realizing selflessness

[vinceschubert]

It’s almost the opposite. It’s a reminder that the DOer doesn’t need to take charge of meditation—directing attention or managing thoughts—or of the awakening process.

Ah, yes. Correction accepted. Tiny K isn’t directing traffic; she’s being invited to clock off.
And if she returns five minutes later wearing the fluorescent vest, that’s just more traffic. :-)

The no-self translation of what I said...

Please be advised that the No-Self Translation Office has closed permanently owing to the complete absence of staff.

You can say, “I’m less identified with thoughts,” “I returned to seeing,” or “I chose coffee.” Conventional language needn’t pass a metaphysical inspection. Translating every sentence can quietly give the imaginary manager another job: ensuring that K speaks Correct Awakened English.

What would I find in the body that would have any bearing on that?

Nothing necessarily. My question was poorly phrased.

I wasn’t suggesting that THIS means the body, or that bodily sensation must certify that thought is included. A thought experienced as thought is already part of what is happening. It doesn’t need a somatic passport.

I was only wondering whether “talking to myself is also THIS” was a remembered conclusion or something noticed while chatter was actually happening. You’ve answered: mainly a remembered conclusion. Fair enough.

Next time chatter is present, there’s no need to descend heroically into the body. Simply notice: is the thought occurring somewhere outside this moment? Did it leave THIS in order to talk about THIS?

I’d still been acting as if being aware of sense perceptions is something I need to DO.

This seems much juicier.

A thought is noticed. Previously, K was assigned the task of escorting attention back to the breath, feet or road. Now it’s becoming apparent that seeing never stopped needing to be seen, hearing never waited to be heard, and the road didn’t vanish while thought was in the foreground.
Nothing has to “return.” Something simply ceases to dominate, and the rest of the scene becomes obvious again.

That may explain the different flavour of quiet you noticed—not fewer thoughts, but less backstage activity devoted to managing what happens after them.

And the wider visual field makes sense too. Just don’t promote panoramic seeing to the new Correct Meditation State, or tiny K will return as Director of Open Awareness.

Focused attention, broad attention, chatter and quiet can all come and go. The interesting bit is that none requires someone in the control tower to operate the aperture.

When thought is prominent, has seeing actually disappeared—or has thought merely taken centre stage while the whole visual field continues without comment? When thought fades, what truly returns?

Angelo’s phrases point beautifully towards this, provided “relax,” “let go” and “let reality show you” don’t become three more assignments. Even feeling unrelaxed is reality showing up without asking permission.

And yes—the mystery basket is ideal for free will and determinism. Choosing happens; afterwards, explanations arrive wearing name tags. Attention shifts in much the same way. Then the narrator rushes in to announce:
“Good news—I brought us back.”

Meanwhile, the rabbits have been wandering across the runway the whole time.

..and i can't shake the story that all of the above is just (unnecessary) words.
v

[whoknows]

[Wrote this first part before you posted:]

I keep noticing an issue that probably should be brought to my (nonexistent) life coach or therapist rather than to my LU guide: I’m not sure what to do with all my time.

When I compulsively check for notifications of a new LU post and when I go looking for Angelo videos to watch or vince stories to read and when I notice something going on in K’s psyche that seems worthy of writing up for an LU post, there’s probably always some seeking energy there, but there’s also, and perhaps more prominently sometimes in recent days, a desire for an engaging way to occupy K’s time.

I feel like if I lived near the seashore or still lived a block from Central Park in New York City, I could just go sit on a bench and watch the world and the people and the birds. (And my brain starts singing Simon & Garfunkel: “Old friends / sat on their park bench like bookends”) (Only belatedly thought of Eckhart Tolle. Didn’t intend to make a reference to him.)

I don’t see myself writing daily stories and songs—

Yay, a post from vince!
(Now on page 51. Sheesh.)

* * * * *

Tiny K isn’t directing traffic; she’s being invited to clock off.
And if she returns five minutes later wearing the fluorescent vest, that’s just more traffic. :-)

Precisely.

Please be advised that the No-Self Translation Office has closed permanently owing to the complete absence of staff.

Excellent.
The manager doesn’t need or want a new job.
In this case, though, it did seem worthwhile to figure out once again what “disidentifying from thoughts” actually means. And “recognizing thoughts as thoughts” is not too cumbersome a translation.
However, the editor would feel compelled to reject many other no-self translations.

* * * * *

Relocated from home to library.

Before I headed out, spouse wanted to talk to me about something, even knowing that the start of my day is a time when I’d prefer not to have any conversations. Fortunately, it was not something about us, which would’ve been more challenging, but something just about him—about what he’s doing with his time. (He’s the same age as you and is retired.) I noticed I was able to listen with equanimity and patience, not feeling clenched up about having a conversation at this time of day or about delaying my departure. I also felt more aware than usual of the visual field.

Driving to the library, I noticed I was speeding up to make it through an intersection where I’d have to wait a long time for the next green light. Then I wondered what the problem would be with waiting at that light, which is a lot like sitting on a park bench. And it’s not like I was in a hurry to get some work done.

(I haven’t had much to do this week for my class, and it’s been almost two months since I’ve had any editing work, which has been fine with me, though it’s not great for the bank account. But I feel for my boss, whose editing business is fading away because of AI.)

On the short drive, I also had a small flash of feeling like life might be lovely and noticed that I didn’t feel any immediate fear of appreciating life and thereby unleashing fear of death. It felt like I might have manufactured all of that or at least elaborated artificially on a tiny seed of something—maybe again because of that desire to feel like this process is moving along—but even if it was not spontaneous but constructed, it’s still interesting.

* * * * *

Next time chatter is present, there’s no need to descend heroically into the body. Simply notice: is the thought occurring somewhere outside this moment? Did it leave THIS in order to talk about THIS?

Gotcha.
I think my “And, yeah, I know, . . . ” comment was intended to convey that I have already pretty well internalized that mental chatter is part of THIS—y’know, even while not having fully grokked what it means for everything to be THIS.
(The internal bookie is laying odds on whether vince will have something to say about the last part of that last sentence.)

Thank you for echoing back my observations and musings about how being aware of sense perceptions isn’t something I need to DO. That was subtle but does seem “juicy.”
And, yes, we don’t need K to be employed as Director of Open Awareness.

When thought is prominent, has seeing actually disappeared—or has thought merely taken centre stage while the whole visual field continues without comment? When thought fades, what truly returns?

When thought is prominent, it feels like there’s not much conscious awareness of vision. Obviously, the eyes and the optic nerves and whatever parts of the brain process vision are still doing their jobs. So if one is walking, walls won’t be bumped into, and presumably if something unusual is seen, especially something dangerous, conscious awareness will be drawn to vision.

But at least in my own experience, if feels like, when attention is caught up in thought, there’s very little conscious awareness of seeing. And when thoughts are noticed, it feels like the screen on which thoughts were being projected, which is right in front of the face and perhaps just slightly translucent, falls away, and what was behind it—the field of vision—is once again clearly and consciously seen. (And it feels like an analogous thing happens with other sense perceptions.)

So I guess I’d say that when thought fades, what returns is conscious awareness of the visual field.

Meanwhile, the rabbits have been wandering across the runway the whole time.

:-)
Pondering this a little more . . .
There’s never been anyone in the control tower.
There’s never been any need for anyone in the control tower.
That doesn’t mean it needs to be torn down.
Just recognize that it’s empty.
And appreciate the rabbits scampering on the runway.

..and i can't shake the story that all of the above is just (unnecessary) words.

I think I understand that story, but I don’t like it.
Do please keep sharing your words!
And, well, I’m gonna keep sharing lots of mine . . .

[vinceschubert]

that I have already pretty well internalized that mental chatter is part of THIS—y’know, even while not having fully grokked what it means for everything to be THIS.

Let’s play with the word.

Remove the TH from THIS, and what remains?

IS.

THIS may still contain a subtle gesture: someone here pointing towards this—perhaps distinguishing it from that.

But IS doesn’t point anywhere. It doesn’t divide what appears into included and excluded.

Mental chatter is part of THIS.
Becomes simply:

Mental chatter is.

Silence is.
Preference is.
Irritation is.
The thought “I haven’t fully grokked this” is.

Nothing needs to be placed inside a large container called THIS. There is no cosmic admissions officer deciding what belongs.

So contemplate:

IS — THIS — IS

Not as a puzzle requiring a clever answer. Let it wobble the grammar a little. Does THIS briefly carve something out of IS, only for it never to have left IS at all?

One caution: removing TH from the word isn’t an instruction to remove thought from experiencing. Thought also is. No purer reality is hiding beneath the chatter.

Does substituting IS for THIS work grammatically? Not particularly.

Experientially? Try this when chatter is happening:

Chattering is.

Then stop before adding anything else.

Is there a K who must recognise that chatter belongs to reality—or is there simply chattering, already requiring no inclusion?

more later..

v

[whoknows]

Re: (TH)IS:

I don’t have any trouble understanding that THIS—or what IS—includes everything, including thoughts, even thoughts about preferring silence to thoughts, and even thoughts like “I haven’t fully grokked this yet.” That all seems obvious.

What I feel like I’m not grokking is . . . well, maybe the significance of the fact that it’s all THIS? Okay, let’s just say it: So what?

When I understand “It’s all THIS” to mean somethIng like “Samsara is nirvana,” then I can dig my teeth into it and wrestle with it, but I’ve gotten the sense that that’s not what you mean.

Is there a K who must recognise that chatter belongs to reality—or is there simply chattering, already requiring no inclusion?

Of course chattering belongs to reality. I have no issue or difficulty with that—or not that I’m aware of.

I even get that experientially. There’s clear awareness of sense perceptions, and there are thoughts that often seem to obscure sense perceptions. That’s all fine. It all IS. It’s all included in THIS, even thoughts about preferring not to be caught up in thoughts.

I just feel like I might be missing some sort of important upshot of that, some sort of “Aha!”

[whoknows]

After posting my first message today, it occurred to me that these exchanges are sometimes starting to feel more like play than like dokusan (meeting with a Zen teacher) or therapy. This is especially noteworthy given that K has been chronically depressed for her entire adult life, until very recently, and hasn’t often found things fun. It’s delightful to find anything fun and to feel playful.

[vinceschubert]

it occurred to me that these exchanges are sometimes starting to feel more like play than like dokusan (meeting with a Zen teacher) or therapy. This is especially noteworthy given that K has been chronically depressed for her entire adult life, until very recently, and hasn’t often found things fun. It’s delightful to find anything fun and to feel playful.

This is big! Really big. That is delightful—and worth noticing without immediately putting it on the awakening scoreboard.

Dokusan and therapy can both carry the flavour of a serious K arriving with a serious problem that must be understood and repaired. Play has no entrance exam. It turns metaphors upside down, removes letters from THIS, lets rabbits occupy airports and occasionally permits Roy Kent to comment on no-self.

For someone who has lived with chronic depression and rarely found things fun, the return of playfulness is not a trivial footnote. It is real change.

It doesn’t prove anything grand, and it doesn’t promise that depression or heaviness will never visit again. But something has loosened enough for curiosity and delight to join the conversation.

Perhaps Inquiry becomes playful when K is no longer experienced solely as an emergency requiring rescue. Nothing needs to be solved before the next small discovery can be enjoyed.

When playfulness appears, is anyone producing it—or is life already playing before K notices and joins in?

Apparently the No-Self Translation Office has closed, and a toy shop has opened in its place.

v

[vinceschubert]

I don’t have any trouble understanding that THIS—or what IS—includes everything, including thoughts, even thoughts about preferring silence to thoughts, and even thoughts like “I haven’t fully grokked this yet.” That all seems obvious.

What I feel like I’m not grokking is . . . well, maybe the significance of the fact that it’s all THIS? Okay, let’s just say it: So what?

An “Aha!” may happen—perhaps with laughter, tears, relief, vividness or a distinctly bodily shift. But that is one possible way recognition announces itself, not the recognition itself.
Sometimes a light switches on.
Sometimes dawn arrives so gradually that no one can identify the moment night became morning.
Grokking may become apparent retrospectively: the old question no longer grips in quite the same way; thoughts aren’t believed so quickly; the control room feels less inhabited; life seems less like something happening to K.
Waiting for an “Aha!” can preserve an imagined future K who will finally receive unmistakable confirmation.
So don’t forbid the thunderclap—but don’t overlook the dawn.
Right now, is anything actually unclear—or is thought waiting for a particular feeling to certify what has already been seen?


v

[whoknows]

Dokusan and therapy can both carry the flavour of a serious K arriving with a serious problem that must be understood and repaired.

Yes. And I feel less like that than I did when we started.

Play has no entrance exam. It turns metaphors upside down, removes letters from THIS, lets rabbits occupy airports and occasionally permits Roy Kent to comment on no-self.

Got a chuckle out of that.

Perhaps Inquiry becomes playful when K is no longer experienced solely as an emergency requiring rescue. Nothing needs to be solved before the next small discovery can be enjoyed.

Yes. There’s still a sense of needing rescue, but it’s not so prominent.

When playfulness appears, is anyone producing it

Playfulness appears. No producer of playfulness can be found.

—or is life already playing before K notices and joins in?

Is this a trick question?
No essential, separate K can be found who does anything, including noticing anything or being playful.
And, come to think of it, saying that “life” is already playing is rather figurative.
An employee from the No-Self Translation Office missed the memo that it had closed and showed up for work today, and he says, pedantically, that all we can say is that playful thoughts appear.
I wanted to offer him a new job and was thinking maybe accountant. I googled “What is a job where it helps to think very literally?” and one suggestion was air traffic controller. Having a good laugh here.

On to your next message . . .

[whoknows]

This is a long one . . .

Sometimes dawn arrives so gradually that no one can identify the moment night became morning.

I will admit that this sounds disappointing.
But I’m having trouble saying why.
Early on in Zen practice, I ran across the idea that koan practice is like getting caught in a rainstorm, and shikantaza is like going for a walk on a foggy morning. Either way, you end up soaked. But I absolutely wanted the rainstorm. Still do.
Maybe this is mostly about being in a hurry—that I want the full measure of freedom and ease and lightness NOW or as soon as possibly possible.
It’s hard to imagine that this proclivity will vanish, so, well, there it is. That’s K’s preference.
And reality probably doesn’t care.

Grokking may become apparent retrospectively: the old question no longer grips in quite the same way; thoughts aren’t believed so quickly; the control room feels less inhabited; life seems less like something happening to K.

Again, although that sounds pretty good, I’m impatient and, I suppose, greedy. I want MORE, and I want it NOW.
And, yeah, that is all very obviously laden with “I” and also with ideas of time (which, for one psychedelic moment in college, seemed to be obviously a mere mental construct).
So, okay, I saved this from last weekend, when I was worn out from examining existential fear and was feeling kinda “been there, done that” with regard to self-inquiry:

Next time “I’m waiting for this to really hit home” appears, look immediately:

Where is the K who hasn’t arrived yet?
Where is the future K who finally will?
Apart from that present thought, how far away is home?

Let’s take a look . . .
The future K who will finally arrive is a cluster of stuff happening now: an image of a K who is freer and happier than the imagined present K; feelings of longing; memories of a search begun forty years ago. (Tears rising and tightness in the throat are happening now, not as components of the imagined future K but as responses to examining her.) . . . . .

That’s as far as I got with that, and then it was time for lunch and a nap, and then I started responding to what’s below, and I may or may not return to the above.

Waiting for an “Aha!” can preserve an imagined future K who will finally receive unmistakable confirmation.
So don’t forbid the thunderclap—but don’t overlook the dawn.
Right now, is anything actually unclear—or is thought waiting for a particular feeling to certify what has already been seen?

When I first read this last night before bed, I puzzled over it, wondering whether being “clear” was something I was aiming for. I figured it might strike me differently today, but nope.

Perhaps because I came to this via Buddhism, what I usually think of as the primary aim is liberation from (second-arrow) suffering. I do want to see the true nature of self, and that seems like a “purer” motive, more like scientific curiosity, but I understand realizing no-self to be the way to pull out the roots of suffering.

I came to LU already having a pretty good cognitive grasp of no-self. Now I’ve spent a lot more time noticing the absence of any experience of a separate, underlying self. So, yeah, okay, I’m confident that a self is not findable in direct experience. There’s nothing unclear there cognitively. And . . . so what?

My sense of being an “I” separate from the rest of reality remains intact. I understand that the sense of self may never entirely vanish and that that’s not a problem. Fine. But I haven’t had even a momentary glimpse of a selfless perspective on reality. I don’t have any experiential sense of that.

As far as suffering goes, I feel like around nine or ten months ago, suffering began to decrease noticeably, and that’s been even more striking in the past four or five months (and I’m getting choked up with gratitude for you, vince). In the past several months, I’d even venture to say that joy has increased.

But there’s still a background of a fundamental sense of duhkha. (Now starting to sob.) I think what makes this tolerable is the sense that things are moving in the right direction and that all you folks who talk about awakening as something that can happen not just in this lifetime but soon are not full of shit but are telling the truth based on your own experience.

I think of how you and others have observed that folks who have suffered a lot seem to be more likely to see this process through. Well, here I still am.

So I dare to be hope-full that what I have been experiencing is not just a lightening of depression and oppression that could be understood in an ordinary psychological way but is part of, or is headed toward, something more fundamental.

It feels like the lawnmower sliced off a lot of the dandelions before they went to seed, but the roots are still there, ready to sprout new flowers.

(It’s interesting that although dandelions are usually considered weeds, they are cheerful little yellow flowers and then fun puffballs of seeds that can be blown about. I’m not sure whether that messes up my metaphor or enhances it in some weird Zennie way.)

So, now (restraining my impulse to apologize for that essay, which does actually seem relevant), what was the question again?

Right now, is anything actually unclear—or is thought waiting for a particular feeling to certify what has already been seen?

I don’t think anything is unclear cognitively.
And I don’t think I’d say that certification is desired for what has already been seen, if “what has already been seen” means the current cognitive understand of no-self, enhanced by being confident, based on repeated looking, that a self can never be found in direct experience.
What is desired is something else, which maybe could be described as a shift of perspective?
So, returning to this:

Waiting for an “Aha!” can preserve an imagined future K who will finally receive unmistakable confirmation.

Apparently, I’m still waiting for an “Aha!” to be experienced by future K.
Is there anything to be done about that?

Yeah, well, I suppose I can pick up where I left off before lunch:

Next time “I’m waiting for this to really hit home” appears, look immediately:

Where is the K who hasn’t arrived yet?
Where is the future K who finally will?
Apart from that present thought, how far away is home?

*Weary sigh.*

Where is the K who hasn’t arrived yet?
She doesn’t exist as a distinct phenomenon apart from the swirling and ever-changing pattern of perceptions and thoughts that is conventionally (and usefully) designated by her name.
And that sentence felt like it totally came from thought.
Let’s try again.
What’s actually here?
Feel of breath in nostrils. Feel of fingers on keyboard. Sight of computer and bedroom and view out window. Sound of typing. Faint sound of a clock. Faint sound that could be faraway traffic and/or wind in trees. Sound of belly gurgling. Feel of tongue in mouth. Sight of rims of glasses. Surprisingly little bodily tension or tightness. Sense of being an “I” inside the body, especially the head, interacting with a world “outside.” What can be found behind the eyes? Nothing that can be directly experienced, of course. Feel of the eyes and blinking. Feel of the lips touching. Etc.
Oh, right, I was looking more specifically for “the K who hasn’t arrived yet.”
So, also:
Vague sense of something unfinished. Sense of longing. Now a little tightness in throat. Orientation toward the future. Some tension in jaw. Mild sense of weariness.

Where is the future K who finally will arrive?
As described before lunch, all that can be accessed in direct experience is a cluster of stuff happening now: Image of a K who is freer and happier than the imagined present K. Feelings of longing. Memories of a search begun a long time ago.

“Apart from that present thought, how far away is home?”
Home?
Oh, right, this is about “waiting for this to really hit home.”
Um . . .
The “right” answer is something like “no distance,” but it took me too long to come up with that, and it came from thinking, so you can ring the bell to evict me from the dokusan room and let the next person come in.
I could say something like, “It can only hit home NOW,” but that gets a disdainful “Oy vey” from my brain.
I dunno.

Spouse is doing an all-day sit with the zendo of which he is an online member. Think I’ll join for a sitting period.
Definitely enough words for now!
Thanks for listenting to all of that.

[vinceschubert]

Is this a trick question?

No. And the pedantic employee is correct: “life is playing” was poetry. All that can be reported precisely is that playful thoughts, feelings and laughter appeared. Promote him to air-traffic controller if you like; the abandoned airport could use the company.

Sometimes dawn arrives so gradually that no one can identify the moment night became morning.
I will admit that this sounds disappointing.

I believe you. You want the rainstorm.

You aren’t merely asking for confirmation of a proposition. You want an unmistakable shift in how reality is perceived—and, yes, you hope it brings substantially more freedom from the background duhkha that has accompanied most of your adult life.
That isn’t the same as wanting an awakening diploma. I blurred those together when I asked whether thought was waiting for a feeling to certify what had already been seen.

Your correction is fair:
You have cognitively understood no-self and repeatedly confirmed that no separate self can be found. What hasn’t happened is the perceptual reorganisation you mean by grokking.

I won’t redefine the gradual reduction in suffering, increase in joy and arrival of playfulness as that shift simply to close the case. Those changes are real and significant, but you are accurately reporting that the familiar subject–object structure remains.

Sense of being an “I” inside the body, especially the head, interacting with a world “outside.”

This is the living edge.
Not the future K. Not the theoretical absence of a self. This ordinary, present division into in here and out there.
You have searched behind the eyes for an entity many times. No watermelon. Perhaps searching for another object called K has given us what it can.
Instead, examine the seam itself.
With eyes open, let the scene remain completely ordinary. Don’t inventory everything, redirect attention or try to become spacious.
Vision has perspective. Facial and head sensations appear. The rims of the glasses are visible. Inner speech may seem to occur somewhere near the throat or head. Sounds have locations.
But where, in any of that, is inside?
Where in the visual field does outside begin?

Does a sound travel across a boundary and arrive at a listener—or does it simply appear with an apparent location?

Do sensations behind the eyes contain an observer, or do their location and the visual perspective combine to imply one?

Can the boundary between K and the room be directly experienced—or is there experiencing, plus a body-map and thoughts drawing the border?
Don’t answer that there is no boundary. See whether the seam itself can be found.

This is different from repeating, “No separate self exists.” It brings attention to the perceptual construction you say remains intact.

“Apart from that present thought, how far away is home?”

The “right” answer is something like “no distance”...

Retire that question. It became too clever and turned the dokusan room back into an examination hall. There was no answer you were supposed to produce, and taking time to invent “no distance” doesn’t bring home any closer.
Your weary sigh was more useful information than the right answer.

Apparently, I’m still waiting for an “Aha!” to be experienced by future K. Is there anything to be done about that?

In the conventional sense, yes: stop rehearsing conclusions and become curious about the live construction of inside me V outside world.
In the deeper sense, no: the shift itself cannot be manufactured. Conditions can be invited; what happens next remains in the mystery basket.
And you needn’t renounce the rainstorm. An unmistakable shift may happen with tears, laughter, relief, vividness or an enormous “Oh, for God’s sake—of course.” Wanting that doesn’t disqualify you.
Just don’t spend the whole foggy morning staring at the sky and missing that your clothes are already becoming damp.

As for the dandelions: their cheerfulness improves the metaphor. The patterns that produce suffering aren’t evil roots contaminating K’s lawn. They are living conditioning. Some are being cut before seeding; some roots are weakening; some flowers may return and look unexpectedly beautiful.

For now, leave the future K alone.

In present experiencing, where exactly is the border separating the one who is looking from what is seen?


v

[whoknows]

With eyes open, let the scene remain completely ordinary. Don’t inventory everything, redirect attention or try to become spacious.
Vision has perspective. Facial and head sensations appear. The rims of the glasses are visible. Inner speech may seem to occur somewhere near the throat or head. Sounds have locations.
But where, in any of that, is inside?
Where in the visual field does outside begin?

Trying to answer from how it seems, not what I “know” . . .

SEEING:

I experience seeing in two different ways:
(1) The usual way is that everything in the visual field, including parts of the body that are seen, seems, in a way, “outside” of K the perceiver, who is “inside” the head. The seen is the object, and the supposed seer is the subject.
(2) Alternatively, vision can be experienced as just “seeing,” with no separate seer (more or less?), so there’s no inside vs. outside, no subject vs. object. In that case, maybe seeing seems “here” or placeless, or maybe it seems like a field right in front of the eyes. This perspective mainly appears during meditation, sometimes with just a tiny bit of prompting along the lines of a reminder that “There is no seer, just seeing.”

(I’m noticing that I appreciate being given a new variation on inquiry into the phenomenology of “self.” No weary sigh.)

Do sensations behind the eyes contain an observer, or do their location and the visual perspective combine to imply one?

I don’t notice any sensations behind the eyes. I only notice a mental image of a location behind the eyes. And it obviously doesn’t contain any observer that can be found. But this is imagined to be the location of the supposed observer, probably in large part because (per my theory that I’m rather fond of) that’s the imagined location where the images from the two eyes converge.

HEARING:

Hearing is similar to seeing:
(1) Ordinarily, it seems like there’s an assumption, or maybe a vague image or impression, of a supposed hearer “inside” the head, who is the subject perceiving sounds, which are objects “outside,” including sounds understood to originate from within the body. (I’m noticing that, so far, my inside-outside distinction is not about whether something is inside or outside the bag of skin but about whether it’s the subject or an object.)
(2) But especially during meditation, with maybe just a reminder that “There is no hearer, just hearing,” hearing can be experienced as just hearing, with no subject-object or inside-outside distinction (more or less?).

Does a sound travel across a boundary and arrive at a listener—or does it simply appear with an apparent location?

(1) When hearing is imagined in the ordinary way, as involving the hearer and the heard, sounds are imagined as being located at what the mind understands to be their place of origin, and the hearer is imagined as perceiving the sounds from inside the brain. More specifically, sound is imagined as travelling from its source to these ears, and some biological processes happen to send signals to some part of the brain, and the “hearer” is some sort of consciousness that is connected in some utterly mysterious way to the brain. And even though that consciousness might be placeless or in a parallel universe or something, the consciousness of hearing tends to be imagined as happening somewhere inside the skull, perhaps halfway between the ears.
(2) When there’s a sense of there being no hearer-heard distinction but just hearing, that hearing is simply happening “here” or maybe with a clear sense that locating sounds in their apparent places of a origin is just an added image.

FEELING:

Awareness of bodily sensations might not parallel seeing and hearing. I haven’t explored this as much. I don’t know whether there’s the same distinction between the ordinary way of imagining it and a more meditative way. And the inside-outside distinction might operate differently. The bag of skin might be more relevant here as an imagined boundary.

Can the boundary between K and the room be directly experienced—or is there experiencing, plus a body-map and thoughts drawing the border?
Don’t answer that there is no boundary. See whether the seam itself can be found.

Trying hard not to answer from thought . . .

Ordinarily, the surface of the skin seems to be the boundary, more or less, between K and not-K.

(I remember once, at a long-ago sesshin, when I was probably trying to “be Mu,” considering whether to include my hair or not, and what about the microorganisms on my skin? And then I might’ve started wondering about the air immediately around me and probably expanded out from there.)

I can direct attention to my skin and to the feel of its contact with my clothing or the air or whatever. But locations are assigned to those sensations by an overlay of thought, based on knowledge of the shape of the body, vision, proprioception, and maybe other things. All that’s accessible in direct experience regarding that skin “boundary” is sensations of pressure and temperature, which, as with direct experience of seeing and hearing, don’t really have a location or a size. And the sensations of the entire surface of the skin aren’t even all held in conscious awareness at the same time. In my experience, awareness can only bounce around among various places on the body.

Examining any particular sensation of the skin against something else, I can’t really feel the “seam” between, say, the tip of my right index finger and the surface of the J key on the computer keyboard. There’s just a sensation “there,” and the mind adds lots of information taken from, e.g., vision and memory and understanding to give the (very strong) impression that there is a fingertip touching a computer key and that there is a clear boundary between the two. But that boundary can’t be found in direct experience.

ETC.:

And you needn’t renounce the rainstorm. An unmistakable shift may happen with tears, laughter, relief, vividness or an enormous “Oh, for God’s sake—of course.” Wanting that doesn’t disqualify you.
Just don’t spend the whole foggy morning staring at the sky and missing that your clothes are already becoming damp.

This is all good.
(And “Oh, for God’s sake—of course” gave me a chuckle.)

For the “gradually getting soaked” file:
Had an unpleasant late-night scene with spouse, but we noticed what was going on, stopped, and figured out, for future reference, where we could’ve stopped it sooner.

As for the dandelions: their cheerfulness improves the metaphor. The patterns that produce suffering aren’t evil roots contaminating K’s lawn. They are living conditioning. Some are being cut before seeding; some roots are weakening; some flowers may return and look unexpectedly beautiful.

Thanks for coming out to play with the dandelions with me. :-)

In present experiencing, where exactly is the border separating the one who is looking from what is seen?

I started responding to this, but, oddly, I feel like I need to spend a little more time on it. But now it’s time for TV and then sleep, and I want to go ahead and post the rest of this, so I’ll return to this question tomorrow.

Very grateful for you, vince.

[whoknows]

P.S.

In present experiencing, where exactly is the border separating the one who is looking from what is seen?

Realized during late-night sit (pre-TV time) that I was probably getting tangled up in this question because I was accepting the premise that, at least in the imagination, there could be a “one who is looking” and a “what is seen,” which are separate from one another. Apparently, I was having trouble even constructing a sensible fiction based on that premise—or something like that.

In present experiencing, there is seeing. There is no direct experience of “one who is looking,” and there is not even any direct visual experience of “what is seen” if that means something apart from the experience of seeing. So of course no border can be found between these two things that can’t be found.

And yet . . . there’s still this sense that there’s an “I” here who’s looking at stuff “out there.” ???

Maybe that’s explained by the fact that this sense of “I” is constructed from stuff other than just seeing, and so are the supposed “objects” out there?

This is confusing.

[vinceschubert]

And yet . . . there’s still this sense that there’s an “I” here who’s looking at stuff “out there.” ???

The SENSE of a self is an illusion created by the mind/brain that has linked the sensory stimulation with a story of origination
The illusion is assembled in layers. First, the brain links sights, sounds, bodily sensations and movement into a body-centred map. Because they are organised around one location, here begins to feel like someone here.
Then language arrives. The flowing pattern is repeatedly addressed as K: “K sees this. K wants that. K did this.” Memory strings yesterday’s K to today’s K, and the familiar inner voice provides a continuous commentary.
Finally, thought claims each event: “I heard that. I decided. I moved my hand.” The claim usually arrives so quickly that it seems to name an existing owner rather than create the impression of one.

Nothing in the construction is false: the body, perspective, memories, name and thoughts are real happenings. The illusion is the extra inference that their coordination proves someone is inside originating and receiving them.

Repeated thousands of times each day, the inference becomes invisible. The story no longer feels like a story; it feels like direct perception.

Without identification, the useful pattern called K remains. The organism responds, learns, laughs and avoids danger. Only the imagined source at its centre is missing.

So, bottom line is that the illusion of self (called the sense of self) will probably stay around until the reframing takes effect. It has nothing to do with an actual self.

love

v

[whoknows]

So, bottom line is that the illusion of self (called the sense of self) will probably stay around until the reframing takes effect.

Yeah, OK.

Got any more self-inquiry-type questions to keep K occupied? Is there any point to that anymore?

One thing from the meeting:

There could be a little something to what you brought up at the meeting, even though it kind of seems like a joke: that maybe I’m worried about what I’ll do with my time if I acknowledge the awakeness here. (Hmm. That awkward phrasing came from the guy who keeps showing up to work at the defunct No-Self Translation Office. I need to get him set up in his new position as air traffic controller for rabbits.) More straightforwardly: . . . what I’ll do with my time if I wake up. I’m already having trouble filling my time, and if I add the time I’ve been spending writing LU posts every day, that’s a lot more time to fill. (Plus, I’d miss these exchanges.)

If that is indeed a small barrier in the road, I suppose it's fairly easy to get it out of the way. I do trust—sort of?—that life will present me with things to do that seem relatively worthwhile or engaging. I don't know. Maybe I don't trust that? I do magine that being awake might significantly lower the bar for what seems engaging.

[whoknows]

Having a crappy day.
Was feeling very resistant to getting any work done and feeling oppressed by a couple of “life administration” chores hanging over my head.
Tried “practicing it away.” I’m kinda making fun of myself there, but I did hope that things like examining what’s actually here and noticing thoughts as thoughts might help a little, and they didn’t really.
Went home for lunch. Spouse was having a crappy day also.
It belatedly occurred to me that probably a good cry was in order. That helped a little.
Finally realized that the low mood and energy were relate to a physiological thing. That always helps, I guess because then I know that it didn’t just come out of nowhere, and I know about how long it will last and that it’ll get better on its own.

“Do nothing” practice was probably not the best choice for my afternoon sit. It mostly devolved into long stretches of being lost in thought—some of them composing this post.