Ready to go

[philkingston]

Hi Vajradakini

Yes but if you take a look at that 'selfing', do you actually decide not to go with the flow, or is it just the habitual reaction of selfing, of taking things 'personally' (assuming there is both a self over there to injure and a self over here to be injured/insulted)?

I've been watching this today and seeing there's no particular hierarchy in the direct experience of choosing but there is a sense that some paths stay closer to freedom and clarity and joy while others would lead to a closing down. I'm aware in these moments of the weight and relevance of Dharma teaching in all this, for the first time in years the nidana chain feels really helpful (as opposed to something that surrounds the more interesting six realms on our Wheel Of Life poster in the bathroom). I know the task is direct looking and not thought but to some extent how I look is conditioned by all the views I've had about Buddhist psychology over time.

My realisation today was that choice is a name we give to how different rivers of habit move through our lives and that there is no one point where a solid 'I' made a choice.

I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater and put all of that down to a 'honeymoon' period, because much of what you describe there sounds like a fairly natural consequence of being with actual experience and beginning to fatally undermine the self-view! You can expect a few kick-backs from 'selfing' if you pull hard at the root.

Today its was as if the cycle of positive emotion turned round again and it was work to contain the giddiness inside, which tends to manifest itself in self-aggrandizing daydreams. Seeing this as cyclical does help detach from it more.

Ok and you were trying to hang on to the whatever more pleasant states arose along with that and maybe wriggle around things by trying to replace that tiresome old self with a shiny, improved Enlightened self :-D.

yes and that habit is pretty subtle.

Trust that this is entirely possible.

yes, doing that in itself has hugely improved my state of mind

Have a look back at recent posts for any pointers that you may have missed answering from DE (of which I think there are a few) and focus on just one. The questions are meant to be used to point you to experience but only 'you' can do the looking...

No chance today to do this but I already knew it was the area of 'choice' i needed to look at. I'll review it all tomorrow.

So close you can't see it.
So deep you can't fathom it.
So simple you can't believe it.
So good you can't accept it.

Lovely. I'll keep that close.

Thanks Vajradakini.

Much love,

Lalitavira

[Douglita]

Hi Lalitavira,

Well done for mastering the 'quote' thingy!

I've been watching this today and seeing there's no particular hierarchy in the direct experience of choosing but there is a sense that some paths stay closer to freedom and clarity and joy while others would lead to a closing down.

Yes that could be a handy perception, but can you find choice of any kind in Direct Experience that leads to a freer path or a constricted path?

Can you choose the next emotion, mind state, atritude, that will arise? Sit and look at what is happening. Can you find any choice - point where you willingly chose any emotion, that appeared in response to a stimulus?

I'm aware in these moments of the weight and relevance of Dharma teaching in all this, for the first time in years the nidana chain feels really helpful (as opposed to something that surrounds the more interesting six realms on our Wheel Of Life poster in the bathroom). I know the task is direct looking and not thought but to some extent how I look is conditioned by all the views I've had about Buddhist psychology over time.

Yes having a cognitive understanding of how it happens - looking at the 'Nidana chain' - and seeing it as a cycle can help a bit like having a 'road map' as to how it keeps spinning and that can 'depersonalise' it or help (to some degree) dis-identify with particular manifestations of that conditionality. But what you're after is more radical…seeing/knowing there is no 'I' at the centre (or hub) of that 'cycle'. So that's why direct experience is emphasised (crucial, in fact!) rather than any thought process/study or reading about this, because thinking mind is inherently divisive and creates 'me' along with every thought, which of course keeps that wheel spinning along 'nicely'!

My realisation today was that choice is a name we give to how different rivers of habit move through our lives and that there is no one point where a solid 'I' made a choice.

Good! But how about now looking a bit more closely whether any kind of 'I' (whether solid or nebulous) made a choice, and even whether there was a moment of 'choice'? This really can't be seen by thinking it through/reflecting, it can only be done looking closely what is happening indisputably in experience...(see above for pointer to look for a point of choice in whatever is arising)

Today its was as if the cycle of positive emotion turned round again and it was work to contain the giddiness inside, which tends to manifest itself in self-aggrandizing daydreams. Seeing this as cyclical does help detach from it more.

Just keep noting that the self-aggrandising thoughts or giddy appropriation of exalted feelings is 'selfing'. Basically ANY manifestation of ‘selfing’ happens without an ‘i’ doing it. It’s just conditionality and part of the conditions arising are thoughts of ‘me doing this’, and other thoughts believing these thoughts. It’s all smoke and mirrors - blow it away!

Remember: whatever happens, however pleasant or unpleasant, exalted or ordinary, is just life happening – no self anywhere, ever.

So ‘you’ won’t get anything from this, in fact, as ‘you’ don’t exist as such, but the constriction and so forth that comes from believing in a separate, fixed, substantial self entity – which the heart longs for release from – starts dissolving as soon as the truth of our being is directly known.

Lv V x

[philkingston]

Hi Vajradakini,



Can you choose the next emotion, mind state, atritude, that will arise? Sit and look at what is happening. Can you find any choice - point where you willingly chose any emotion, that appeared in response to a stimulus?

They are not chosen they just arise but the difficulty I am having today is the watching for this, the attempt to look directly becomes so loud it starts to mask the clarity of experience. I have also tried allowing a sense of letting go to take place because I see the chuntering background sound of my voice as a construct that's keeping the self alive.

I do see that because choices are made this doesn't mean there is a chooser, but there is understanding this and really seeing it. Today I had a fight with my wife and I could feel the armaments of the self arising ( and the joy and freedom receding). It was very difficult to poke my awareness above the parapets a sit felt like the decisions made to firstly not communicate and then finally reach out an olive branch were just that, decisions I made.

. So that's why direct experience is emphasised (crucial, in fact!) rather than any thought process/study or reading about this, because thinking mind is inherently divisive and creates 'me' along with every thought, which of course keeps that wheel spinning along 'nicely'!


My habit nowadays is to return to direct experience as often as possible. It feels like a natural home and my enthusiasm for meditation has never been so high because it is where I can get back to a deeper more natural place.

But as I sit here taping away on this ipad, a bit hazy with anti histamines ( huge pollen count) and still unresolved in communication with my wife I can't say it's been the clearest day. Dissatisfaction with the self is very strong, yes. But how do I keep looking without inviting the bath water back I with the baby? How to look without tripping myself up in the endeavour? There's no shortage of willingness or energy.

Best wishes,

lalitavira






Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Douglita]

Hi Lalitavira,

I'm very sorry but I have not had the time to reply to you today! I will write tomorrow morning. I sent you a pm earlier.

V x

[philkingston]

Hi Vajradakini,

I can't find the PM on th site but never mind. I'll write something anyway because the momentum is important and I feel the forces of inertia pulling at this process.

I stay with DE when I remember, and find the chattering of the mind to be quite irritating and frustrating now I know there is freedom from it. There is a lot of attempts to look through this but as I said yesterday the attempting itslf feels as if it is getting in the way.

Generally the positive feeling tone has gone and life feels like work again though it is definitely true there feels like more space and more inclination to make better decisions, to choose to behaviour more creatively. Am keen to stay in the habit of looking at DE no matter the context, good days, bad days, positive state, negative state etc...

Habits of reactivity are back whereas it felt like I was on holiday from them. This convinces me I haven't uprooted the conviction of a fixed self. You made a remark about it holding on strongly when threatened and recently this process has a had th feel of some sort of struggle going on at a deeper level.

Pressing on,

Best

LV x

[Douglita]

Hi Latitavira,

Sorry for the hiatus!

They are not chosen they just arise but the difficulty I am having today is the watching for this, the attempt to look directly becomes so loud it starts to mask the clarity of experience. I have also tried allowing a sense of letting go to take place because I see the chuntering background sound of my voice as a construct that's keeping the self alive.

It may be keeping the self-view alive, but perhaps 'you' are making too strained an effort to be with direct experience. Remember looking in DE is never far away and doesn't have to be complicated or depend on special conditions or state of mind. It's always available; it's in tasting your coffee, the sensation of air on your skin, backside on the seat - it's there in every sensation available all the time because you're alive. Yesterday I swam in the cool water of a lake in sunshine and being entirely in the senses was bliss. But even sitting in the garden for a while or by a tree - try it. You don't have to be in pleasant surroundings or having pleasant sensations to experience the bliss of being simply with what is.. A pain in the knee would do: in DE 'knee' dissolves and even 'pain' is just a label for all sorts of sensation - it just 'is'.

Sit for a while with eyes closed.

Sitting wherever you are with eyes closed, imagine what you saw before your eyelids shut (in fact you can still literally 'see' light and various little forms playing on the eyelids open, or have a retina image of what you saw before, but focus on the imagined image of what you last saw)....stay with that a while and note that as the content of thoughts/imagination.

Now open your eyes so you can see what is really there instead of what you imagined. That seeing/looking/naked awareness is all this 'looking' is, before the conceptual mind has a chance to grab it, take hold of it, layer more thoughts and feelings on top of it, label it with the mind like this: 'that is a tree, that is a pretty flower, a dead pigeon (etc)'.

Stay just with the looking sensations...Is it 'I' see, or just seeing? What directs focus? Is there a choice to look at this, or that, or just looking?

I do see that because choices are made this doesn't mean there is a chooser, but there is understanding this and really seeing it. Today I had a fight with my wife and I could feel the armaments of the self arising ( and the joy and freedom receding). It was very difficult to poke my awareness above the parapets a sit felt like the decisions made to firstly not communicate and then finally reach out an olive branch were just that, decisions I made.

Ok, it might not be easiest to see no-self when in the middle of a heated exchange where 'selfing' (and as part of that, 'self'- defending) comes to the fore, but even in the midst of a 'fight'...notice how you believe and buy into the story of I as it plays out in the argument and how the 'I' and 'You' that gets zero'd in on in that argument keeps reinforcing the identification with the feelings and thoughts. If you saw this movie and these characters on screen you might also get 'involved' or caught up in the story and emotions involved as they were played out on the screen and feel for the one who was hard done by, but you wouldn't cancel a dinner date afterwards because you were so upset about the argument you just saw these characters on screen having!

But as I sit here taping away on this ipad, a bit hazy with anti histamines ( huge pollen count) and still unresolved in communication with my wife I can't say it's been the clearest day. Dissatisfaction with the self is very strong, yes. But how do I keep looking without inviting the bath water back I with the baby? How to look without tripping myself up in the endeavour? There's no shortage of willingness or energy.

Habits of reactivity are back whereas it felt like I was on holiday from them. This convinces me I haven't uprooted the conviction of a fixed self.

I sympathise but in terms of this investigation the state of mind you're in doesn't a) matter too much and b) doesn't indicate a self. Hazy/clear/mindful/distracted/troubled/peaceful...this is not the point! The state is not indicative of anything but conditionality playing out. Were not trying to get rid of unwanted mental states here or the habitual mental/emotional complexes and the fact that they are still present does not mean you cannot see through the illusion of self or even that you haven't already done so. Why do you have to buy into this 'conviction'? Convinced = belief = thought!

You can presumably see to some degree that these are just thoughts. When open awareness is present – or let’s say, when awareness is in its openness phase – isn’t it clear directly that there’s no self-entity here to be reactive or not reactive?

Habitual mental patterns are ‘automatic'. Can you see these habit-patterns attributing ‘self’ to themselves? Can you seen that this is simply another self-perpetuating habit pattern, a mere conditional arising, impersonal?

Lv V xx

[philkingston]

Hi Vajradakini,

Exhausted this evening so shall keep this short and to the point.

I concentrated on one part of your reply

Sit for a while with eyes closed.

Sitting wherever you are with eyes closed, imagine what you saw before your eyelids shut (in fact you can still literally 'see' light and various little forms playing on the eyelids open, or have a retina image of what you saw before, but focus on the imagined image of what you last saw)....stay with that a while and note that as the content of thoughts/imagination.

Now open your eyes so you can see what is really there instead of what you imagined. That seeing/looking/naked awareness is all this 'looking' is, before the conceptual mind has a chance to grab it, take hold of it, layer more thoughts and feelings on top of it, label it with the mind like this: 'that is a tree, that is a pretty flower, a dead pigeon (etc)'.

Stay just with the looking sensations...Is it 'I' see, or just seeing? What directs focus? Is there a choice to look at this, or that, or just looking?

Sat at lunchtime on a bridge in the bright sun and practiced this. As I noticed before raw experience was so much fuller and seemingly impossible to reproduce in this fullness in imagination. Every time i re-opened my eyes it poured back in. The layering on of self was quick but eventually when opening my eyes to look back at the phone in my hands there was moment when it wasn't 'I' seeing but just seeing. a kind of rush filled my body momentarily and then was gone.

Best wishes,

LV x

[Douglita]

Hi Latitavira,

Sat at lunchtime on a bridge in the bright sun and practiced this. As I noticed before raw experience was so much fuller and seemingly impossible to reproduce in this fullness in imagination. Every time i re-opened my eyes it poured back in. The layering on of self was quick but eventually when opening my eyes to look back at the phone in my hands there was moment when it wasn't 'I' seeing but just seeing. a kind of rush filled my body momentarily and then was gone.

Ok so any 'rush' will come and go, but the great thing there is that moment when you saw

it wasn't 'I' seeing but just seeing

. If you keep seeing
this as you look in all areas of experience where before a self was presumed to exist then that belief in self weakens to the point it can no longer be sustained.

It's probably not possible to stay with DE all the time and it's more the clear 'seeing' through self that looking engenders that we're after than the looking in itself... Perhaps just for now view allowing awareness to be in DE as simply the method to reveal the absence of 'I' - to reveal more and more of how things really are. If there's highs and lows as part of that then enjoy the 'good' bits but keep looking! ;-)

So: The five senses – excluding mentating (thoughts, mental images etc.)– take them one by one. Using the example of the visual sensations you focussed on yesterday:

 Are you ‘doing’ them? Making them happen? Deciding in any sense what body
sensations are going to arise next?
 Do ‘you’ have any influence over whether pleasant / painful or neutral sensations (vedanas) arise?
 Are you the ‘one’ experiencing them? If this seems to be the case, can ‘you’ find ‘the
one’ who is doing the experiencing?

Look at one or more of the sense-spheres in this kind of way, in direct experience. You may
not need to do it with them all. Let me know your observations.

V x

[philkingston]

Hi Vajradakini,

 Are you ‘doing’ them? Making them happen? Deciding in any sense what body
sensations are going to arise next?
 Do ‘you’ have any influence over whether pleasant / painful or neutral sensations (vedanas) arise?
 Are you the ‘one’ experiencing them? If this seems to be the case, can ‘you’ find ‘the
one’ who is doing the experiencing?

Good stuff. Totally take your point about not attaching to states around this process but stick to looking.

Observing touch. There are sensations of pressure and texture which I clump together and call my body but there is no obvious connection between what I see of my hand and the feel of it.

But there is a difference between touch and sight/ sound in that the physical sensations I predict I will have, say by touching this window, are closer to what actually happens than the predications I make about sight or sound. Sight and sound feel so much richer in DE. There still a qualitative difference though between imagined physical sensations and actual ones.

'Who' is having the physical sensations? Me. Where is this 'me'? In the body. But the body is simply a collection of sensations, there are sensings which are constructed by habit into the term ' my body', so the 'me' is the body sensing itself? No there are only the sensations, there is no underlying layer.

How am I in control of the sensations? I can predict the ones I'll have if I turn my head or decide to touch the window. But there is no choice? But I say to myself ' I will turn my head' and I turn my head and see the things I expect to see.

Returning to this exercise. Relaxing the habit of trying. Committed to honesty. Even when it's not the observations I want.

Best wishes,

LV x

[philkingston]

Hi V,

An addition to the above

Watching decision making in the drive to work

There are actions, some of which involve a voice, sometimes barely conscious , sometimes explicit, which accompanies the action but which is a thought and this is what is thought of as choosing.

I know we've been here before. This habit of locating the self, assuming the self exists in the ability to choose, is strong.

There is nothing else though than sensations and thoughts. I don't understand why this is so hard to see for me, other than of course the years of conditioning and the fact the world operates on these assumptions.

The identifying of self with thought is VERY strong. Will look at that today, seeing thought as another sensation.

Best

LV x

[Douglita]

Hi Lalitavira,

Just seen your second post but will answer this one for now....

Observing touch. There are sensations of pressure and texture which I clump together and call my body but there is no obvious connection between what I see of my hand and the feel of it.

Good observation.

But there is a difference between touch and sight/ sound in that the physical sensations I predict I will have, say by touching this window, are closer to what actually happens than the predications I make about sight or sound. Sight and sound feel so much richer in DE. There still a qualitative difference though between imagined physical sensations and actual ones.

Yes, some sensations are more easily predictable in imagination and thought but you also see they are not identical - there is a qualitative difference which is really important to see. I'll suggest an exercise to explore that a little more later...

'Who' is having the physical sensations? Me. Where is this 'me'? In the body. But the body is simply a collection of sensations, there are sensings which are constructed by habit into the term ' my body', so the 'me' is the body sensing itself? No there are only the sensations, there is no underlying layer.

Good questions - Good observation again.

How am I in control of the sensations? I can predict the ones I'll have if I turn my head or decide to touch the window. But there is no choice? But I say to myself ' I will turn my head' and I turn my head and see the things I expect to see.

Yes imagination and thought can predict or recognise, and action followed thoughts in that moment! But did they arise because of a 'you' behind it, someone sitting in command - as it were - or from various conditions coming together in that moment?

Notice how decisions arise conditionally - do it with a simple decision like whether to make yourself a drink or not. Quite apart from unconscious factors, which obviously you can't really 'look' at, how many conditioned arisings can you notice around this simple decision-making process. And in the moment you do move to make a drink, or to do something else instead - notice how that implicit decision actually 'activates' and what the mind is doing with it a moment later. Do thoughts about moving always result in movement - do actions always occur as a result of a thought about it? Really look: does the thinking ‘cause’ the moving, or whatever the example you’re examining may be?

Returning to this exercise. Relaxing the habit of trying. Committed to honesty. Even when it's not the observations I want.

Honesty is great :-) and really essential for this to work, so there really are no 'right' answers here but only what you truly see when you look. The problem many times is distinguishing between what we 'think' we see and what we actually see.

V x

[Douglita]

There are actions, some of which involve a voice, sometimes barely conscious , sometimes explicit, which accompanies the action but which is a thought and this is what is thought of as choosing.

Pretty much spot on.

This 'voice' or thought is one of the conditioning factors in the action – but remember you’re looking for a ‘self’ – can thought as a conditioning factor be what you regard as ‘me’ / ‘myself’’?

I know we've been here before. This habit of locating the self, assuming the self exists in the ability to choose, is strong.

Yes this can be a very strong assumption indeed! There is no problem with 'been here before' - we can revisit this as much as is helpful.

There is nothing else though than sensations and thoughts. I don't understand why this is so hard to see for me, other than of course the years of conditioning and the fact the world operates on these assumptions.

Well that's interesting - is it really hard for you to see or is that just another assumption too? Do you have a belief or doubt knocking around that says you cannot see this/'get' this?

Yes the world operates on those assumptions, and you may have operated on that basic assumption all your life, yet perhaps the more amazing thing is that all it takes is knowing how to look properly and having a really good look at what actually is and it can blow up or dismantle that whole illusion in an instant - or a series of instants that have the effect like the final straw....

The identifying of self with thought is VERY strong. Will look at that today, seeing thought as another sensation.

Notice how ‘you’ decide to think something. How does a particular thought arise? Does another thought think ‘I’m going to think about such and such’? Or do they seem to fire off ‘of themselves’ or because of other thoughts or sense impressions?

Love, V

[Douglita]

Oh I forgot this:

Yes, some sensations are more easily predictable in imagination and thought but you also see they are not identical - there is a qualitative difference which is really important to see. I'll suggest an exercise to explore that a little more later...

Sit in a chair and bring awareness to all the contact points your body has with the chair and the floor. Feel the sense of pressure in your feet, move up to the pressure in the backside and the back. Close your eyes and focus just on the raw experience – ignore the ‘inner picture’ that has constructed the experience as ‘my body sitting in a chair’. Can you feel where the body ends and floor/chair begins or is the experience itself seamless? Without using thought – before thought intervenes – what is the nature of the experience? Where is the experience taking place? What are its qualities? Is there a ‘centre’ to this experience? Is there a ‘thing’ separate from the sensations that the experience is ‘happening to’? When thought tries to intervene, don’t follow it, allow awareness to remain in the raw experience. Do this several times for at least ten minutes. Report back what you find.

Even if you predicted accurately what some of the sensations, thoughts and feelings in connection with that experience were going to be, was it identical to the imagined experience?

Now broaden out to all the physical sensations in the body you are aware of now - are there just sensations, or are they divided between 'sensation' and 'self experiencing'?

[philkingston]

Hi V,


[quote][quote]
Sit in a chair and bring awareness to all the contact points your body has with the chair and the floor. Feel the sense of pressure in your feet, move up to the pressure in the backside and the back. Close your eyes and focus just on the raw experience – ignore the ‘inner picture’ that has constructed the experience as ‘my body sitting in a chair’. Can you feel where the body ends and floor/chair begins or is the experience itself seamless? Without using thought – before thought intervenes – what is the nature of the experience? Where is the experience taking place? What are its qualities? Is there a ‘centre’ to this experience? Is there a ‘thing’ separate from the sensations that the experience is ‘happening to’? When thought tries to intervene, don’t follow it, allow awareness to remain in the raw experience. Do this several times for at least ten minutes. Report back what you find.[/quote][/quote]

Interesting! At first it was very difficult to get beneath thought because the very gathering of the experiences together implied a shape, a body to which they all belonged but when I concentrated on one and stayed with it, it seemed to fade or get lighter, it became less substantial. Impossible to say that it was tied anywhere, to anything, it just was. I want to return to this because when I attempted to broaden out the imposition of an imagined layer, that all these sensation s belong to my body, gets in the way automatically. It's just time though. I have very little at the moment.

Another insight that came unbidden yesterday was that this is simple, I.e. That I have a habit of assuming anything to do with the mind must be complicated so there sis the expectation I have to bury beyond what is obvious to find the truth. But looking at thought as sensation yesterday I realised they are not such complicated things as I assume and that maybe this whole belief in complication is getting in the way.

I'll post this now but let me dwell on everything else you wrote for the rest of the day. Lots sof good stuff I want to take time to answer.

Love,

LV

[Douglita]

Ok - you have a lot to be getting on with there so this is just a quick reply. If you don't have a lot of time right now it's fine to reply when you are able. Take a bit more time if you need it to engage with the questions and do the exercise again. It's great that you engaged so well with that body sensation exploration ---and seeing through 'complication' as another thought - excellent!

V x