Isaiah 40:6-8
“6 All flesh is grass, And all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. 7 The grass withers, the flower fades, Because the breath of the Lord blows upon it; Surely the people are grass. 8 The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever.”
"Pleasure of the senses is emptiness ever filling itself,
Yet remaining ever empty.
Pleasure of the soul is fullness ever emptying itself,
Yet remaining ever full."
-Heiromonk Damascene ("Christ The Eternal Tao" Part I ch 64 p184
"The spirit is made blind by these three passions: avarice, self-esteem, and sensual pleasure. These three passions on their own full spiritual knowledge and faith, the foster-brothers of our nature. It is because of them that wrath, anger, war, murder, and all other evils have such power over mankind. Because of them we are commanded not to love 'the world' and 'the things of the world' (I John 2:15); not so that we should hate God's creation through lack of discernment, but so that we should eliminate the occasions for these three passions."
-St Mark the Ascetic (from "The Philokalia")
Each person is a universe;a greater world within a small one.It is here — in our greater interior world — that we may find and balance on that edge connecting the visible and invisible;the empty point of convergence that reveals the inseparability of being and not-being, created and un-created, finite and infinite...It is here that Christ is positioned as the Way conjoining knowing and un-knowing...We may meet Christ — the Logos, the Way, the Life —(or, rather, Christ will emerge to meet us)in the hour during which thought and image are not followed but allowed to liberate themselves and dissolve in the pure Light of unbroken Oneness and Love.We are to be, as Merton advises, like pristinely clean glass:being illuminated by the entering Light of the sun and disappearing in its Radiance.
"Seeing" the Light (the "Luminous Darkness") of Logos (Christ, the Word, the Tao, the Way)Experiencing the Grace of the Spirit (Holy Spirit, Teh, counselor, breath)Unknowing through negation (apophatic prayer, contemplation, setting aside all that is known to draw near - or to be drawn nearer to - the Unknowable: that which is beyond all existence, thought, concept, and intelligibility... one can only describe things relating to the Essence of God)
Satipatthana: direct path..."Sati [choiceless awareness; non-reactive; non-interfering] does not change experience, it deepens it." p 56; "Upatthana": placing near; being present; attending - instead of "foundations" (derived from "patthana" which was never used with "sati" in the early Pali texts) which describes them as "objects" that lead to sati rather than attitudes with regard to them that one performs as an activity of sati; "mindfulness being present (upatthitasati) can be understood to imply presence of mind, in so far as it is directly opposed to absent-mindedness (mutthassati); presence of mind in the sense that, endowed with sati, one is wide awake in regard to the present moment." p48 - sati as present moment awareness and remembering/re-collecting (breadth of attention connecting information from the present and about the past) - relaxed receptivityBodily investigation leads to understanding of attachment to the body: feeling (bodily states); "who is feeling?" or the understanding that body and feeling are mental objects leads to contemplation of mind (mental states) which can lead to investigation of the categories of all psycho-physical phenomena (compared to Pramote Pramojjo - vipassana in relation to body and ...mind"Satipatthana definition: "abide contemplating (anupassī) _____ as ____ (e.g. body as body), diligent (ātāpī), clearly knowing (sampajāna), and mindful (sati), free from desires and discontent (vineyya abhijjhādomanassa) in regard to the world" - "anu-": emphatic prefix, passati: to see (thus: to closely observe); present participle of verb, "sampajanati" "sam-": intensifying prefix, "pajanati": he/she knows (input-processing; to fully grasp or comprehend; ranging from a basic knowing to a deep discriminative understanding); "ātāpī" is related to "tapas": which connotes ascetic practices; "vineyya": "free" from verb vineti "to remove" - may be "having removed" or "one should remove" indicating a concurrence of abiding and removal of desires/discontents (which may be referring to the hindrances - similar concurrent action with regard to loving-kindness and absorption: "fake it till you make it"?) - Free from desire or discontent: natural concentration resulting from the enjoyment of the present moment of experience whether pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral - "unification of mind" at the point of present (timeless) moment awarenessConcentration: Balanced effort like tuning strings of a lute or holding a chick (too tight: choked; too loose: it falls)Samadhi ("concentration" - used very broadly in different contexts); 4 ways of developing: leading to pleasant abiding (jhanas), to knowledge and vision (dev of clarity of cognition), to mindfulness and clear knowledge (contemplating arising/passing of feelings, cognitions, and thoughts), and destruction of influxes (contemplation arising/passing of 5 aggregates) - "decisive factor that qualifies concentration as “right” is not just a question of the depth of concentration achieved, but is concerned with the purpose for which concentration is employed" p74Samatha primarily for countering passions (greed/hatred) and Vipassana primarily for countering ignorance; both are developed as "one hand washing the other"Sati functions to monitor in satipatthana contemplation (penetrative, process-oriented, calm, nonreactive observation); more active sati that alters experience is more in the pasture of right effort (appropriate action of body, speech, or mind) - sati can interact with other more active factors of mind without itself interferingThis objective and receptive observational stance (not suppressing or reacting) can be closely related to the ability to tolerate a high degree of cognitive dissonance (since witnessing one's own shortcomings usually lead to unconscious attempts to reduce the resulting feeling of discomfort by avoiding or even altering the perceived information)Noun sati is related to verb sarati (to remember; to recollect; the use of that faculty which makes memory possible) - the present moment and/or the 6 recollections; as a faculty, awakening factor, a factor of the 8-fold path, or at the moment of realization; stabilizing, restraining, supervising, balancing, guarding, gathering, and controlling functions; surgeon's probe, elephant's neck, goad/plowshareBare attention/open awareness of empty phenomena rolling along (swirling, floating, passing, churning, emerging…) - listening (Mother Teresa: listening to God listening to me); allowing “things” to be revealed"Refrain": internally("or/and...")/externally (spatial axis); arising/passing away (temporal axis); bare knowledge & continuous mindfulness (mere awareness - using direct speech to formulate what is to be known: using concepts to facilitate the tools of labeling/noting/apostrophizing (there is a... body/feelings/mental state/dhamma") only to the "extent necessary for bare knowledge and continuous mindfulness"- leads to a dis-identification); independent without clingingBody satipatthanacontemplation of body in action then analysis of anatomical, material, and temporal perspectives with mindfulness of breathing acting as transition from active to more static if moved to the third position (to support the movement from more obvious to more detailed): awareness of postures (knowing), clear knowledge of activities (knowing), awareness of breathing (knowing then training), analysis of anatomical parts (considering/repeated analysis), analysis of material qualities (considering/repeated analysis), and contemplation of temporal perspective of (the disintegration after death) the body (comparing) - [mindfulness of breath is used by "breathing though" the anatomy and then ending on the airy quality of the body to contemplate the act of breathing itself without specific physical location)Similes of man carrying jar of oil (with a man with a drawn sword behind him) while watching a beautiful woman dance and of a post with 6 wild animals tied to it (who eventually lie down next to it) both highlight the sense-restraint grounded in present awareness of the bodyContemplation of the body can be a basis for developing samatha (calm) or it can lead to an application of sati to feeling and mental phenomena in vipassana (insight)Mindfulness of breathing: 4 steps (as opposed to the 16 of Anapanasati sutta) - in/out knowing long breath; in/out knowing short breath (moving to more subtle breath as tranquil-concentration deepens); in/out experiencing the whole body; in/out calming the whole body [because the breath can be both automatic (by the body) and under control (by the mind), the conditionality of body and mind can be contemplated through the breath most easily); Focus on rising-falling or other anatomical-orientation during breath awareness: suggested (in Mahasi tradition) that this is contemplation on the air element rather than actual breath meditation - maybe breath meditation begins with the focus on breathing itself without emphasis on a specific location[?]Awareness of Postures-Mindfulness/Clear Knowledge of Activities: passive voice; "who is... whose is...?"; grounding of awareness in the body that forms the basis for clear knowledge of the range of activities (bending, stretching, shifting, settling, etc); mindfulness and clearly knowing (progression through: purpose, suitability, pasture/relation to one's path-of-growth/sense restraint, and non-delusion) complete the preparatory stages of ethical conduct/sense restraint/contentment and prepare the mind for seclusion/overcoming of hindrances/progress through levels of absorption/realizationAnatomy-Quality: seeing the internal (anatomy and/or qualities) as no different from the external (the environment); e.g. Just like the earth is not resentful when trash is thrown on it, one can respond to others with loving-kindness (metta) and compassion (karuna) rather than resentmentMeditation on death (decay of the body): as a countermeasure to lust and, when applied to one's own body, conceit - but, it should not lead to aversion or depression. Using the breath (or eating) to contemplate the limited nature of the substance we cling to as an embodiment of "I" and "mine": the next breath (or mouthful) is not certain.These last three (postures-activities, anatomy-qualities, and death) are useful especially to cultivate a dis-identification with the body.Feeling satipatthana (affective and ethical):•not emotions (these are more complex parts of states of mind): before reactions, projections, and justifications;•contemplation on feelings can enhance intuitive apperception•worldly (having an underlying tendency to lead to desire, aversion, or delusion) and unworldly (not having those tendencies); flesh and renunciation; carnal and spiritual; or physiological or psychological; the underlying ethical sensitivity of wholesome or unwholesome•like winds from different directions: sometimes warm, cold, wet, dry, pleasant, unpleasant, neutral...;•"who feels?": this leads from merely experiencing feelings to contemplating them as a satipatthana•link between contact and craving (which leads to "views"•bringing the evaluative and conditioning function of appraisal (MAP schema/disposition formation) to conscious awareness: de-conditioning emotions from their points of origination instead of allowing them to find "rationalized homes" within views/opinions (clinging and dogmatic adherence are results of the dependence of views/opinions on initial evaluative impact: affective bias) - "right view": concerned with a non-attached stance in relation to one's views•"Feeling provides quick feedback during information processing, as a basis for motivation and action." P162•"Logic and thought often serve merely to rationalize already existing likes and dislikes, which in turn are conditioned by the arising of either pleasant or unpleasant feelings." P162•Pleasant: Important to develop joy (piti) and happiness (sukha) - non-sensual pleasant feelings•Unpleasant: the "unawakened" view leads to being shot by 2 darts: one of pain and the second of suffering led Ronny mental reaction•Neutral: discovered by inference (absence of pleasant and unpleasant) likened to a hunter seeing tracks before and after a rock, inferring the path of the animal; associated with wisdom or ignorance (transcending an object vs. mere bland disinterest in object) - progressive move of neutrality toward equanimity: sense-feelings, mental feelings (sense renunciation), mental joy, equanimous feeling of wise neutrality that transcends mental joyMind satipatthana•essentially "knowing" presence or absence of 3 roots of unwholesome action divided into 8 categories (and their opposites) covering the range of mindfulness of mind states:•"ordinary" states (5 hindrances):*with(without) desire/lust, aversion/anger, ignorance/delusion, contraction(sloth-torpor)/distraction(restlessness) and•"higher" states (calmly noticing any advanced stages of practice lest they give rise to speculative views - all are products of the mind and conditioned, volitionally produced, and thus impermanent experiences):*as(not) great (broad scope of attention), unsurpassable (reaching for highest possible absorption), concentrated, liberated (temporarily/permanently free from all the hindrances)•Non-reactive Awareness: purpose with all categories: calmly notice unfolding (arising-passing) of experience - MONITORING (not actively avoiding/opposing) lest speculative views arise as a result of phenomena within these categories - non-reactivity deactivated the emotional/attentional "pull" of unwholesome states by countering the impulse towards reaction or suppression•overcoming mental "defilements" through repeated wise observation; being a "mirror" and simply reflecting whatever condition of mind arises without interference or reactive involvement•if this doesn't work, direct attention to the nature of these mind-states and to volitional dispositions underlying them; then try directing attn to something wholesome instead or reflecting on the danger of succumbing to unwholesome thoughts or try to forget them - as a last resort: "beat down and crush mind with mind"•"citta": Mind in the sense of mood or cognitive-emotional state of mind; in its "conative" sense•recognizing the states of mind that underlie particular trains of thought or reaction•underlying ethical sensitivity of wholesome/unwholesome (like "Feeling" satipatthana); there is no fire like lust, no grip like anger, and no net like delusion; pulling in, pushing away, running around in circles•To be aware of the knowing faculty with all its concomitant mental states (Goldstein)"Dhammas" satipatthana (look at whatever is experienced through each category) - diagnosis, cure, and prevention•particularly concerned with the conditional nature of phenomena•specific mental qualities (5 hindrances and 7 factors of enlightenment) and specific categories (5 aggregates, 6 sense spheres, and 4 noble truths)•compared to the last 4 steps of the anapanasati sutta: (contemplation on...) impermanence of all phenomena; fading/passing away; cessation; letting go/detachment•5 hindrances: like more specific version of Mind States, but with focus on conditional nature of hindrances (knowing if each is present, if each is not-present, conditions that lead to arising, conditions that lead to removal, and conditions that will prevent future arisings) - learn to withstand impact of each with awareness (like trying to properly see one's reflection in a bowl of water: colored with dye, boiling, overgrown with algae, blown by the wind, or muddy) - turning obstacles of meditation into objects of meditation (middle way between suppression and indulgence through simple recognition) - counterbalancing one's perceptual appraisal ("antidotes") once the cognitive-emotional distortion (hindrance) is recognized (not for the sake of annihilating them, but for seeing the conditions of their arising, passing , etc): bodily awareness for desire, Metta for aversion, "clarity of cognition" (luminous mind or light image - mindfulness and clear knowledge) or: eating less, pulling ears, massaging body, getting up/changing posture,water on face, look at sky, or walking meditation for sloth/torpor, calm and stability through samatha or less energetic striving for restlessness/worry, and skillful discernment of wholesomeness/unwholesomeness through investigation for doubt - mindfulness is central to recognition, removal, and prevention of hindrances•5 aggregates (a paraphrase of the theory of dependent origination): "such is _____; such is its arising; such is its passing away" - clear recognition of the nature of each then awareness of the arising and passing away of each aggregate; applied to other practices (e.g. Jhanas, anapanasati: sensation of breathing, hedonic-tone of breath, noting the breath, effort of breathing, knowing the breath);-desire/attachment to these aggregates (of clinging) is the root of dukkha-non-self essential, impermanence clearly observed, and suffering as a result of attachment to aggregates is apparent in this contemplation; characterized by what they do rather than what they are; the mental aggregates exist as functions not as entities-material form: the subjective factor of organic sensations; materiality and sensibility - function rather than an entity; that which is "derived" from the 4 qualities of matter;-contact is the condition for the paired manifestation of feeling and cognition ("with contact as condition there is feeling, what one feels, that one cognizes") - feeling relates to the sense organ (the "how" of experience) and cognition relates to the sense object (the "what" of experience); cognition: use of memory to "gather together" sensory input/feelings and furnish them with conceptual labels;-volition and intention: conative (reactive or purposive) aspect of mind (conation) that reacts to objects or their potentiality - conditions and is conditioned by other aggregates; includes many mental factors (executive function; 5 hindrances - all of which can be automatically arising intentional/emotional states - to be known not annihilated)-consciousness: 3 forms of term "mind"- vinnana (conscious awareness 'of'/underlying stream of consciousness - this is the sense used in the aggregate schema; particularizing), mano (door of thought action/6th internal sense base), and citta (center of experience/subject of thought, feeling, and volition);interdependent conditioning of consciousness and 'name-and-form' (name: mental aspects of feeling, cognition, volition, contact, and attention; form: material form);-mistaken (delusional) identification with the aggregates: claiming "I am" by "where I am" (body), "how I am" (feeling), "what I am (perceiving)" (cognition), "why I am (acting)" (volition), and "whereby I am (experiencing)" (consciousness); "self" as a product of projection (of the aggregates); aggregate contemplation uncovers patterns of identification with ("me"), attachment to ("mine"), or reification of (view of "myself") "Self"/"I";form is like the foam on a river, feelings are like impermanent bubbles formed on the surface from the rain, cognition is like an illusory mirage, volitions are like a pithless tree, and consciousness is like a magician's trick-non-identification strategies: "who?"/"whose?" - "representational"/"symbolic" self - arising/passing and conditional nature of aggregates (2nd stage of contemplation after clear recognition) by observing the change taking place in every aspect of experience then in all aggregates simultaneously - seeing the conditions for the arising and passing of each aggregate; one condition that can be brought under control-within-constraint is the condition of identification/attachment/reification-"chariot" analogy: "chariot" is a conventional term describing the functionality of all its conditioned and impermanent parts; this is the same with the "representational" (conventional, functional, impermanent, conditioned) self; the aggregates (i.e. personality) are not an eternal Self, but the self still operates and "exists" conventionally, functionally, impermanent, conditionally (emptiness, not nothingness)-contemplating the distinction bw body and consciousness (mind) may be sufficient to lead to insight (found in the Mahasakuludayi Sutta) - "mind" is analyzed in more detail (4 aggregates) simply because it is more difficult to see the impersonal nature of mind than body-purpose of this satipatthana is to expose identification-patterns leading to disenchantment/detachment (a key aspect of which is awareness of their impermanent and conditioned nature by observing change taking place in every aspect of personal experience; e.g. sensations of breathing/blood circulating, change in feeling-tone, variety of cognitions/volitional reactions arising in the mind, or the changing of consciousness at this or that sense door; then all these together)-Bodily and mental experience depends on and is affected by a set of conditions - "I" and "mine" turn out to be utterly dependent on what is "other" - identification, through volition, is one thing within personal control[Paticcasamuppada: essentially: co-conditioning of consciousness and psycho-physical system (name-and-form)Links of the chain of conceptual ("diamond-shaped-net" of aggregates) proliferation/reactivity (3 "lifetimes"):• (Past) Ignorance of Dispositions/tendencies ->• (Present: *the only real event - the past and future are alternate perspectives of present experience) Consciousness-Sense Objects-Sense Organs -> Contact -> Feeling AND Cognition (Mind-and-Matter/Nama-Rupa/Psycho-Physical-System) -> Craving/Aversion -> Clinging ("view" of intensified craving) -> Becoming (the "regenerating process")[OR] (Craving/Aversion ->) Volition with Wisdom/Skillful Understanding (breaks the cycle with an intentional stance of equanimity and gradually replaces craving with equanimous traits - transforming sañña into pañña)• (Future) "Birth" ("new"/reinforced dispositions) -> "Aging, Decay, and Death" (samsara = suffering); one then becomes a victim of one's own "net" of associations, memories, projections, etc]•6 (inner and outer) sense spheres:-recognize the inner sense organ and object-know the conditions that lead to the arising of a fetter (bondage rooted in desire, aversion, and/or delusion); the conditions that lead to removal of a fetter; and the conditions that lead to prevention of future fetters-perceptual process: contact, co-arising of feeling-tone and cognition (point of perceptual distortion), thought, and conceptual proliferation (which feeds back/projects into future perceptions-sense-restraint: mindfulness at the sense doors (observing sense data before the initial feeling-tone/cognitive appraisal - ["wedge" bw craving and clinging/orientation-appraisal and response]) is the foundation of concentration and insight
Essence of mind is calm awareness; movement of mind is phenomenal emergence at the 6 sense doors. Essence and movement are also the same thing: like energy and matter, the ocean and its waves, the sun and it's rays, or a movie screen and the sounds/images projected on it. Seeing them as separate cultivates the duality of clinging and rejection.To “meditate” simply means to maintain a presence with both the calm essence and active movement of mind (recognition and continuation of pure, non-dual presence): there is nothing to “meditate on”. Any thoughts, desires, etc should be simply allowed to self-liberate at the very instant of their arising through simple present awareness - these conditioned phenomena are all apertures into the ground of Still and Silent Presence; of Primordial-Core Awareness.“Truth is one, many is its names” (Rig Veda). “Non-dual” is the inseparability of the Relative appearance (Christ as Particular) and the Absolute emptiness (YHWH as Universal) — [Practice/Realization/Awakening of the sameness of Christ/YHWH is (the result of) Spirit][Alpha/Omega and the tabernacle of God is with men: Revelation 21]The process of conceptual cognition categorizes sensory cognition and all of mental cognition (which includes conceptual cognition itself) as “this”s and “that”s: mental objects that represent, are derived from, and resemble (or construct?) external (material) perception and that filter internal (mental) perception......this is the root cause of duality - physical and mental things we “know” are the causes and the ways we know them are the effects; direct experience and our conceptions of experience are distanced and bifurcated in time.So, reliance on conceptual understanding is limited to a shallowness (“grossness”) of understanding reality. A depth (“subtlety”) of understanding is encountered through non-conceptual knowing: something like awareness itself.
Form: quality of solidity, permanence, separateness, continuity, and definition
Emptiness: quality of insubstantiality, impermanence, indistinctness, discontinuity, and ambiguity
Non-Duality ["Deep" Mindful Awareness; Contemplation]: recognition that existence and experience are permeated by the qualities of form and emptiness - they are aspects of each other and they condition each other: "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.”
“There is one body, one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, through all, and in you all.” -Ephesians 4:4-6
As I decided to cut my hour-long sit to 30 minutes (when you realize that you feel sleepiness because you are actually sleepy, you should stop meditating unless you just want to play around with it), I asked myself mid-sit, "who am I trying to impress, anyway?"... This question quickly splintered to be "who am I?... trying to impress" as in, "who is the 'I' that is trying anything?"Watching the play of "empty phenomena rolling along" can be captivating. At one moment, there is the gap between thoughts; the space within which feelings color perception; the blank background of discursive experience... during the next moment: "I" am having the time of my life imagining a fantasy of a clown face tell me a story and singing a song to myself while planning whether to get a medium or large coffee...... a crucial time to decide to use the distraction to launch back to the object of attention, let the distraction dissolve into the vastness of Awareness (my preferred contemplative "method" at the present moment), or... to get up.The half-hour before this moment of self-compassion and forgiveness (i.e. The gifts of mercy and grace) had been filled with watching thoughts dissipate into the empty space of consciousness - sort of like following the thought to the rabbit hole and stopping there to watch the thought go down by itself.
Whoever I was trying to impress for a few minutes by fighting genuine tiredness was obviously not real. The "I" that was trying to impress the un-real someone hasn't proven itself to be all that real either.
So, yeah: you should practice with diligence and determination even when it's hard and you're sleepy. But do it for the right reason. Impressing someone (especially the fleeting appearances of "Me in the presence of No-one") is not a good reason.Practice because it's right; because you are growing; because you can; because it is. If you are not doing that, get up.And also, emptiness is not nothingness. Remembering that will save a lot of depression and anxiety in the life of practice.
All phenomena can be known in different ways:-Raindrops falling and dissolving into the vastness of ocean...-Waves of localized motion unceasingly rising out of and falling back into the expansive waters...-The depths of emptiness that underpins all action and intention.We can know ourselves as rain in life, waves in imprisonment, or the ocean in freedom.A tablespoon of salt is unpalatable. Dissolved in a Great Lake, it is unnoticeable. We are like that: at once a unit of identity and a dispersed whole; the material center of our experienced universe and the ubiquitous center of an open circle.Seeing this is freedom from entanglement;Living this is the Way.
From a non-dual perspective, the essence of mind is calm concentration; movement of mind is phenomenal emergence at the 6 sense doors. Essence and movement are the same thing: like energy and matter, the ocean and its waves, the sun and it's rays, or a movie screen and the sounds/images projected on it. Seeing them as separate cultivates the duality of clinging and rejection. To “meditate” simply means to maintain presence of both the calm state and movement of mind (recognition and continuation of pure, non-dual presence): there is nothing to “meditate on”. Any thoughts, sensations, desires, etc should be simply allowed to self-liberate at the very instant of their arising through a presence imbued with awareness - these conditioned phenomena are all apertures leading into the Ground of Still and Silent Presence; of Primordial Core-Awareness. “Truth is one, many is its names” (Rig Veda). "Non-dual” is the inseparability of the Relative appearance (Particular) and the Absolute emptiness (Universal) [Christ-YHWH; and Practice/Realization/Awakening is (the action and result of) Spirit].
The process of conceptual cognition categorizes sensory cognition and all of mental cognition (which includes conceptual cognition) as “this”s and “that”s: mental objects that represent, are derived from, and resemble (or construct?) external (material) perception and that filter internal (mental) perception - this is the root cause of duality: physical and mental things we “know” are the causes and the ways we know them are the effects; direct experience and our conceptions of experience are distanced and bifurcated in time. So, reliance on conceptual understanding is limited to a shallowness (“grossness”) of understanding reality: limited awareness - Sem. A depth (“subtlety”) of understanding is encountered through non-conceptual knowing: pure awareness Rigpa. Yet it also seems that "non-duality" may not even be experienced (maybe not the right word, but whatever) through non-conceptual knowing like simple perception or bare attention to experience... these could be seen as simply non-conceptual forms of Sem; not clearly knowing the totality of conceptual and non-conceptual awareness of presence (Rigpa). Awareness itself (pure awareness of presence; reflexive deep awareness; self-arising deep awareness; awareness of its own face) seems to be the "place" where concept and non-concept can be subsumed (the way sunlight both clearly reveals objects and illuminates itself: clear light cognition that knows its "both-nature") rather than used as markers of what is "real" or not.
[Rigpa aspects: primally pure awareness — self- and other-voidness, spontaneous awareness of pure appearances (clearly knowing), and responsive (compassionate) awareness]
[Rigpa types: Basis awareness, effulgent awareness, and essence awareness — compare with purgative, illuminative, and unitive and/or active, active-contemplative, and contemplative life]
Who the hell knows...
Apokalypsis (Greek: 'unveiling' or 'disclosure' often transliterated as 'apocalypse' but translated as 'Revelation')
Iesou Christou: Christ is the "firstborn from the dead"
John (while in exile on the island of Patmos): "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and..." - he then describes the illumination of his Contemplative experience.
When he saw the slain lamb take the scroll of 7 seals from the hand of "he who sat upon the throne" (never named "God", but the mysterious gap; the luminous darkness) and opened the scroll (supposedly containing the 'Way' or 'Will' of God - the 'Way' that Christ revealed by living as 'It'); John sees God revealed and Worshiped in all things: all of creation becomes an expression of the Glory of God's presence. This was a description of John's awakening to Reality; his liberation from experiencing the world as suffering, his experience of the Revelation of Christ.
John gives us (as much of the stories of Christ do also) an example of meditation; an explanation of a true Contemplation of the action and presence of God (the undefinable mysterious gap) in the Spirit (a continual state contemplation) and through Christ (which contains within and manifests as true Contemplation). This is our example.The 6 (?) seals shows the suffering and impermanence of the world. "The Logos is the Beginning of all things because from Him flow the creative outpourings, the particular logoi of creatures. He is the End of all things because He is the center toward which all created beings tend. This is the mystical meaning behind His words: 'I am the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the Ending' (Revelation 1:8)." (Hieromonk Damascene from Christ the Eternal Tao p474)
"Create in us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, grant us peace."
Amen
During my sit today, I wanted to see if I could fully concentrate on just one breath without any distraction... I don't think I did.Maybe one or two throughout the whole 30 min session.Distractions (gross and subtle) were rampant: sounds, sights (my eyes were open to help with sleepiness - it was early), images, thoughts, feelings, etc. continued to pull at me and I often followed them. My attention had to be constantly returned to the seemingly pointless hope of paying attention to just one breath!...It was the best sit I've had in a while.No big light show or anything, just good, solid practice.
The distractions I encountered seemed to function like a fire: if I gave them heat (my energy), oxygen (my attention), and fuel (my elaboration or intention to 'know'), they thrived (the train of thought proliferated); if I didn't, they withered and blew away.
At one point fairly early on, a spontaneous phrase entered my mind: "Listen to Nibbana"... not a word I 'claim' at all, but I took it as something like the "Silence" of Awareness that underpins and may fill the emptiness of self-insight. There was a brief moment of peace and clarity with this.
The condition of the body follows the intention of the mind; the intention of the mind also follows the condition of the body.The sleepy body (heaviness, slothfulness, energyless-ness) is a condition for dull or fantasy-driven or dream-like mental actions.I see the posture drop. I see the mind become foggy and dreamy thinking (fluid and loose association) take over. I see sleep slowly and insidiously crawl in from an unseen bottom like a mist filling the space around a creek early in the morning... there was clear sight under the luminous darkness of the moon, but as the mist-filtered light emerges, the eyes are fooled into thinking all is light - it is at this moment that the fog is mistaken for the emptiness of "just sitting"; this is when the "self" becomes reified in a sleepy practice.
Grounding Space-Time upon which everything rests, out of which everything emerges, and into which everything dissolves (Unmanifest Yahweh)Creation, matter, form, being (Manifest Logos-Christ)The Process of Energy/Force: gravity, motion, felt-presence, etc. (Dymanic Spirit)
(Evan Thompson) the bird needs its wings to fly, but the wings are not the flying itself: flying is a relation between the bird and itself and the bird it's environment.Likewise, we need a brain to have a mind, but the mind isn't the brain: it is a relation between us and ourselves and us and our environment that includes the brain.What might be called "spiritual" seems then to be merely a falsely dichotomized "other" arena of being rather than the non-conscious and extensive "dimension" of what we call mind (i.e. our interdependent, interpersonal field of experience including culture, natural and social environment, etc.).The "spiritual" and "psychological", then, are one and the same; non-separate, superimposed dimensions of the same lived reality; the Christ; the Tao; the Way...Finding this convergence of simultaneous sameness and presence may be the result of Contemplative effort or simply opening the eyes of the heart to know that which is at once unknowable and undeniable.At least that's what "my" "mind" says "I" believe right "now"...
Seeing the swirl of experience pass through the mind,moment after moment,until the detached gaze is timeless...Seeing the workings of the mind betray themselvesand their own shallowness —moving from "knowing these functions of mind" to simply "knowing"...Seeing the chasing;the grasping;the expecting;the clinging;the identification;the wanting;the hatred;the irritation;the lust;the conditions of frustration;and the vapid unsatisfactoriness in all happenings...until all is realized as suffering except the freedom of releasing all from the tightly clenched fist of the mind.This sightlessness is seeing; this Silence is hearing; this untouchability is true feeling; this un-knowing is wisdom; this death is living.
Just as a man who is starving will indescriminately eat any option of sustenance put at his table,he who has tasted even a slivered glimpse of true Release grounded in Awareness (and my taste has admittedly been a mere flashed reflection of a slivered glimpse) will receive, accept, and continue to let go of experience as it is without desire for it to be any different.However, the purification of diligent meditation and prayer efforts driven by a clear presence of mind will hurt...
Oh, this feeling is something "real". This is an exception from all the other things observed in practice. This passion; this irritation; this vertigo is actual and unconditioned. Other feelings are fleeting and impermanent, but THIS feeling is true!...
Get over your"self" you phony practitioner; you hypocrite of hypnosis; you masquerading meditator; you absolutely contradictory Aspiring Contemplative.This feeling is no different than the sense of sitting, the feeling of breathing, or the phenomena of sound and thought. It is an arisen and temporary factor of mind - despite its resulting discomfort, which is, in and of itself, a passing fluctuation on the surface of the Infinite Way.See the shadows and flames at play in this game. Be aware of the folds of time separating one moment of "aversion-consciousness-arising" and another... maybe even direct the intention of mind toward a different emergence of "phenomenal reality".This game, this trick, will NOT go away. It is transient and impermanent, but the possibility of its arising will never cease (at least not yet). There is a choice of habit to be made in every infinitesimal moment of mind: be still and know (Ps. 46)Christ is the consciousness of knowing the God of mystery and luminous darkness as within and surrounding the space of awareness in our experience.Satan is a chosen unconsciousness (not unconsciousness itself): an unwillingness to awaken to the depth of joy in a moment of sorrow or opening one's eyes to the bottomless suffering in an instant of bliss. All preference should be released. Turn away (metanoia: repent)from the conditions of willful ignorance (hamartia: sin).Do this always (Mark 14, Luke 22, 1Corinthians 11). Do not let the thoughts of effort interfere with the way of seeing the Way in everything.
Settling, noting the breath, just sitting in a body-grounded presence, and observing the arising and dissolution of consciousness (of sensing... of thinking... of feeling... of response patterns...)Through jolts of ecstasy; between tremors of bliss; despite the attraction of painfully sensitive joy...Sit with what is.See the suffering in a "good sit". Relish in the torment of a "bad sit". Watch with simple and impartial observation the psycho-physical system along with which consciousness lunges up out of and crashes back down (again and again) into the "one necessary thing": the "Way, Truth, and Life"; the Tao; the Law; Stillness; Being; the Ultimate Will; Silent Awareness; God. I can think of less interesting things to watch...
In the development of the path of insight (whatever that means to you), it can be very helpful to discover (or construct if you have to) personal 'signs', 'road-markers', or 'fingerprints' of certain types of qualia (the sense of the experience of something: the felt sense of a certain types of mental state). Ideally, these can be like 'meta-labels' within the practice of vipassana and can be used to guide through the emergent stages of meditation.These can only be constructed or discovered in retrospect... if one sees the impermanence of all mental-material phenomena through momentary concentration of noting the arising and passing objects of experience, the characteristics of that state of mind (its qualia) can be 'tagged' as having a certain quality; a certain 'felt sense'...Learn what it feels like to feel in that state. Know what it feels like to 'know the arising and passing nature of...' and allow that knowledge (of a perceptual-cognitive nature) to organize mindful efforts during the practice - only to the "extent necessary for bare knowledge and continuous Mindfulness" (see Satipatthana...).Prepare the practice of living during (object-oriented) open-monitoring insight meditation by seeing when things are clearly seen; through momentary concentration, the fingerprint or distinguishing marks of those passing states of mind will aid in the building of mindful and penetrative observational dispositions.This skill is essentially an understanding and manipulation of the faculty of sense perception (as opposed to the cognitive function of perception to recognize, mark, organize, etc): bare awareness -> appraising-organizing of feeling-perception -> representative thought -> mental proliferation (the train of thought).Knowing this conditional process is to know the location of the door to freedom from unskillful patterns of relating to experience, and recognizing the qualia of seeing the nature of mental-material phenomenal interaction begins to guide us to that door.
By the time we actually are able to forget ourselves enough to "cling" to Christ, there is no need...we just ARE and we allow Christ to be within us —and we allow ourself to be [within] Christ.Self-forgetting is the motion of striving toward clinging only to Christ —not through stories, books, passion, or proselytization;but through "seeing" the constant swirling of "self" (including even consciousness) arise out of and return to the dynamic process of embodied divinity.Jesus gives a picture;Christ gives the Way;Spirit gives “inspiration” and energy;God gives Ultimate Mystery and eternally-receding horizons.
The way the "self" or "ego" reacts to contemplative efforts can be unpredictable, I guess... ways in which other "aspiring Contemplatives" have noticed reactions against (or maybe adjustments to) striving toward Union have included:• giddy sadness• physical tremors, tense shaking, sudden outbursts (moans), violent jolts and jerks• tearless or "dry" sobs• tears• great Sadness - shared Joy• welling sensation of overwhelming joy, meloncholy, and warm comfort - like I've returned to the arms of a loving parent after having been lost and desperate for a long time• fullness and lightness• laughing or chuckling• desire to do nothing else but pray when not formally in practice