realizing selflessness

[whoknows]

objection sustained!

I appreciate the fair judgment. :-)

Changes are happening. No independent changer is required.

Yep.

Can the changes be enjoyed without making them pass an awakening entrance exam?

I think so.

But neither pleasantness nor unpleasantness reliably measures awakening.
Look instead at broader patterns: less personalisation, less secondary struggle, faster recovery, clearer boundaries and more adaptive action. A miserable morning may still reveal change if K stops treating it as personal failure and adjusts the conditions.

I think I get what you mean.

E.g., I referred to a couple of meditation sessions as “nice” and “pleasant” because the mind was fairly clear and quiet. But I recognize that the number of thoughts that appear (or what kinds of thoughts they are) is not any sort of “reliable measure of awakening” or even of “good” meditation. What might be a more meaningful measure would be to what degree the thoughts, whatever their frequency and content, can simply be seen and let go of, rather than adding a lot of “personalisation” or “secondary struggle.” Right?

In teaching beginning Zen practice, I often tell folks that, sure, meditation can be more pleasant when you’re mind is quieter, but that doesn’t mean it’s “better” or more worthwhile. So I do get that distinction.

But even from the no-self perspective, it is my impression that when there’s less "personalization" and "secondary struggle," thoughts do tend, on average, to quiet down some, so that might at least be interesting diagnostic data.

During an unpleasant episode, what exactly has failed—the experiencing, or only an imagined standard K was supposed to meet?

If “unpleasant” simply refers to situations that are unpleasant — e.g., a deluge of unpleasant thoughts arising during a meditation period — nothing has failed in terms of “spiritual practice” (or whatever the heck you want to call it; why is there no good term for this?!).

Now, have to decide whether to immediately read your story or get some work done first . . .

[whoknows]

About the story:

“But the changes are still happening.”
“Yes.”
“So I can enjoy them.”
“Of course.”
“Without saying I caused them.”
“Yes.”
Daniel thought.
“That feels annoyingly reasonable.”

Saying that “I” didn’t cause the changes seems perfectly reasonable to me and not even “annoyingly” reasonable.

“I suppose I’m treating pleasant states as evidence that the system is functioning differently.”
“They may be.”
“Exactly.”
“But are they reliable evidence of awakening?”

I don’t think so, because I don’t think it’s helpful to talk about a gradual process called “awakening.”
However, there’s something gradual that can go on around all this, and it’s hard to figure out how best to talk about that. Maybe: gradual assimilation of the awakeness that has always already been here? But then does that “gradual assimilation” inevitably get understood in the same way, with the same unintended corollaries, as “gradual awakening,” while simply using more convoluted language?

“Then maybe the miserable morning itself contained evidence of change.”
Daniel stared at her.
“That’s annoying.”

Happy to report that I don’t find that annoying either.

The event could remain unpleasant while the relationship to it changed.

Yes.

“Maybe this is like weather versus climate.”

I dunno. That seems like it’s still using the pleasantness scorecard for something it shouldn’t be used for.

“The problem?”
“When relative change is recruited as proof of spiritual identity.”

It seems like looking at changes in the “climate,” instead of changes in the “weather,” is still using the pleasantness scorecard, just with a broader view of the relative changes. No?

He wrote two columns.
HOW I FELT
and
HOW I RELATED

This is helpful.

[whoknows]

P.S. Ignore the next-to-last quote and comment in the previous message. I think I might have quoted the wrong thing and/or just lost track of what I was thinking.

I'm having a discombobulated day because we woke up to having no water in our town because of a water main break. So our routine got totally disrupted.

I'm managing not to ascribe too much spiritual significance to feeling discombobulated and unhappy.

[whoknows]

P.P.S. Then our power went out late tonight for like an hour and a half, for no apparent reason! Spouse and I were not happy but both dealt with it okay.

[whoknows]

Post #5 in this batch (I'll stop now!):

This morning, feeling resistant to doing work and trying to remind myself of my own insights about dealing with the mind, I dug this up, from a post of mine on July 1:

Earlier today, a fleeting thought arose: “It’s just thoughts and physical sensations.” This was an expression of wonder that something as evanescent as thoughts, along with bodily sensations that are generally mildly uncomfortable at worst, could spawn so much suffering.

And this is from an email to a friend in 2022, after I’d gotten a tiny bit of a felt sense of what “no picking and choosing” means (from the Zen text “Faith in Mind”):

“No picking and choosing” doesn’t mean, of course, having no preferences about, like, what you’re having for dinner or what TV show to watch tonight or who to marry or who to vote for. It’s about what arises in your consciousness. It’s about how there are some emotion-thoughts (as Joko calls them) that I like and some I don’t like, but I can practice an attitude of “OK, bring it on, whatever it is. It’s all fine.” . . . The difference between the “negative” ones and the “positive” ones is largely irrelevant. I don’t have to be afraid of the productions of my own mind.

Any elaborations on or tweaks of any of this are welcome.

[vinceschubert]

Any elaborations on or tweaks of any of this are welcome.

I'm not meaning to be funny about this, but seriously you are doing a great job of guiding yourself at the moment. In fact I wonder why you don't recognise that you do recognise what's valuable about this stuff.
Your quote from four years ago in the email to your friend showed that you had already seen the stuff I've been blathering on about.
But what comes to mind isn't that you didn't know about this stuff. It's that You didn’t appreciate the full implications of it.
As an exercise, make a list of the things that are dependent on the existence of an inherently separate self that's in control of running life. What comes to mind?

[whoknows]

As an exercise, make a list of the things that are dependent on the existence of an inherently separate self that's in control of running life. What comes to mind?

What first comes to mind is: Obviously, nothing.
But I know that's the "right" answer, so I paused to see if it feels to me like there's anything that's "dependent on the existence of an inherently separate self that's in control of running life." But nope, I can't come up with anything. I'd have to work hard to even invent a convincing candidate.

But what comes to mind isn't that you didn't know about this stuff. It's that You didn’t appreciate the full implications of it.

Yep. I think I get the basic idea, and sometimes I get little flickers of grokking it, and I think it's gradually starting to percolate into my lived reality.

I wrote this last night (but didn't want to add yet another post before I heard back from you):
Did five hours of emergency editing work for my boss today, when I really wanted to be spending that time preparing my fall course. I felt grumpy and discouraged, but I coped with those feelings fairly well, and I feel okay now that the editing work is done, rather than having a lot of residual unhappiness (which seems like the kind of thing minds are apt to do).

[vinceschubert]

As an exercise, make a list of the things that are dependent on the existence of an inherently separate self that's in control of running life. What comes to mind?

What first comes to mind is: Obviously, nothing.

what about
1. Control
2. Responsibility
3. Decisions
4. Choice
5. Intention
6. Agency
7. Authorship
8. Effort and discipline
9. Accountability
10. Morality
11. Blame and praise
12. Ownership
13. Achievement and failure
14. Planning and goals
15. Learning from consequences
16. Promises and commitments
17. Consent and boundaries
18. Protection and survival
19. Love, care and relationships
20. Creativity
21. Meaning and purpose
22. Identity and continuity
23. Regret, guilt and forgiveness
24. Personal growth
25. Awakening itself

But the deeper question is whether any of these actually requires a separate self. Choosing, caring, learning, planning and responding all happen. Where, within any one of these processes, is an independent controller necessary?

v

[whoknows]

OK. Wow. That looks like a final exam for “Buddhist Philosophy” or “Nondual Phenomenology” or something. And I think a lot of my responses would be mainly rather cognitive.

But let’s start with a couple of these that I feel like I've come to understand through experiential exploration:

5. Intention

An intention is when a thought arises about doing something, and then a thought of approval or ratification arises about the previous thought. Sure, it all happens within the brain of a particular organism or, to put it another way, within a particular ever-changing pattern of thoughts and perceptions, so it’s that particular “person’s” intention, but there’s no need for an “inherently separate self” — a thing or phenomenon underlying all of the thoughts and perceptions of that “person” — to be involved in order to talk about it sensibly.

3. Decisions

A decision is simply the end of a chain of thoughts and feelings about options. Thoughts and feelings arise, based on lots of preceding conditions, about the details and pros and cons of various options. Eventually, a thought may arise that one option seems like it’s the best or the least bad. And then maybe there needs to be one more thought going, “Yep, go with that option.” Voila! A decision has been made. No separate “self” is needed as the “decider.”

Everything else in the list is basically the same. That is, all we can find through direct experience is thoughts and perceptions, and all of the things in the list can be talked about usefully enough without invoking an essential “self”/thinker/perceiver/controller/doer underlying a particular cluster of thoughts and perceptions.

And realizing “no-self” means realizing how it’s always been, so realizing no-self doesn’t mean that some sort of “self” that used to be involved in all of this suddenly vanishes. There never was a “self.” Things just continue on as before. There are still intentions, decisions, etc., but they’re understood differently.

So, e.g.:

10. Morality

The realization of no-self doesn’t negate or undermine morality. It’s still wrong to kill, steal, commit adultery, etc., and for the same reasons it’s always been wrong: because those actions cause harm and pain. It doesn’t matter that all actions arise as a direct result of all of the preceding conditions. That doesn’t mean that wrong actions aren’t wrong or that there shouldn’t be consequences for them.

23. Regret, guilt and forgiveness

Likewise, even though actions arise due to preceding conditions and there’s no underlying “self” who made them happen, it still makes sense to regret actions that causes harm or pain, and feeling guilty might still be inevitable if you have a well-developed conscience, and it still is appropriate apologize and ask for forgiveness. In the conventional sense, you’re still the “person” who caused the harm or pain via the “decisions” (see above) that “you” made.

May I stop now?

Oh, wait, but this one is interesting:

25. Awakening itself

There’s no independent, essential “self” who can “awaken.”
Awakening is, maybe, the grokking of this “self”lessness?
And maybe that means something like that the pattern of thoughts and perceptions known as a person has a lot fewer thoughts about other thoughts or emotion-laden thoughts based on the preferences of the fictional “I,” and maybe the stream of conscious experience is increasingly dominated by sense perceptions and by thoughts that come and go without being grabbed onto or kicked away (except when cognition is actually useful).
I dunno.

But the deeper question is whether any of these actually requires a separate self. Choosing, caring, learning, planning and responding all happen. Where, within any one of these processes, is an independent controller necessary?

As far as I can tell, no independent controller is required for any of this.

I’ve got all that theoretically, but . . .

Well, I guess something we’re doing is contributing to gradual changes in how "I" experience life.

[vinceschubert]

Well, you’ve answered the central question: intentions, decisions, morality and responsibility function without an independent controller.
A few refinements:
Intentions and decisions needn’t consist entirely of conscious thoughts. Sometimes a leaning, commitment or action appears before thought explains it. Deliberation happens, but no separate deliberator is found.
Conditioning does matter morally. It shifts the emphasis from metaphysical blame toward protection, consequences, learning, repair and compassion. Remorse may be useful; identity-based guilt isn’t required.
And awakening needn’t mean fewer thoughts, more sensory experience or permanent spaciousness. Those changes may occur, but they aren’t the definition. The crucial change is that thoughts about “me” are no longer automatically taken as evidence of an actual owner.

Consequences become conditions, but still don't elicit personal responsibility. (& thus guilt) even if it's appropriate to respond to those conditions.

So where is the usefulness in recognizing all of the above?

[whoknows]

So where is the usefulness in recognizing all of the above?

Well, I don't know.
That is, I'm having a hard time figuring out how recognizing all of this intellectually is useful.
Um . . . Maybe having an intellectual understanding of the lack of a need for a separate "self" removes some sort of possible barrier to realizing no-self in a more experiential way?
That's all I'm coming up with.
What is the usefulness of recognizing all of that?

[whoknows]

Having an ordinary day, with ordinary little challenges.

After the mind made note of that, it then started to form a thought like: This is certainly an improvement over all the time I’ve spent feeling like life is torture, but if I didn’t have hope that things would keep getting better, I might still feel trapped in life.

But as that thought was forming, the mind offered: Hold on now, what’s that “I” that’s already starting to think it’s trapped?

And I didn’t even do much more with that, but just noticing the “I” construction defused things.

[whoknows]

Read “The Morning After.”
Bookmarked it, hoping that it will be relevant soon.

Read “The Question That Couldn’t Be Answered.”
This part really hit me:

But underneath the demand for certainty was something much less intellectual.
Fear.
Not fear of being philosophically incorrect.
Fear of remaining trapped.
Fear that all the years of searching had led nowhere.
Fear that suffering would continue.
Fear that she would die without ever having found what she had spent her life looking for.
Naomi whispered, “Oh.”
Elias said nothing.
The question:
Am I awake?
had been carrying another question:
Am I safe yet?
Naomi cried for several minutes.
Then stopped.

[vinceschubert]

What is the usefulness of recognizing all of that?

i think the key is in what recognition is.

Maybe having an intellectual understanding...

Firstly, is it possible to confine understanding to mind only? There will be some kind of response
Surely understanding includes a feeling of "oh, I got it!" ...and have you isolated that feeling?

But underneath the demand for certainty was something much less intellectual.
Fear.
Not fear of being philosophically incorrect.
Fear of remaining trapped.
Fear that all the years of searching had led nowhere.
Fear that suffering would continue.
Fear that she would die without ever having found what she had spent her life looking for.

The fact that it hit suggests it is relevant now.
“Am I awake?” may sound philosophical, but underneath it can mean:
Will this suffering ever ease?
Were all those years wasted?
Can I stop searching?
Am I safe from dying without finding it?
Poor K wasn’t merely seeking an insight. She was asking awakening to provide a lifetime guarantee of safety.
Seeing that changes the Inquiry. When “Am I awake?” arises, what danger is being predicted if the answer is no—and is that danger present now, or imagined across an entire future?

Fear points not necessarily to actual danger, but to what the nervous system predicts is in danger.
Without an immediate physical threat, it may be protecting control, certainty, approval, belonging, identity or an imagined future. Sometimes no clear story appears—the body has simply learned “danger.”
A productive question that could be contemplated is: "is the fear a biological habit hat the body learned, or is there a story still being responded to?" - Don't look for an answer. Stay within the question.
A story may be: “If awakening doesn’t happen, I will remain trapped, suffer indefinitely and die without finding relief.”
Complete this without polishing it:
“If I never awaken, then ______.”
What arises?

much love

v

[whoknows]

What is the usefulness of recognizing all of that?

i think the key is in what recognition is.

I’m finding this rather cryptic, but cryptic doesn’t generally seem to be your style, so let’s see . . .
"What recognition is" . . . ?
Maybe the “re” is important? Something I’d cognized before needs to be re-cognized?
But, no, seeing how things like control, responsibility, decisions, etc., don’t depend on the existence of an inherently existing “self” that’s in charge of everything seems more like a new cognition than a re-cognition. So I don’t think that’s it.
Um . . .
But maybe there’s still an idea of returning to a more basic understanding of being a person, like from early childhood? . . .
I don’t know. I’m stumped.

is it possible to confine understanding to mind only? There will be some kind of response
Surely understanding includes a feeling of "oh, I got it!"

Good point.

...and have you isolated that feeling?

I suppose I had a little bit of an “aha!” feeling when I figured out how “intentions” and “decisions” can work without a “self” in charge.

But I still don’t understand exactly how this whole line of inquiry is helpful for grokking no-self.
OK, but maybe I don’t need to understand that?
Maybe Zen prejudiced me against any sort of intellectual-seeming inquiry?

I know that some of the “checkpoint questions” for LU are about decision, intention, responsibility, etc., but my impression is that grokking no-self makes it easy to respond to those questions, not that figuring out answers to those questions helps one to grok no-self. But maybe it goes both ways?

OK, I'm going to post this now and then move on in a separate post to the emotionally-charged stuff . . .