The questions that you put forth in this video truly help one to see how only thoughts cause pain and suffering. The pain and suffering are only in the thoughts. Thank you ❤
Thank you for this video We give so much importance to a thought, when this intangible thing can believe anything. A mind that can imagine unicorns and dragons and easily gets distracted needs guidance.
Your teaching here.. so beautiful..as always. Is there one mind? Is mind simply memory? Is the gap, the pause, the borderline? Would a realized one ask, what mind? Deep gratitude to you. ♥♥♥
Yes! What mind? When the mind seeks the mind there is nothing to find. In that 'gap' there is only You. Not as anything in particular but as an absolutely undeniable Aware-ness/ Sentience. And then when some phenomena is perceived, can that experience create an entirely new category or entity called "my mind"? All experience is just a movement along some dimension of the very same Awareness. But there are different ways to describe this same fact. The concept of mind gets destroyed or its meaning expands to encompass all categories as in Huang Po's teaching on the One Mind: "All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This mind which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible. It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong in the categories of things which exist or do not exist nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measures, names, traces, and comparisons. It is that which you see before you! Begin to reason about it and you at once fall into error. It is like the boundless void which cannot be fathomed or measured."
So.. Are you saying that 'the concept of mind gets destroyed or it's meaning expands to encompass all categories' are both saying the same thing? Also, I wondered if you could clarify something? Last night I was walking and kept getting struck by the sheer beauty of the mysterious presence. I, moonlight, muted scenery, quiet sounds, all meeting/moving/just there in such Stillness. Every thought that came really stood out somehow, kinda like a bell chiming in a quiet room. Then a thought passed through, but it was experienced even more unfamiliarly, and I'm not sure if I'm describing it very well. But the experience was that the thought was just another sense, like touch or sight. Kinda like it was just another meeting place, or just a function of the body. It was disconcerting actually, but beautiful. Today there was a period where some senses were very heightened in a way that was quite overwhelming, while simultaneously sort of distant, like being experienced directly but also being watched from without. The Stillness .. I'm nervous, oh disembodied voice. I am scared of loss. I am scared that if I don't try and stop this somehow, I will lose love. That nothing Hannah loves, or Hannah's love itself, will have any substance anymore. But.. You do not seem like you have lost love. I don't even know what I'm asking to be clarified. But.. Can you tell me what on earth is going on? Does any of this sound familiar?
> So.. Are you saying that 'the concept of mind gets destroyed or it's meaning expands to encompass all categories' are both saying the same thing? Yes, both amount to the same. No mind or the One Mind that is like the boundless void which cannot be fathomed or measured. The experience of thought being just another sense is correct. Thinking is specific to each body and part of its functioning. It's really just as involuntary as hearing. You know the thoughts, but are not the one thinking. The kind of experience you had comes from observing the contents of the mind. But the fear comes from taking the position that this mind/ body is the self. That position doesn't make sense because the mind/ body is what is being observed! Just the fact that you can observe the mind/ body demonstrates that you are already a factor apart from that. You are perceiving the chatter of neurons as these thoughts and feelings. The neurons are not sentient. Nothing in the body or mind constitutes a sentient entity. So what are you then? That's all that Self-inquiry is about. There is no loss in finding out what you already are.
@@untangle-your-mind I'm not sure how to get to the heart of what is niggling, and it seems I may as well try. Thank you for that reply, BTW, it was very clarifying, the niggle is still with the last part (there is no loss in finding out what you are). But I might need to ask you a couple of 'personal pov' questions to do this, as I can't seem to get to the point directly, though I understand this is due to the identification with this body/mind as you said. So.. Hmm, an example. OK, what do you imagine/know your experiences would be if (in a good few years!) your daughter had a child in happy and loving circumstances? What range of experiences might be the same as before the lightening strikes you experienced? What would be different? I THINK the answers to those will both clarify my question and answer it! Hmm. I guess I just really don't want to lose all feeling and I think I would. One of the first experiences of different perception I had was on a rollercoaster, and it was so neutral there was no FEELING at all. Perhaps, calmness, but it was so empty I don't even know if calm is a good description. If this world needed undoing and saving as the monks I hang out with seem to think (if I understand them), then I'd feel differently, I think. But seeing as there is nothing going anywhere, would I even want to be that completely empty? I'd rather know the emptiness and the wholeness.
I have a question. I just had s dream and so I woke up from it once I went into ego. So I guess our identity on earth is ego? I often wake up from dreams when I go into ego so I assume it's my earth identity?
In a dream, you realise you are not this dream character. A moment later, the thought arises that instead of this character, you are person X. But what were you in between taking yourself to be either of these characters? That is most truly You. Just pure Sentience. The characters can be one, two, or many, but this Sentience is the basis of all dream characters and their worlds. The ego is by no means a solid identity. It is a belief that can be examined, seen through, amd discarded.