The Unborn Buddha-Mind

last SG · 2009-11-26T23:54:38+00:00

Unintentional deeds such as what you said is not blameful as it is done out of need and not an unwholesome intention to kill others. Whatever harm is totally...

Weychin SG

Hi Emanrohe! My contention that anger, or other emotional outburst for that matter, is non conceptual, is that it does not arise during point of engagement, but it arise from condition in reference to "I". I may have "learnt" dislike someone, but if do not think or the someone, anger does not arise. Remember, emotions are a primal response"good" or "bad" in relation to self. Anger manifest as initially as irritation, as it builds, impatience and finally a lost of mental control and if unrestrained maybe physical violence. When "self" is threatened or reaches one's level of emotional IQ, ones loses composure and becomes irrational. Anger is a lost of control that preconditioned and triggered when a stressor is applied. Predisposition, in this instance, personality inherent and not acquired. Ever realise that every new born baby has a personality? Some are placid and content, others curious and very inquisitive, some insecure and required constant attention and still others highly irritable. This are inborn traits which not conceptual, they simply are, thus forming the one basis of relationship. The conceptual or awareness of "I" does not develop until much later. Preconditioning with the basis of one personality in contact with one's environment and persons in contact, further develops one's personality. However, at or around the onset of puberty, one start consciously wonder one individuality and tries different persona to develop or finds one's identity. While is it true that sometimes, especially kind do not know in certain situations. Once if there is a reference "I", a response is forthcoming.

Weychin SG

Amend the last 2nd sentence, while is is true that sometimes, especially kids does not know how to react in certain situations . If there is a reference to"I", response is usually forthcoming.

Emanrohe SG

Dear Weychin,

If you talk abt the reference to "I" then you are spot on :)

Metta_(I)_

An Eternal Now SG

I wrote: I think 'What is it' is a powerful koan and pointer. Whatever you say isn't It (it's your interpretation of It, which thus is not It), you can only 'know' it by becoming ONE with it. Actually there is not even a becoming one, there is only actually IT, our mind merely projects separation.

When we experience Awareness directly without using our thoughts, everything is experienced as having a magical, alive, shimmery, fresh, amazing and blissful quality to it. Life is not not the 'boring and ordinary' as the mind interpretes it, even the most ordinary things rings of 'awesomeness'. You will be naturally attracted, pulled towards the pristine awareness than to stressful thoughts. The ego will melt in the wonder and majesty of awareness. Awareness will literally blow your mind away One moment I was just dreaming stressful thoughts, the other moment I 'woke up' and was totally drawn to Awareness itself... there was no compulsion for me to go back to the dream. It's just such a huge contrast. Sometimes it's so blissful that people around me wonder why I'm smiling. But surely I'm not mad... it's mad to not notice Life... hahaha

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I was reading this interview by Eckhart Tolle just now and thought to myself "Oh my god, that's exactly the same order as I have experienced it". First I was lost in suffering thoughts, then I had a compulsion to transcend the thoughts as I can't stand them and what I did is precisely the same: asking Who am I? Then everything was dropped off and what remained was just this I AM, this beingness that doesn't have a form but is clearly present. Afterwards I'm just absorbed in this formlessness and next there was just this amazing clarity and experiencing everything as if like a miracle with almost no thoughts, like he said, 90% of the thoughts gone. There's just no more interest in the thought, I'm just basking in wonder of pure awareness, everything ordinary becomes wonderful. I'm only interested in 'feeling' everything than thinking about it.

And I too felt that I needed to write it down "in case it leaves me or I lose it", and that is why I wrote it here. The experience isn't equally intense in all moments of my life, but this 'peak experience' is actually not a distant experience but is something accessible at any moment (there's only One) Right Now in the Present Moment, Pure Awareness is the ever-present shining sun that can never be lost. It just becomes temporarily obscured as we become fixated on thoughts, or become distracted... if we just turn the light around we discover this state is our natural state and never leaves.

The thought that Eckhart Tolle's intro chapter in The Power of Now was a little similar to mine did came to mind on that night as I was writing the post, but it never occured to me that the order it all unfolded was actually similar.

Excerpt from his interview:

http://www.inner-growth.info/power_of_now_tolle/eckhart_tolle_interview_parker.htm

Yes. I was about twenty-nine, and had gone through years of depression and anxiety. I had even achieved some successes, like graduating with the highest mark at London University. Then an offer came for a Cambridge scholarship to do research. But the whole motivating power behind my academic success was fear and unhappiness.

It all changed one night when I woke up in the middle of the night. The fear, anxiety and heaviness of depression were becoming so intense, it was almost unbearable. And it is hard to describe that "state" where the world is felt to be so alien, just looking at a physical environment like a room. Everything was totally alien and almost hostile. I later saw a book written by Jean-Paul Sartre called Nausea. That was the state that I was in, nausea of the world. [Chuckle] And the thought came into my head, "I can't live with myself any longer." That thought kept repeating itself again and again.

And (then suddenly there was a "standing back" from the thought and Looking at that thought, at the structure of that thought," If I cannot live with myself, who is that self that I cannot live with? Who am I? Am I one—or two?" And I saw that I was "two." There was an "I," and (here was a self. And the self was deeply unhappy, the miserable self. And the burden of that I could not live with. At that moment, a dis-identification happened. "I" consciousness withdrew from its identification with the self, the mind-made fictitious entity, the unhappy "little me" and its story. And the fictitious entity collapsed completely in that moment, just as if a plug had been pulled out of an inflatable toy. What remained was a single sense of presence or "Beingness" which is pure consciousness prior to identification with form—the eternal I AM. I didn't know all of that at the time, of course. It just happened, and for a long time there was no understanding of what had happened.

As the self collapsed, there was still a moment of intense fear—after all, it was the death of "me." I felt like being sucked into a hole. But a voice from within said, "Resist nothing." So I let go. It was almost like I was being sucked into a void, not an external void, but a void within. And then fear disappeared and there was nothing that I remember after that except waking up in the morning in a state of total and complete "newness."
I woke up in a state of incredible inner peace, bliss in fact. With my eyes still closed, I heard the sound of a bird and realized how precious that was. And then I opened my eyes and saw the sunlight coming through the curtains and felt: There is far more to that than we realize. It felt like love coming through the curtains. And then as I walked around the old familiar objects in the room I realized I had never really seen them before. It was as if I had just been born into this world; a state of wonder. And then I went for a walk in the city. I was still in London. Everything was miraculous, deeply peaceful. Even the traffic. [Chuckle]

I knew something incredible had happened, although I didn't understand it. I even started writing down in a diary, "Something incredible has happened. I just want to write this down," I said, "in case it leaves me again or I lose it." And only later did I realize (that my thought processes after waking up that morning had been reduced by about eighty to ninety percent. So a lot of the time I was walking around in a state of inner stillness, and perceiving the world through inner stillness.

And that is the peace, the deep peace that comes when there is no longer anybody commenting on sense perceptions or anything that happens. No labeling, no need to interpret what is happening, it just is as it is and it is fine. [Laughter] There was no longer a "me" entity.
After that transformation happened, I could not have said anything about it. "Something happened. I am totally at peace. I don't know what it means." That is all I could have said. And it took years before there was some "understanding." And it took more years before it evolved into a "spiritual teaching ."That took time. The basic state is the same as then, but the external manifestation of the state as a teaching and the power of a teaching, that took time. It had to mature. So when I talk about it now to some extent, I add something to it. When I talk about the "original experience" something is added to it that I didn't know then.

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