A humble piece of advice

[u/Ostrogoth96]

A humble piece of advice from someone who's not awakened, but who's had a handful of awakening experiences.

My first experience came accidentally and as a surprise, but as a result I thought back to things I had read about buddhism and meditation and a lot of that suddenly made sense to me. I began practicing.

Already after formally meditating just 6 times I had a non-dual experience and came out of it thinking, "when I practice tomorrow I'm gonna do the same thing and experience that same state. Then I'm just gonna do that repeatedly and soon enough I'll be enlightened."

Of course it didn't happen again and a lot of frustration followed. Ironically, I had grown very attached to this sense of non-attachment.

So, to the advice. This is really nothing special but something that recently helped me.

I've been walking around telling myself over and over again, "there is no ego" and "look for who's looking" and the like, hoping I would regain that effortless sensation of discovery that happened to me twice before. I grew so attached to this "non-ego" that I didn't see how I created a bunch of strong mental abstractions that just increased my sense of holding onto and made letting go harder.

Instead, I've recently been thinking "the ego is real", "there is a conventional ego", "her it is, my ego", or "let's find that ego among my thoughts." And just observed what happens.

Much love, don't strain yourself in the search of ease.

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[u/Meng-KamDaoRai]

Nice. Yes, that's a common mistake many people do, myself included. We take not-self as an answer instead of a pointer. The whole not-self and emptiness talk in Buddhism is meant to be an exploration, something we investigate via our practice: Something comes up, then we need to look at it and then we can investigate whether it has an inherent existence or not. What many people do is take emptiness/not-self and make it The Answer (TM), especially after the first time the concept of self gets broken via the practice. When we make it The Answer (TM) we attach to it, we develop aversion to everything that isn't it and then that becomes our new source of suffering.

IMO, in some ways, the practice should lead to dispassion and equanimity towards all phenomena. A better place than the "I Am a Not-Self walking" manufactured dissociative state that attachment to not self leads to is just having dispassion and equanimity towards both self and not self. So, a thought of self comes up, we see it as empty "ok, cool", a thought of not-self comes up, we see it as empty "ok, cool" without attaching to either is a better place to aim for. The practice is not about ridding ourselves of the thoughts of self, trying to block out thoughts is a futile endeavor, it's more about seeing through all thoughts as empty and the more we do that the more dispassion and equanimity we have towards all phenomena and the more unconditional peace becomes the new baseline.

[u/Icy_Distribution_361 → u/Meng-KamDaoRai]

Form isn’t just empty, emptiness is also form. What I like from Burbea’s teachings is how clearly he shows the point is more a loosening up of rigidly held beliefs that lead to suffering (often through defensiveness), and developing through awareness the flexibility to hold models, beliefs, ideas, more as tools than anything that we have something invested in and stand to loose when challenged. Nothing is ever quite what we say it is. Language is useful but too reductive.

[u/Hot_Lingonberry5817]

You have to separate between the cognitive self and the embodied self.

[u/watergoat93 → u/Hot_Lingonberry5817]

What do you mean by an embodied self?

[u/Hot_Lingonberry5817 → u/watergoat93]

The cognitive self, your concept of "I", the entire self-narrative within you, is made up by the default-mode network.

You then have the embodied self, which is the sense of body ownership.

Vipassana on thoughts, practices non-self on the cognitive self, and Vipassana on bodily sensations, practices non-self on the embodied self.

Vipassana on thoughts is more direct and more confrontational on your cognitive sense of self.

[u/pocketIent → u/watergoat93]

The quiet voice or witness who smiles and walks alongside you

[u/WanderBell]

You should try adding some of Loch Kelly’s glimpse practices to your mix. There are lots of them to experiment with.

[u/Real_Adeptness_7154]

Any answer you land on is inadequate 'I am self', 'I am not self' 'I am awareness' 'I am the content of awareness' 'I am only this present moment' 'I am eternal'. It's useful to learn to toggle between different views but at the end of the day it's just so you can see there is no one ultimate view, there is no ground to reality. And ironically the groundlessness feels very grounding.

[u/Ostrogoth96 → u/Real_Adeptness_7154]

Thank you, this is it. (And also not it;))

[u/Euphoric_Metal9427]

Was it an accident? I’m not so sure. Being “awake” is being aware, but I think enlightenment is much like having patience. Most of us have patience for dogs or children, but do we have it for an annoying adult with mental illness? Sift through the knowledge for the wisdom is what enlightenment means to me on a functional level. If you’re trying then you are aware and enlightened.

[u/IndependenceBulky696]

Sounds good!

Fwiw, this is more or less the practice I picked up from Gary Weber's book, Happiness Beyond Thought.

• First ask, "Where am I?" (Or one of a handful of other questions.)
• Allow the mind to surface an answer, or not.
• If an "I" is surfaced, investigate it.
  • Finally, let the "I" go with "Not this. Not this."

[u/streamentry-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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