Joseph Maynor

I'd say that the sounds you hear in your mind are real. And you're right, they are not the same as external sounds. The thoughts triggered by the sounds in your mind are real too. The thought-stories are not real, but the sensation of the thoughts are real. I think people go too far with the Maya concept. Maya is not impressions so much, it's conceptions. What is real are the impressions. You being the self-aware impressions is reality. Not being by doing anything, just realizing you already are what is True, what is real. Impressions are not technically distinct though. Reality is one unified flow. Impressions are sort of identified out of that flow. But it is not like impressions are mere thought-stories or symbols. Impressions are pieced-out of the singular flow, sectioned-out of it. So, impressions stand at a much higher level of real-ness than thought-stories do, even if individuation of impressions pre-supposes limits that don't exist in Nature. Like when you are walking outside and you hear a dog bark. That is individuation because actually your experience is all of a piece. What your mind has done is individuate a sound and label it. So, this does get complicated. Are impressions real if they inherently bifurcate reality? In that case, perhaps the claim that impressions are Maya is not implausible after all. Sometimes I wonder if Mindfulness is inherently reductionistic because it tends to bifurcate reality into 6 cubby-holes. Is that position towards reality egoic, overly mental? Interesting question. I think the answer is that if we want to have any knowledge at all we have to make at least one assumption -- and that seems to be the idea that there exists sight, smell, taste, feeling, sound, and thoughts. But if you think about this, that is a concept too. And it is not grounded in any impression. And it bifurcates reality, which is all of a piece. It privileges epistemology over metaphysics. What is is seen though the lens of what is knowable, or what we can know. But maybe there is an egoic perspective hiding in the bowels of that. Am I talking crazy? Philosophizing might be crazy, but it's not always stupid.

I agree with you in part. It has been by asking questions that has raised my awareness the most though. So, you gotta be careful with that kind of advice. But I take it charitably and in good faith. Enlightenment is not just the destination but the journey, and the journey by necessity is fraught with error. It's like a child thinking it can skip adolescence and shoot straight to adulthood. You gotta go through the process to become enlightened. And that process should be messy. If it is clean it is a weak enlightenment not a strong one. You might not get the answer by questioning, but the questioning unsettles something else that leads to an epiphany. So, whatever you do in service of becoming enlightened is ultimately beneficial over the long term, even if it is engaging in stupid things. Stupid things cause smart things paradoxically. And there isn't always a 1-to-1 connection between them. It's like tripping and falling down a manhole and landing on a feather bed stuffed with money with angelic music playing in the background. Who knew? Who could have known? So, beware of the rationalist paradigm kind of skewing this assumption that there has to be a 1-to-1 relationship between questions and answers. Sometimes a dumb thing leads to a smart thing. Be open to that. What we are doing here is increasing awareness. And it's by doing a lot of dumb things that increases awareness the most. And everybody has to do this, even if it is annoying to those further up the chain. Like listening to kids talk about basic math is almost intolerable to the calculus student. The calculus student forgot where he came from. He sees things myopically from his current perspective. Watch this excellent video on point: It's one of my favorite Leo videos. "Failure is a mechanism that feeds a lot of progress in your life, specifically it feeds understanding." "Focusing on success to the exclusion of failure is backwards and not very realistic." "Failures tell you with certainty what doesn't work." "The failures you are taking along that route are actually generating a lot of your ultimate success."

The notion of reality, that reality exists, that reality is real, is a paradigm-lock.

Great question. I had the same one. This video helped me find the answer.

It took me this long to figure this out! You can hear this stuff, hear this stuff, hear this stuff. And then, at the right time, it just clicks. It's like -- oh yeah, what the hell am I doing? Awareness killed off another stupidity. It takes a while to navigate the maze though. The irony is that you gotta do it, so I don't regret the path. I pursued it fervently. The best insights come from counter-intuitive moves. I paraphrased below more of your language from the video and added a couple of words in myself so that's why this stuff is not in quotes. All ideologies except true skepticism make claims about what is good and bad, true and false. This game becomes your downfall because it is a game you cannot win. You will never be happy playing this game. Your mind will be perturbed mentally because now you need to defend this stuff. The true skeptic does not take positions on what is good, bad, true, and false. This leaves them with a quiet, unperturbed mind, and from there they can achieve Eudaimonia.

@Leo Gura The more I continue to play the debate game, the more I really resonate with this wise video of yours. A great video. Nothing can be known for certain. "Skepticism leads to non-duality by refusing to take any ideological positions. Total quietude of mind is the absolute truth." "Stop holding positions. The whole point of the ego is to latch onto positions. Let them go. The ego needs a position to be, to exist. Don't fall into that trap." "The true skeptic is not a debater, they are interested in the end of debate." "Judgments and conclusions go beyond the appearances. We don't want to kid ourselves that we know more than we do. This is dogmatism." "The true skeptic is not a debunker." "True skepticism leads to tranquility of mind." I need to embody this but without stopping Inquiry. Inquiry needs to be confined to the Self though, as Ramana Masarshi said. The problem is that we want to externalize Inquiry. That's where we go astray. We go from the mindset of offering a perspective to the mindset of offering the Truth. That's the slight of hand. Every perspective is just a perspective. No perspective is the Truth. We forget that all the time. The ego is very sneaky and nefarious on this point. As soon as we notice that we are telling (dogmatically asserting) the Truth (our truth) or setting the record straight, we should check ourselves. I watched this video twice through tonight. It's easy to hear this stuff, but much harder to embody it and to live it.

So we cannot know for certain that reality is real then. That would be a judgment. All we have is the appearance. Saying the appearances are real is going beyond appearance. Here's an interesting one. I am the Self. Is this an appearance or a judgment? If it's a mere appearance, how can we claim that we are the Self in a factual kind of way, like we are inclined to do. I think the belief that I am the Self is the only case where the proof is provided, and it's not experience or reason. The one undogmatic belief. Even saying that appearances are real seems more dognatic than the belief that I am the Self. I am the Self seems to be the only objective Truth. Is this a dogmatic statement? Direct consciousness is a way of knowing, as is experience and reasoning.

@Shin Really all that is happening is our awareness is increasing, nothing more. Everything else is just monkey-chatter. We are not even in control of this increasing awareness. We're just aware of it happening. The Self is unfogging it's own mirror. It's the ego that interprets this as progress. There really is no value in reality. Reality just is. Enlightened life is no more objectively good than unenlightened life. It's only the ego's preference for peace, bliss, that gives the nod to enlightenment. The ego kills itself in this quest though because in the pursuit of peace and bliss, the Truth ends up chopping the feet out from under it. So, we are tricking the ego to kill itself basically. But even that cannot be seen as objectively good, because reality just is. There are no objective values in reality, that would be egoic, a human perspective super-imposed upon reality. Maybe this is why you hear the cliche that it is better to transcend a strong ego than a weak ego. But the trippier thing is that pursuit of peace and bliss is egoic, but the end of that egoic quest leads to annihilation of the ego -- yet we cannot even say that that is objectively good! This is very tricky stuff. Sneaky, egoic drives are behind enlightenment initially -- the ego gets on board, but it's a death-wish ultimately. Why would the ego be dumb enough to plot its own demise? Well, think of hard drug use, it's the same concept -- the ego being stupid and thinking too myopically. The ego sucks at thinking long-term -- that's its weakness. Enlightenment is a way of exploiting that weakness. It's like luring a mouse onto one of those snap-traps with an enticing piece of cheese.

Your belief that experience is an illusion is not the Truth. I think you go too far there. For somebody who claims experience is an illusion, you tend to hold strong beliefs, stronger than most others on here. Your real default position is that you know quite a lot.

This is not a beginner's question where you can get the answer from Wikipedia. This is a serious question. I'm looking for some key differences that you can think of. And then we'll discuss. I find that Taoism is incredibly profound and should be more fully investigated in the West. And I'll contribute too because I have a pretty intermediate grasp of Taoism. I understand the Tao Te Ching very well. Or at least I think I do. When that book becomes clear to you, it is hard to mistake it. With Buddhism, I'm at the intermediate stage, but I am stronger in Taoism than Buddhism, although I am learning very quickly. And you can add some Advaita Vedanta theory in here too. Or any other relevant theory. Maybe you coined the theory yourself? If so, add that. Let's not get locked in the paradigm of looking back. Tradition is what it is, but let's also innovate and see connections in a modern way so that we can make the connections current to us. In the now. Ok. So, to recap, what we're doing here is trying to find parallels and comparisons between Taoism and the Indian Philosophies of Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. Consider: Tao = the Absolute (Brahman) Tao = Atman Wu We = Flow Te = indistinguishable from Tao Te gives rise to Tao

If there is no free will shouldn't the voice be released as egoic? Or should it be accepted. I realize the irony here as there is really no control. However, increased awareness with create the desired control. Awareness alone is curative. The Truth alone is curative.

@Anna1 The world may be illusion, but the Truth is not illusion. The Truth is reality. Reality is real, not illusory. Maya is a belief, an ideology. Maya does not capture Awareness, the Self, or the Truth. Quite the reverse actually. Awareness captures Maya as an idea, a belief.

@Anna1 There is no subtle body. That is an illusion. All distinctions are existentially false. Reality is Nothingness.

@Edvard Reality exists, just stripped of all concept.

Got it. One of the things I have to be mindful of is when the ego wants to sustain the belief that my awareness comes through the eyes. I need to expand Awareness to all Truth. This can only be done through increasing Awareness and mindfulness, through "practice".

Is this my awareness, or is this an illusion? Does this show that my awareness is often contingent on the position of my head? This appears to be a myopic kind of awareness, not the majestic awareness that we like to think we are. If I am not my body, why is my awareness so confined to being intimately correlated with the position of my body? // Leo described the Self as pure, transparent, empty awareness -- or presence. The essence of the Self, or empty awareness, is to hold experience and all of reality. The Self is not located anywhere.

I love your posts! I am reading the Upanishads and Brahma Sutras right now. Here's my understanding. The Buddhists generally do not think there is a Self or Absolute. I take that to mean that they do not think that Awareness is real. They are like Materialists. They do not give reality to Awareness, to consciousness. So, yeah there is consciousness of things, but consciousness itself is not real, not True. So, there is no Self per se. There is no Brahman, no Absolute. All there is is disparate phenomena without a higher-order thing above or underlying it. The Buddhists are kind of like Materialists and the Hindus are more like Phenomenologists -- if you want to draw parallels to Western Philosophy. What is cool about Advaita Vedanta is the Buddhist influence on Hinduism, namely the focus on mindfulness and a certain kind of hard-nosed Empiricist attitude, which is strong in Buddhism. So, Advaita Vedanta is a certain kind of synthesis between non-dual Hinduism and Buddhism. I think that's what Adi Shankara was up to. It's a pretty nice marriage. Shankara is like an Immanuel Kant of Indian Philosophy, a synthesizer. I'm not endorsing Kant by the way. I am very opposed to Kantian Philosophy in general (but I respect him and his thought a lot and he was a huge advance); however, I see a similar kind of synthesis happening with Kant's thought in Western Philosophy, with his integration of and transcendence of Empiricism and Rationalism, two formerly well-entrenched Western Philosophy traditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Shankara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant

The mind doesn't exist. It is a thought-story. What we call the mind is just the ego, including but not limited to the illusion of control, and thoughts (including thought-stories) in awareness. There is no reason to talk about my mind or your mind. Do you agree? If so, why do we do this? Also, the same logic applies to the body. There is no distinction in awareness. Awareness is all of a piece.

@Principium Nexus Correct. You can be aware of thoughts as things from an existential standpoint, but when you get sucked into their stories in the existential standpoint, that's where you get sucked into delusion. Does this make sense? One thing I am doing is trying to only acknowledge the thoughts as things, but using awareness to not allowing the thought-stories to send my awareness down idiotic rabbit-holes. All the rabbit-holes cause suffering because you have no control anyway. But you gotta be careful. Only use awareness. Do not try to control. All control is egoic illusion. Just be super mindful of what thoughts are when the monkey-mind starts throwing them at you. Separate the Truth of the thoughts from the illusory thought-story part. Watch this video. It's great and explains this. Also watch this one.

@Principium Nexus You are the Truth. You are the Self. You are Brahman. You are the contents of experience stripped of thought. You are the whole of awareness. You are the holder of the ego as thought. You are not the voice. You are the Truth basking in itself. Don't think of yourself as the screen, that is concept, belief. Whatever you are is nothingness. Pure emptiness. Emptiness is anti-conceptual. That's a huge hint. But all somethingness occurs within emptiness. So you are all non-conceptual somethingness too. The Self is God.

I've heard people say this. To me it was self-acceptance or self-love that started to give me a lot of shifts. Large ego was more of a reaction to the self losing its footing in the earlier shifts of enlightenment. Like a bully losing his confidence, neurotically flailing his power around nonsensically.

@The White Belt Yes. The next step is to be the Truth. Awareness and being merge into one. That's true bliss. This is accomplished by simply realizing that that's what you already are.

Yes. But they can also build self-acceptance too, which is still egoic but a necessary step on the path towards enlightenment. But, yeah, for enlightenment, the work is to transcend the self, not to try and manipulate or program it with affirmations. Affirmations pre-suppose a self-image you are clinging to. Once you transcend the self-image, affirmations become pointless.

After all, how is Self-awareness differentiated from being the Truth -- it seems that is is a distinction that is conceptual, not real. If it is pointing to something True or real, what is it pointing to. Is Self-awareness baked-into being or is it a separate "sense" so to speak?

Ok, I'll take your word for it. What do you want, an argument? How would that rabbit hole run?