Does anything suggest that this is the case?
If we are to believe the stories about Gautama Buddha, he only managed to attain this state after dying from eating poisonous mushrooms.
This of course might be a buddhist joke : myself being being no more mine than the billions of other past and future selves.
Plenty of books and teachers speak of enlightened beings who have ‘transcended’ the self. Some are, to me, reasonably trustworthy … though, skeptic that I am, I doubt the veracity of all of them.
Where is it said he didn’t attain this state upon enlightenment under the bodhi tree?
°Hearsay (even hearsay written down) is not considered evidence.
°Belief in secondhand knowledge is part of the danger of being human (K advises against it).
°"transcending the self" is not the same as : the self never arising again; or the brain no longer performing its functions. (just as : “freedom from” does not mean non-existence of)
°Re Buddha. Not stating that something did not happen does not imply that it did - for example, no one has said that cheese did not fall from the sky last night 
- however, although the texts say buddha attained nirvana under the bodhi tree, they also say he finally attained paranirvana (final absolute nirvana - no coming back, no rebirth) when he died - as far as I am aware Buddha also continued his meditation practise after his psychological death under the Bodhi tree.
About hearsay and belief, yes … that’s why I wrote ‘reasonably’ trustworthy, to be taken with a grain of salt.
Ah, okay, if you mean when did the Buddha stop experiencing skandhas (physical and mental impressions, seen by Buddhists as the source of the self), the texts say it was at his death, which is how it is said to work for all enlightened humans.
Seeing what is: Are animals are perfect examples who follow seeing what is. They are the only species who see what is. Because, they act, they learn,they act again they learn and again they act. There is in almost all occasions of their existence they never use thought to interfere in their actions. It is always seeing what is and acting.
Unfortunately, when human started using thought as tool, to see what is. They could never see what is. As long as thought interferes in seeing what is, it is difficult to see what is…
You seem to think that humans are the only animals that cannot see clearly, and this is because we have a tendancy to think?
Does this mean that chimpanzees - who probably have some form of proto-mentation (a primitive, simple form of thinking) understand reality less clearly than a lizard or a starfish?
Does this mean that rocks, plants and chemicals have a better grasp of reality than animals because they are not affected by any brain activity at all?
Does this mean that when a deer and a human run from a wolf they are equally seeing reality as it is - but if the human thinks about the wolf and their experience, the quality of his/her understanding diminishes?
Hello Douglas. My understanding of the teachings in that awareness and attention to the movement of thought are central to what K spoke about. I understand that he said that when the mind is effortlessly silent we will be more in touch with “what is” actually taking place around us and the filter of thought, with its constant interpretation through past experience, will be absent. Does thought and the self constantly arise? K seemed to have discovered a way where the constant, effortless awareness of the movement of thought prevented this from happening. That is what I understand, anyway.
Howdy Sean - I was wondering if you were still present here.
I can’t recall where he said that the awareness was constant. (And it would be in total contradiction to - I’m betting- everyone’s experience of the matter)
I can recall (vaguely) him telling us that it wasn’t constant and also to stop wanting all this constant stuff.
If this doesn’t ring a bell for you we can go and do the scholarly thing and search for the quotes.
Sounds legit - though it would still be dependant on our human potential. I am sure that we are capable of doing better than thinking that reality really is what I (redneck, commie, muslim, western intellectual or whatever) think it is.
When we say in touch with “what is” - what do we mean? Is it Psychological death, the absence of suffering? This may be a hardly noticeable change or a quasi mystical insight - depending on circumstance eg. If great pain suddenly dissapears.
Do we mean special states of mind - like suddenly viewing the world as our own projection? or seeing out of everyone’s eyes? or becoming one with the light?
Which one of these is seeing what is? If any.
Have you been consumed?
If we’re incapable of seeing reality for what it is, we are incapable of seeing whether this is true.
Here the word ‘seeing’ is not asking acknowledgement by someone, not see this or that, not saying agree or disagree, it is a shared understanding. An understanding like listening to the birds, watching the wind in the trees, or the waves rolling into shore, or simply sharing the communion . What is this failure to understand, this lack of communion?
Your statement implies that if a correct answer is not available to us, this necessarily means that we are unable to determine whether an answer is incorrect.
You seem to think that humans are the only animals that cannot see clearly, and this is because we have a tendancy to think?
Yes. The way, we are programmed or conditioned or developed a tendency not to pay complete attention. We have split attentions and perceptions in general. We do not see as it is and learn to unlearn. We cling on to that attention and preserve it for applying in future, which interfere with seeing what is.
Does this mean that chimpanzees - who probably have some form of proto-mentation (a primitive, simple form of thinking) understand reality less clearly than a lizard or a starfish?
Humans could not comprehend themselves complete do you think they could comprehend Chimpanzee lizard starfish? It is just their pride observations. Without any Q&A with those species.
Does this mean that rocks, plants and chemicals have a better grasp of reality than animals because they are not affected by any brain activity at all?
Who knows? May be? Who are we to call them without life. Every particle in this cosmos is connected with each other. Calcium, potassium, iron, enzymes, bacteria, enamel, etc. They could be extension of one single universal form of existence. Like all humans have a common consciousness type of reality.
I do not know, but I always have felt rocks may have life. Not some neurotic idea. It is like why not? It is a constructive doubt.
Does this mean that when a deer and a human run from a wolf they are equally seeing reality as it is - but if the human thinks about the wolf and their experience, the quality of his/her understanding diminishes?
Survival is a give and take phenomenon. Since all forms of life (including rocks) have a common genesis. And moves in symphony with cosmos ( like Sun, etc). The actions of survival are kind of characters in a grand play of their own creation. The species are voluntary participants, playing the game of hide and seek or playing their limited role to that form. There is no attachment to their role. Their roles are self created or sustained or modified or mutated or ??.
Since they play their role with freedom, their attention is not split, they see as it is, as if they ought to see. There is no determined or predetermined action of their part of role. They exist to perish to exist in their formless forms.
On the other hand humans being play different role compared other species using knowledge, thought and not seeing what is. All creations of human beings are burden to rest of the fellow species and forms of life( so called dead or life). With no exception. If the all other species indulge in similar kind of activities like human, this planet would take the shape of that of MARS or MOON and so on.
Hello again Karne - I was not clear in my intentions - let me try and explain : I am not saying “I think this is true and that is false” - I was merely using the tool of logic to examine your claims.
With this in mind, can we look at the questions again?
Do you know the logical tool of reductio ad absurdum? So the question above means: “I think that thinking induces a delusion”. So the absurdity is that my thought : that thought necessarily comes to a false conclusion, must be a false conclusion.
If you think that logic/reason is a bad way to check our thoughts - what would be a better way?
So with my explanation of logical reasoning in mind - this means that I am not claiming knowledge about other animals - I am just using logic to explore your claims about thinking : if this, then …what?
maybe you can look at my questions again with this in mind? (I am not asking you to believe what I say - I am asking questions)
Agreed. Though I think that the problem arises from the clinging.
Which leads to another problem : comparison : Thinking is bad/not thinking is good.
We do not see what is, because clinging to knowledge turns seeing into a game of comparison: I believe non-humans see clearly vs humans don’t see clearly. (belief → comparison-> conclusion → belief etc)
The fact that “we have not evolved to see reality as it is” (because there’s just too much that our senses can’t detect) does not mean we can’t accurately perceive enough to avoid confusion and conflict. What we need to know about actuality, we can detect. But we are distorting, denying, or discounting what we detect because of our beliefs about what should/should-not-be.
Our condition is not inability to perceive what actually is, but our resistance to what doesn’t support our presumptions about what actually is. The conditioned mind is closed to what is true in favor of what is believed.
Hi Douglas, yes, I’m still here, chipping in occassionally. You went AWOL for a while but glad to see you back here.
Well, I have no idea how “constant” K’s awareness of the movement of thought was, but from what I understand, it was certainly more than a sporadic or fleeting awareness. I also have no idea of everyone else’s experience of this matter and this is something we can’t really know. However, it seems that K discovered this effortless way of being aware of the movement of thought and this led to him having a silent mind for at least some of the time. This in turn led him to be able to make astonishing observations by looking both inwardly and outwardly. He obviously thought that his discovery was teachable, if I can use that word, something which others too could come across and dedicated his life to pointing out what he had discovered. Has anybody else been able to discover this effortless observation of the movement of thought and the automatic psychological emptying which seems to come with it? Of course, I don’t know the answer to that. How do you see this?
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I think we all see a different K - but for the same reasons ie. our brains worked in the same manner to arrive at our conclusions.
Yes, I’m sure we all do indeed see a different K. But is there a “real K” to be seen? Do any of us really understand what he was pointing to?