What is seeing?
Look at whatever is in front of you. Is it seen from the persective of two widows……?
When I look, I do not view things through two separate windows, but just as one ‘windscreen’ view. I have been taught that this ‘act of seeing’ is processed by a part of (the / my) brain. There is a belief that this is ‘true’, but what is actually experienced is ‘just the act of seeing’…….. I have a concoction of ideas about how this happens, but there is ‘just seeing’. I can sense no ‘I’ doing the ‘seeing’, although I have been taught to reference this seeing as ‘my seeing’ as opposed to someone else’s.
Even labelling this as ‘seeing’ appears incorrect. There appears to be something happening which ‘I’ have learned to label as ‘seeing’, but I do not really know what it is. I have been taught to separate this experience from other sensory experiences. In the world of words, separate labelled experiences appear to make sense. In reality (although ‘reality’ is an idea), there is a ‘complete not knowing’ of any of this stuff….. and the question of ‘who’ is experiencing is ridiculous. We appear to have created a bunch of sounds that we call words and expect these words to hold inherent and real meaning.
So when looking takes place, there is seeing…..No ‘one’ sees…… there is just ‘looking’ and ‘seeing’. For want of another term (or no term at all)….space is seeing / emptiness is seeing / no-one is seeing.
Is there any awareness separate from experience or is there just experience?
I guess when there is awareness of ‘seeing’ there appears to be no traceable see-er behind it. Awareness appears to flip between various sensory experiences and there is a sense that ‘I’ can watch the process. But this idea of ‘I watching the process’ breaks down quite quickly, as the sense of ‘I’ comes and goes, becomes distracted, goes into a dream state……. There appears no permanent ‘me’ or ‘I’ that is in control. Although there sometimes appears to be a separate ‘I’, there really isn’t anything that’s reliably separate. Throughout the day, little ‘I’s try to assert themselves, but then just vaporize.
Experience and awareness are just different words, we separate things with words and create two different ideas.