Mind or consciousness is not real

 John Tan:

To me, this separation of "existence" from "what appears" is unique and very skillful.  "Non-existence" appearance is essentially the same insight as anatta.  It involves the 2 authentications:

1.  Seeing through the reification of conventional construct and

2. Recognition of appearances as one's empty clarity.

What makes appearances appear "real, solid and external" are our mistaken perception of the inherent framework of subject-action-object.  But that is only part of the confusion.  The other is not realizing what appears is just radiance, that is y it is illusory and insubstantial.

However if we deconstruct entities and characteristics, then mind and phenomena, consciousness and conditions are all deconstructed, u can't treat mind as real due to point 1.  Otherwise one skewed towards yogacara (but then yogacara doesn't actually treat mind as real either).  It is sort of strawman stereotyping a group of practitioners attaching to mind as real.

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Therefore there r 2 parts:

1.  Understand and clearly see how the conceptual conventions confused the mind.

2.  Directly experiencing appearances as one's radiance

But some masters can see 1 yet the path they teach can't match with 2.

While other masters try to teach 2 but their view cannot doesn't match.

This is most problematic.

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Yes what x said is good.

What originates dependently does not originate, abide and cease. Neither internal nor external nor is there a here and now. This must be directly linked to what appears and not as a mental enterprise. 

So in anatta, 

there is no hearer, only sound.

there is no thinker, only thoughts.

Sound is neither internal in our head nor external in the world.

Thought is also not inside our head nor is it outside our head.

The spell from our faulty premise creates that impression,

Freedom of that is liberation.

If she stabilises this experience of essencelessness post anatta, the radiance will turn very soothing, very light and transparent; like space, free and liberating. Appearances turn illusory and magical, joy will keep surfacing in every authentication. Her clogged energy will surely be released.😁

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Actually after authenticating appearances r radiances, I see the next most important step is to arise insight of DO and emptiness.  It is a sort of special insight that sees the "middle path" and we use this insight to re-orientate our conventional world view and understand  8 extremes do not apply.

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I shared this with someone recently 

“Even when all is mind is taught, it was not asserted by the Buddha that such a mind is a universal mind or a truly existing mind. Mind is empty of mind, this too was clearly taught by the Buddha. 

 

Therefore as Mipham wrote and criticised self-styled followers who misinterpreted the Yogacara founder Asangha:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/iyepfk/madhyamaka_cittamātra_and_the_true_intent_of/ (highly recommend to read the whole text in full)

...Why, then, do the Mādhyamika masters refute the Cittamātra tenet system? Because self-styled proponents of the Cittamātra tenets, when speaking of mind-only, say that there are no external objects but that the mind exists substantially—like a rope that is devoid of snakeness, but not devoid of ropeness. Having failed to understand that such statements are asserted from the conventional point of view, they believe the nondual consciousness to be truly existent on the ultimate level. It is this tenet that the Mādhyamikas repudiate. But, they say, we do not refute the thinking of Ārya Asaṅga, who correctly realized the mind-only path taught by the Buddha...

...So, if this so-called “self-illuminating nondual consciousness” asserted by the Cittamātrins is understood to be a consciousness that is the ultimate of all dualistic consciousnesses, and it is merely that its subject and object are inexpressible, and if such a consciousness is understood to be truly existent and not intrinsically empty, then it is something that has to be refuted. If, on the other hand, that consciousness is understood to be unborn from the very beginning (i.e. empty), to be directly experienced by reflexive awareness, and to be self-illuminating gnosis without subject or object, it is something to be established. Both the Madhyamaka and Mantrayāna have to accept this...