Why even talk about this "crazy" teaching that couldn't possibly be (conventionally) true? Of course, "I" exist and "you," too! Just look at us! But, of course, what we see and think we see, that is not a real "self" -- not anything we produce, control, direct, own, or command. It's happening of its own; in an ultimate sense, it is impersonal -- even though it feels utterly personal. Because what am I if not this body, these feelings, these perceptions, these mental formations like will (motives, impulses, intentions), and this consciousness (which many sophisticated persons, particularly ancient Brahmins and modern Hindus, to say nothing of Christians, Muslims, Jains, and others) cling to that "thing" which we must really be when we figure out we are not this body or the other attendant mental phenomena. At least, at the core, I must be THE ONE WHO IS AWARE, the watcher, the knower, the decider, the doer. But this wrong view falls apart under careful, mindful, systematic attention with a cleansed and purified mind/heart. Otherwise, all that will be seen are the usual distortions and perversions of view. This Doctrine invites no one to blindly believe or parrot a Teaching, but to "come and see, investigate it."
How can contradictory truths (such as conventional vs. ultimate) both be true? - They can't. Only the ultimate one is ultimately true. Be we don't live in ultimate truth. We live mired by conventions of language and assumptions about reality that are all wrong. For example, there is a very easy comparison to be maid thanks to the widespread teachings of physics. Question: Is this desk right here mostly dense or mostly empty space?
Answer: Well, mostly dense, of course. That's why it serves as a desk.
Okay, now go ask your physics professor the same question and listen to her tell you all about atoms and particles, sub-particles, quarks, muons, and whatnots, finer and more subtle components of matter.
What can she say? I'll just beat my hand down on her desk during office hours to prove to that Egghead that, of course, a desk is solid!
Yes, sure, see where that gets you. Once we understand that an "atom" (an indivisible, uncuttable, irreducible unit of mass) contains more empty space than anything tangible, we'll suddenly see what she's talking about and what science teachers in schools and professors in universities teach.
So what, then what?
Then it will both be true that this desk seems dense and solid -- because our hand can't go through it like it can the empty air -- and yet is not actually true at all. It seems true. It is conventionally true (insofar as it is useful to speak this way to one another to distinguish things like air and desks), but it is not ultimately true. Only what is ultimately true was ever actually true -- even as we walk about like ignorant monkeys never giving it a second though. Desk solid, air empty. Solid things are only relatively solid to less dense things, and hands don't go through because of gravity and energy, not because a bunch of density is resisting. And air is not empty, having a bunch of gases and other molecules floating through it. But it's easier to talk this way in common parlance to understand each other and get things done. As science advances, more will know what it really is like, even if they do not particularly appreciate the distinction.
COMMENTARY
Wisdom Quarterly
Buddha, why are you always smiling? Freedom?
One could say that it is not "who" is aware, but WHAT is aware? Asked this way, it can be answered. The Five Aggregates (form; feelings, perceptions, formations, consciousnesses) clung to as self (which are all dependently originated) phenomena. Form forms, feelings feel, perceptions perceive, formations form, and [the six kinds of] consciousness are conscious. Each PROCESS is arising, performing a function, and passing away very quickly, billions and trillions of nearly identical but not actually identical "thought-moments" (cittas) after another. Note the semicolon after form. Why is it there? Form means "material form" (fine-material or rupa in superior planes of existence and tangible or kama in this sensual human world), the body, which is not singular but also fourfold, composed of the mahabhuta or dhatus (Four Great Elements, which are not things like "atoms" but rather kalapas, dense fine-material particles, characteristics of materiality not materiality itself). These eight (condensed to five) aggregates are not to be taken on faith or for the sake of philosophy. Through the path of purification, the heart/mind can be temporarily purified, intensified, and trained to directly perceive these eight streams or phenomena. And in seeing them -- seeing them for what they really are -- the mind/heart lets go. One awakens to freedom from all attachment, aversion, and delusion about them. Thus, in no longer clinging to wrong views about them, one lets go and abandons them, glimpses nirvana, and is free. One enters the first stage of enlightenment or stream-entry. The Buddha does not talk about "no-self" lightly nor before one is ready to hear and begin to understand it. But he cannot let it go unmentioned and untaught because it is the basis, the crucial determinant, of awakening. In other non-Buddhist teachings, at the time of the Buddha as now, this teaching does not exist. Therefore, the Buddha said there neither arise beings of the first stage, second, third, or fourth stage of enlightenment, nor are there to be seen individuals on the path to those realizations. Only when a supremely awakened buddha arises in the world does this teaching get taught and the way of realizing it for oneself. For unless one comes to know-and-see it directly, there is no liberation.
Irish American Charles Francis Feeney (April 23, 1931–October 9, 2023) was a businessman and philanthropist who made a massive fortune [from the U.S. military] as the co-founder of DFS Group (Duty Free Shoppers Group), the travel retailer of luxury products based in Hong Kong.
He was the founder of the Atlantic Philanthropies, one of the largest private charitable foundations in the world. Feeney gave away his fortune in secret for many years, wisely choosing to remain anonymous while doing it, donating more than $8 billion in his lifetime....
PERSONAL LIFE: Wise Saint Feeney was known for his frugality. According to a New York Times article in 2017, "Until he was 75, he traveled only in coach [the lowest class, discount seats], and [he] carried reading materials in a plastic bag."
He did not own a car or a house and wore a $10 Casio F-91W watch [41, 16]. As of 2016, he lived in a rented apartment in pricey San Francisco, California, with remaining assets of $2 million [1]. More
Dāna (sharing, generosity, liberality, giving, supporting, helping) as an internally-motivated spiritual act or a formal, externally-influenced religious act is directed by Buddhist laypersons first at monastics and spiritually-developed persons [37].
In the Buddhist understanding, it has the effect of purifying and transforming the heart/mind of the giver [38], the one who lets go.
Generosity developed through unselfish sharing and generous giving leads to the experience of material wealth and the possibility of being reborn in happy states (defined as rebirth in the human world or the many superior planes of existence above it).
In the Pāli canon's Dighajanu Sutta, "generosity" (denoted there by the Pāli word cāga, which can be deemed synonymous with dāna) is identified as one of the four traits conditioning happiness and wealth in future lives (after this karma comes to fruition and ripens. Just as a seed sown does not immediately burst into a sprout or blossom into a flower or fruit, it is foolish to expect immediately obvious karmic resultants. And it is exactly for this same reason that unskillful misdeeds do not show the harm that comes from them immediately in what John Lennon foolishly popularized as "instant karma." There is nothing instant about most karma, and even to the extent that karma can produce immediate mental benefits, these are not always obvious).
Conversely, lack of letting go, sharing, providing for others, liberality, giving leads to woeful (unhappy) states in the future, after the ripening, as well as poverty.
Dāna (having done acts sharing and generosity) leads to one of the development of one of the "perfections" (paramis, pāramitās, known as dānapāramitā, the perfection of letting go, detachment, giving up, benefiting others).
This can be characterized by unattached and unconditional generosity, giving and letting go [39].
The Buddhist belief that actual letting go, actual giving, the kind without seeking anything in return, rather the transactional variety of this-for-that, leads to great spiritual wealth and immediate mental satisfaction and calm. Otherwise, we are subject to great disappointment.
Moreover, letting go reduces the acquisitive (greedy) impulses that ultimately lead to continued suffering [40] from egotism. More
Could good Saint Feeney (as we call him, when Chuck sought no such title in his life and the Catholic Church has yet to recognize him) have benefitted by living in liberal California, in the Bay Area of all places, surrounded by Asian and Buddhist influences, like so many of the Golden State's remaining inhabitants?
I did my yoga, and I'm starting to see not-self and that I am One. What's for lunch?
Rites and rituals for samadhi in India
(dakota of earth) India's worst way to reach "enlightenment," usually defined in Hinduism as mere samadhi, which is a stage to understanding not the final goal itself in Buddhism.
I think I'm starting to lose my grip on reality.
When one becomes a "saint" (a NOBLE ONE) in Buddhism, having entered at least the first stage of enlightenment (of seven stages usually condensed and described as four main stages), one is immediately rid of four things.
Of these is the wrong view that clinging to rites and rituals could ever lead to enlightenment (bodhi, awakening to the ultimate truth).
Attachment to rites and rituals (sīlabbata-parāmāso) is one of the subtle fetters binding beings (who are constantly becoming and never actually being) to samsara, the Wheel of Life and Death. Śīla refers to "virtue" or "moral conduct" + vata (bata) to "religious duty, observance, rite, practice, custom" [25] + parāmāsa to "being attached to" or "a contagion" (clinging, upādāna) and has the connotation of "mishandling" the Dhamma[26], Buddha's Teachings. Together sīlabbata-parāmāso translates as "the contagion of [adhering to] mere rule and ritual, the infatuation of good works, the delusion that they suffice" [27] or, more simply, "fall[ing] back on attachment [clinging] to precepts and rules" [28]. Whereas the fetter of "doubt" (vicikiccha) can be seen as pertaining to the dharmas of competing wandering ascetics (samanas) during the time of the Buddha, the fetter regarding clinging to rites and rituals likely refers to some practices of contemporary Brahmanical authorities [29]. More
The former prince Siddhartha Gautama (the future historical Buddha), as a wandering ascetic on a quest for enlightenment, practiced these futile things -- particularly extreme fasting -- for years until he finally stopped blaming the body for the mind's defilements and accepted the blissful meditative absorptions (jhanas) as the real path of purification and path of freedom to seeing things as they really are and thereby finally being able to let go of lust, clinging, attachment, and all that binds us to interminable rebirth and suffering in samsara.
Until then, a person might do any useless thing -- particularly engaging in the extremes of severe austerities and bodily mortifications (tapas, penances, extreme austerities, attempts at purification) to purify oneself or hedonism, debauchery, and excess with the excuse that "anything can be used in the service of liberation, including the very poisons -- alcohol, drugs ("Crazy Wisdom"), sanctified or twisted sexuality (tantric sex), meat eating and cannibalism (as in Aghori holyman practices), fasting and self-starvation (inedia), self-mummification (sokushinbutsu)...
Two things are true. 1. There is no self. In other words, all things are marked by the characteristic of being impersonal ("empty"). 2. Whatever arises arises dependent on causes and conditions, which is known as Dependent Origination.
Only by comprehending both will someone avoid confusion and an apparent paradox. Of course, there are two "truths," the conventional everyday truth (honesty) and the ultimate truth (reality). That there is, ultimately speaking, no ongoing persisting surviving transmigrating self is of the latter variety.
How could that possibly be true if all that we have is ourselves and our experiences, our conscious awareness and this body?
It is completely counterintuitive, but it can be known-and-seen directly, which results in enlightenment (awakening) if penetrated as it really is. Before that, it can be comprehended intellectually.
This is a very advanced teaching for dedicated meditators and monastics, not easily understood by them until they develop direct insight into the Truth. Therefore, how is any ordinary, uninstructed person ever to figure it out? They will not. But anyone can receive intellectual instruction to understand it without being liberated by the Truth. For liberation, practice of direct-seeing and insight (vipassana) into the true nature of existence is necessary:
Not-self (anatta) is the central doctrine in Buddhism, without understanding which a real knowledge of Buddhism is altogether impossible.
This uniquely Buddhist anattā doctrine teaches that there is neither within the body or mind -- the bodily or mental phenomena of existence -- nor outside of them can there be found anything that in the ultimate sense could be regarded as a "self" (a real self-existing ego-entity, soul, or any other abiding substance.
This is the pivotal central doctrine of Buddhism, that which without comprehending, no real understanding of Buddhism (i.e., the historical Buddha's Dharma) is possible.
This strange doctrine is the only really specific Buddhist teaching, with which the entire structure of the Buddha Dharma stands or falls.
All other Buddhist doctrines might, more or less, be found in other philosophical systems or religions, but the anattā-doctrine (that ultimately ALL things are impersonal) has been clearly and unreservedly taught only by a buddha, which is why the Buddha was known in his day as the Anattā-vādi or "Teacher that all is Impersonal."
Whoever has not yet penetrated the impersonal nature of all existence, who does not comprehend that in reality there exists only this continually self-consuming process of arising and passing bodily and mental phenomena (called the Five AggregatesCLUNG to as self), and that there is no separate soul, self, or ego-entity within or without this impersonal process, such a person will not be able to understand Buddhism, that is, the teaching of the Four Ennobling Truths (sacca) the fourth of which is the Ennobling Eightfold Path, in the correct light.
One will necessarily assume (wrongly think)
that it is one's self, soul (atta, atman), ego, or personality that chooses and performs skillful and unskillful karma (intentional actions),
that experiences suffering, neutral feelings, and happiness as a result (phala, vipaka, the fruition and resultants of previous actions),
that will be reborn according to that karma (those former deeds),
that will enter or fail to enter nirvana (nibbāna, the quenching and cooling of the threefold fire of greed, hatred/fear, and delusion),
that walks or fails to walk the Eightfold Path to awakening.
"Mere suffering exists, no 'sufferer' is to be found;
Deeds are, but no 'doer' of deeds is really there;
Nirvana is, but not any 'person' who 'enters' it;
The Path is but no 'traveler' on it is to be seen."
"Whoever is unclear with regard to conditionally arisen phenomena and fails to comprehend that ALL actions are conditioned through ignorance and so on [through the 12 causal links of Dependent Origination], that person [necessarily assumes] thinks that it is one's soul, self, ego, or personality that understands or fails to understand, that acts or causes to act, that comes to existence at rebirth and passes out of existence at death...that has sense-impressions, feels, desires, becomes attached, continues, and at rebirth reappears or enters a new existence" (Vis.M. XVII. 117).
[The Three Universal Characteristics of Existence are that all things are radically impermanent, unable to fulfill (ultimately unsatisfactory, disappointing, liable to suffering), and impersonal.]
While in the case of the first two characteristics, it is stated that all "formations" (sabbe sankhārā) are impermanent and subject to suffering, the corresponding text for the third characteristic states that "all things are not-self" (sabbe dhammā anattā, MN 35, Dhp. 279).
This is for emphasizing that the wrong view of assuming, believing, holding that it is an abiding self or substance is neither applicable to any "formation" or conditioned phenomenon, nor to nirvana (the "unconditioned element" (asankhatā dhātu)
The "Discourse on the Characteristic of Not-Self" (Anattā-Lakkhana Sutta) was the second discourse delivered by the historical Buddha after his great awakening, enlightenment (maha-bodhi) to his first five disciples, who after hearing it attained to the same awakening (arhatship).
The contemplation of not-self (anattā-anupassanā) leads to the freedom of the "emptiness liberation" (suññatā-vimokkha).
At the next two stages of enlightenment, one becomes a "vision-attainer" (ditthippatta or "right view reacher"), and at the ultimate stage of "full awakening" (arhatship), one is called "liberated by wisdom" (paññā-vimutti). More
Tao Temple (video); Ven. Nyanatiloka (Buddhist Dictionary) edited and clarified by Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly, summer 2026
The mind may never stop thinking [except deep in the eight Buddhist meditative absorptions, in samadhi], but if we turn our attention to what or who [the Witness, the Watcher] is listening, suddenly the inner voice may pause or stop.
The method to follow, the practice
The voice doesn't bother me. I need stimulation!
"Bhagavan," he asked, "how do I remain as this Witness? The voice remains the moment I stop trying." The seeker expected a method, something to follow, something to practice.
Ramana's voice was gentle but firm, "You cannot remain as the Witness. You are already the Witness. The question itself comes from the mind. The seeker's face tightened, "I do not understand."
"The mind wants a method, it wants a practice, it wants a way to achieve 'witnessing.' This is the trap. The mind cannot witness itself into existence. I can only dissolve.
"The practice is simply to notice. When the voice speaks, what hears it? Do not fight the voice. This creates more noise: 'I should not be thinking this, I am failing at meditation, I must try harder!' More voices, more struggle."
A thought arose in the seeker right then, "This is too difficult." Instead of believing it or fighting it, he asked, 'What is aware of this thought?" The question itself dissolved the thought. For a moment, there was only silence, only presence.
So the method is not a method, not a practice?
"Do not try to become the witness," Ramana continued. "This creates a false 'doer.' 'I am witnessing now, I am doing it correctly, I am making progress.' This is still the mind wearing a spiritual mask. Simply rest in the question, 'Who is aware of this thought?'...
"In your relationships," Ramana said, "the voice says, 'They do not love you anymore.' Ask, 'Who is unloved?' The answer? 'I am.' Then ask, 'Who is this "I" that can be loved or unloved?' The story collapses."
He paused. "And [of] that shame, the sense that you have not progressed, that others have arrived somewhere you cannot reach, ask, 'Who is the one who has failed?' The answer? 'I am.'
"Then ask, 'Who is this "I" that can succeed or fail at [meditation] practice?' Its owner cannot be found. The shame does not to be argued away; it simply has no ground to stand on.
"The witness is not cultivated," Ramana said, "it is uncovered. Every time you [mindfully] notice the voice, you are already the witness. You just have not recognized it yet."
The seeker sat with this. It was so SIMPLE, it felt impossible. He had spent years trying to improve his mind, control his thoughts, become a better meditator.
And now Ramana was saying, "Just notice what is already aware [mindful]. Every example leads to the same place. The voice has an owner that cannot be found. And what remains when the owner [ego, atta, atman] disappears, that is what you are."
"Bhavagan," he said quietly, "what is the purpose of the question, 'Who am I?' if it cannot be answered?"
Ramana smiled. "The question, 'Who am I?' is not meant to be answered by the mind.It is meant to DISSOLVE the mind.
The seeker closed his eyes. The voice had nothing left to say.... He no longer needed the voice to stop.
I went to a Buddhist retreat needing something to happen; nothing happened.
My friend, a regular American woman into yoga, also went but not expecting anything, hoping for anything, "needing" anything; something happened.
I asked, "How?! How is this happening? What did you do differently?"
She claims she didn't "do" anything. She just sat. She just attended to the present moment with bare awareness, almost like that R.E.M. song, "Stand in the Place Where You Are." She didn't say that. She mentioned thinking about the song "Just Breathe" for inspiration sometimes.
I asked, "You're thinking about music?"
She answered, "No, but intrusive thoughts come and go. Sometimes by habit I engage them before mindfully-remembering and then letting them go, letting them cross like clouds in a vast open sky." And she mentioned visualizing the in-and-out breath as steam in a steam room or a small whirligig (windspinner) at her nose turning as the breath moved.
I asked, "You spend your time visualizing?"
She answered, "No, but sometimes to focus, I imagine some indicator of the breath just to help get focused."
I asked, "How do you stay energized and focused for so many hours of the retreat schedule day?"
She surprised by answering that she used a little peppermint under her nose.
I asked, "You spend your time huffing essential oils?"
She answered, "No but it's a nice pick me up in the morning, and it's good to feel a chill on the spot above the lip where I place my calm attention."
I started to see the pattern. Everything I asked and conceived was about getting and gaining.
And everything she answered was about letting go, relaxing, and staying aware without "thinking" (i.e., ruminating, perseverating, proliferating, drifting away on a tide of discursive thinking).
A Buddhist retreat, like a Christian church service, is not somewhere to go to gain. It is a place to go to lay down the burden and let go a little, release, share, give, abandon, listen, allow with radical acceptance of what is. Imagine only ever going to church (mass, temple, the sabbath ritual) with a laundry list of wishes for the God. How well was that ever going to work? But a person with a purer heart goes just to receive the Word or the Spirit or advice embedded in the sermon to give more donations to the church or whatever nonsense most sermons are on nowadays. Surely that purer person would get more out of the experience than the person with the list treating the God of that church like a restaurant, ATM, or the lap of Saint Santa Claus (Nicholas).
So let us follow in the example of the woman who "succeeded" in getting what everybody else on that retreat was after. About three other women got it, too, including Buddhist meditation teachers Shaila Catherine (Wisdom Wide and Deep: Jhana and Insight) and Dr. Nikki (The Persian Buddhist: Dr. Nikki).
Oddly, strangely (coincidentally?), these three women are all from California, but the long retreat was on the east coast at IMS with a rare enlightened master. I do not now recall if there was a male among the very small group of retreatants/meditators who "succeeded" in getting somewhere very deep with their meditation. But it was impossible to overlook the fact that even if there were, it was still 75% women who succeeded. So I asked her about this.
She answered, "I did notice, and I asked the Teacher, and he explained, 'It's easier for women.'"
I asked, "Why in the world would it be easier for women? Surely, they have it harder than men in this world, which after all we are told is 'a man's world.'"
She agreed, and she mentioned that she asked him the same question, and the great master, a successful scholar-practitioner not teaching only from theory but having a great deal of direct practical personal experience with the historical Buddha's Path, answered. He explained that it is how women are (by nature at this time) and how they are treated now (by injustice). Their way, as anyone can see in terms of American sex-role stereotyping and gender asymmetries (that they are treated less than, overlooked, underestimated, ignored, disregarded, and all that) actually gives them an advantage in meditation and spiritual progress.
I said, "Why? Why would that be?"
She answered, as it came right back around to slap me in the face and punch me in the gut, that it is because women, generally, are NOT striving, struggling, needing, demanding, insisting, interfering, pushing, muscling, and all the "wrong" (disadvantageous, self-defeating, dysfunctional) things we men generally do.
I asked, "Well, isn't everyone there -- having paid and taken time off work and putting in all those hours of silence, getting up early, eating only in the morning, detoxing from technology, giving up their cell phones, social media, and email accounts -- doing EXACTLY that?!
She answered, "Yes, except for the four of us, for some reason. It's not like we knew each other or knew what the others were doing. We were each just minding our business, not socializing, not looking around, not taking walks, not arguing, not demanding, not all of that stuff that everyone else [being American] were in the habit of doing."
I said, "Oh, I see! It's exactly all that grasping, needing, struggling, striving, and kicking @$$ that is getting in everyone's (well nearly everyone's) way!
She answered, "It would seem so."
Then I realized I was pushing her for these answers, and she was kind enough, because we had known each other for so long and been such friends, and because I encouraged her and made sure she got to this retreat, that she tolerated this interrogation of sorts. I was startled by what she was saying, and she was saying precious little unless I pushed. I realized anyone with common sense and common decency would never push like this or ask pointed questions. But this is how I pressed that very teacher to answered and explain things, which he did as he kindly inquired about my practice and how I was doing and why I was so worried or interested in what anybody else was doing. (I didn't have enough sense to trust in him that when I was ready, I would learn all these things directly and not need to be so bullheaded in asking). But because I had not made progress, I'd been left to wonder what I was doing wrong, aside from everything. It was only my luck, my precious good karma, that I had the good fortune of knowing more than one person who had done it right (or was currently doing it "right" in the sense of the eight path factors of "right mindfulness, right effort, and so on) that I could see by comparison where I veered off. I already knew about my veering off. What I needed to know, for myself and Wisdom Quarterly readers was, What's the right road, the right path, the right practice? Now I was getting a dose of it. I had only been "a little" off but that little had grown to a complete derailing and going off the road, as a boat traveling a long distance -- with course correcting along the way -- would end up way off track like a wayward Columbus. I was stressed out in asking all these things.
She answered without stress, gently smiling at my silliness, manliness, foolishness, and blindness.
But there is an extraordinary thing I realized/remembered as I was talking to her about these things (Dhamma), these matters so rare in the universe that only someone with a real kalyana-mitta can ever hope to hear, and it came when I formulated a preface to a question like a lawyer would, establishing common ground, being on the same page. I wanted to ask her about her level of attainment and that of the others. But to do so, I needed to establish that she was ahead of all the others on the retreat, or was it the case that the elder and much more experienced meditator and teacher Shaila Catherine was ahead, and where was Nikki Mighafori in the ranking, and for that matter, at what level was the teacher?
She answered no answer, just a perplexed look, a series of sounds and utterances that gave me to believe we were not sharing common ground and not on the same page.
I pushed, "Look, regular people are 'uninstructed ordinary worldlings,' right?"
She answered, "Okay?" as if confused by my very lowest common denominator question.
And I kept pushing, and any Aryan (any "noble" disciple, any attained person of whatever ever rank, stage, or level) is greater than that, right?
She answered more perplexed, "Okay??"
I pushed to the point of breaking, "What? You won't give me that? There are ordinary people and there are attained people, and they're not the same because of a 'change-of-lineage' (gotrabhu), riiiiight? The Buddha said as much! It's foundational to the whole Teaching in this school of Buddhism. This is not hard. This is not a trick question..."
She responded, "And why are you asking?"
I, exasperated, kept pushing through, as if I were doing a set of heavy weights at the gym and just needed to get a certain number of reps in even if it hurt, "I'm trying to establish that there's a difference. There are ordinary people there and extraordinary. And among the latter group, there are gradients..."
She looked puzzled, dismissive, not catching on, "Okay???"
I barked, "Well, come on! There's that, right? And this is when she blew my mind. Did you, dear reader, know that enlightened people (in the specific Buddhist sense of the word bodhi and not what other traditions, religions, or systems think or mean when they use the exact same word) DO NOT THINK OF THEMSELVES as better than anyone? Sure, you did. Anyone can figure that out. They know there's no ego; they go lording it around over anyone's head. BUT, did you know, enlightened people (of whatever stage or level) DO NOT THINK OF THEMSELVES as worse than anyone? Sure, come on, that can be deduced by anyone who gives it a little thought. "Saints" (Aryans, the noble ones) are nice. Here's the mindblower: Reader, did you know that enlightened people DO NOT THINK OF THEMSELVES as equal to anyone? 🤯 (See the Pali canon sutta "With Khema" AN 6.49: Khema Sutta—translated by Bhikkhu Sujato for suttacentral.net) And this is what was happening here. We were getting snagged and tangled up on the very first presupposition of stages and levels. It's not that she didn't know or had forgotten that there were levels, but what had happened is that she had DIRECTLY REALIZED that in reality she is no better, no worse, and not equal to others. These Aryans just don't think that way. It doesn't occur to them. They don't frame things that way anymore. And they may not even remember ever having done so, or so it would seem as I tried to remind her that this is how the whole world thought, including the Buddha, if we can deduce this from his teaching that there were levels of attainment and therefore it is possible to designate someone as higher, lower, or equal to someone else, anyone else.
She just looked at, as if remembering, then came back to herself, "And????" leading me to make my point, whatever my point was originally going to be. I didn't remember, and there was no sense in asking if we could not agree on that much for starters. This was a nonstarter.
"Wow," I thought, the things in the ancient sacred texts are really true: Aryans are this way or that, whether it makes sense to us or not, whether it fits our frames, whether we agree or would have it otherwise. Buddhism (the Buddha Dharma), what the Buddha taught, was not "hammered out by mere reasoning." The Buddha directly saw these things, knew these things, taught a path-and-practice for others to be able to DIRECTLY know and see these things. I bowed to her and left it at that for the moment. There are some things we are not meant to know before we are ready to know it. And all of this, it seems, was none of my business. It would become my business when I directly experienced these things and became one who knows-and-sees. This is a teaching for the wise, after all, not for those sunk in worldliness, distraction, delusion, resentment, aversion, fear, greediness, selfishness, self-centeredness, or all manner of wrong view arising from ignorance, delusion, and holding views.
And now I realize that one way to talk about all this might be through the Taoist video at the top of this article. Maybe on this path we are becoming what we always were and have been -- nobody. Certainly, nobody special. Not better, not worse, not equal. The worldly mind will completely reject this out of hand. It's preposterous! This is a patriarchy founded on a hierarchy as taught by the oligarchy and a lineage of worldly rulers all the way up to the first heaven. And we must submit to them because that's the way God wants it. 🙄 That's ludicrous and preposterous, but it just might be closer to the truth than the way we've been carrying on here in the world IF "the God" we are talking about is the Monad (the One in Gnosticism, the Brahman not Brahma in Buddhism, possibly even the Tao in Taoism). That GOD doesn't want or not want, doesn't look on needing it to be one way or another. In that sense, there is just being. We can just be (though technically there is no "being," only becoming, this ceaseless impersonal process of radical impermanence as everything falls apart and rebuilds all the time, marked by three universal characteristics the Buddha taught again and again, implicitly and explicitly: All things are radically impermanent, utter unable to ever fulfill us, and impersonal whether we imagine there to be a stable "self" or not. That's reality. Here we are over here never really in touch with what's real due to all the distractions, talking, ruminating, thinking, and everything else coming at us all at once. If we slow down, let things be, allow, accept, welcome experience as it is without needing to change or "improve" it, we can quite possibly make quick progress to the end of all suffering and the arising of liberating-insight, the wisdom that has gone beyond, that which we set as our goal when setting off on a spiritual path. So "be nobody." After all, that's what really are already, and the sooner we get right with it, the happier we are likely to be so we can see things sa they really are and always have been.
WARNING: "A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring: There shallow thoughts intoxicate the brain" - the Great Alexander Pope (reddit)
O, those Greeks of Macedonia were something
This is in reference to the spring in the Pierian Mountains in Macedonia, sacred to the Muses. The first line of this couplet is often misquoted as "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
In Greek mythology, the "Pierian Spring" of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia was sacred to the mythological Pierides and the Muses. As the metaphorical source of knowledge of art and science, it was popularized by a couplet in Pope's 1711 poem An Essay on Criticism:
WQ says no such thing. What we say is that, in an ultimate sense, "self" (soul, ego, atman, atta, spirit) is impersonal.
So there IS a "self"?
In a conventional sense, of course there is! How else would we live in a squiggly universe without a sense of our boundaries demarcating where we end and others start?
Oh, so I don't have to give everything away, join a commune, and do whatevers my Guru tells me to?
Ugh, no, you do not. Be yourself. Think. Practice. Buddhism only makes sense for those who practice the Dhamma, not the debaters or scholars of it.
Wait, then, so I'm as "real" as this chair? - Yes.
EGO DEATH is a "complete loss of subjective self-identity" [1]. The term is used in various contexts, with related meanings.
The 19th-century psychologist and philosopher William James uses the synonymous term "self-surrender." Jungian psychology uses the synonymous term "psychic death," referring to a fundamental transformation of the psyche (soul) [2].
So I can be responsible with a career? - Yes.
In death and rebirth explanations, ego death is a phase of self-surrender and transition [3, 4, 5, 6] as described by mythologist Joseph Campbell in his research on the "Hero's Journey" [3].
It is a recurrent theme in world mythology and is also used as a metaphor in some strands of contemporary Western thinking [6].
In descriptions of drugs, the term is used synonymously with "ego loss" [7, 8, 1, 9] to refer to temporary loss of one's sense of having a self due to the use or abuse of drugs [10, 11, 1], be they negative (deluded) hallucinogens or positive (pro-realization) entheogens.
The term was used as such by Harvard Dr. Timothy Leary and others [1] to describe the death of the ego [12] in the first phase of an LSD trip, in which a "complete transcendence" of the self [Note 1] occurs.
Did the Grateful Dead know about this?
The concept is also used in contemporary New Age spirituality and in the modern understanding of ancient Eastern religions (such as Nondualism/Advaita/Oneness) to describe a permanent loss of "attachment to a separate sense of self" [Web 1] and self-centeredness [13] (egoism, egotism, selfishness, conceit).
This kind of conception is a part of Eckhart Tolle's Buddhist-like teachings, where Ego is presented as an accumulation of thoughts and emotions, continuously identified with [and clung to], which creates the idea and feeling of being a separate entity from one's self, and only by disidentifying one's consciousness from it can one truly be free from suffering [14]. More
Life: break us to wake us? DRUNK
(T&H Inspiration & Motivation) I was disgusted, busted, and not to be trusted. I was a drunkard, an alcoholic. I wasted 33 years of my life in my head before Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins explained this
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