What is the Awakened State like Experientially?
A friend (without much spiritual background) asked me recently what's the difference between my experience and his experience. What does awakening entail, experientially? In order words, what is the feeling of it like? (Note that I am recalling from that conversation, this isn't the exact words)

I answered: Here there is a complete absence of any sense of sense of self, body, sense faculties, objects, boundaries, and an absence of any sense of locality. Whereas those are present in experience for you.

For example when I'm driving the car, there is no sense at all of being a driver located in the driver seat. The whole infinite field (including trees, roads and traffic lights) is simply experiencing itself and reacting seamlessly and spontaneously with no sense of distance (no sense of a me here encountering and reacting to things 'out there'). Presencing (vivid experience) "stands out" as the "concrete textures and details" of everything when not a trace of self remains. Everything shimmers with a vivid intensity of pure aliveness and presence.


He asked: If you don't experience locality, why do you like to travel to different places? Doesn't non locality mean you can teleport anywhere since you are not located or fixed anywhere? Since you are nowhere and already everywhere, why do you need to travel? Why did you visit a music festival (Tomorrowland) in your recent trip to Europe?

I answered: I still enjoy experiencing new stuff sometimes. Non locality is not teleportation, it means there is no locality or reference point to which a fixed subject (experiencer/self) or an object exists. Appearance 'knows' from itself without a knower behind. It does not mean that because there is no self besides everything that appears, I am everywhere in the world all at once, like including Antarctica. Specific appearances only appear in the presence of specific conditions. Ever-fresh phenomenal appearances manifest due to certain conditions including travel, etc. The experience of a music festival requires conditions like international DJs playing music, the communal setting of massive numbers of people coming together, so on and so forth.
(And even those appearances cannot be pinned down as "it is here" or "it is there" as they are simply and merely appearing due to conditions, like reflections of a moon on water. There is no intrinsic existence of a phenomenal appearance to be found.

But as Thusness said, "When you are luminous and transparent, don't think of dependent origination or emptiness, that is post-equipoise. When hearing sound, like the sound of flowing water and chirping bird, it is as if you are there. It should be non-conceptual, no sense of body or me, transparent, as if the sensations stand out. You must always have some quality time into this state of anatta. Means you cannot keep losing yourself in verbal thoughts, you got to have quality hours dedicated to relaxation and experience fully without self, without reservation.")

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Forms are Empty, Emptiness is Form
By James Corrigan

https://medium.com/@StillJustJames/forms-are-empty-emptiness-is-form-13bf7e5eac6a

StillJames
Boy looking at Xmas toys in shop window, public domain. Creator: Bain News Service. Courtesy of US Library of Congress.
This essay is about one of the most disconcerting, and possibly debilitating, meditative experiences that occurs while meditating, and it is almost a sure thing that you will find yourself suddenly and directly experiencing the lack of a real self in anything — if you seriously meditate long enough, both in frequency and duration.
In a non-secular setting in which the teacher has no exposure to this advanced meditative experience, you may find yourself unsupported and abandoned — neither knowing how to make sense of the experience, nor how to move forward in your life. Stopping your meditation permanently may even make it worse in such a non-secular context.
In a spiritual setting, such as that of Buddhism in a traditional context, you are not vulnerable in that way — having access to competent teachers and millennia of accumulated experience with such advanced meditative experiences.
The purpose of this essay, however, is not to teach you anything about Emptiness — the Buddhist concept of the universal absence of any intrinsic self — it is simply a pointing out of the source of our common misunderstanding about this direct meditative experience, and the misuse, and misapplication of the derived concept.
Children quickly learn that they have a mind. This is the name that we give to the source from which, and the venue in which, our thoughts occur. Later, children learn that this mind is where perceptions and feelings occur too. And they begin to call it “my self.”
When the self is seen to have no place, no identity, and no enduring qualities at all, this mind is sometimes elevated to “Mind,” in order to escape the orphanage of parentless thought, and the error of a “greater Self” occurs.
Because if the self has no true reality, how can it be a place or thing from which, and in which, thoughts, perceptions, and feelings occur? Yet even though we may understand this intellectually, we still call it mind, or Mind, because our faculty of reason needs something positive to hold onto — we simply cannot understand what we cannot grasp (hold of), so even just a name suffices. And so, we keep referring to mind (or Mind) as if it is something, tenaciously holding onto it.
Similarly, when all things are seen to lack an intrinsic reality, we say they are empty of, or lack, an intrinsic self as well.
It is said that the world is empty, the world is empty, lord. In what respect is it said that the world is empty?” The Buddha replied, “Insofar as it is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self: Thus it is said, Ānanda, that the world is empty.⁠¹
Unfortunately, we call this lack of a self: “emptiness,” because (again) the discerning faculty of reason needs something positive to hold onto, even if it is only a name.
— Because an absence named is just such a positive thing.
Look closely at this. We notice that something we thought was there, is not there, and rather than say nothing, or like the Buddha, just say it is not there, we ‘extract’ this quality of being absent from the thing (neither of which is truly possible⁠²) and make it a thing-in-itself, marking this ‘fact’ with a word that ends in “ness.” Our faculty of reason then has something positive to think about — “Emptiness.”
Yet even though there is no mind, your thoughts, perceptions, and feelings still occur. We can call their occurrence whatever we like — we can still call it mind, as many do — but we should realize we are no longer talking about a thing or a place, but rather, just activity.
An activity is understood to not have a self, as verbs are not considered to be nouns or names. Even so, we are taught early in life that all actions have an actor that is responsible for them, because we need to place our praise or blame on someone for everything that occurs.
Pay attention here, because this error carries over into our predilection to over-think the lack of an intrinsic self by applying it to activities that occur, saying that they too are empty of an intrinsic self, as we do in the case of all our phenomenal experiences. But, (and in the vernacular): Duh! Even in a physicalist understanding of reality, actions do not have an intrinsic self. Instead, they have an actor that is the cause of the activity.
But we’ve already done away with that erroneous construction, once we realized that there is nothing with an intrinsic self, Right?
Our faculty of reason is well-trained to always hold an actor responsible for activities that occur. But there is no actor, no ground, no nature, no source. That’s what the insight of “no intrinsic self” reminds us of, and that is all it means.
Yet our faculty of reason needs something positive to hold onto, and “Emptiness” (the concept) is like a super weapon obliterating everything in its path. Besides we’re kids and love our toys, so “Emptiness” becomes, not just the destroyer of all things (“thinghood” actually), but the source of all things too.
What? The absence of something is not the presence of something else. “Emptiness” is a place-holder for what we used to assume was there, but isn’t, and nothing more.
But notice that thoughts, feelings, and perceptions still occur. Amazing. It is as if words have no sway over them!
This activity (thoughts arising, feelings manifesting, and perceptions arriving) should be called something other than “Emptiness” though, because that word marks the absence of an intrinsic self, not the presence of activity. It is called “suchness” by some in order to mark this presencing (arising, manifesting, arriving, appearing, showing up, etc.) of these things, thoughts, perceptions, and feelings. But “suchness” is a noun, and specifically one created by abstracting some aspect or characteristic from something (it’s the “ness” suffix that gives that away again). It therefore still suffers from our habit of needing to point our fingers at things — even if they aren’t there!
If we are attentive, we quickly realize that there is no mind-thing, no perceiver-thing, and no other-things, yet even so, we still call these occurrences mind, although technically they should be called “minding.” I prefer to use the verb “naturing” myself, to indicate nature in an active sense, much like Spinoza’s natura naturans (but dropping the “nature” thing because there is nothing with an intrinsic self). But most people just stare blankly at me when I do that.
All too many fall into the trap of immediately forgetting what they recently knew, and see suchness as some thing(s), and reactively apply their secret weapon, Emptiness, to suchness, in order to make the things go away. But there are no things, and no need to bring out the big gun anymore. Our old habits of mentation are leading us astray.
Suchness has no positive source, nor even an absence of source. There is no ground, no place, and no time for suchness, and no need for any of that. There is no emptiness for suchness either, because it doesn’t apply — doing so is a “category error” in philosophical parlance.
This groundless, baseless, reality,
 Just left alone, is utterly awesome;
 This unmoving pure presence, 
 With no destination, is utterly awesome; 
 This immediately available awareness of the now,
 Irrepressible, is utterly awesome.³
It’s unfortunate that we had to make a noun out of this activity, calling it “Suchness,” just because our faculty of reason needs something positive to hold onto, and something to blame. Since suchness — or naturing as I like to say because that’s a verb, not a noun — is not a thing, and not even a collection of things — it can only be activity — which is more truly calledpresencing. Remember what was done here.
Where would “it” occur? Where does that which shows up appear? When we talk about the “space-like” expanse of appearances, we are not affirming the existence of Space. Go sit by a Buddhist Stupa and learn the lesson it presents in the form of the Bindu-Nada that is placed atop it.
The Bindu is the non-dimensional point from which all appearances manifest. Note its specific denial of spatial characteristics (non-dimensionality) — it isn’t anything at all. The Nada, the vibrations, or reverberations, are the appearances emanating from that non-manifest point. I call it an event horizon. You can say what you will about the appearances, but say nothing about how they show up. But how could youpossibly know?
So please note that Emptiness is not Suchness, and is not the nature of anything — because then suchness wouldn’t be empty of an intrinsic self. We can say it is the essence of Suchness, elevating the absence of what we thought was there in the appearances to the stature of the absolute source of all, but that is just overkill and so wrong. It’s useful for a while, but it has the nasty effect of retarding our progress.
Show Quoted Content
Suchness is the presencing of forms (otherwise there would be no distinguishing anything), and forms are empty of any intrinsic self. Yet we can discern the inherent essence of each form. Where we get lost is in confusing the “nature” (inherent essence) of a form, which sets it apart from other forms, with an intrinsic self. Our problem lies in the confusing multiplicity of meanings for the word “nature.” If we just thought of it as “intrinsic self-naturing” versus “essential character,” we’d be on our way to lessening our confusion.
Thus, “Emptiness” (note the capitalization) is a form also — it’s a thoughtform, called a “concept.”
So repeat after me: “Forms (suchness) are empty, Emptiness is form.” This will remind us that “Emptiness” is just an idea that took hold when we noticed we were originally wrong about everything.
The essential character of Suchness is Pure Spontaneous Presencing. And I feel the need to again remind you that suchness is not a thing, it’s the name we give to this activity — ”presenting as form.”
And the nature of this is not something else, it’s the activity. So Pure Spontaneous Presencing is not a thing. It’s simply a description of the salientcharacteristics of the activity that is our phenomenal existence — of suchness.
Thus, it defines nothing, because there is nothing to define. As Garab Dorje said:
Transcending all discrimination in its arising, Transcending all discrimination in its release.
And as Jigme Lingpa said:
While safeguarding the continuity of the wonderful intrinsic perfection of our existential presence, if the thought “the nature of pure presence is empty” springs up in the rational mind, by ascribing an objective focus of emptiness to pure presence, buddha is precluded.
Forms are empty, Emptiness is form.
ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།
Footnotes:
1 Suñña Sutta
2 If something is not there, it really can’t be said to have a quality. But even worse, we are in the process of noting that the ‘thing’ really isn’t a thing at all, so how can ‘it’ even be imagined to have a quality?
3 The Heap of Jewels
4 Quote attributed to Longchenpa in the “Yeshe Lama,” Jingme Lingpa
5 “Yeshe Lama,” Jingme Lingpa


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泰国【宋卡】龙象山寺 Wat Tham Khao Rup Chang 高僧释明山方丈年谱


http://bbs.taiguo.com/

泰国【宋卡】龙象山寺 Wat Tham Khao Rup Chang 高僧释明山方丈年谱

http://storage.live.com/items/903AB98B1833035!181?filename=%25E8%25A7%2582%25E4%25B8%2596%25E9%259F%25B3%25E8%258F%25A9%25E8%2590%25A8%25EF%25BC%2588%25E9%2599%2588%25E6%2598%259F%25EF%25BC%2589.swf
距離合艾往南一小時車程的宋卡山洞，到了那里真可谓是特别的發現和讓人興奮神秘的地方——观音菩萨龙象山寺。這座寺院是沿著橡膠園一路攀上斜坡而上的寺院，進入眼簾竟是一座憾動人心的菩提迦耶，使人非常雀躍，裡面共有三層，第一層是一個中國寺廟的大殿，可納5000人的大殿，牆上都壁畫，石柱上都是塑有龍柱，來到第二層則是泰式的大殿，一個傳統尖角的泰國佛像，佛像上的壁上則是塑有精緻及多元花紋的彩圖，勝入其境彷彿到了另一個境界，層層都給人許多驚喜。

兴建大雄宝殿万佛塔碑 （佛历二千五百四十七秋立）

泰国宋卡府昔罗县巴东勿杀区考律田观音菩萨龙象山寺开山祖师兼住持，释明三老和尚俗姓陈名专正，原籍中国广东省潮州揭阳县凤美乡人，幼年随父到星洲，九岁失怙大兄，因过劳病逝，小弟亦死于非命，数口之家生活颠簸困苦，全赖师尊维持，经多年奋斗，渐入佳境，事业已有所成，奈人生无常，三十八岁失持顿悟人生多难，苦海无边，决心寻求解脱，于1967年拜中国禅宗高僧慧僧老和尚为恩师。虔诚事佛后徒泰国南部巴东勿杀深山洞中持戒苦修，披荊斬棘募化建寺

上明下三长老年谱
年
1967 44岁拜中国禅宗高僧慧僧老和尚为师。
1968 印度朝圣（僧俗四十一人）同时第一次在菩提迦耶燃指供佛。
1970 拖佛。（出攀砂）被邀请坐在一座平底小龙舟，木刻佛像按舟上，由善男信女数十人以绳索慢慢拖至十余公里外的巴东市场。
1971 拖佛。（出攀砂）
1972 第二次在印度菩提迦耶燃指供佛（四月独自一人）
1973 观音菩萨与祖师圣像圆满建成，二月十五日举行典礼，三月十三日闭关一年，修拔丹三昧法三个月，闭关期间由于观音菩萨灵感显瑞相，故发心割下双耳奉献观音菩萨。
1974 闭关一年。 拜法华经。
1976 塑造释迦牟尼佛圣像（高约四十多英尺），二年后完成。 前往曼谷筹铜厂，订造一尊地藏王菩萨，一尊韦陀菩萨，一尊明王菩萨及西方三圣。
1977 建一座四层楼高客房。
1982 第三次在印度菩提迦耶燃指供佛。 建一座三层楼高楼房，楼下作为斋堂与厨房。
1983 前往台湾受增壹戒为期五十三天。 建造牌楼式大门及修筑围墙，门前塑造两只守门大象。
1984 建造一艘停泊在河上的龙头船，船上建一尊金身四面天王圣像。
1985 在前往大洞斜坡路上两旁塑造两条雌雄七头龙，身长十尺，建一座二层楼房，泰语“隆堂”用以招待法师，建造数间（龟滴）供徒弟修持及工人住宿。
1986 农历十一月初六举行观音菩萨龙象洞开幕典礼及布施米粮衣服给临近穷苦人家。
1987 四月率领十余信徒往中国四大名山及西藏布达拉宫朝圣山。 六月装山五色灯使黑洞变成“小小桂林”。 开发另一洞称为“罗汉洞”。
1988 订造木刻观音菩萨圣像。 二度往中国普陀山。
1989 台湾订造一口重壹仟公斤的大钟及大鼓。 农历九月初一日举行第一次布施给三百户穷人家（现今每年一次）米，糖油衣服等。
1991 水路普度法会（农历十一月初一日开坛十五天）
1992 完成距离山洞二公里外路口的龙象洞大牌楼。
1993 加宽加扩大大洞前的场地，在河上驳建一座面积三千余平方尺的平台，楼下作为接待宾客的客厅，工程费九个月完成。 三月在“小小桂林”塑建一尊长约三十英尺的卧佛。 大佛两则供奉木雕装金身的四大天王圣像。 六月为大牌楼及卧佛开光典礼，恭诵“妙法莲华经”法会四十九天。 九月十七日政府来信批准申请建造正式寺庙的证书。 政府批准于龙象寺内建孤儿院，同时开始收养孤儿并给于教育。 1994 建筑孤儿院。 1998 七月万佛宝塔动土。
2001 建一座三楼高“隆堂”靠近万佛宝塔右侧。
2002 供千二僧。
2004 建河流边的“隆堂”.
2005 万佛宝塔宝珠仪式。 近大门建筑一座“隆堂”
2006 万佛宝塔开光仪式（六月六日）。
2010年11月21日 佛历二五五三年，长老圆寂于寺院中。享年八十八岁，僧蜡四十四载。

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