Aware and Settled
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Friends: Acutely Aware is Aloof, Above, and at Ease! Once the Blessed One was staying at Ves�li in Ambap�li's grove. There and then, he taught the Bhikkhus in this very way: Bhikkhus a Noble Friend should remain: Aware and Settled! And how does a Noble remain Aware? In this: Such Noble Friend sees any Body as just a frame of materiality - a mere transient physical form - thereby keeping any lust and rejection arisen for and of this world under firm control. Aroused, composed, & alert. Such Noble Friend sees any Feeling as just a reaction to sense contact - a mere short-lived mental response - thereby keeping any desire & aversion arisen for this world under firm control. Just eager, calm and clear. Such Noble Friend sees any Mentality as just a passing set of moods - a mere ever-changing complex habitual mental formation - thereby keeping any craving and anger arisen from this world under firm control, by being keen, balanced and attentive. Such Noble Friend sees any phenomenon as just a fleeting experience - a mere blinking appearance of a momentary mental state - thereby keeping any attraction and repulsion arisen from this world under firm control by remaining aloof, above, at ease while acutely aware. Thus is a Noble Aware... And how does a Noble remain Settled? In this: When going out, & when returning such Friend is continuously settled in awareness of exactly that relocation… When looking forward, & when gazing backward such Noble Friend is continuously settled in awareness of just exactly that seeing… When bending a leg, & when stretching an arm such Noble Friend is continuously settled in awareness of only exactly that movement… When wearing a robe, & when bearing a bowl such Noble Friend is continuously settled in awareness of exactly that presence... When eating, when drinking, when chewing, when tasting, and when swallowing such Noble Friend is continuously settled in awareness of exactly that eating process… When using the toilet, when walking, standing, sitting, lying, sleeping, waking up, speaking, and when keeping silent such Noble Friend is continuously settled in awareness of exactly that activity... Thus is a Noble Settled... A Bhikkhu should remain Aware and Settled, Bhikkhus. This is our instruction to you. Comments. Unfailing Continuity of clear Awareness is the crucial issue here! That settled unfailing Awareness of all moments as they pass by mind flickering in time, can disable and eliminate the otherwise domineering autopilot and always pleasure-seeking monkey-mind! Black-hole non-awareness should noted in these common daily situations: "Oops where did I put my keys?", "Ach, I forgot my umbrella there... again!" Illustrative Story: A Zen monk once sought a teacher living in the mountains. When he reached his hut, he quickly entered after leaving his sandals outside. After his reverential bowing, but before he could make any request, this teacher asked him: "To which side of the door did you put your sandals outside?" Stunned by the fact that he could not remember this trivial fact, he realized just there on the very spot, that establishing unfailing continuous awareness was an essential requirement, he yet had to fulfill... He stayed therefore for years on this mountain with that well seeing teacher to do exactly that!      Source: Samyutta Nik�ya - Kindred Sayings V On the four foundations of Awareness. The Awareness Ability: Four_Foundations_of_Awareness, Sati_Summary, Right_On, Straight_View, Sharing_Supreme, Awareness_Analysis, Feeding_Awareness, One_and_only_Way, The_Awareness_Ability, What_is_Right_Awareness, Sati_Studies, Clear_and_Aware_Comprehension, Careful_and_Rational_Attention, Phenomena_is_Mental_States, 1_Producing_4, Mighty_Magic_Majesty, Sati_in_Solitude, Sati_Acute, Winning_Awareness, Aware_and_Composed, Noble_Awareness, Causes_of_sati, Clear_Comprehension, Awareness_Sati. Aware and Settled! Updated: 11 August 2011 http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/IV/Aware_and_Settled.htm
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How to be Released into the very End of Suffering?
The Blessed Buddha once said:
Bhikkhus, these Four Foundations of Awareness, when firmly established
by development and cultivation, are both Noble and Liberating! They lead
one out into the complete elimination of all Suffering. What four?
Here, Bhikkhus, a Bhikkhu lives & dwells, aware & clearly comprehending,
while continuously contemplating & reflecting upon:1: The Body merely as a decaying & ownerless Formation..
2: The Feelings just as conditioned Responses fading away..
3: The Mind only as a set of ingrained & routine Mentalities..
4: Any Phenomenon simply as a constructed mental Appearance..Thereby removing yearning, urge, envy & frustration rooted in this world..
These Four Foundations of Awareness, Bhikkhus, when firmly established
by development and cultivation, are both Noble and Releasing! They guide
one to the Exit, to the Escape by an absolute destruction of all Suffering! -
Isn't our mind like an empty space? Lastime I meditate. It feels like my mind is an empty space where thoughts arises and ceases in them. Is mind an empty space ?
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If it is empty space, isn't it dead?
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What is it that knows empty space? -
Mind is an amazing thing. Streams of thoughts can intrude our mind when we meditate.
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Originally posted by Protoman:
Mind is an amazing thing.
Streams of thoughts can intrude our mind when we meditate.
Thoughts are like clouds. They are not good or bad. Your job is not to judge the thoughts.
Let them pass, and in the gap between thoughts, discover that bright essence of awareness and presence that remains after all conceptual thoughts subside... like the sun revealing itself when the clouds are gone.
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Teacher to guide is important right? Realisation sent me a insight meditation course at bright hill temple.
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Originally posted by Protoman:
Teacher to guide is important right? Realisation sent me a insight meditation course at bright hill temple.
Yes it's best to find a teacher, but you don't need to wait to start looking right now. Your own Mind is your birth-right, nobody can give it to you or give you permission to look at it right now.
http://www.purifymind.com/PlayMind.htm
The big mind of pure awareness is a no-man's-land--a free, open reality without reference points, property boundaries, or trail markers. Although it cannot be grasped as an object by focal attention, it is not an article of faith. Quite the contrary, in the words of a Tibetan text, "The nothingness in question is actually experienceable" (Guenther 1959, 54). Unfortunately, when the untutored mind regards it as a mere blankness or nothingness, the jewel-like radiance of this pure awareness becomes obscured. As Dzogchen teacher Tenzin Wangyal (1997, 29) points out:The gap between two thoughtsis essence. But if in that gap there is a lack of presence, it becomes ignorance and we experience only a lack of awareness, almost an unconsciousness. If there is presence in the gap, then we experience the dharmakaya [the ultimate].
The essence of meditation could be described quite simply, in Tenzin Wangyal's words, as "presence in the gap"--as an act of nondual, unitive knowing that reveals the ground of being in what at first appears to be nothing at all. As another Tibetan text (Guenther 1956, 269) explains, "The foundation of sentient beings is without roots. . . . And this rootlessness is the root of enlightenment." Only in the groundless ground of being can the dance of reality unfold in all its luminous clarity. -
Originally posted by An Eternal Now:
1: The Body merely as a decaying & ownerless Formation..
2: The Feelings just as conditioned Responses fading away..
3: The Mind only as a set of ingrained & routine Mentalities..
4: Any Phenomenon simply as a constructed mental Appearance..I do not really understand what it means by a constructed mental apprearance. Could you explain it?
Thanks
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Here's another translation by the same venerable: "4: Phenomena as made up of and manifested by momentary mental states ..."
See if this is not true. All our sense-perceptions and thoughts, are really momentary, mental states arising and fading... we think what we perceive are truly existing objects, and that mind is the 'I', the perceiver, of those objects... but there can be no knowing without the sense faculty and the object, there is no such thing as a 'knowing' without something being known - even if that object is a mental object... it just wouldn't make sense to speak of knowing without something known, so there cannot be knowing apart from the known in the same way there is no wind apart from the activities of blowing, or a river apart from the activities of flowing... so all that we perceive is simply this fact, this activity and dependently-originated functioning of knowing, awaring, seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, thinking. Knowing/awareness cannot be separated from the object of knowing, and it cannot be separated from all the causes and conditions that manifest this moment of knowing. Because mind is not some perceiver behind the perceived, everything being perceived is in fact mind, or a mental perception... 'Mind' and 'Awareness' is realized to be simply a label collating the various mental perceptions and modes of consciousness. We realize that in seeing there is just the experience, the vivid mental-perception of seen, without a separate agent or seer.
And this fact of awareness, this luminosity, is the essence of all mental states - without which, nothing at all can be experienced. And this arising consciousness (visual consciousness, ear consciousness, etc etc... up to mental consciousness), depending on our sense faculties and sense objects, does not have an independent existence of its own, so it is a function, a display of dependent origination, so what we see, hear, smell, are really 'constructed mental Appearances' - they are not truly there, independent of the meeting of causes and conditions.
In truth, there is nothing that is not a moment of mental perception, much like a dream, and there isn't a true 'I' perceiving 'that'... there is no 'I' apart from this mental perception, so there is simply a vivid mental perception, everything is just a mental perception, and that mental state is in essence luminous clarity. And it is in nature void or empty of any substantial substance - it cannot be located as something inherent or independently existing... certainly the display and the experience cannot be denied, but upon investigation we realize it is just like a dream or a TV show. Try looking at where a thought arise, abide, and ceases to, and it is discovered that thoughts, like all appearances, are simply a coreless and vivid mental appearances, without an independent existence locatable somewhere. What is constructed, what is dependently originated, turns out to be empty and unborn - there is no independent essence of seeing, hearing, etc to be found or located somewhere... there is no independent essence of mind, of experience, of whatever we see - it is a merely dependently originated mental appearance, that turns out to be empty (yet vivid and luminous). In other words, all constructed mental appearances, like a dream, turns out to be in reality unborn.
Everything seems very objectively real until you realize that it is just a mental perception without real substance there! Apart from being just this shimmering, vivid, and yet empty, transient and dissolving mental perception... like a shimmering, flickering mirage, a rainbow, a dream.
To realize this and abandon all our clingings and false projections of an inherent reality, is liberation.
If any of this is not clear I can clarify....
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I would like to ask if you can describe some examples of everyday occurances of the mental states.
Thanks.
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A good example of mental appearance is how our eyes see things around us. We don't actually see the things.
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So as an example, would it be correct to say...?
With regards to the eyes and form, the momentary mental states are like quick and successive snapshots of what mind perceives. Even if the scenery doesn't change, but still the mind is constantly taking snapshots of what's before the eyes. So every moment actually gives a fresh perception.
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Originally posted by realization:
So as an example, would it be correct to say...?
With regards to the eyes and form, the momentary mental states are like quick and successive snapshots of what mind perceives. Even if the scenery doesn't change, but still the mind is constantly taking snapshots of what's before the eyes. So every moment actually gives a fresh perception.
In my opinion, what you said was correct. Many people including me experience mood swings (I try not to "swing" too much nowadays ha ha..). Our moods affect our perceptions. Though it is the same scenery, thing or people, our perception changes according to our mood or other conditions.
Our Zen master gave a very good example. When we are well and good, many people will try to argue or quarrel with people whom we disagree with but when we are sick and unwell, we can't be bothered to argue or quarrel with anyone because we are not in the mood.
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Originally posted by Beautiful951:
I would like to ask if you can describe some examples of everyday occurances of the mental states.
Thanks.
Everything is a constructed mental state... The six consciousnesses are all mental perceptions (five senses + mind).
So when the eye meets a visual object, a visual consciousness arises - that means the mental perception of a red flower, for example. We know this is just a mental perception - for example, the dog does not see a red flower, but a black flower instead. If we can see with 'quantum eyesight' we see 99.999% space. So whatever we perceive is simply a Constructed (dependently originated) mental perception according to our karma and conditions. No true independent and objective reality called 'black flower' or 'red flower' could be found apart from the causal conditions that led to that mental perception, that appearance. We think 'redness' is an attribute of an objective reality, yet upon investigation it is discovered to be empty and dependently originated. 'Black flower' and 'red flower' is simply a constructed mental perception.... see if all phenomena are not so.
As another analogy, if you look at a mirror, you see a reflection of the surroundings... but is the reflection something 'inherently located' inside the mirror? This is not the case, as we know that the function of the mirror is pure potentiality to reflect without a fixed form. The visual perception of the reflection depends on which position you are viewing the mirror from too, for example. So if you walk to another position, another visual perception arises, so we see that every perception is dependently originated, it is a constructed mental perception... it is not something inherent to be found anywhere, inside or outside. Everything is relative to all its causal conditions without independent existence.
These mental states are constantly fading away... they are impermanent and without substantiality. What arises via conditions, ceases via conditions.
Do you have some understanding about this now?
p.s. all the sutras, Heart Sutra, 'Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form' is all talking about this
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Originally posted by realization:
So as an example, would it be correct to say...?
With regards to the eyes and form, the momentary mental states are like quick and successive snapshots of what mind perceives. Even if the scenery doesn't change, but still the mind is constantly taking snapshots of what's before the eyes. So every moment actually gives a fresh perception.
Yes but there is no 'scenery' that doesn't change either... Everything is utterly empty and unfindable as well as impermanent.
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Originally posted by An Eternal Now:
Everything is a constructed mental state... The six consciousnesses are all mental perceptions (five senses + mind).
So when the eye meets a visual object, a visual consciousness arises - that means the mental perception of a red flower, for example. We know this is just a mental perception - for example, the dog does not see a red flower, but a black flower instead. If we can see with 'quantum eyesight' we see 99.999% space. So whatever we perceive is simply a Constructed (dependently originated) mental perception according to our karma and conditions. No true independent and objective reality called 'black flower' or 'red flower' could be found apart from the causal conditions that led to that mental perception, that appearance. We think 'redness' is an attribute of an objective reality, yet upon investigation it is discovered to be empty and dependently originated. 'Black flower' and 'red flower' is simply a constructed mental perception.... see if all phenomena are not so.
As another analogy, if you look at a mirror, you see a reflection of the surroundings... but is the reflection something 'inherently located' inside the mirror? This is not the case, as we know that the function of the mirror is pure potentiality to reflect without a fixed form. The visual perception of the reflection depends on which position you are viewing the mirror from too, for example. So if you walk to another position, another visual perception arises, so we see that every perception is dependently originated, it is a constructed mental perception... it is not something inherent to be found anywhere, inside or outside. Everything is relative to all its causal conditions without independent existence.
These mental states are constantly fading away... they are impermanent and without substantiality. What arises via conditions, ceases via conditions.
Do you have some understanding about this now?
p.s. all the sutras, Heart Sutra, 'Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form' is all talking about this
I would like to tell you what I understand about this and would like your input.
From what I understand, all things are not real because different people have different thoughts and ideas about them depending on how they look at it.For example, I may like to do something today, but depending on my feelings, my hobbies will change over time, and so it is not permanent and what I have done before seems redundant
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Hi,
What you spoke is about what is experienced after mental formation. In a sense yes that is true, that our mental formations and conceptualizations varies according to subjective perception, is ever-changing, and therefore they are illusory.
But emptiness is not just about the illusoriness of mental formations.
What is before mental formation? A pure sensate perception of something, is prior to conceptualization. Means in seeing red flower, you just aware of it on a bare sensate level, just pure awareness.
But even that is empty! It is not the case that if we go beyond concepts, we find something truly existing.... because the bare sensate percept too, dependently originates based on the sense faculty and objects, and therefore are empty.
Like the analogy of a dog seeing a black flower and a human seeing a red flower - even before the formation of concepts and thoughts, the experience differs.... why? Because of different karmic conditions.
As such, we cannot say that the flower is 'truly red and existing' - even the non-conceptual percept is empty and dependently originated.
So we have to discern that both the concept and the bare non-conceptual percepts are both empty in nature.
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Originally posted by An Eternal Now:
Hi,
What you spoke is about what is experienced after mental formation. In a sense yes that is true, that our mental formations and conceptualizations varies according to subjective perception, is ever-changing, and therefore they are illusory.
But emptiness is not just about the illusoriness of mental formations.
What is before mental formation? A pure sensate perception of something, is prior to conceptualization. Means in seeing red flower, you just aware of it on a bare sensate level, just pure awareness.
But even that is empty! It is not the case that if we go beyond concepts, we find something truly existing.... because the bare sensate percept too, dependently originates based on the sense faculty and objects, and therefore are empty.
Like the analogy of a dog seeing a black flower and a human seeing a red flower - even before the formation of concepts and thoughts, the experience differs.... why? Because of different karmic conditions.
As such, we cannot say that the flower is 'truly red and existing' - even the non-conceptual percept is empty and dependently originated.
So we have to discern that both the concept and the bare non-conceptual percepts are both empty in nature.
I remember an analogy posted somewhere in here about a cracker and how it became not a cracker when it is crushed. Is that a little closer?
I also know about the one where the tree falls in the wood and there is no body to hear it so it seems there is sound but there is no sound?
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Originally posted by Beautiful951:
I remember an analogy posted somewhere in here about a cracker and how it became not a cracker when it is crushed. Is that a little closer?
I also know about the one where the tree falls in the wood and there is no body to hear it so it seems there is sound but there is no sound?
Where is the Cracker?
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Originally posted by Beautiful951:
I remember an analogy posted somewhere in here about a cracker and how it became not a cracker when it is crushed. Is that a little closer?
I also know about the one where the tree falls in the wood and there is no body to hear it so it seems there is sound but there is no sound?
Yes the cracker is a good analogy. Not only it becomes not a cracker when crushed... even while there is the appearance of a cracker, there is no core of cracker to be found. If there is a core, it should be findable, yet because there is no core, you can split the cracker in any way you want and break it into crumbs.
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Originally posted by realization:
Where is the Cracker?
Thanks for the link.
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Originally posted by An Eternal Now:
Yes the cracker is a good analogy. Not only it becomes not a cracker when crushed... even while there is the appearance of a cracker, there is no core of cracker to be found. If there is a core, it should be findable, yet because there is no core, you can split the cracker in any way you want and break it into crumbs.
Thanks for explaining it so much. I think I understand about emptiness a little better.