Mr W.A:

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Soh, on retreat I had a great deal of energetic conditioning come up, and as they did, I realized that parts of my mind and body were "coming back online." There was an aha moment where I realized that the "ego" had never been anything more than the patterns in thought and feeling caused by these conditionings. Without them, there just isn't anything there to recognize. Even the very act of identifying is itself just a very strong and deep conditioning... literally something happening on the purely energetic level whose influence is mistaken to be a self. Noticing this dramatically accelerated things. While I still have a lot of conditioning left, it does feel like once this clicked, attention no longer looks for a self to blame, but rather just for the resistance held in the conditioning. This is practical and fruitful to practice. Just wanted to share, as it's a bit of a different way of talking about the sense of self, yet quite congruent with the teachings on right view, and has proven robustly accurate in my experience so far.

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Soh Wei Yu

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That's good.

Even more crucial is to realize the seal of anatta -- in thinking, there is always just thought without thinker. Seeing is, no seer, and so on and so forth. As you said, it just conditioning, and this implies a momentum of its own. Did you think that thought or did it just happen? It just happened, by its own momentum and conditionings. Something triggers you and some anger or fear arise, did you control or will it to occur? Did you choose to feel nasty or pissed off or moody or whatever? It just happened, due to the various conditions and triggers and one's latent tendencies and so on. Purely dependent origination, no agent or controller or thinker is involved here, and even 'ego' is just that patterning, that pure happening. If it were from a 'you', then 'you' would not have chosen to feel shitty/nasty/whatever, or 'you' would simply have chosen to only feel unconditional love, or some other nice mental states and not ruin an otherwise perfect day. But upon clear seeing, its just seen so clearly that mind/thoughts, body, consciousness, all those are not you, not yours, not due to a controller or agent.

Initially if you have had not the direct realization of one's radiance, Pure Presence, it will be skewed to the first stanza of anatta, towards non-doership which is also important, as described above. At this point it's also important realize one's radiance and to recognise whatever thoughts and sensory appearances as the display of one's radiance. Mature realization of anatta reveals both stanzas of anatta to be a seal, to be what is always already so.

So whatever thoughts arise, even conditionings, patternings, there is no need to reject, nor grasp at them, but simply recognise this seal of anatta to be always already the case, the nature of mind/thoughts/appearances. It doesn't matter whether it is a very strong emotion, conditioning, or a very normal or peaceful thought, they are all fuel for contemplating the nature of mind/consciousness/experience. Its nature (as is the nature of all mind/displays) is the union of luminous clarity and emptiness.

Also see:

On Anatta (No-Self), Emptiness, Maha and Ordinariness, and Spontaneous Perfection

And

Resolving That Thoughts and Perceptions are Buddha-Mind