A remarkably ordinary experience

[Singhashri]

I have been practicing Buddhism for 13 years. Recently on a retreat, I had a very strong experience of non-separateness. I was looking into another woman’s eyes and was suddenly aware of the absence of a sense of a separate self. There was nothing that I could distinguish as me in the experience. There was simply a connection between us. I found that I could look into her eyes without any sense that there was a me and a her out there as separate from me. I could hold her gaze without any sense of self-consciousness. Simultaneously, there was a feeling that I could not distinguish as mine. I intuited this feeling to be related to what she was communicating to me, an empathic response conditioned by the non-separateness. Somehow, awakening into that connection, I was immediately able to empathize without any effort. As remarkable as it seemed, the experience was also quite ordinary. I simply saw quite clearly that there was no boundary between myself and others, where once I believed there was. Since this experience I have found that I am able to be much more present with myself and others.
After this experience I was sitting with a strong feeling and the thoughts that arise with it about something difficult at work. This feeling and the thoughts are very familiar, a pattern I have been playing out for my entire life. But then I remembered this experience of non-separateness and told myself that my strong opinions didn’t matter, I could let them go. My reaction was simply a thought co-arising with a feeling in the body but I didn’t have to believe it anymore. This was incredibly liberating.
After the retreat I was sitting with a group of friends. One of them began complaining about the behavior of another friend. I found listening to her very painful, as I could see how her views were creating a false separation, leading to more suffering for herself and others. I then began to notice all the ways in which I create this separation, and a strong desire to fully awaken arose in me.
A friend of mine suggested I join this forum, so I’m curious to hear from others and go through the guidance process.

Love,
Singhashri

[kvotski]

Hello singhashri,

My name is Sunil and I would be happy to guide you if you wish.

We use first names.

Are you ready?

[Singhashri]

Hi Sunil,
Yes, I am ready. Not sure what you mean by using first names, Singhashri is my ordained Buddhist name and the name I go by in all areas of my life. Many thanks for offering to guide me, looking forward to it!

[kvotski]

Hi Sunil,
Yes, I am ready. Not sure what you mean by using first names, Singhashri is my ordained Buddhist name and the name I go by in all areas of my life. Many thanks for offering to guide me, looking forward to it!

Hello Singhashri,

Before we begin, please confirm that you have followed the process outlined in the guiding area by our rules.

Specifically that you commit to post at least once a day.

I will ask questions and you would answer them honestly as well as from direct experience, no recitation from what you may have read.

For now you will set aside other teachings including your Buddhist texts.

If these are acceptable to you, please confirm and let us begin.


Let's start with your ordained name. Is that you? Is there a singhashri? Is there a pre singhashri? What are the differences between them?

[Singhashri]

Dear Sunil,
Yes, I agree to the rules, although putting down Adyashanti's The end of Your World, which I am half way through at the moment, will be difficult =)



I knew you would ask me about the name as soon as I sent my response. Singhashri is not me, it is a name given to this particular manifestation of consciousness that my preceptor identified. There is no Singhashri that is a static, unchanging being. There is only emergence. It is helpful to reflect on the meaning when I am needing to reconnect with my deepest intention to radiate love (Singha - Lion, Shri-Radiance). That is how the name is helpful as a spiritual tool. Is there a Singhashri - only in that there is a person with that name operating in the world at the moment and that it is helpful to have names on a practical level. Is there a pre-Singhashri? Only in my memories and in the conditioned habits that continue to play themselves out from before I received this name. The differences between Singhashri and pre-Singhasri - there is no difference - all is process.

Love,
"Singhashri"

[kvotski]

Dear Sunil,
Yes, I agree to the rules, although putting down Adyashanti's The end of Your World, which I am half way through at the moment, will be difficult =)



I knew you would ask me about the name as soon as I sent my response. Singhashri is not me, it is a name given to this particular manifestation of consciousness that my preceptor identified. There is no Singhashri that is a static, unchanging being. There is only emergence. It is helpful to reflect on the meaning when I am needing to reconnect with my deepest intention to radiate love (Singha - Lion, Shri-Radiance). That is how the name is helpful as a spiritual tool. Is there a Singhashri - only in that there is a person with that name operating in the world at the moment and that it is helpful to have names on a practical level. Is there a pre-Singhashri? Only in my memories and in the conditioned habits that continue to play themselves out from before I received this name. The differences between Singhashri and pre-Singhasri - there is no difference - all is process.

Love,
"Singhashri"

Hello Singhashri

Thank you for abiding by the rules and I know how hard it is to put aside words and works that have been a part of your practice for some time.

Now let us focus on direct experience here. Examine your views on how spirituality is playing a role in your life right now and directly. The question isn't whether the name or your practice helps you reconnect, love or be blissful. The question is there a you, whether you call him singhashri or pre singhashri?

You say there is a person by that name. Is there really a person? Can you directly experience him? Where is he? What are his attributes? Can you find him? When did he come to be? He was called something before and singhashri now? Did he change? Will he change again? How many times has he changed? Only direct experience please. Not consciousness and faith or vapor. You need to use your senses to find him not imagination or thoughts. You can see the table, hear the music. What about singhashri? Can you see him? Can you hear him?

Love and best wishes to you also.

[Singhashri]

Hi Sunil,
I'll reinterpret your questions using the pronoun "she" and adjective "her", as I am female, and that conditioning probably won't go away even when I see through the delusion of self.

You say there is a person by that name. Is there really a person? Can you directly experience him? Where is he? What are his attributes? Can you find him? When did he come to be? He was called something before and singhashri now? Did he change? Will he change again? How many times has he changed? Only direct experience please. Not consciousness and faith or vapor. You need to use your senses to find him not imagination or thoughts. You can see the table, hear the music. What about singhashri? Can you see him? Can you hear him?

There is a body and a mind, with thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, perceptions, volitions. This is what I directly experience. Beyond that there is no place I can find a self separate from these experiences. She does change, is always changing, as all these things I mention are constantly arising and passing in a field of awareness. Its impossible to know how many times she has changed. I see and hear a body, that is all. Beyond that I see and hear a world, but I can not say with certainty that this world is separate from this body.

Love,
Singhashri

[Singhashri]

Sitting on the bed, heavy eye-lids, slow, shallow breath. pressure on the right side of the back of the head. Sore cuticle on the left side of the right index finger. Tension in the left middle back. Tingling sensation up the outside of my left thigh. Heart beating in the inside of the ears. Clothes warm and soft against the skin. Thoughts of today and tomorrow pass through the mind. Each thought brings a sensation somewhere in the body. Knot in the stomach. Warmth in the heart center. Tightness in the right shoulder. Joy in the belly. And then it moves up and through and out.

[kvotski]

Sitting on the bed, heavy eye-lids, slow, shallow breath. pressure on the right side of the back of the head. Sore cuticle on the left side of the right index finger. Tension in the left middle back. Tingling sensation up the outside of my left thigh. Heart beating in the inside of the ears. Clothes warm and soft against the skin. Thoughts of today and tomorrow pass through the mind. Each thought brings a sensation somewhere in the body. Knot in the stomach. Warmth in the heart center. Tightness in the right shoulder. Joy in the belly. And then it moves up and through and out.

Very nice singhashri. The computer may have ate one of my posts. No matter. We are on perfect track.

I would like to reiterate one of my questions about you being a female. Are you? Or is that just a female body? If there is no you how can there be a female you?

I would like you to spend some time contemplating your expectations from this exercise here. If you like you could expand it more if you like although we want a laser focus on what we want to accomplish here.

Much love to you.

[Singhashri]

Hi Sunil,

I would like to reiterate one of my questions about you being a female. Are you? Or is that just a female body? If there is no you how can there be a female you?

Just a female body, yes. There is no me and no female me. There is no quality of femaleness that can be identified beyond the body.

I would like you to spend some time contemplating your expectations from this exercise here. If you like you could expand it more if you like although we want a laser focus on what we want to accomplish here.

My expectation is to connect with someone who can support me in completing the process of seeing through the separate self. I believe this process has begun, but needs more inquiry to come to full fruition. I don't expect this seeing through to be synonymous to full awakening, but a very important step in that direction.

Love,
Singhashri

[kvotski]

Hi Sunil,

I would like to reiterate one of my questions about you being a female. Are you? Or is that just a female body? If there is no you how can there be a female you?

Just a female body, yes. There is no me and no female me. There is no quality of femaleness that can be identified beyond the body.

I would like you to spend some time contemplating your expectations from this exercise here. If you like you could expand it more if you like although we want a laser focus on what we want to accomplish here.

My expectation is to connect with someone who can support me in completing the process of seeing through the separate self. I believe this process has begun, but needs more inquiry to come to full fruition. I don't expect this seeing through to be synonymous to full awakening, but a very important step in that direction.

Love,
Singhashri

On the dot are your expectations.

I would like to know if this is the first step, what do you expect when fully awakened?

Please observe your actions and thoughts, as many as you can, over the next day and relate to me if you can find you, yours or self in any of them. Example, look at your hands. Are these your hands or are they simply hands? Go further what part of what you see is a label and what is real? Real defined here as that which can be directly experienced through the senses. The table, the dishes, music, bird calls, wind rustling leaves, this computer are all directly experienced. What about the self? Can you find it?

When you touch a surface with eyes closed, what do you feel? Go deep. Try not to label what you sense. What do you sense? Please give me intricate details.

Singhashri, I have a sense that you may already see that there is no self. If I am wrong, please tell me where do you find the self really posessing your attention?


Love and best wishes.

[Singhashri]

Dear Sunil,

I would like to know if this is the first step, what do you expect when fully awakened?

I don't think there will be a single moment when I am fully awakened. I think that there is simply a process of deepening awareness that goes on infinitely and has nothing to do with me. This deepening awareness purifies ones consciousness so that eventually greed, hatred and delusion are eradicated. This is the end of suffering. I have already experienced the power of deepening awareness on my own mental states, as I have become more and more integrated over time, watching the forces of greed, hatred and delusion weaken in me. Simultaneously, compassion arises, and also deepens infinitely.

Please observe your actions and thoughts, as many as you can, over the next day and relate to me if you can find you, yours or self in any of them. Example, look at your hands. Are these your hands or are they simply hands? Go further what part of what you see is a label and what is real? Real defined here as that which can be directly experienced through the senses. The table, the dishes, music, bird calls, wind rustling leaves, this computer are all directly experienced. What about the self? Can you find it?

Today I got frustrated with a colleague. There was tension in the belly, heat rising in my body, unkind words in the mind and in speech. These experiences were real. I watched the mind try to make a self of them, justify a position, a very old habit that is not real. But because of this clear seeing, I saw through the delusion of my own hatred. I could break down the experience into its physical sensations and accompanying thoughts and not identify with them. I spoke with her a couple of hours later and we sorted it out. I didn't have to hold on to anything, no opinions to cling to. Very liberating.

My hands are not even hands. They are warmth and energy and matter conditioned in a particular way at the moment. All I experience that I call "hand" is just this, and nothing more. They move out of habit. I don't even know where the choice to move comes from. No self to be found in the experience of a hand.

When you touch a surface with eyes closed, what do you feel? Go deep. Try not to label what you sense. What do you sense? Please give me intricate details

At first, I feel the rough texture of the fabric of the blanket on my bed against the skin. But once the hand has stopped moving I don't feel anything. Then, a sense of pressure of the weight of the hand against the blanket. There isn't one sensation that stays the same, it's always changing. Even the subtle movement of my pulse in my fingertips changes the way the blanket feels, soft one moment, rough the next. Hard to tell where the blanket ends and the hand begins.

Singhashri, I have a sense that you may already see that there is no self. If I am wrong, please tell me where do you find the self really posessing your attention?

There is nowhere that a self possesses my attention, only times when I cling to an idea or feeling and try to make it into a self. I see this happening and awareness liberates the clinging.

I will continue to investigate my actions and thoughts tomorrow to see if there is a me in any of them. I will look into what part of my experience is a label and what part is real.

Love,
Singhashri

[kvotski]

Hello Singhashri

Really great work. Your seriousness comes in wide and clear.

I don't think there will be a single moment when I am fully awakened. I think that there is simply a process of deepening awareness that goes on infinitely and has nothing to do with me. This deepening awareness purifies ones consciousness so that eventually greed, hatred and delusion are eradicated. This is the end of suffering. I have already experienced the power of deepening awareness on my own mental states, as I have become more and more integrated over time, watching the forces of greed, hatred and delusion weaken in me. Simultaneously, compassion arises, and also deepens infinitely.

I want you to work a bit more on the "I", me and mine.

Will you be finally awakened?

All these things that have happened because of your past work, did it happen to you? Where was this you then? Where is it now?

Today I got frustrated with a colleague. There was tension in the belly, heat rising in my body, unkind words in the mind and in speech. These experiences were real. I watched the mind try to make a self of them, justify a position, a very old habit that is not real. But because of this clear seeing, I saw through the delusion of my own hatred. I could break down the experience into its physical sensations and accompanying thoughts and not identify with them. I spoke with her a couple of hours later and we sorted it out. I didn't have to hold on to anything, no opinions to cling to. Very liberating.

Was that you that did all of this? Would it still have happned if there were no you? How would the body and mind react in this situation if there just was no Singhashri?

My hands are not even hands. They are warmth and energy and matter conditioned in a particular way at the moment. All I experience that I call "hand" is just this, and nothing more. They move out of habit. I don't even know where the choice to move comes from. No self to be found in the experience of a hand.

Was there an experiencer in this experiment as a separate entity somewhere?

At first, I feel the rough texture of the fabric of the blanket on my bed against the skin. But once the hand has stopped moving I don't feel anything. Then, a sense of pressure of the weight of the hand against the blanket. There isn't one sensation that stays the same, it's always changing. Even the subtle movement of my pulse in my fingertips changes the way the blanket feels, soft one moment, rough the next. Hard to tell where the blanket ends and the hand begins.

Yes, hard to tell. Do this again and see if there is a you feeling it even when it is moving not just when stopped?

There is nowhere that a self possesses my attention, only times when I cling to an idea or feeling and try to make it into a self. I see this happening and awareness liberates the clinging.
Love,
Singhashri

What clings to an idea? And this awareness that liberates, is it different from you? Or is it just another name you are giving to self?

Happy to be here with you.

Love

[Singhashri]

Hi Sunil,

I want you to work a bit more on the "I", me and mine.

Will you be finally awakened?

All these things that have happened because of your past work, did it happen to you? Where was this you then? Where is it now?

There is no me that will be finally awakened, nor a final awakening. There is only a process in which a being will have purified its consciousness to the point of eradicating the three poisons. Awakening awakens to itself, or reveals itself to itself. Reality wants to know itself through the awareness that is the ground of all experience.

What I have experienced in the past I now only know through memories, thoughts about those experiences. But there is a knowing of a process of deepening awareness. So perhaps it is awareness recognizing itself. These things didn't happen to "me", they happen to the idea of a person in the idea of a past played out through the memories of the idea of a person in the present. This "me" that these things happen to is simply an idea, so it was nowhere then as it is nowhere now, except in the mind as a thought.

Was that you that did all of this? Would it still have happned if there were no you? How would the body and mind react in this situation if there just was no Singhashri?

I did not do any of it, it all arose dependent on conditions, including the thoughts and the resultant clinging to the thoughts. It would still have happen without a "me" - the body and mind would have reacted the same without a Singhashri. Yet, I am aware of the process in which there was a clinging that resulted in the idea of a Singhashri as separate from my colleague. But this awareness is not me, it is simply where all of this arises and is known. Perhaps without the idea of Singhashri there would have been no clinging. So the clinging is dependent upon the condition of the idea of a separate self. Once that separation is seen through, then the clinging will cease. Ah, ha!

Was there an experiencer in this experiment as a separate entity somewhere?

No, no separate experiencer. The direct experience can happen without any"one" who experiences it as separate from the experience.

Yes, hard to tell. Do this again and see if there is a you feeling it even when it is moving not just when stopped?

There is no "me" feeling anything, moving or stopped. Simply sensations arising in awareness.

What clings to an idea? And this awareness that liberates, is it different from you? Or is it just another name you are giving to self?

Clinging happens dependent on the conditions created by the idea of a separate self. This awareness is no different from me, in fact, it is all there is. Awareness and what arises and passes in awareness. No self to be found anywhere in awareness. Any subtle clinging to awareness as a "self" self-liberates when "I" become aware of that clinging. Wow!

Love,
Singhashri

[kvotski]

HI Singhshri,

You are on a roll. Re-read your own message that you just sent me. You started with a separate self and ended up here with an wow. But we are not done.

Clinging happens dependent on the conditions created by the idea of a separate self. This awareness is no different from me, in fact, it is all there is. Awareness and what arises and passes in awareness. No self to be found anywhere in awareness. Any subtle clinging to awareness as a "self" self-liberates when "I" become aware of that clinging. Wow!

Love,
Singhashri

I suspect the clever self may simply be renaming itself into this awareness that is basically the god concept and enchanting you. Is she really there? Remember we are doing direct experience here, i.e. if we have to imagine this awareness then it s beyond my expertise or interest to follow. So, please ask if ALL I, me, self or its derivatives are nowhere to be found. If not, where are they? Introduce her to me.

Look at this paragraph carefully and see the ruse. "This awareness is no different from me" but there is no me. So simple natural law of algebra says if there is no me, how can there be an awareness?

Come back....

Much love.