Months ago someone (let's call him Mr. X as he prefers anonymity) messaged me about a breakthrough. He described having no more sense of self, instead there is just a vast open expanse and stillness without inside and outside, that holds everything within it. It was a beautiful, all-encompassing radiance of clear light that has never not been here, is ever-present and from which all appearances appear within. His description was longer than this but I summarized.

He must have thought that this was the same as what I call the anatta realization, but I told him it was more of the I AM and one mind type of realization and understanding. He couldn't understand what was the difference between that and anatta. Today however he had another insight and became clearer.

He said, "Its about practice and perspective and view etc. When we spoke last there you mentioned it wasnt quite anatta and i couldnt work out why it wasnt...but then today all experience dropped out, totally, there wasnt nothing, and there wasnt something. cant explain it.

upon coming back from that its abundantly obvious that everything that ever was has been could be is here, and not here. theres no viewer, no view, no seen, heard, everything that arises knows itself totally, comes, and goes, changing changing changing. like a kaleidoscope. Its not as if theres anyone thats aware, its all just aware of itself without effort.
Perhaps an analogy would be a spinning top or a diver diving off a high board, over and over itself, in and out, no time, space, or location
vibrant, shining, is-ness
no questions remain and no point of even being an I. just this
i wonder if you had any reflections on that?
Gasshou"

Soh: "What is experience like now? It can be a glimpse of no mind but glimpses fade. Realization is doubtless quantum shift in perception and leap in view
Are you doubtless about anatta as always already so? Not a stage"

Mr. X: "never wasnt like this bro
i just didnt realise
its always been this way
but theres quite literally no 'I'. just the feeling of the keyboard, the sound of the keys, the bird song outside
the aliveness of the body.
the feet on the floor.
all just happening in and of itself
very very alive though. vibratory. sounds are felt like a subtle subtle vibration
What is experience like now? It can be a glimpse of no mind but glimpses fade. Realization is doubtless quantum shift in perception and leap in view
the view would be like 'being' a totally bottomless endless space of potentiality
but its not really something that words can really describe
interested in your reflections as its some time before i can see my teacher"
 
 
[1:15 am, 14/10/2021] John Tan: Wow...viewing his [Mr X]'s age and with his teacher guidance, he will go far.  20?👍
[1:16 am, 14/10/2021] John Tan: Or 24?
Soh: XX years old haha
 

Anyway I went online to check out his Zen teacher a little.

John Tan and I like this description by his Zen teacher:

Jeff Shores:

"Let the senses come fully to rest in sustained zazen. “The senses”
includes mind and all its activities as well. That is, the activation of
the mind that generates self-other, light-dark, illusion-enlightenment,
and so on. When the church bell rings, what’s there? Do you
reverberate – or do you sit there in your little world listening to the bell
outside? In the beginning it may seem like awareness itself is
resounding, but that is still the inside of self-experience, isn’t it?
Something remains within, listening.
When we really sit through, it becomes clear: it ’s not a state of
mind, it’s not a matter of awareness. Light is often used as a
metaphor for awareness. But only when our light is extinguished –
blown out, as it was with Tokusan – do things illumine themselves.
Here the exquisite beauty and inviolable dignity of “the other” is
illumined – precisely because the separation that we impose on it is
gone. Then we really see what’s in front of our little noses!
In terms of the metaphor of the ocean and the waves, first we
settle into the calm, boundless depths where all wavering and turmoil
are gone. Then, out of that, sense experience is suddenly
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reawakened by a wave of sight or sound – w e come back to our
senses. To put it zenistically, no-self comes back to its senses :
laughing with pleasure , crying in pain . With this, each and every
wave is realized as what it is: the boundless source now flowing back
through all of our senses.
Every other also shares that boundless depth. And this is directly
realized, not just understood, felt, or intuited. Every other also shares
that boundless depth, not by becoming likenesses or pale reflections
of yourself, but by truly being what they are. Sitting through to the
very depths, you don’t get stuck even there. Wisdom naturally wells
up as compassion.
Please feel free to stand up and stretch. [Short break]
For the last several days you have gotten a sense of continuous
practice. Eventually, it’s something we are so imbued with that it’s
spontaneously forgotten – without a trace. Thus it seamlessly works
in the world. Wisdom realizes that there never was, is not now, and
never will be, a self that suffers. And that wisdom, if it’s truly wise and
alive, can’t help but overflow as loving compassion. Realizing that all
is, at bottom, empty of self, we never deny the actual conditions of
felt pain and dis-ease. Consider this well as you return to home and
to work.
“Never blind another’s eye.” This has been a guiding principle
throughout. We don’t open the eye of the other. We don’t need to.
We can help and guide them in various ways, as they can do so for
us. But we should never get in the way of others realizing it for
themselves.
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Please do take care returning home today; you may be more tired
than you realize. Just as you threw yourself into the practice here,
when you get home throw yourself into what needs to be done
there. Return grateful to those who sacrificed so that you could be
here sitting on your butt. Recognize that some people may think
that’s all you were doing here. Hard to deny! You don’t have to
explain how painful that butt was at times. [Laughter] Remember that
they were home covering your butt: doing the laundry, watching the
kids, and so on. Thus we bow deeply.
Each and every dharma,
Consisting of causes & conditions – empty, without self.
Putting mind to rest, penetrating the original source –
Thus one is a sramana.
[一切諸法中 因縁空無主 息心達本源 故號為沙門]
From The Middle Length Sutra on Origination. The term “dharma”
refers both to any particular thing and to the living truth. What’s the
difference? “Sramana” referred to someone wandering in search of
truth, and eventually became a term for a Buddhist monk. Here and
now it simply refers to all of us. Consider it well.
To sum it up in my own clumsy way:
Sun always shining bright
Moon ever full and round
Each dark night
every tossing turning wave
unbound.
Sometimes it’s cloudy , or the sun has yet to rise; but t he sun is
always shining bright, isn’t it? Half moon, quarter moon, new moon;
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yet it’s ever full and round , isn’t it? Each dark night, just as it is, is
unbound, released. I mention it merely for you to go beyond. Thank
you all for your questions and comments, and for your support. This
is the way we work it out together. "

 


 

    Eckhart Tolle on manifestation:

    1 Comment


    Soh Wei Yu
    Admin
    This is something a little off topic and unrelated to manifestation:

    The peak of the 'completeness of the present moment' and absence of 'feeling of lack' which Eckhart Tolle eludes to, is 'in the seen just the seen', 'in the heard just the heard'.
    If the heat is just heat, the heat kills you and the whole universe is the heat. If cold is just cold, the cold kills you, and the whole universe is cold. (See: Where There Is No Cold or Heat) In such a state, you are completely 'killed'. It is as if, and in fact in an experiential sense it is absolutely true, 'you' no longer exist at all. There is no trace of 'you' left anywhere in the universe. It is such a state of equipoise accompanied with prajna wisdom that liberates. And how can there be incompleteness, imperfection, or feeling of lack in such a state? How can there be mental unease, resistance, or craving in such a state, whether you are sitting on a porch in front of a beach, a mountain, or a slum?

    Bitten by mosquitoes is just another sensation - in sensing only sensation, no sensor. Sensations are just sensations, they kill 'you' (and in fact after anatta is realised as always already so and becomes stable natural state then there is no longer even a 'killing you' it's just naturally so as an actualized state). The sensations don't bother you at all, it is more like you bother the sensation, or rather the sense of 'self' is in fact the karmic activity of resisting that sensation. It's like someone can be very annoyed at some sounds, and another person just sits there in a state of zen and equanimity, why? The sounds in and of itself doesn't bother the person, it's the person 'bothering the sound'. The Buddha said, the eyes and forms, body and sensations, and so on, doesn't fetter you, it is the desire [or resistance/aversion/delusion] towards them that constitutes the fetter. Fetter or afflictions is simply 'self-created' chains and bondage, the aggregates are in and of themselves free when seen as they are.
     

    (Update: and when I said self-created I don't mean arising from a truly existing agent as there isn't any, but rather arising due to the nexus of ignorance-driven dependent origination)

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  • Bodhidharma says, "The usual person, through basic ignorance, fixates on one thing and then another.

     

    This basic ignorance is the root of self-image, avidya, basic ignorance, ignoring the fact that one is already fundamentally free and pretending to be bound. In the midst of space, trying to carve out some territory, as if one could build walls out of the sheer air, as if one could tie knots in the air, nail clouds in place.

     

    This tying of knots, this erecting of walls, this nailing things down, is this fixating on one thing and then another, grasping at thought, grasping at sounds and feelings, grasping at forms, and names. This is called craving.

     

    And so the craving that we need to address in our practice is not just a matter of giving up our attachment to fashion or a beautiful house, a beautiful wife, a beautiful husband, beautiful children, a beautiful life in which there are no problems. Dropping that does not liberate, because all craving, all greed, all lust, all anger, are rooted in this fundamental strategy of self-image to contract and localize, to create boundaries within emptiness, to grasp at emptiness. And so we must understand this process of fixation as it arises, and it arises not in a beautiful house. It arises in this moment of seeing and hearing. It arises as mind moments display themselves, and as this display is interpreted to be self and other, time and space, body and mind. This is the craving that we must understand and release.

     

    - Anzan Hoshin Roshi

     

    SN 35.28 

    PTS: S iv 19 

    CDB ii 1143

    Adittapariyaya Sutta: The Fire Sermon

    translated from the Pali by 

    Thanissaro Bhikkhu

    © 1993

    Alternate translation: Ñanamoli

    Alternate format: [SuttaReadings.net icon]

    X

    The updated version is freely available at

    This version of the text might be out of date. Please click here for more information

    I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying in Gaya, at Gaya Head, with 1,000 monks. There he addressed the monks:

    "Monks, the All is aflame. What All is aflame? The eye is aflame. Forms are aflame. Consciousness at the eye is aflame. Contact at the eye is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the eye — experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain — that too is aflame. Aflame with what? Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I tell you, with birth, aging & death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, & despairs.

    "The ear is aflame. Sounds are aflame...

    "The nose is aflame. Aromas are aflame...

    "The tongue is aflame. Flavors are aflame...

    "The body is aflame. Tactile sensations are aflame...

    "The intellect is aflame. Ideas are aflame. Consciousness at the intellect is aflame. Contact at the intellect is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the intellect — experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain — that too is aflame. Aflame with what? Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I say, with birth, aging & death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, & despairs.

    "Seeing thus, the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones grows disenchanted with the eye, disenchanted with forms, disenchanted with consciousness at the eye, disenchanted with contact at the eye. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the eye, experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain: With that, too, he grows disenchanted.

    "He grows disenchanted with the ear...

    "He grows disenchanted with the nose...

    "He grows disenchanted with the tongue...

    "He grows disenchanted with the body...

    "He grows disenchanted with the intellect, disenchanted with ideas, disenchanted with consciousness at the intellect, disenchanted with contact at the intellect. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the intellect, experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain: He grows disenchanted with that too. Disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is fully released. With full release, there is the knowledge, 'Fully released.' He discerns that 'Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.'"

    That is what the Blessed One said. Gratified, the monks delighted at his words. And while this explanation was being given, the hearts of the 1,000 monks, through no clinging (not being sustained), were fully released from fermentation/effluents.

      



    More comments by Soh:


    🙂 it doesnt mean there really is a person bothering the sound, the “person” is the activity of “bothering the sound” but it is in a sense a distinct stream of phenomena arising in dependence on ignorance and sound Once anatta insight is clear the way of practice is also clear It is like bahiya sutta and Māluṅkyaputta Sutta
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