We bringing the mind to the present moment, being aware not of fantasies or imaginations or thoughts or day dreams or not just drifting but being lucid about what is actually going on right now.
This can be quite mundane where we are aware of a particular thing that is going on, perhaps we are watching a game of rugby and we are engrossed in what is going on. Or as Buddha says in the Anapanasati sutra we can be aware of the nature of feelings of our breath: a long breath, a short breath etc.
But then there is the more transcendent where we are no longer interested in a particular going on but aware of the actual fact that there is a world, that things are going on, that there is a potential for things to go on. As Heideggar puts it we get alerted to the question of why are there things at all. We're not interested in solving that question, that is a pointless activity that drags us back down again. We are only interested again as Heideggar puts it in the "Lighting Up Process" by which the world becomes manifest. The brightness of Being. Some say that Heideggar was in love while writing Being & Time. Certainly there is a brilliance with which the world shines when we are in love. But this is a tainted version of the sublime because it is only temporary and it arises due to an imperfect conditional being namely the object of our love. But it does for a while focus and interest our mind on the reality of the world. When the suffering sets in again and we become disillusioned with the world again, we stop being quite so interested in it, the brightness goes and we dwell more again in fantasy and imaginations. But it need not be like this. That brightness of love is always there whether we love or not. In Christianity it is a God of Love. Jesus doesn't fall in and out of love, that openness to the brightness of the world is a faith that cannot be tarnished.
But there is a potential pitfall here. The brightness of the world can be interpreted as an "I AM." It goes from a pure consciousness to a "self consciousness." This blog has looked in length at this Narcissistic move. The brightness of existence in general becomes hijacked by an intense awareness that I exist. The brightness of the world emanates from my eyes and it is my presence that makes the world exist.
What is the sound of a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear it. The "I AM" realises that without it there is no sound. It sees itself in that sound. That sound is proof that it exists. "I AM" is what makes the world. This can get fully psychotic as we start to see our fundamental involvement in the very existence of the world. "I AM GOD" we can think in the extreme.
What was a brightness as light as a butterfly landing on our finger, is now a full metaphysical statement about our own primary status in the fabric of existence.
I made this mistake as a kid. The problem simply is that we are using the existence of myself to theorise about the existence of everything else. But if the existence of the world needs a foundation then don't we too?
This is the Descartes error. The presence of thoughts, Descartes observed implied a thinker. Or originally the presence of doubts implied a doubter. And then eventually in his reasoning the presence of anything implied a self. That "presencing" implied an observer. That phenomena exist seemed to imply a necessary connection with a second entity the observer. Where one thing existed there seemed to be an attendant second thing. Surely a simply application of Occam's Razor might have been handy. It immediately doesn't seem right that for one thing to exist there must be two. Or is it?
But there is truth to all this. Quickly before I forget the conclusion, here is just in "owning" things. None of the reasoning is completely faulty it is just the grasping at things that becomes the pathology.
So it is true that a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear it falls in a kind of "silence." That silence is in fact something we should call "null." Its not that a tree suddenly falls over in silence, that is crazy, its just that there is no one to hear and so it goes unheard. That is a "null", or in math an undefined. We are asking an impossible question. What is heard if no one can hear. Consequently the Buddhist encourages us to observe that a phenomenon arises as the interaction between an object and a consciousness. There are indeed two existences required for a single phenomenon to happen just as Descartes observed.
This can be generalised to the Buddhist doctrine of "Interdependence." Nothing exists by itself; all things are born from other things, and will decay back into other things. It's a simple thing to observe. If a cake existed in the ingredients then we could never eat a cake, it would exist forever. The point is that at some point the cake does not exist. It must be made. And then we eat it and it no longer exists again. The cake does not exist by itself. It is in fact the result of many things coming together, just as the phenomena of our sense are the result of things coming together. Coming together is what underpins existence.
Ah ha says our "I AM". See there "I AM". I am the consciousness that must be present when a phenomenon happens. I hear the tree, I have made that sound. But its only part true. The tree made the other half of the sound! And it gets worse for the "I AM." Because as we can see the tree start as a seed, grows and then falls and dies. And we can also see the exact same thing about our self. Indeed its even more fragile for a consciousness. Every time we fall asleep our consciousness disintegrates. Our consciousness gets made anew every time we wake up, completely new every day! And its even worse, because as we day dream and let our mind drift it can fall to such a low level of consciousness that it barely exists at all. Things can happen and we don't even notice. Best example of this was in the Beavis and Butt-head movie where the on going joke was that nothing happened for them, not because it didn't happen but because they simply didn't notice.
The problem for Descartes is that the "I AM" is very fragile. It will exist perhaps only during the phenomenon itself. It is a different "I AM" each thought. From the previous post when Descartes thinks "I am thinking" he is placing a token with that thought to give it some ownership and "hisness". A car is a car it is definitely not me, yet when I place my token in the car it somehow magically becomes a part of me. Scratch that car, even 1000 miles away and you scratch me. This is because we place a token, like a bet, on that car. If the thought that Descartes has placed his token in is good or bad, right or wrong, important or irrelevant now that token goes with it and that is the problem. Defending that token, leads to all kinds of strange behaviour regarding the thought. You may even write a whole book and philosophy, indeed begin Modern philosophy by following that token.
The giving of authority to first hand direct observation of phenomena instead of arguments derived from Theological texts or God was an important step in philosophy but it was immediately tainted by a spectre of "self" as individuals adding betting tokens. In the Neo-Classical West this is considered a good thing in the adversarial approach to justice, dialectics and politics. And indeed Plato is not wrong, that truth exists in the gaps between people, it is like the sound of the tree arising from the interaction of falling tree and ground; it doesn't stand around like a passive statue to be found, Truth is created in the interactions of people. But lurking around every corner is the desire for the "self" to place a token in this. This truth is mine. I did this. "I AM."
And briefly picking up on a thread above. Phenomena are weird things. Beavis and Butt-Head may not notice all the things going on because they are incredibly unmindful and alert. But there is another quality of mind called Concentration. In modern secular meditation they don't talk about this much. If mindfulness is keeping the mind gentle and watchful of what is going on around, concentration is closing the mind down on one thing. A person in mindfulness will notice all phenomena; they won't follow them (or place token) but will just note that they are there. A person in concentration will only notice what they are focused on, they will follow that one thing like a person on horseback follows the horse. Concentration is like a powerful laser beam that smashed through the layers of dirt and cloudiness that blocks the brightness of the present moment. After deep concentration the mind returns completely pure with all blockages removed. It is an extraordinary experience, unmatched by anything in mundane worldly life. This is jhana and there are either 4 or 8 layers depending upon your school. While jhana are connected in a tree you can enter any of them directly. So phenomena are in a precarious position. Someone may be in the forest when the tree falls, but if they are concentrating on something else in jhana the tree still won't have a sound.
So it is tempting then to say that "I AM" does exist, it is just the power to chose what I focus on and make exist. This is the transcendent version of something mundane like "I want to see Bodh Gaya". We go through all the processes, travel plans and eventually we arrive at Bodh Gaya and there are the temples and the people all manifest. We have made them manifest through our pilgrimage. "I AM" we conclude. And indeed this is true, you did make this happen. Wow people say you have done the pilgrimage. Unfortunately that means a token is placed! But it is done now, the journey is over, now you are there different things happen. And if we are tempted to start to leave a counter on the achievement of the pilgrimage it is worth reminding ourselves that we only exist because our parents gave birth to us. When the "I AM" does its awards speech on having achieved the great goal of having travelled to Bodh Gaya it needs to remember its parents, and the people who built and ran the transport, and the people who built Bodh Gaya and Buddha himself, and the worms that made the soil healthy that grew their food... the "I AM" is not so central after all.
I walked Lands-End to John o'Groats in UK once and in retrospect the big dissatisfaction was not knowing exactly when I arrived. For me it was following the straight line between coast to coast. But how do you pick the end? In the end I found a post on the cliffs by the lighthouse as the end. But went down on the beach all the same, and went into town. After so many weeks it ended with a fizz spread over a day, not a bang. This is life, there are no definite things or points, or landmarks or sign posts. You can do the whole walk but there is no clear line around it, like climbing mountains I mentioned before the exact top is unclear. We should set a precision limit when we aim to complete a task: within 20m of the top is enough. For some people they may say within 50miles of John o-Groats will do as the end. Likewise the boundaries of our pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya are a undefined. We get home and someone says they spent a week on retreat at the temple and we think oh no I didn't really arrive I only skimmed the surface like a tourist. So the phenomena are boundless and the events of the world really quite undefined. But we are not Beavis and Butt-Head, the point is that when we look closely and are fully aware they are no longer so black and white.
This reminds me of the SRH too. An entity cannot define its own boundary. The boundary of a thing necessarily invokes things that are not that thing. The idea of self contained entity, a pure substance that is itself is a contradiction. And even in abstract logic when someone tries to create a total system it fails as Godel showed. Or before him Russel with the Set of All Sets.
OK I may have lost thread here. Returning to the conclusion. There is a stage in the lucid mind where we have an amazing experience of the Now where we deeply understand that we exist. Life is no longer a dream. I really do exist! Its a profound life changing realisation. "I AM HERE." When I see the sun rise it is rising on and even for me. It is religious and gives grounding and solidity to the world. But beware. We can grasp at this inauthentically and hold that self as a permanent being. I need to explore this more myself because in Hinduism the Tat Tvam Asi (TTA) is very close to this. The Atman (or "I AM") is seen as identical to the Brahman (or "That is"). Which is very near Descartes. In the manifesting of the world we see ourselves. They are not different but the same.
Perhaps easier to put the TTA in terms of its opposite. In mundane existence we see ourselves as separate from the world. The world is there to be grasped, owned, conquered, and in turn it fights back and crushes us, disappoints us, lets us down, makes us hurt. The opposite of this is TTA. We realise that there is no soul that exists in "opposition" to the world. My deepest soul IS the most hostile and alien part of the world. Not similar they are the exact same thing. Look one way it looks like Self look the other and it looks like World. Yet people do not regard Descartes meaning this. For Descartes the thinker and the thought were bound together, they were not the same thing!
And Buddha differs from TTA too. For Buddha the Thinker and the Thought are separate things, what is important is that neither is permanent. The phenomenon or consciousness of thinking arises from the interaction. For Buddhism there is only one goal and that is to up anchor and drift away from the idea of a solid statue like permanent self. The problem with TTA is that it places a solid statue like self at the heart of the universe. In reality this means people with this teaching are more likely to grasp the TTA and attribute some solid reality to it. The proper use of TTA is to use it to get rid of the opposition between self and world which is the mundane state of belief and awareness. Absolutely not to then posit the existence of something solid and permanent behind this that we can hold onto instead. What kind of Moksha involves holding on to things?
And so to wind up. A lucid consciousness in the present moment may start to grasp a self and use this as proof of a self that is separate from the world; the "I AM." This should be resisted. The proper mind state is just awareness that this is now and that we are inhabiting a very present now at this moment. But we take nothing from it! Once this lucidity goes it is gone! Carrying things around after meditation or pure states of mind arise is like putting another rock in our rucksack. We aren't supposed to be carrying anything, we're supposed to be lightening the load.
This is the fallacy in declaring your enlightenment. Indeed you may be enlightened, but you don't carry it with you as a weight. Enlightenment is the giving up on such weights, labels and binding. How can Siddhartha Shakyamuni have been enlightened, he wouldn't even have accepted that name (except for pragmatic reasons of discourse). Likewise how can there be a "I AM" beyond a fleeting moment. We certainly can't be bothered to carry it the freeloader with us.
Cue Zen story. So a novice monk and his master come to a swollen river and find a woman unable to cross. The master offers to carry her. She climbs on his back and he wades over. Some days later the novice says that he is troubled by what the master did. You are not supposed to have contact with women how could you have carried her on your back. The master said I only carried her across the river, you have been carrying her ever since.
And this is the point, not of rules and petty worldly concerns but the essence of life that it only ever happens in small chunks and when the chunk has happened it is gone. All of it. Even our precious memories are temporary. Things happen, we remember them, we re-remember them and change them, the original memory is gone we hold on to some new version, it changes gradually, and then we forget them or we die. There is nothing to carry with us. Not even a "thinker" or "rememberer" being carried along. Even mind states no matter how wise and enlightened only lasts so long. As Venerable Kondanna realised at Sarnath what is born must die, and what exists must have been born.
Its a common feature of mankind that as kids we look to the future and as elderly we look to the past and at some point in the middle we are concerned with what is actually going on. There is no reason it has to be this way. In a long difficult journey at the start its good to look back and appreciate what you have achieved, rather than be overwhelmed with what is to come. And at the end we focus on what is left to do. When all is done we can relax. The elderly don't need to look back, they can look only at what is left to do, and rejoice in that freedom of everything being done. Compare themselves with a child who has all the struggle of education, finding love, settling down, becoming someone still to do. There is no fixed approach here. We don't have to carry anything unless we want to, but then like the monk carrying then woman, we put them down once the river is crossed. Easier said than done, but that is the challenge of enlightenment... which we also put down eventually.
So in conclusion, at end of another very rambling and lengthy post while I think onto paper to sort out my own ideas out: in lucid states of mind the temptation to grasp at a self is the wrong take home. The take home is the opposite that we can let this go.
And ironically the take home from this text hopefully is no doctrine, but rather a step closer to upping anchor and considering nothing in this world worth carrying for longer than necessary. And the "than necessary" is critical. It tempting when first beginning to throw everything away and carry nothing at all. What did Buddha do other than abandon all worldly interests and even almost starve himself to death. We shouldn't be concerned about such an extreme approach, we all need to learn. I sometimes think "middle path" is interpreted as caution and mediocrity especially in strict societies where rigid social conformity is expected. We should not be worried about making mistakes, the whole point is to abandon such concerns as reputation and achievement. If we seek earnestly we will find, that's all. But if harm arises, like Buddha almost dying of starvation, or at the other extreme our motivation weakens and we become fat, formulaic, dogmatic and lethargic, the message is pretty obvious we have placed too many betting tokens, our debts have risen and we are carrying too many things.
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