Well expressed by Yin Ling

Mind is luminous, bright, and knowing.

Mind is empty of stains, stains of inherent existence.

Every arising is the mind,

Each touch,

Each sound,

Each taste,

My hands rubbing each other,

All my mind.

So clear, so vivid, so luminous.

Each arising is empty of stains,

Each arising is a dependent arising,

Each arising is a release all conditions into a display of emptiness,

Nothing there, yet so vivid.

Each arising is my true nature. Vivid and empty. Intimate as ever, I express myself as no-thing.

The trees, cars, babies, mothers, ward,

Speaks the dharma again and again,

But they are not separate from me,

We are not separate,

Yet we are not apart.

Yet there’s no we, as there’s no them?

There’s no others!

How else to describe with words?

I do not know.

My body and mind understands it intimately,

The dharma, it speaks a language

Of love and magic

Yin Ling 17 hours ago · What is mind? Rub your hand together, feel that? That is mind!

Post anatta advice:

John tan:

John Tan's advise:

As for those layman practitioners that for some reasons still prefer to go on their own asking for some general guides post anatta insights, I think they can focus on the 5 following points: 

1. Extend the insight of anatta, the de-reification process to all events and phenomena.  MMK comes handy here.  It will help one investigate most of the subtle assumptions we held to be "true" in a hypnotic way.

2.  Open up our body and go deeply into body-awareness. This is critical imo. Less intellectual activities and more body-awareness.   Post anatta and along the path, due to the de-construction process, the energy released from unconscious holding of our mental constructs can be quite overwhelming.   It may also be due to other reasons, for example, attachment to non-dual experiences and as a result it will cause discomfort to both our mind and body.

3.   So opening up our body is key at this phase.  The imbalance can be released by massage, non-inflammatory diet, qi gong, tai chi movements, yoga or any other body awareness exercises. Just open up our body and bring awareness to our body to complement the anatta insight and less intellectual activities.  

4.  If after that, the practitioner can intuit directly the relationship between mind, prana and body and wish to pursue his knowledge further on how the energy system works, they can then look for experienced teachers in this space to guide them.  U r not into this, hence, do not advise ppl on what u r unsure and have no experience. 

5.  Lastly, bring the insight of anatta into our daily activities, meet conditions and engage. 

....

[7:54 AM, 6/3/2021] John Tan: Not bad.  He should relook these insights and experiences and ask the following:

1.  If everything is me, then the sense of "me" must also disappear at that moment of experience.  Otherwise one must mature the experience into no-mind and then anatta as an insight.

2.  If later it is realized that there is no me/self/Self as an insight and experience (anatta), then one must refine the view and question how does the sense of me/self/Self arise in the first place?

3.  Then bring this insight from the refinement of view into all phenomena and all actions.  

4.  Therefore not only there is no seer in the seen just the seen, there is no seeing and nothing seen.  No self, no others and no aggregates.  

5.  If this is understood only as negations, then one is not free from extremes and all elaborations.

6.  Therefore conventionally, there is self, others, seer, seeing and seen. There are causes and effects.  There is arising, abiding and ceasing and the only valid mode of arising is dependent arising.

7.  Point 1, 2, 3 praxis is on samatha and vipassana. Direct experience and insights. To mature this insight of anatta, the path of analysis is needed.  

8.  Point 4-6 thorough reasoning and analysis is added to relinquish cognitive obscuration.  

9.  If he is interested, he should look into mmk (Nagarjuna's text Mūlamadhyamakakārikā), it will expose the many hidden nuances and subtleties of our cognitive obscurations.  Patience is needed to get used to the line of reasoning of Nagarjuna.  But no need to get involved in those polemics of the Tibetan schools.

[8:08 AM, 6/3/2021] John Tan: 10. Lastly one should understand the praxis of the 2 stanzas and mmk are different.  The 2 stanzas are using samatha and vipassana to directly see through mental constructs to realize one's nature (direct path) whereas mmk is via path of analysis and reasoning.  So when reading mmk, one must adhere strictly to the conventional 3 fold structure of seer-seeing-seen.  See through the structures and deconstruct step by step.  The ultimate purpose and result are the same except mmk exposes all the very subtle and hidden cognitives obscurations that we are unable even post anatta insight.  So if one is interested in bringing anatta insight to maturity and perfection, mmk is needed.

.....

Yin ling:

What works for me to deepen realisation after the initial insight of Anatta (no-self)

1) Don’t chase the luminance and brightness.

Let go of the self slowly more and more by sensing deeply the senses non dually. Keep showing the mind in the seen only the seen, and keep showing the no self structure to the mind. It needs to learn.

It will naturally stabilise at a brilliant radiance without effort.

It is the self that blocks the radiance, not by intensely experiencing the radiance - this can cause energy imbalance.

2) sleep hours will drop but take it easy.

Have some sort of exercise to tire yourself out abit, go easy on caffeine,

if not insomnia can happen due to the brightness, luminosity, and the energy that breaks through from the dropping of self construct.

3) practice by sensing deeply the senses.

Let the intensity of senses become clear.

Be there with the sound. (You will know what I mean, when you hear the sound non dually, at first there will be some sort of vague background due to imprint, let go of that background more and more)

4) Sense deeply the body sensation one by one, sharpen the mind up like a satipathanna practice, this will drop the sense of body outline

5) open up. Let go of the Center in the body.

Let consciousness Spread out slowly, as much as you can, a little each day. Meditate that way, sense the senses in separate little fireflies like figure. See how confusion occurs by our mind collating and separating these dependently originated sensations.

6) shamatha is crucial. It will sharpen the insight and calm the mind. It helps with the letting go of self and calm the afflictions. Have a few good hours of pure shamatha a week will help greatly.

7) when emptiness of personal self stabilise, move this insight to the chair, table, bird, .. investigate how no-self happen to your body and now investigate if you can extend to phenomenas.

Take the time to stabilise personal self emptiness first, however if you have bad energy imbalance like me, you probably will need to extend this insight fast to empty phenomena for the energy to move. Or else it’s agony.

8. Talk to ppl with this insight to strengthen the confidence. It takes time to build that confidence and faith. Read the teachings again and again. Analyse why is it no-self.

Don’t participate with those who says “there is no self, so no worries and nothing to do”- they are clearly not in no-self lol it’s not like that.

9. Remember there’s still a long way and a huge amount of practice to do. Not to call yourself Arahant, not to think you are enlightened 🤣Hurry and practice hard. Try not to be a “teacher” too soon, take too many clients, and write too many books, before you are really clear and safely on the other shore 🤣

Will write if there’s more I can remember.! Wish to hear from others too!

.....

Yin Ling

Yasmin El-Hakim it can be abit hard to understand dependent arising and emptiness via Nagarjuna and jay Garfield to be completely honest..

Just because the way they use “consequences” statements to bring out the lack of inherent existence suits a very high caliber person trained in this kind of logic. Usually we don’t speak like that. So we might not get it not bec we don’t understand Nagarjuna but we don’t understand what they are trying to point

I think better to study some modern book.

Guy newland emptiness is quite good.

Also how to see yourself as you truly are from his holiness is quite good and clear language for modern ppl.

(Soh: the books she mentioned are here:

https://www.amazon.com.au/How-See-Yourself-You-Really/dp/0743290461

and

https://www.amazon.com.au/Introduction-Emptiness-Taught-Tsong-Kha-Pas-Treatise-ebook/dp/B001U88ZTY/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1691228412&sr=1-1

)

On No-self (Anatta) realisation.

I felt compelled to write about this today, seeing many are on the brink of no-self realisation, some feeling confused as I once was. I sincerely hope my scribbles will more or less help other practitioners on their path. To me, anatta insight is the most crucial insight on the path to fully penetrate. Without the insight of no-self, subsequent insights such as emptiness and dependent arising are difficult to penetrate experientially and will inadvertently be distorted. This writing ended up slightly long, but I wanted to write everything I know and everything that is helpful.

No-self insight is not a simple insight and might take one many years of contemplation to realise and after initial period of realisation, many years of practice to refine and stabilise the realisation.

Here I present the 2 important parts of this realisation.

—

The first part of no self realisation is when the notion of ‘SELF’, a central, cohesive, independent, immutable, inherent ‘ME’ is realise to be unfounded after cycles of searching.

This is a realisation after careful analysis that there is no basis for this self that we held dear. There is no basis for that PERSON that we thought was looking through our eyes. There is also no basis for that sense of contraction held in the body, moving the body, walking in a place, walking through time, WHO IS THIS PERSON? WHAT IS THE BASIS OF THIS SENSE OF ME?

Practitioners need to go through sincere and careful searching, this sense of self that feels like a contraction, what is it based upon ? Where is the HQ of this sense of self?

In the head? In the pituitary? In the pineal gland? In the heart? The trunk? In the eyes?

Where?

This exercise need to be done in meditation sincerely and repeatedly. The mind needs to see the repeatedly searching and It has to learn that it has been holding onto a phantom, like a phantom limb. The Self we always taken for granted as a sense of ME, now we cannot find it!

What is next? No-Me, then who is alive being? We cannot deny the aliveness!

If there is no basis for ‘ME’, how do I hear, how do I see, how do I know what I know, experience what I experience, feel what I feel?

----

2) Hence the second part of this realisation is ——> Who knows ?

This is the second part of no-self realisation that must be thoroughly penetrated to make sure we do not just hold a dry, intellectualised ‘no-self’ in our mouth, all the time saying “no I, no me, no mine, no self, no problem blah3”, but unable to have any experiential realisation because ‘the face before your parents meet’ or ‘Mu’ is not authenticated, we don’t actually know WHO KNOWS? We don’t know anything about our true nature yet. There is no anatta realisation without this important part.

To penetrate ‘Who see? Who hears? and Who feels? Investigate awareness carefully.

Ask, If there is no basis for ‘ME”, where is this awareness knowing the sound, seeing the sight, knowing the touch? Where is it?

Is it separated from the sound? If it is separated, when the sound is gone, is the awareness of sound still there? Search for it . If sound and awareness are not separated, is it together?

One will realise the awareness of sound only happens when sound is heard, and when the sound is gone, that awareness of sound is gone too. So both sound and the awareness of sound CANNOT be TWO separate things.

Is it one then?

One can use Bahiya sutra to help here, “in the seen only the seen, in the heard only the heard”, Buddha taught Bahiya compassionately.

One can take this phrase into meditation and sense into the sensations, how is it that ‘in the seen only the seen’?

Is the awareness located in the flowers seen?

Is the awareness located in the sound heard?

Can it be that the awareness is embedded already in the sound rather than in our head? (Yes)\

Can it be that the awareness and sound is not TWO, but ONE?

Can it be that the awareness and sound is not even ONE, but the sound knows itself naturally, never a split before?

Can it be that the sound is already self-aware?

Can it be that there was never a ‘self’ needed to hear the sound, as the awareness of the sound arise effortlessly when sound arise as sound has a nature of awareness in it? (Yes)

Can it be that the 6 senses are all self aware? (Yes)

Our world is made up only of 6 senses, does it mean our whole world is self aware? (Yes)

Does it mean when the whole world is self-aware, there is no separate self needed to be aware of all sensations? (Yes)

Once this is penetrated deeply, one’s perception will change drastically and one’s world will have a sense of heightened ‘brightness’ to their perception, like watching the most well defined HD television. It will be exciting, new and shocking at first, but the excitement will die down after awhile. However the brightness and sharpness of perception will stay. One will understand the dullness of perception is due to the filter of self. The more the sense of self melt away, the brighter one’s perception is, as though one lives in a crystal world, so sharp and bright.

* of note, Luminosity in buddhism does not mean ‘bright’ , it usually means ‘self-aware’ or ‘knowingness’.

Just to clarify, the few inquiries above took me a few months to penetrate, and that was my progression of insight gradually. It took me many cycles to refine no-self insight that those were the steps I took.

----

3) After the above 2 understandings of

1) There is no such “SELF” contraction in the body or the head and

2) All 6 senses are actually ‘self-aware’ and awareness does not stem from the head outwards….

One’s framework of reality will gradually change from an initial “self seeing and sensing the world” into “there is no separate self, the world seeing and aware of itself 360 degrees”…

The sense of a subject will be gone, the physical body will become an “object” just like the table in the room, then an equality in our perception will arise.

That is the no-self insight.

Nothing mystical, just very sensible and realistic.

After that, it will be plenty of practice to ‘melt’ away the core or sense of self in the body and sense of self will actually slowly diminish with sincere investigation and practice. Both shamatha and vipassana is needed. The most crucial part is the VIEW.

No-self or emptiness of personal self is a crucial insight, but it is only the FIRST step into buddhism insights to eventually reach such-ness.

Emptiness of inherent existence, dependent arising and interrelatedness can soon be penetrated and will not be too hard once no-self is realise properly, IMO.

Then non dual and insubstantial nature of mind eventually can be penetrated soon after.

But I won’t go into that today, it is too long already.

I wrote from my own practice and experience so it might not be standard textbooks statements.

May this helps sincere practitioners more or less.

 

 

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Sarah Luna
Nice artwork. I don’t think I’m on the brink but I am looking forward to reading…
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Carter Spinks
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This is very helpful. I really appreciate the clarification. I have been naively thinking that No-self is realized after searching and not finding, your first part. I needed this break down. Seriously thank you.
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William Albert
All very good and clear, thank you. I have one observation though... It seems that true Anatta is permanent and irreversible, and also a very large "quantum" shift from what came before. What you're describing as anatta seems to be more like 3rd path. Frank Yang, Ingram, and Roger all describe this feeling and then were blown away when the actual shift happened (Theravada 4th path). If you haven't watched it, I highly recommend Roger's stage theory, especially the last video, because it describes this territory of feeling like you're "maybe there" and then the permanent shift into true Anatta:
https://youtu.be/iPaBSjYdPPw
Not that this doesn't deepen, but it seems that most people say this shift is pretty huge and irreversible even if they try.

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True No Self and No Centre - A Stage Theory of Enlightenment (5/5)
True No Self and No Centre - A Stage Theory of Enlightenment (5/5)
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Soh Wei Yu
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William Albert
Yin Ling should do a reply from her experience.
But I just like to mention that MCTB 3rd path is not Yin Ling's anatta. It is Yin Ling's nondual phase. See Yin Ling's three stages: https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/.../yin-lings-three...
Because anatta is not yet realised in MCTB 3rd path, only nondual, you have all those 'chains of anagamis' that Daniel Ingram wrote in https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/.../rigpa-and... which would be impossible at the anatta phase.
MCTB 4th path is Yin Ling's anatta or AtR's anatta. It is indeed irreversible.
And for us, in AtR, we see anatta as just sutta stream entry. MCTB 4th path, Frank Yang's "full enlightenment", Kevin Shanilec's ten fetter arahat, etc, are all just sutta stream entry for us as explained in https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/comments/igored/insight_buddhism_a_reconsideration_of_the_meaning/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf%20 which John Tan found to be really good and told me to pin it up to the top of AtR blog. Yin Ling agrees with us. Also: https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/.../insight-buddhism...
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Carter Spinks
Top contributor
After reading this again, I had more thoughts on the matter.
I think this is where the confusion comes in for me, because the feeling I have when I pay attention feels very much like I am not identifying with what I commonly thought of as “me.” It does not feel like intellect, it feels very visceral.
The feeling of looking for the self, not finding it, and resting in that space of not identifying with a “me” does feel like I would have imagined the experience of no-self be like. But i guess if I stay in accordance with what you wrote, this is not a full realization.
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Soh Wei Yu
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Carter Spinks
Yes, what you wrote is more of impersonality than nondual or anatta.
“Unless there is expression of non dual, otherwise yes more like impersonality and non-doership [than anatta].” – John Tan, 2019
“Nothing much, his no-self is more towards no doership rather then pellucid luminosity.” – John Tan mentioned about someone’s experience, 2020
Also see:
https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/.../what-is...
Dec
03
What is experiential insight

Yin Ling:
When we say experiential insight in Buddhism,
It means..
A literal transformation of energetic orientation of the whole being, down to the marrow.
The sound MUST literally hears themselves.
No hearer.
Clean. Clear.
A bondage from the head here to there cut off overnight.
Then gradually the rest of the 5 senses.
Then one can talk about Anatta.
So if for you,
Does sound hear themselves?
If no, not yet. You have to keep going! Inquire and meditate.
You haven’t reach the basic insight requirement for the deeper insights like anatta and emptiness yet!
Yin Ling:
Yin Ling: “Realisation is when
This insight goes down to the marrow and you don’t need even a minute amount of effort for sound to hear themselves.
It is like how you live with dualistic perception now, very normal, no effort.
Ppl with Anatta realisation live in Anatta effortlessly, without using thinking to orient. It’s their life.
They cannot even go back to dualistic perception because that is an imputation, it js uprooted
At first you might need to purposely orient with some effort.
Then at one point there is no need.. further along, dreams will become Anatta too.
That’s experiential realisation.
There’s no realisation unless this benchmark is achieved!”

AWAKENINGTOREALITY.COM
What is experiential insight
What is experiential insight
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Soh Wei Yu
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......
"Soh:
what is important is that there is experiential realisation that leads
to an energetic expansion outwards into all the forms, sounds, radiant
universe... such that it is not that you are in here, in the body,
looking outwards at the tree, listening the birds chirping from here
it is just the trees are vividly swaying in and of itself, luminously
without an observer
the trees sees themselves
the sounds hear itself
there is no location from which they are experienced, no vantage point
the energetic expansion outward into vivid manifestation, boundless, yet
it is not an expansion from a center, there is just no center
without such energetic shift it is not really the real experience of no
selfxabir Snoovatar" - https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/.../the-difference...
Labels: Anatta, Yin Ling |

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The difference between the experience of non-doership and impersonality vs the experiential realization of non-dual anatman
The difference between the experience of non-doership and impersonality vs the experiential realization of non-dual anatman
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