Wake up and walk through

[charleshyde]

I'm still out here James just living and letting things play out through me. I've been thinking about going back through the thread to look for ways in which I can continue the enquiry. Any advice on that?

I got a part time job and a chance of another. I did some training and am just doing what needs to be done with an unusual degree of ease, focus and continuity. Thanks C

[James Anderson]

The obvious enquiries are the basic and fundamental ones.

Experientially, is the body moving on its own, or are their thoughts of a "you" controlling the body?

Experientially, are thoughts arising on their own, or are their thoughts of a "you" that chooses and controls the thoughts?

[charleshyde]

What experiences experience? Nothing. Experience contains any sense of experience. Nothing can stand outside it.

What is the self? A story, a part of experience that could be labelled illusion: it doesn’t exist other than as a sense of self.

What controls thoughts, speech, and movement? Nothing – they are all spontaneous.

What is suffering? Suffering is the story that accompanies a sense of self. Like all stories, it can be read or put down, believed or ignored.

What is meaning? Relative understanding of aspects of experience, without utility.

What is true? Experience is true.

What is the difference between seeing and delusion? Delusion is where meaning is mistakenly perceived within experience. Seeing is experience.

[James Anderson]

What is suffering? Suffering is the story that accompanies a sense of self. Like all stories, it can be read or put down, believed or ignored.

What is there to read it, put it down, believe it, or ignore it?

What is meaning? Relative understanding of aspects of experience, without utility.

Relative? And what is it that is understanding, and in what form does the understanding exist?

What is true? Experience is true.

So a dream is true? Isn't a dream just as vivid an experience as any other?

[charleshyde]

What is suffering? Suffering is the story that accompanies a sense of self. Like all stories, it can be read or put down, believed or ignored. 
What is there to read it, put it down, believe it, or ignore it?

No one suffers – there is only suffering happening – in the same way that no one/nothing rains the rain. It can’t be controlled as there is nobody to control it.

What is meaning? Relative understanding of aspects of experience, without utility. 
Relative? And what is it that is understanding, and in what form does the understanding exist?

Like the question “What rains the rain? – answer: clouds, water, climatic factors etc.” all of these answers could be labelled as ‘understanding’ and yet the question is a dead end.

What is true? Experience is true. 
So a dream is true? Isn't a dream just as vivid an experience as any other?

The dreamer and waker inside experience, all of which is as ‘true’ as any other part of itself.

[James Anderson]

You originally replied

"Like all stories, it can be read or put down, believed or ignored."

Is that true? Is that possible?

[charleshyde]

No no it's not possible - I was trying to illustrate that it seems to me that suffering is like a story which depends on a certain belief to exist. Who is there to do the believing I can't say. I'm tying myself in knots talking about it this way but it seemed to me that suffering is like the idea of self itself - a construct, not direct experience, 'an artefact of thought'.

[James Anderson]

I propose that if thoughts of objection arise, then they arise, as there is no one or nothing to chose them or reject them, and if certain physical sensations arise alongside those thoughts, then you have what is commonly labelled as suffering.

Those thoughts and physical sensations will arise or they won't.

There is no one or nothing to dis-believe them or to "put them down".

So ultimately, what was there ever to look for, and what was there to look?

[charleshyde]

I like your proposition. In direct experience, I can feel physical suffering, anxiety, restlessness, the heaviness or sleepiness I have described earlier – and these are no doubt accompanying thoughts. So, if I’m dreading going to work tomorrow morning, or worried about money, being criticized, illness, being abandoned – a vulnerability might find expression in feeling cold, tired, resentful, hungry or seeking distraction like alcohol, sex or food.

I try my best to control these, to keep the physical stuff pleasurable – but this doesn’t work much. My desires are often thwarted, pleasures short-lived. On the other hand, payback seems heavy and to increase the viscous circle of feeling out of control and needing to seek pleasure again.

Hence, the proposition that thoughts just arise and disappear and alongside them, so do physical sensations, is comforting. But comforting to what? I need to keep looking at what’s real but still at a loss as to how to look.

[James Anderson]

In my experience, when the process started, the thoughts that caused and accompanied those negative physical sensations, therefore becoming negative emotions, were seen for what they really are.

When they were continuously seen for what they are, and the negative implications of them was continuously seen, then they started to arise less and less on their own.

I believe that that process has to work itself out over a period of years. There is no instant solution.

Even when the illusion of self is seen, and the thoughts are seen to be just thoughts, the thoughts and emotions will continue to arise, and although there is nothing separate for them to cause suffering to, they themselves are still suffering.

[charleshyde]

Thanks for this. Separating thoughts from sensations is helpful. A couple of times recently I have felt quite intense psychological pressure, once when I was in a queue trying to buy tickets for my family and many people were around me and I felt, were staring hostilely at me as I wasn’t sure which option to purchase with limited money. Another time, I was teaching a class and I got in a muddle about something. I felt the class’s confidence in me slipping away. My head actually felt very physically pressurised, which I found interesting even at the time. In the first incident, I withdrew, even though I felt I was letting my family down and being weak. Just thoughts, I thought. I apologised afterwards and life went on. In the class situation, I kept my cool and picked up the pieces the next day.
I guess I am sensitive, particularly to criticism. But even during these moments, I wondered why these thoughts were making me feel so bad – it was nigh on intolerable in the moment and yet my body was in no particular discomfort or physical threat etc.
Re the process of seeing thoughts for t=what they are and it taking time, I wonder if I haven’t always had some kind of a sense of the illusion of self – I used to look at my brother or mother when I was young and think to myself ‘Who are these people?’ – not like they were strangers but that there was no begin of them and end of me. But perhaps this sense hasn't been sufficiently continuous to really be a relief.

[James Anderson]

The only thing that you can do is to continue to keep seeing. The more that is seen, the more that continues to be seen, if that makes sense.

Don't get too caught up in the whole no-self thing. It is much more a tool than it is an ultimate reflection of reality.

It helps to see that thoughts are just thoughts, and sensations are just sensations, and that there is no separate conscious controller etc, but ultimately, no-self is no more true than self is.

Try to picture a wave in the sea. It gives the illusion that it is a single entity, moving across the top of the sea, but ultimately, the wave is actually the sea itself, rising and falling in a pattern that gives the appearance that there is something moving.

So in one sense you could argue that there is no wave (IE no self)
But in another, when a tsunami is heading for the beach, you can stand there and argue that there is no wave, but it'll still hit you!

Humans are pretty much the same. In one sense you and I have no inherent existence, and are just temporary processes of the universe's energy, unfolding on their own, but in another I am still sitting here typing now, and you will still read it!

As Buddha said
To say that there is self is not true
To say that there is no self is not true
To say that there is both self and no self is not true
To say that there is neither self nor no self is not true

Ultimately, all standpoints are incorrect, as any description tries to give inherent thing-ness to temporary process's. That doesn't negate the reality of those process's though!

So if, when standing in a line, there are thoughts of worry about what people are thinking, and accompanying physical sensations that combined can be labelled as anxiety, then although there is no separate person that the anxiety is affecting, and although the anxiety itself has no inherent existence as it is just thoughts and physical sensations, it doesn't change the fact that the process that is labelled as anxiety still exists in that moment.

But when, over a period of time, those thoughts and physical sensations are seen, and the fact that they manifest as suffering with no purpose whatsoever is seen, then they simply tend to stop arising so often on their own.
At that point, when calmness is reality, any conceptual disputes about whether self exists or not are totally irrelevant.

[charleshyde]

Thanks indeed for this: it is clarifying and would seem to bring the search back to more familiar territory. No self is a strange thing to assert, especially to someone else.

I have been spending time looking at waves - real ones - and asking myself what's the difference between them and I. A hundred choppy waves can easily transform into a crowd of excited people in my mind's eye. Back they recede into the sea - as we all seem to. We were never separate. But when the wave crashes, the pebbles fly - as you say, so I begin to believe in their individuality again. And I believe in mine again, and the burden that accompanies that thought.

I need to keep looking.

[James Anderson]

I would suggest no longer looking, in the sense that you are trying to find something, and instead just seeing, ie, just continuously noticing "what is" without judgement.

When we look for something, we tend to conceptualise, but when we just see, then the process tends to take care of itself.

[charleshyde]

I can't seem to find who is thinking my thoughts - who they belong to. They seem to reverberate in a bigger space. It's kind of exciting.