I won’t claim that I’m constantly in a self of non-self, but as I’m writing this, I don’t really feel that I’m locally existing in my body. I’m rather the awareness of everything that continuously arises in consciousness.
This doesn’t happen all the time, I won’t claim to be enlightened or anything but maybe this n=1 self-report can help?
Even from this state of awareness, there’s still a will to do something. It is almost like you’re a force of nature moving forward with doing what you were doing before you were in a state of presence awareness. It isn’t you and at the same time it is you. Words are honestly quite insufficient to describe the experience, but If I try to conceptualise it, I’m the universe moving forward by itself. In a state of non-duality, the taste is often very much the same no matter what experience is arising.
There are some times when I’m not fully in a state of non-dual awareness when it can feel like “I” am pretending to do things. At the same time it also kind of feels like using a tool? The underlying motivation for action changes to something like acceptance or helpfulness, and in order to achieve that, there’s this tool of the self that you can apply.
I’m noticing it is quite hard to introspect and try to write from a state of presence awareness at the same time but hopefully it was somewhat helpful?
Could you give me some experiments to try from a state of awareness? I would be happy to try them out and come back.
Extra (relation to some of the ideas):
In the Mahayana wisdom tradition, explored in Rob Burbea’s Seeing That Frees, there’s this idea of emptiness, which is very related to the idea of non-dual perception. For all you see is arising from your own constricted view of experience, and so it is all arising in your own head. Realising this co-creation can enable a freedom of interpretation of your experiences.
Yet this view is also arising in your mind, and so you have “emptiness of emptiness,” meaning that you’re left without a basis. Therefore, both non-self and self are false but magnificent ways of looking at the world. Some people believe that the non-dual is better than the dual yet as my Thai Forest tradition guru Ajhan Buddhisaro says, “Don’t poopoo the mind.” The self boundary can be both a restricting and very useful concept, it is just very nice to have the skill to see past it and go back to the state of now, of presence awareness.
Emptiness is a bit like deeply seeing that our beliefs are built up from different axioms and being able to say that the axioms of reality aren’t based on anything but probabilistic beliefs. Or seeing that we have Occam’s razor because we have seen it work before, yet that it is fundamentally completely arbitrary and that the world just is arising spontaneously from moment to moment. Yet Occam’s razor is very useful for making claims about the world.
I’m not sure if that connection makes sense, but hopefully, that gives a better understanding of the non-dual understanding of the self and non-self. (At least the Thai Forest one)
I won’t claim that I’m constantly in a self of non-self, but as I’m writing this, I don’t really feel that I’m locally existing in my body. I’m rather the awareness of everything that continuously arises in consciousness.
This doesn’t happen all the time, I won’t claim to be enlightened or anything but maybe this n=1 self-report can help?
Even from this state of awareness, there’s still a will to do something. It is almost like you’re a force of nature moving forward with doing what you were doing before you were in a state of presence awareness. It isn’t you and at the same time it is you. Words are honestly quite insufficient to describe the experience, but If I try to conceptualise it, I’m the universe moving forward by itself. In a state of non-duality, the taste is often very much the same no matter what experience is arising.
There are some times when I’m not fully in a state of non-dual awareness when it can feel like “I” am pretending to do things. At the same time it also kind of feels like using a tool? The underlying motivation for action changes to something like acceptance or helpfulness, and in order to achieve that, there’s this tool of the self that you can apply.
I’m noticing it is quite hard to introspect and try to write from a state of presence awareness at the same time but hopefully it was somewhat helpful?
Could you give me some experiments to try from a state of awareness? I would be happy to try them out and come back.
Extra (relation to some of the ideas): In the Mahayana wisdom tradition, explored in Rob Burbea’s Seeing That Frees, there’s this idea of emptiness, which is very related to the idea of non-dual perception. For all you see is arising from your own constricted view of experience, and so it is all arising in your own head. Realising this co-creation can enable a freedom of interpretation of your experiences.
Yet this view is also arising in your mind, and so you have “emptiness of emptiness,” meaning that you’re left without a basis. Therefore, both non-self and self are false but magnificent ways of looking at the world. Some people believe that the non-dual is better than the dual yet as my Thai Forest tradition guru Ajhan Buddhisaro says, “Don’t poopoo the mind.” The self boundary can be both a restricting and very useful concept, it is just very nice to have the skill to see past it and go back to the state of now, of presence awareness.
Emptiness is a bit like deeply seeing that our beliefs are built up from different axioms and being able to say that the axioms of reality aren’t based on anything but probabilistic beliefs. Or seeing that we have Occam’s razor because we have seen it work before, yet that it is fundamentally completely arbitrary and that the world just is arising spontaneously from moment to moment. Yet Occam’s razor is very useful for making claims about the world.
I’m not sure if that connection makes sense, but hopefully, that gives a better understanding of the non-dual understanding of the self and non-self. (At least the Thai Forest one)