Rather, it is an original truth of how things really are. .. that is... things are without self-nature.
In Buddhism, this realisation of no-self is required for 'stopping' the rebirth cycle.
This realisation of no-self does not mean that you suddenly have no sense-of-self completely. The complete dissolving of sense-of-self is a very gradually process that can take up to a maximum of 7 lifetimes.
It is like... one initially discover the truth of things.... but the momentums of life are still filled with the dynamics build up by false assumptions. Slowly and gradually, one dismantles the false to re-establish the way things really are.
.........
Once come to the point of realising no-self.
Realise that all along there is no self ... just the aggregates.
There is no need to go from a 'sense of self' towards no-self. In another word, at each penetrating moment it is already without self... This have been a subtle but crucial insight.
Thought, thinking, mental opinions, ideas, strategies form a continous flow as if someone(me) is there. Relax them and they will disjoint and disconnect.
Thoughts will pop out and go away.... in a disjointed manner... deepening the insight that there is no self all along.
These aggregates arise not in an environment of a 'me' and an environment outside 'me'. They appear in a non-dual manner without subject and object... as a series of dynamics dependently originated.
...From my limited experience, all i can say is that thoughts will be clearly seen... When there is no-self and there is clarity, thoughts are not followed. This allows the thoughts to be clearly seen and dissolve. . At times, thoughts may even cease. That mean, when the last thought dissolve there is a temporary space where no thought arise.
So, I will not classify no-self as any particular state. It can have thoughts as well as being without thoughts. In the clarity, these thoughts are very vivid and their dissolving is also very vivd.
Normally, with a sense of self... thoughts are fuzzy.... thoughts form a continunous chain.
-
Thanks bro
I understand little but I guess its better than nothing.Do you feel bored after enlightenment? When all is peaceful.
-
No... in fact every moment becomes more amazing, as there is a depth, clarity, intensity, aliveness, wonder to one's direct experience/perception of life that is simply filtered off when one lives with the delusion of self.
Every is happening in its pristine, vivid, luminous immediacy. It's intense presence, wonder, magical-like quality of awareness. We don't see it because we're living in our concepts, thoughts, and delusion of self. When you wake up you'll see you're literally living in an alive, wonderful, delightful, a fairy-tale like paradise. -
Originally posted by An Eternal Now:
No... in fact every moment becomes more amazing, as there is a depth, clarity, intensity, aliveness, wonder to one's direct experience/perception of life that is simply filtered off when one lives with the delusion of self.
Every is happening in its pristine, vivid, luminous immediacy. It's intense presence, wonder, magical-like quality of awareness. We don't see it because we're living in our concepts, thoughts, and delusion of self. When you wake up you'll see you're literally living in an alive, wonderful, delightful, a fairy-tale like paradise.Well Iets hope one day I'll be able to attain that.
I should be happy but I'm not...In fact...I'll probably be happy to be sad....lol.
Thanks for your time bro.
-
Come to think of it, Openness is not scary anymore. After having read articles on reality, i understand reality is constructed upon our observations. This is very shocking to me.....reality is constructed upon our observations. Then everything and anything around me is all an illusion. All experiences, feelings, emotions........ It took me some time to accept it.
-
Openness is not about seeing everything as an illusion.. that is something else.
Anyway this is a very good article: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com.au/2008/11/reflection-and-presence-dialectic-of.html -
The one that is the most relevant for my practice and why I use the term is one of the classic ones, that being "in the seeing just the seen, in the hearing just the heard, in the thinking just the thought," etc. It is a perfect fit.
You can find AEN quote in Sutta Ud 1.10 B�hiya Sutta: B�hiya
"Then, B�hiya, you should train yourself thus: In reference to the seen, there will be only the seen. In reference to the heard, only the heard. In reference to the sensed, only the sensed. In reference to the cognized, only the cognized. That is how you should train yourself. When for you there will be only the seen in reference to the seen, only the heard in reference to the heard, only the sensed in reference to the sensed, only the cognized in reference to the cognized, then, B�hiya, there is no you in connection with that. When there is no you in connection with that, there is no you there. When there is no you there, you are neither here nor yonder nor between the two. This, just this, is the end of stress."
At the end of the sutta, The Buddha exclaimed:
Where water, earth, fire, & wind have no footing:
There the stars don't shine, the sun isn't visible.
There the moon doesn't appear. There darkness is not found.
And when a sage, a brahman through sagacity, has realized [this] for himself, then from form & formless, from bliss & pain, he is freed.
Here, one can see that when our ‘consciousness does not find a landing’ one is than free from all sorrow, affliction or dispair.
-
Originally posted by Genie99b:
Thanks bro
I understand little but I guess its better than
nothing.Do you feel bored after enlightenment? When all is peaceful.
Joan Tollifson just wrote this:
Responding to my last post, someone wrote that when he drops into simply being present, at first what he finds “seems to be flat and ordinary. There is breathing, there are noises. So what?” And then he describes that when he stays with it, there is often a sudden shift: “thinking stops and everything becomes deep and interesting.” He comments that there seem to be “two radically different modes of experiencing the now,” the flat and boring one and the deep and interesting one, and then he describes being in the flat place trying to get to the deep place. He notices that this shift from flatness to depth happens by itself, not by trying to make it happen, and he describes this shift as being at once “radical and subtle.” These are wonderful observations, and I wanted to comment further on all of this.
The present moment seems flat and ordinary when we’re experiencing it through the smog of mental ideas, thoughts and stories about it. When we’re not really seeing what’s in front of us deeply and openly, then it can indeed seem very boring. Breathing, traffic noises…and the mind asking, “So what? Been there, done that. What does this do for me? Who cares?” Boredom is an interesting experience to explore. What does it feel like in the body? What thoughts accompany or trigger it? And what is under that superficial, all-purpose label we call boredom? Is it restlessness, anxiety, fear, sorrow, disappointment, regret, unease? I’m not talking about merely coming up with more labels, but rather, exploring and feeling this thing called boredom nonconceptually, somatically, as sensation and energy in the body. It may turn out to be much less boring than we thought!
If we look at our kitchen table through the smog of conceptualization, we don’t really see it at all. We see an image on a map. Thought tells us that it’s just our same old kitchen table. We think we’ve seen it before. Thought tells us that it’s something ordinary, mundane, unimportant, meaningless, and therefore uninteresting and boring. What can our kitchen table do for us aside from holding up the plates during meals? Not much, we think. If we’re steeped in a certain variety of eastern religion, thought may even tell us that our kitchen table is nothing but an illusion, that it’s only the phenomenal manifestation, that it’s not the real deal. But when we really look at our kitchen table with the eyes of a very little child or with the eyes of an artist or with open and awakened eyes, we see something we’ve never seen before, something that is new in every moment. We see light and color and shape and gesture, a happening that no words can contain. We may even see something extraordinary and marvelous.
Of course, “extraordinary and marvelous” are dangerous words, because we may hear that and immediately begin evaluating whether our present experience is “extraordinary and marvelous,” and then we’re immediately lost in another conceptual spin. From that conceptual place, chances are, our present experience will fall short of seeming extraordinary and marvelous, and then we’ll begin wondering what we’re doing wrong. And of course, when we get caught up in trying to see something marvelous all the time, it is a losing endeavor guaranteed to end in disappointment. Evaluating and judging our experience, taking it personally, seeking a better experience, clinging to the good stuff when we find it, resisting what we don’t like—this is our human suffering in a nutshell.
To some degree, of course, chasing pleasure and fleeing pain is a natural survival instinct, part of our animal nature, and it serves an intelligent purpose. But in humans, it gets carried off into some very bizarre places that have nothing to do with intelligence or actual survival. No other animal smokes or drinks itself to death or goes broke sitting in front of a slot machine. Humans are susceptible to unique forms of suffering due to our complex brains and our subsequent ability to think and self-reflect in ways other animals cannot. So in a way, what we are doing in all of this meditation and awakening work is learning how to function more intelligently with these complex brains.
As this person noted, the shift from boring to marvelous, from flatness to depth, happens by itself. We cannot make it happen. All we can do is get out of the way and allow it. We do that by being aware of all the ways we obstruct it—seeing those obstructions for what they are as they arise. Trying to make this shift or this seeing happen is one of the ways we obstruct it. And we can’t make ourselves stop trying. We can’t force these habits of obstruction to go away through an act of will, on command. But in the light of awareness, by allowing them and seeing them clearly and feeling them as pure sensation and energy, these conditioned habits lose their power, their allure, their credibility, their ability to hook us. So all we can do is start where we are in this very moment, by being aware of the trying, or being aware of the boredom. Simply see it, feel how it feels, see the accompanying thoughts as thoughts, give it space and allow it all to be as it is.
And can this happen without seeking a result? Is it possible to approach unwanted or uncomfortable states of mind such as boredom, loneliness, anxiety, seeking, resisting, and so on with open curiosity, interest and wonder, in the same way we might approach a beautiful flower or the face of our beloved? Can we explore these uncomfortable states and conditioned habits of the bodymind with love and without expectation or judgment? And if expectation or judgment arises, if we notice that we’re doing all this for a result, can we simply start right here with that? Notice that desire for a result, that expectation. See it. Feel it. Be aware of it. Allow it to be. Don’t try to get rid of it, because trying not to try just adds more trying (more seeking and resisting) to the mix.
And that’s the golden key right there to the subtle and radical shift from flatness to depth, from samsara to nirvana, from delusion to enlightenment. What actually invites this shift is very counter-intuitive. Instead of an infinite regression of trying not to try, what actually works is to simply allow the trying to be as it is. See it, feel it, be awake to it. Give it all the space it needs. Be curious about it. Embrace it. And needless to say, if we’re doing all that in a goal-oriented way, in order to make the trying go away and achieve a result, then we’re not really allowing it to be as it is. It requires complete surrender to what is, complete acceptance, complete effortless presence. The thinking mind tells us this is dangerous, that if we do this, the bad stuff will never end. But in fact, counter-intuitively, quite the opposite is true.
That shift to complete openness without an agenda happens instantly when it happens, but it may take considerable time to get to that point when the grasping, goal-oriented, seeking mind finally relaxes and lets go. And even when that shift finally does happen, the habit may return a moment later. Certain habitual patterns may take decades to completely unwind and dissolve, and some may persist over an entire lifetime. We can’t force this kind of transformation, this kind of undoing. But when we really understand that none of it is personal, that all of it is a happening of life, then we are willing to give it however much time and space it needs. It’s not about me anymore. And we can enjoy the journey in all its various twists and turns.
So are we willing to be bored? Is there a willingness to meet what seems to be the same old habit, or the same old kitchen table, or the same old depression anew in this moment, to see it freshly with open eyes, with love and curiosity? In fact, in the dance of existence, there is endless variation: cloudy days, sunny days, warm days, cold days, sickness, health, happy, sad, and so on. Grey and flat is an experience that we all have sometimes. Every moment isn’t going to be a moment of extraordinary bliss and magnificence. But the more we look and feel deeply and closely and openly into what at first seems grey and boring, or painful and bleak, the more we discover the jewel at the core of every experience.
The jewel is the awaring presence, not the object being seen. That’s why we can be bored and disappointed while gazing at the Swiss Alps and ecstatic and blissed out over a crumpled cigarette package in the gutter. The beauty is in the quality of the seeing, the awareness, the presence, not in the object being seen.
A single thought pops up unbidden out of conditioned habit: “Oh no, it’s raining again,” or “Is this all there is?” or “So what?” If that thought isn’t instantly seen for what it is, then we’re no longer awake and present. And before we know it, we’re lost in a whole story about how, “Nothing works, everything is hopeless, life is a mess, I’m a loser, I’m doomed, there’s no way out, it’s another miserable day,” and so on, accompanied by queasy feelings in the gut, an ache in the chest, a lump in the throat, an over-powering feeling of exhaustion, a feeling of stuckness. And then more thoughts, more stories, more disturbing sensations, more emotions—an endless feedback loop of emotion-thought that spirals into more and more despair or discouragement or irritation or whatever it is. And next thing we know, we light a cigarette, start a fight with our wife, drop a bomb on our neighbors, drink ourselves to death, shoot ourselves in the foot, or whatever it is we do. This is our human suffering and we can see it playing out at every level from the personal to the global.
So how do we meet this sinking feeling in the gut, this overwhelming exhaustion, this frightening sense of anxiety, uneasiness, disappointment, depression? Do we go to war with it? Do we try desperately to find the bliss in it? Do we rush to the liquor cabinet or light up a cigarette or grab for a spiritual book? Or maybe, just maybe, does it occur to us to turn toward it and actually meet it with open minds, open hearts, open eyes, open arms…and to see what it really and truly is. That is waking up. Not once and for all, not forever after, but moment to moment, now. And it’s not about perfection. Sometimes we don’t wake up, sometimes the old conditioning overpowers the ability to open, sometimes delusion happens. No one is beyond this. But the amazing thing is, we can always start anew right where we are, right here, right now. -
Originally posted by An Eternal Now:.
-
wow. this is all very deep. thanks for sharing.