Hi iLoveCookies,
Hello. I'm realized no self long time ago (when RT was working) but things go back into the place and decline of realization so I thought I need to repeat the process but it was wrong, all those things and tactics of triggering seeing into no self will not work again.
I think you are right when you say that you can't relive an experience and I think you are wrong when you say that a tactic is needed to trigger the seeing that there isn't a self. You just have to look with honesty and curiosity and see if there is or there isn't a self here and now.
I have quote for other people I do not know if you delete this or not, but other people who realized no self and gain insight and felt like their experience decline - you need to go further and do not repeat my mistake coming back or trying to coming back to experiences you had.
I wonder what do you think going further is. I suppose you're imagining future experiences? Experiences that will make life better or that will make you a better you? If this is the case you're missing this experience that is going on now, while you're seeking something better (although the seeking is also what is going on now...). And this "whatever you want to call it" thing that is going on now is what will be waiting for you, when you stop trying to find it in a future, "other than this now" experience.
But this time I could not use the same investigative techniques that I had previously used to such good effect. Techniques employed in the past were no longer relevant to the present moment. In order to keep pace with internal events as they unfolded I needed fresh tactics, newly devised by mindfulness and wisdom and tailor-made for present circumstances. The nature of the pain was still the same, but
the tactics had to be suitable to the immediate conditions. Even though I had used them successfully once before, I could not remedy the new situation by holding on to old investigative techniques. Fresh, innovative techniques were required, ones devised in the heat of battle to deal with present-moment conditions.
Mindfulness and wisdom went to work anew, and before long the citta once again converged to the very base of samãdhi.
It seems to me that a technique is a practice that has a specific goal. One of my kids is practicing chess techniques because he wants to be a good chess player (and defeat his mother, moi). Mastering a technique will make you good at something (cooking, meditating, riding a bike, etc) - or not (it may not be in the cards that you will be a great violinist, for example). And it can help with mindfulness, being in the present moment and dealing with pain. Sure. But a practice is not required to see there isn't a self here and now. You're mistaking apples and oranges. A technique/practice and the seeing that there isn't a separate self here and now isn't the same kind of thing, in my opinion.
After realizing that I rapidly go beyond self or no self, or neither self nor no self into citta. Maybe it will help other people to go further or beyond into peaceful citta which no self triggers only for a while and I get attached to that but now I know the way.
Are you expecting to abide in a state, "peaceful citta"? I suppose you have heard of impermanence? Do you expect to always be in peace? I know enough about Buddhism to know the Buddha taught the inevitability of impermanence. Maybe this goal of going further and beyond, this seeking of "peaceful citta", is one of the reasons why you aren't at peace with what is going on now?
Thank you for your time Canfora, you maybe didn't trigger the no self, but you help me understand some things about myself and to look from further perception. _()_
I can't trigger what doesn't exist, be it a self or a not self or a peaceful citta. I wish you the best of luck in your quest for something other than this perception, this that is going on now, this aliveness that you're dismissing as not being enough, while you are imagining there is something else to find.
A big hug,
Sandra
