Soh Wei YuAdmin
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It is more crucial to realise Presence. Your descriptions in the past were more of non doership and impersonality.
Also there is a difference between deity mysticism of fulcrum 8 and the I AM realization of the higher causal realization of fulcrum 9 to put it in ken wilber’s terms ( https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Radical-Wholeness-Integral-Delight-ebook/dp/B0CLR9BB9V/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.eVWO2U0-EVznAVGYt3zt-DDYxPqSNnP9SHXRHzYAJj9VWPG7w3YjIvyR7dPVMFW407f4j4zXFMCTmfnRrwbmAhns1E9Oavka7y0qbMOpetMR3fG3AfU9I0U-x530c5owAuZzJpAwHztzsAHLLw1rDjNEQS9QVH2fayceeKQoEbVSDehEP3RTxKWNwjh3Smq8XPZCEEnwsP2zbAi4PdC4LA.GXUGkfTaPCXmJJb1yqOlIpLCVpxunc2kurBm5rCv2nY&dib_tag=se&keywords=ken+wilber&qid=1717909959&sr=8-1 )

https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2017/11/anatta-and-pure-presence.html
Nov
18
Anatta and Pure Presence
Someone told me about having been through insights of no self and then progressing to a realisation of the ground of being.
I replied:
Hi ____
Thanks for the sharing.
This is the I AM realization. Had that realisation after contemplating Before birth, who am I? For two years. It’s an important realization. Many people had insights into certain aspects of no self, impersonality, and “dry non dual experience” without doubtless realization of Presence. Therefore I AM realisation is a progression for them.
Similarly in Zen, asking who am I is to directly experience presence. How about asking a koan of what is the cup? What is the chirping bird, the thunder clap? What is its purpose?
When I talked about anatta, it is a direct insight of Presence and recognizing what we called background presence, is in the forms and colours, sounds and sensations, clean and pure. Authentication is be authenticated by all things. Also there is no presence other than that. What we call background is really just an image of foreground Presence, even when Presence is assuming its subtle formless all pervasiveness.
However due to ignorance, we have a very inherent and dual view, if we do see through the nature of presence, the mind continues to be influenced by dualistic and inherent tendencies. Many teach to overcome it through mere non conceptuality but this is highly misleading.
Thusness also wrote:
The anatta I realized is quite unique. It is not just a realization of no-self. But it must first have an intuitive insight of Presence. Otherwise will have to reverse the phases of insights
Labels: Anatta, Luminosity |

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Mr. KS
Soh Wei Yu my friend, when you mean Presence it can be the Awareness?

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Soh Wei YuAdmin
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Mr. KS
They mean the same thing as john said:
“Hi Mr. H,
In addition to what you wrote, I hope to convey another dimension of Presence to you. That is Encountering Presence in its first impression, unadulterated and full blown in stillness.
So after reading it, just feel it with your entire body-mind and forgot about it. Don't let it corrupt your mind.😝
Presence, Awareness, Beingness, Isness are all synonyms. There can be all sorts of definitions but all these are not the path to it. The path to it must be non-conceptual and direct. This is the only way.
When contemplating the koan "before birth who am I", the thinking mind attempts to seek into it's memory bank for similar experiences to get an answer. This is how the thinking mind works - compare, categorize and measure in order to understand.
However, when we encounter such a koan, the mind reaches its limit when it tries to penetrate its own depth with no answer. There will come a time when the mind exhausts itself and come to a complete standstill and from that stillness comes an earthshaking BAM!
I. Just I.
Before birth this I, a thousand years ago this I, a thousand later this I. I AM I.
It is without any arbitrary thoughts, any comparisons. It fully authenticates it's own clarity, it's own existence, ITSELF in clean, pure, direct non-conceptuality. No why, no because.
Just ITSELF in stillness nothing else.
Intuit the vipassana and the samantha. Intuit the total exertion and realization. The essence of message must be raw and uncontaminated by words.
Hope that helps!” - John Tan, 2019
-- excerpt from the abridged AtR guide, which you can read for self-enquiry pointers: https://app.box.com/s/zc0suu4dil01xbgirm2r0rmnzegxaitq

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Mr. KS
Soh Wei Yu thanks! last thing: where i can read about the awareness that tibetans point and if this awareness has an essence or not?

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Soh Wei YuAdmin
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Mr. KS For the Tibetans, awareness is empty in nature. But usually one realises the clarity aspect first before realizing emptiness, and this is so even for vast majority of the Tibetan and Zen practitioners.
See partial excerpt from: https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2020/09/the-degrees-of-rigpa.html

John Tan's reply on something Malcolm wrote in 2020:
“This is like what I tell you and essentially emphasizing 明心非见性. 先明心, 后见性. (Soh: Apprehending Mind is not seeing [its] Nature. First apprehend Mind, later realise [its] Nature).
First is directly authenticating mind/consciousness 明心 (Soh: Apprehending Mind). There is the direct path like zen sudden enlightenment of one's original mind or mahamudra or dzogchen direct introduction of rigpa or even self enquiry of advaita -- the direct, immediate, perception of "consciousness" without intermediaries. They are the same.
However that is not realization of emptiness. Realization of emptiness is 见性 (Soh: Seeing Nature). Imo there is direct path to 明心 (Soh: Apprehending Mind) but I have not seen any direct path to 见性 (Soh: Seeing Nature) yet. If you go through the depth and nuances of our mental constructs, you will understand how deep and subtle the blind spots are.
Therefore emptiness or 空性 (Soh: Empty Nature) is the main difference between buddhism and other religions. Although anatta is the direct experiential taste of emptiness, there is still a difference between buddhist's anatta and selflessness of other religions -- whether it is anatta by experiential taste of the dissolution of self alone or the experiential taste is triggered by wisdom of emptiness.
The former focused on selflessness and whole path of practice is all about doing away with self whereas the latter is about living in the wisdom of emptiness and applying that insight and wisdom of emptiness to all phenomena.
As for emptiness there is the fine line of seeing through inherentness of Tsongkhapa and there is the emptiness free from extremes by Gorampa. Both are equally profound so do not talk nonsense and engaged in profane speech as in terms of result, ultimately they are the same (imo).”
Dalai Lama - "Nature - there are many different levels. Conventional level, one nature. There are also, you see, different levels. Then, ultimate level, ultimate reality... so simply realise the Clarity of the Mind, that is the conventional level. That is common with Hindus, like that. So we have to know these different levels...." - Dalai Lama on Anatta and Emptiness of Buddha Nature in New Book

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Soh Wei YuAdmin
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On the empty nature of Awareness in Tibetan tradition, see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz5etGfyB6Q - Malcolm Smith on Advaita Vedanta and Dzogchen

https://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2014/02/clarifications-on-dharmakaya-and-basis_16.html - Long elaborate explanation by Dzogchen teacher Acarya Malcolm Smith on Dzogchen basis (and also why it differs from realist views)

https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2007/03/self-liberation-through-seeing-with.html - Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness - A Dzogchen text by Padmasambhava, pithy and wonderful text

https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2022/02/a-letter-to-almaas-on-dzogchen-and.html

https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2022/04/establishing-inner-perceiver-as-well-as.html

https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2009/09/rigpa-and-aggregates.html

Others can probably provide even more links

Also check this out, Mahamudra:

https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2020/06/the-royal-seal-of-mahamudra-volume-one.html

https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2015/12/self-liberation-by-khamtrul-rinpoche-iii.html

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