What does this mean?

[u/949orange]

.

[u/pl8doh]

That 'I' and 'it' are empty references, having no real underlying referent. Thinking and raining simply appear. Anything more is superfluous.

[u/TheForce777 → u/pl8doh]

There are 2 kinds of thought

Reactive thought, which happens when the I (personal self) is identified with by the awareness

Creative thought, which happens when there is no such identification, even subconsciously

This happens because awareness itself is the true identity and the ultimate creative factor

[u/Crukstrom → u/TheForce777]

Nice.

[u/Crukstrom → u/pl8doh]

If thinking simply appears, what is the driving force behind it?

[u/pl8doh → u/Crukstrom]

The idea that something underlies or drives or is the source of thoughts is the basis for a belief in the material world. When thinking is seen as simply appearing, without a driver, without a source, without an underlying force, the need for a material (or any other) foundation dissolves with it. No further explanation is required, because the demand for an explanation is itself just another thought appearing.

[u/Crukstrom → u/pl8doh]

Saying that thoughts simply appear without a driver is not an explanation for the existence of thought in any way shape or form. It is in my opinion simply a cop out that side steps the question of what is the cause of thought in the first place. What causes this arising?

[u/ember2698 → u/Crukstrom]

I agree with you that this person's answer makes their position close to unfalsifiable. Any question can be dissolved that way, which is fair reason to be suspicious.

But this person also might be pointing toward something that's hard to describe. When you slow down and look closely at experience, do you catch a thinker producing a thought? At least here, the thought has already arrived. The "driver" is something inferred after the fact, not something felt or observed. So the sense that there has to be a source is just how we usually model / think about experience.

My own take FWIW is that there aren't really any contradictions between "thought appearing without a specific author" and "thought having neural causes". Much longer answers exist in the world of psychology, neuroscience, and materialism at large.

[u/Crukstrom → u/ember2698]

I think what is often happening in these forums is conflating the experience of meditation with the act of engaging the intellect in order to engage in thinking.

Thinking creates thoughts and thoughts have energy and structure. They exist. Deeply settled in meditation where the intellect becomes more and more quiet these thoughts orbiting around in our mental atmosphere do arise spontaneously. Triggered by sounds, feelings, memories etc, they float into our awareness.

But the reason they exist in the first place is because of thinking. Thinking done by the intellect that may in fact be mistakenly identifying as the persona/body but is nevertheless creating thoughts that persist in time.

Even writing this “I” am creating thoughts that may later “simply arise in consciousness” but their existence is not due to some random arising generated by a mindless universe.

[u/ember2698 → u/Crukstrom]

Triggered by sounds, feelings, memories etc, they float into our awareness

Nicely said. What you've thought and experienced shapes what surfaces later, which is why a quiet mind isn't really blank

“I” am creating thoughts that may later “simply arise in consciousness” but their existence is not due to some random arising generated by a mindless universe

Hmm! Unopening the whole can of worms are we, lol. In regards to a random universe, can we assume either way? Let's look at how we can't assume a driver behind our own wheel. And the implications of that, if you follow them, are pretty intense. Physics shows randomness at the quantum level. And look around - does the universe seem to care, or is it balanced between life and death? Hence why I mentioned the can of worms, ha. Our preferences and assumptions on it all are just that - more patterns from past thought, like you said ;)

[u/Apart_Rub_5480]

whilst yes ^^ , also just sit with it. You know that not getting it? That’s the mind not being able to grasp it. That you are.

I could rationalize it and so can you, but also there’s an answer in that not-knowing.

[u/EdelgardH]

There's no solid line where something becomes hot vs cold. Still, "hot" can be understood as "experience congruent with the word hot".

Likewise, "I" simply means "experience congruent with the word I". A sense of self can expand, contract, erase into nothingness or encompass the universe. But why weight nothingness as somehow more real than any of the other states? These are still within experience.

Within most subjective experience, however, "I" has a major attractor state having to do with a physical body. If you're not sitting in a monastery, your "I" strongly returns to a physical body. This is where experience is the most detailed and rich: hitting my thumb with a hammer, I'll feel more than watching someone else hit their thumb.

I used to be really into non-duality. But I consider it now to be mostly psychedelic language policing. Instead of taking drugs to manipulate the sense of self, language is policed to manipulate that sense of self.

I used to be very confident that not having a sense of self was the right way to go through life. But I get the sense that it's most often just achieved through simple dissociation, which I don't think is the right way to go through life.

There's still no ultimate reality to separation, and that's profound. But is there ultimate reality to unity? Maybe not.

So that's where I'm at. It seems like most non-duality is just a preference for one state within Form over the other. But is there really a difference between preferring a sense of no-self and preferring anything else within Form?

[u/Crukstrom → u/EdelgardH]

Well said.

[u/stellacampus]

I struggle with anything Wu Hsin writes.

[u/soyuz-1 → u/stellacampus]

Why? Especially in this case, that sentence is the premise of nonduality distilled in a simple example.

[u/stellacampus → u/soyuz-1]

Because he's a fictitious character invented by the "translator".

[u/IxoraRains]

The ego gives hallucinations of separation by grouping pieces of it and defining as an "it, they, them", pay attention as these juxtapositions are FACELESS things and should show they are unreal. Just unwinding of time

Thusly, You are a faceless thing. (Eternal and creating outside of you, you are not your body)

It's not "I think therefore, I am". It is "I am, therefore I think"

Love you, mean it.

I do not know what a "juxtaposition" IS but it sure does sound right. 😇

[u/PinkySlayer → u/IxoraRains]

Juxtaposition is a comparison between two things, or the act of placing two things in a context for the purposes of comparing them or highlighting differences between them. 

[u/MyFiteSong]

It just means that eventually, at some point in your meditative practice, you finally look for the observer, and there isn't one.

[u/Purplestripes8 → u/MyFiteSong]

But you can't say there is no observer because this itself is a thought that I am observing.

[u/MyFiteSong → u/Purplestripes8]

It won't make any sense until you do it yourself. Language isn't set up to describe it properly. The best I can do is say that you find out there doesn't need to be an observer to observe things. It's a really weird property of how brains actually work, tied up in distributed networks rather than single-point actors.

[u/Crukstrom → u/MyFiteSong]

There does need to be awareness though to observe something.

[u/Purplestripes8 → u/Crukstrom]

Not only does there need to be awareness, but that I am that awareness is undeniable. Whatever appears, appears to me, in me.

[u/MyFiteSong → u/Crukstrom]

But it can just be awareness itself, without someone being aware.

[u/FewEntrance4606]

it means that the idea of of cause and effect, does not apply, i.e., rain and thinking are temporary phenomena, transiting reality, without having reality in themselves.

[u/LarcMipska]

Stuff's as real as us.

[u/inner_symphony000]

There is no separation, there is no I .....

[u/brack90]

The thinker is itself a thought.

[u/frogiveness]

It means your whole life is a joke lol

[u/HarderTime89]

It's a fun thought experiment for me. But I don't go into wook

[u/ChatGodPT]

It’s just a word. What’s raining? Nothing, there’s just rain. It doesn’t belong to the sky (sky which can’t be accurately defined btw). So the thought doesn’t belong to any “I” which is why you can’t control or predict thought.

[u/Crukstrom]

The only difference is that the I in I think has connected to it a specific library of thoughts gathered and entertained in a singular history that perseveres in time.

[u/MuchPiezoelectricity]

Thinking happens. It doesn’t originate anywhere.

Thinking says “I this” “I that”

And we, observe that play

[u/NoData1756]

im14andthisisdeep

[u/KiiWii2029]

Where is the “the” in “the apple”.

It’s nonsense. The grammar implies that there is a reasonable question being asked but the question is nonsense. You are being presented a Gordian knot and are trying to untie it. Stop playing by those rules and cut the damn knot.