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.
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.
(Buddha's Wisdom) Inception's hidden Buddhism: The real prison was never the "dream" (maya).
Inceptionis an American science fiction action film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, who also produced it with his wife Emma Thomas.
The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a professional thief who steals information by infiltrating the subconscious of targets.
To whom are we still hopelessly attached?
He is offered a chance to have his criminal history erased as payment for the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.
The ensemble cast includes Ellen Page [now living as Elliot Page], Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Dileep Rao, and Michael Caine. More
Buddhism in The Matrix goes deeper than most of us think (other than Wachowski Brothers). The Wachowskis built this film on Buddhist philosophy—but Neo (Keanu Reeves, who played the Buddha in Little Buddha) goes on a journey that reveals something most viewers miss: Taking the red pill isn'tenlightenment, it's just the beginning. This video explores what The Matrix gets RIGHT about Buddhism, what Neo gets WRONG about awakening, and why the ending is actually the most Buddhist part of the entire trilogy. More (See The Matrix Trilogy)
HOW do we get out of this prison?
We are trapped in a prison of our own making. Realizing it does NOT free us. Letting go does. But how can we let go? We can't. It isn't an act of willpower. It's by seeing things as they are. Okay, okay, that makes sense! How are they? This is not a belief-system to believe. We must go in and see kalapas and cittas, particles and mind-moments, which means we must first cultivate samadhi (stillness, absorption) to purify and intensify the instrument of seeing (the mind). Then when we really know-and-see what is there, letting go happens by itself free of effort. The mind/heart lets go when it sees all things are marked by Three Universal Characteristics.
(One Timeless Witness) He meditated for 20 years [seeking moksha or liberation] then the Buddha said "stop," an apocryphal tale to make a point.
Bhava-taį¹hÄ is "craving for becoming," grasping leading to "clinging" (upÄdÄna), which inevitably results in disappointment, dissatisfaction, misery, suffering...not getting what one wants, getting what one doesn't want, all of which is dukkha.
Bhava-taį¹hÄ ("craving for becoming") [5] is craving to be or become something, to unite with an experience [16].
This is ego-related, says Buddhist scholar Peter Harvey, the eternal seeking for identity and the desire for some type of rebirth or other [5].
This last donut will fulfill and satisfy me!
Other scholars explain that this type of craving is driven by the popular wrong view of permanence and Eternalism (Sassatavada, the view that a "soul" or "self" never dies because something survives, as if consciousness unchanged carries on, never realizing that what carries on through the "continued wandering on" of saį¹sÄra is an impersonal PROCESS clung to as "self") [4, 17].
The opposite wrong view is Annihilationism (Ucchedavada), the wrong view that there is something that is annihilated at death, which is a transition, passing from one state to another, of an impersonal process. But Western "logic" tells us it has to be one or the other: either we carry on or come to an end. How could both be wrong? This is what the Buddha tried to explain, and he succeeded by explaining Dependent Origination. If there is no self, of course it does not carry on in samsara. But a process carries on, so there must be "self" doing the carrying on, right? No, for in every moment and submoment, phenomena arises
It is not eternal life for an eternal soul, not an independent ego, not something personal, not a "self" or "soul" -- without actually living up to the definition of "soul" or "self" we have always assumed is there). More
How to reach enlightenment here and now (an over-explanation for non-practitioners)
Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Ananda (DBM), COMMENTARY FOR WISDOM QUARTERLY
What is the true nature of all things, of all phenomena? They are (1) impermanent, (2) unsatisfactory, and (3) impersonal (not-self).
But it is foolish to assume that this "impermanence" is eventual. In fact, it is radical(from the Latin radix, at its "root")! From moment to moment, things do not stand. They constantly fall away. They are always arising, turning, and passing, not only at every moment but at every submoment.
In a "moment," such as a citta or "mind-moment," there are three phases: (1) arising, (2) turning, (3) passing. The exact same thing is true of physical particles, rupa kalapas (form phenomena).
This impermanence goes by so quickly that it is not possible to see directly, but there's a trick. The arising and falling away is recorded by the mind and can be reviewed (replayed) in slow-motion to observe the process.
One would learn this in a monastery that knew what it was doing -- such as those in the lineage of the great Pa Auk Sayadaw -- from a long line of practical advice handed down from accomplished teachers to students. So far as we can determine, it is not recorded in the texts, either discourses or commentaries. This seems to be the case with the practical application of many of the teachings mentioned in the Pali canon sutras. The Path of Purification is a compendium of Buddhist meditation practices, and some things are explained there. But it is so dense, in addition to being awkward in translation, that good luck making sense of it.
It's too confusing, too much to think about!
You know, "Buddhism" was much more fun when we were just joking about Zen (Taoism, always asking, "What is the Tao, what is Tao?" a question the Buddha never asked) and chitchatting about koans. Who knew the Buddha really taught something and that there was an actual path-of-practice to enlightenment (bodhi) and liberation (nirvana)? Shouldn't this be easy, and shouldn't it be that Buddhist monastics are wasting their time with all those pesky rules and meditations? Now we see there was a point and there was no time to waste. How long would it take to calm down (samadhi, jhana, stillness), how long would it take to develop insight (vipassana) through systematic mindfulness?
Of course, all of this will seem impossible, but come and see. The process of purification gives the mind incredible powers it does not now possess. This defiled, corrupted, dissolute mind can't see these thing, but that purified, clarified, intensified mind can. The ignorant, uninstructed person cannot see, but an instructed disciple can. That is what the Buddha has been saying all along.
This is what we do not understand, what we do not directly know-and-see, until we develop the path of purification and dispassionately look on at all phenomena (as explained in detail in "The Four Foundations of Mindfulness Discourse" or Satipatthana Sutta).
When we are finally able to see things (cittas and kalapas, mind-moments and material particles) behaving as they have always behaved when we were blind to and deluded about what was really there all along, the mind/heart automatically lets go. There is no effort to do so. Seeing their true nature, we stop clinging.
Furthermore, when we see that all things are utterly incapable of ever fulfilling, satisfying, or doing anything but being ultimately disappointing, we stop craving, stop expecting any new thing to be any different.
Moreover, when we finally know-and-see as it truly is that what we thought (assumed) was personal and self is not, what in the universe (with three spheres of sensual, fine material, and immaterial worlds -- with "heavenly" places in each) is there to cling to?
Why have we been holding on to suffering (dukkha, this unsteady, askew cartwheel making the road so bumpy and painful) and to things always hurtling towards destruction? It is exactly because we did not see, did not know.
I get it! Now I know and see!!
And now are we undeceived, having seen things as they really are and always have been, there is no "effort" to let go. Letting go happens naturally and one knows-and-sees the ultimate, nirvana. This process is "awakening" (bodhi, enlightenment).
Then it is as if everything -- all ignorance and darkness -- dissolves (nirodha), and light arises, and there is awakening out of painful ignorance to ultimate unending bliss. This is the bliss of nirvana, the highest happiness and peace. There is no use in describing it, but it can be directly experienced here and now, free of concepts and views.
There is a mind-door, greenish in hue, near the heart. This heart-mind seems to be the physical base of consciousness, not the brain in the cranium. When meditating, attention can be adverted to the area around the heart. There there is a mirror reflecting experience, consciousness, awareness. If the "mind" were in the brain or the head, it seems attention would be placed there to find it. But it is very much down closer to what in the West we refer to as the seat of our emotions. The Buddha did not specify a physical base for vijƱÄna (consciousness) or manas (in Early Buddhism). However, he seems to have been well aware of the practical application of locating this base for the sake of realizing the ultimate nature of mind-and-matter (nama-rupa), ultimate mind (a stream of cittas) and ultimate materiality (a stream of kalapas). But this is for advanced practitioners of Buddhist meditation rather than philosophers and speculators. For those, perhaps Zen no-mind would be better or the compelling mind-only (Yogachara) view.
(SEEKER TO SEEKER) Buddhist non-duality [there being no distinction between seen and seer in the Mind Only School] sees all of reality as the activity of consciousness.
Divisions such as subject and object, mind and matter, self and world, [nirvana and samsara], are artificially created by consciousness in the process of simulating an external reality.
This video explores the philosophy of the YogÄcÄra School of Buddhism, a tradition that specializes in the study of mind—and how insight into the mind's workings can transform our way of being.
š SCRIPT: Read the script of this video essay on the author's personal Substack page: [soon...]. Video editing by Sempiter & Simeon
#Buddhism #nonduality#AdvaitaVedanta#Neo-Advaita#meditation #philosophy #awakening #enlightenment. How this was made: auto-dubbed
audio tracks for some languages were automatically generated. Learn more
SEEKER TO SEEKER, Jan. 23, 2026; Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
It's a question we (metaphysical thinkers, philosophers, and intellectuals) love. We would probably all want to know. That someone may have been the foolish monk Ven. Malunkyaputta. Here's how the Buddha answered to subdue his delusion, ignorant confusion, and pernicious wrong views.
Metaphysical questions
Malunkyaputta, do not trouble yourself with such Qs
Once when presented with a problem of metaphysics (questions that go "beyond physics") by the Buddhist monk Malunkyaputta, the Buddha calmly responded with the Parable of the Poisoned Arrow.
On that occasion, Ven. Malunkyaputta had been meditating when he got distracted and started pondering. The hindrance of skeptical doubts arose in his mind, realizing that he had never gotten the answer to all of the usual "spiritual" questions seekers were usually in search of. All of those unanswered (some might even say unanswerable, the imponderable questions that plague Homo sapiens or "thinking human").
Is the physical world finite or infinite?
Did the universe have an origin, and will it end?
Who created this Universe?
Is the soul the same as the body or different?
What becomes of a fully enlightened person after death?
And so on ad nauseum. There is really no end to possible metaphysical speculations.
There is even a Buddhist text that summarizes all of the view prevalent at the time of the Buddha, which is called the BrahmajÄla Sutta or "The Net of All-Embracing Views."
"Views" (ditthi) generally refers to wrong views (miccha-ditthi) unless otherwise qualified with samma- ("right-") views. They are as dangerous as a thicket one will get caught up in; it is far better to set them aside, awaken, and with an enlightened mind try to recall what they were when they used to make sense because they will not make sense -- and will not arise -- to the awakened (enlightened) mind/heart.
Ven. Malunkyaputta did not stop there. He threatened the Buddha that he would quit the monastic life and disrobe if he did not get answers to these things.
The Buddha gave him a powerful parable, asked him if the Buddha had ever promised to answer such questions in exchange for him becoming a monastic disciple, and thereby encouraged him to pursue the Path to the end of all suffering at which time he could see for himself independent of any teacher or teaching. This was that parable:
When one is shot with an arrow smeared with poison, that wounded person's family may summon a doctor to have the poison removed and provide an antidote [9].
But what if the wounded person refuses to let a doctor do anything until such time as certain important questions are answered? What if the wounded person demands first to know:
Who shot me with this arrow?
What is that person's caste and job?
WHY did that person shoot this arrow?
What kind of feather was used in its tail?
What kind of wood was used in its shaft?
What kind of poison was smeared on its tip?
What was the method the poison was procured?
One who demands first to have answers to all of that would surely die long before such questions were answered.
So, too, Malunkyaputta, a meditator will die long before getting such [fruitless metaphysical] questions answered.
It is no different for one who follows the Middle Way, which teaches only those things necessary to realize enlightenment (direct knowing-and-seeing for oneself).
Things not helpful and not necessary (but harmful and misleading), the Buddha (the Tathagata or Wayfarer, the Supremely Awakened One) does not teach.
It is because those types of questions are not helpful in one's quest for enlightenment that they have been left undeclared. More (Nontheistic religion)
More, more? Enough has been said, but for those persistent thinkers who question
I have more questions, Sir. - Ask them.
NOTE: It is not because they can't be answered. They can (but any answer will be misleading, confusing, entering a thicket of views). It is not because a Supremely Awakened Buddha does not know; such an extraordinary being does know. But it is precisely because those questions are not useful (but a detriment) that the great Teacher -- concerned with the welfare and wellbeing of students -- sets aside such things and leaves them undeclared.
A disciple, a student, also sets them aside and pursues this path-of-practice to its culmination: awakening in this very life. Then one may ask all such questions.
One may even answer them for others on their quest who ask such loaded questions, but to do so will be a disservice to them which the Awakened One has avoided, set aside, and left undeclared.
It would be like asking the question, "Have you stopped beating your wife? Yes or no!" What is the right answer? There isn't one. There's an explanation but not an answer.
A more ancient example that still makes sense is the question, "When this fire goes out, which way does it go: up, down, sideways?" It doesn't "go" somewhere, for it ceases when its causes-and-conditions cease because, really, it never had an independent existence (an existence independent of those very causes and condition: fuel, wick, heat, oxygen, and process-of-combustion...
In exactly the same way, when we ask about the "soul" (the "self," atta, atman, ego, personality, being, consciousness), "Where does it go after death? To annihilation? To eternal life? Which is it?!" The question is wrong, so any answer will be misleading and mistaken. But there is an answer:
The Buddha formulated that answer in accordance with ultimate truth: Dependent Origination. "When this is, that comes to be; when this is not [present], that does not come to be." Or it may also be phrased more poetically as, "Not having been, they come to be; once having been, they cease." What? Those things. Which things? All composite things (nirvana being the only compact, a.k.a. non-composite, thing and so not a "thing," no-thing yet not "nothing") but most importantly the Five Aggregates clung to as self.
That is why the Heart Sutra says, "Form (the first aggregate or heap) is emptiness, and emptiness is form." A better modern translation would be to say, "Form is impersonal [not self], and the impersonal is form." Then the exact same thing is then said of the remaining four aggregates: feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness(es), the khandha or skandhas in Sanskrit.
The Buddha also went into greater detail when he answered, "What things?" with "the ALL that is burning."
How could this possibly be true? There are many who have followed the Middle Way, who have avoided four foolish (and detrimental) questions and pursued four wise (and beneficial) questions. What are they?
Was I in the past?
What was I in the past?
Will I be in the future?
What will I be in the future?
The fool ponders such thing fruitlessly, full of wrong view, caught in a thicket of views. However, the wise pursue four other questions which the Buddha has suggested, commended, and advocated:
What is dukkha (disappointment, suffering, pain)?
What is its cause?
What is its solution?
What is the way to its solution?
These, indeed, are of great benefit. They are known as the Catu-Ariya-Sacca, the Four Ennobling (Enlightening) Truths, the fourth being this very Ennobling Eightfold Path declared by the Buddha.
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