All of our forummer Longchen's articles (
http://www.dreamdatum.com/articles-path.html) are of especially good quality and very well written especially that it's coming from a sincere practitioner willing to share his insights gained from his practice.
He was just discussing about maintaining non-duality while engaging in conversation when I met him for lunch days ago in school, and which he later wrote this (followed by two other articles
"Are we supposed to get rid of unwholesome thoughts?" and
"The misconception surrounding Transcendental Nonduality"):
http://www.dreamdatum.com/nondual-conversation.htmlNon-dual ConversationIs it possible for one to maintain non-dual while having a conversation with another person? This is something that I am learning to do. From my few experiences, yes it is possible. But it is quite a challenge. And at as of this writing, I am very unstable at this.
There is really no method of how this can be done. It is really a matter of discovering something and entering into the state without volition.
I will state what happens when non-dual conversation is taking place. The following features are present when having a non-dual conversation:
1. No sense of talking to someone outside of oneself. All this is happening within the same space without subject-object division.
2. No sense of my body talking to another body. This has got to do with no sense of ownership of body. At this point, the sense of owning the physical body is absent. In addition to that, there is also no sense of the sound and sight of another body as being separated from all that is happening at the moment. This is different from no 'I' in the sense that it now encompasses 'no mine' or 'no ownership'.
3. Because of the absence of self-others demarcation, conversation occurs without the usual mode of trying to get some kind of response, reaction or effect from the other party. At my current stage, I did notice a slight grasping that is being used to translate sound into meanings. This is unlike the total deconstruction that occurs with the 'powering down' of perception.
OK, that all I can think of and write about this topic. I will revise and improve this article where the need arises.
For your necessary ponderance. Thank you for reading.
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http://www.dreamdatum.com/thought-detach.htmlAre we suppose to get rid of unwholesome thoughts?This article is related to a common misconception with regards to spiritual practice. Many spiritual teachings say that one must get rid of unwholesome stuffs in one's life. So does that include getting rid of unwholesome thoughts that one is having.
Are we suppose to get rid of unwholesome thoughts? Before we can answer this question, we must first ask...
"Can the self or 'I' get rid of thoughts that are deemed as unwholesome?" The answer to the latter question is a NO.
As already mentioned and explained
here, the sense of self or 'I' is not the doer of action. As much as this 'sense of self' desires, it simply has no power over the arising and ceasing of thoughts. Thoughts, are for most part, related to the functioning of memory. Because of that, thoughts and memory cannot be removed by will.
So, if thoughts cannot be stopped from arising using volition, are we powerless with regards to its influences. No.
While thoughts cannot be stopped, the attachment or aversion to them can be diminished with training. Both attachments and aversions are types of grasping.
So to be precise, during spiritual practice, we are not supposed to try to stop unwholesome thoughts from arising. This will prove to be ineffective and all we get will be more frustrations. What we can do, is to let go of the grasping to the thoughts. There is an energetic difference between the two.About this letting go, it is really a gentle process and cannot be forced. Excessive forcing re-enforces the arising of 'sense of self' and ineffective grasping kicks into action again.
Often, the thoughts that arised are in conditioned response to what is being perceived by the senses. The speed of the arisal of the thought often is very fast. Because there is a perception, which is followed rapidly by the conditioned thought, the conditioned reaction(grasping) to the thought often is almost immediate. The rapid change that occur within this short span of duration is what makes 'recognising' the grasping from the perception and thoughts difficult.
OK, that all I can think of and write about this topic. I will revise and improve this article where the need arises.
For your necessary ponderance. Thank you for reading.
These articles are
parts of a series of spiritual realisation articles.
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http://www.dreamdatum.com/nondual-misinfo.html(just updated)
The misconceptions surrounding Transcendental Non dualityThis article is related to a common misconception with regards to the Transcendental experience of Nonduality. Within the spiritual circle, the term Non-duality is a very misunderstood or misinterpreted term. It must be understood that the term has more than one meaning and its perceived meaning largely depends on a person's stage of spiritual awareness.
More often than not, a lower stage understanding of the term is misconstrued as the Transcendental experience of Nonduality or non-dualism. This confusion is largely compounded by so-called new age spiritual materials.
The most common understanding of Non duality is related to the issue of Polarity such as light and dark. In this semantic, non-duality is explained as the non-biasness towards any side of a pole. This is about the concept of there being no absolute good or evil. In another word, it is about being non-judgemental. Many spiritual materials believed that this concept of non-duality is equivalent to enlightenment. This is not entirely correct.
Non-duality as a concept for no polarity is not wrong. However, it should not be mistaken for non-duality as the state of enlightenment. The term non-duality that is being used to describe Enlightenment is actually describing a state whereby there is no subject-object division. This is an experience that is difference from the concept of no absolute polarity.
No subject-object division is the true nature of existence. The method of realising this insight lies in the dissolving of the 'sense of self'. This often involves the continual and correct letting go of mental grasping.
OK, that all I can think of and write about this topic. I will revise and improve this article where the need arises.
For your necessary ponderance. Thank you for reading.