Yes. Non-action, non-movement away from ourselves. - It requires some leisure to be properly still in this way of course. It’s easy to lose oneself in the rush of daily affairs.
Is there something that can be burnt that must be protected ? Maybe you are you thinking of some harm in particular?
Listening from this shore is usually based in some concern of loss and gain - there might be different ways of listening : the scholarly way for example, and listening with love.
I just mean that ‘doubt must be kept on a leash’ (a Krishnamurti saying) - because there is a way of doubting that goes nowhere. There are some people who block themselves through doubt, get knotted up in intellectual problems that have no solutions. Doubt wrongly handled can lead to solipsism or even stupidity. So to doubt intelligently requires both freedom and a degree of mental health.
Btw, I feel that sometimes people in the Rinzai world get too hung up on the Great Doubt. Bankei used to pity monks who turned their minds into “balls of doubt” because they had been told they needed to break through the Great Doubt. - Doubt is a creative act of intelligence that cannot be modelled to fit a formula or to gain a reward. It is a natural part of any inward inquiry.
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Speaking from my experience: Ja! Fire’s extremely powerful and extremely dangerous. Otoh letting things burn to the ground may be the right way to go. Some things aren’t worth fixing.
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Personal experience is obviously affecting our take on what we mean by doubt.
The only remarkable moment of insight in my life seemed to be directly correlated to what I am calling Doubt.
By which I mean an uncomfortable experience of not knowing what to believe or do, whilst at the same time feeling that something absolutely had to be “done”.
The wisdom teachings that I was listening to at the time in order to address the issue of self & suffering seemed stupid, but giving up on any attempt at awakening was not an option either. There didn’t seem to be anything I could do to solve the problem of self, yet just continuing as usual was not an option.
My claim is that the intensity of my doubt, how seriously I was taking the matter, the complete absence of solutions that would allow me to move away from this discomfort, played a major role in the insight and release that followed. The subject matter of what the insight was about (self) seemed directly correlated to the subject matter concerning me - and the difference in quality between the suffering and the release also played a major part in the experience - made it more obvious.
But I cannot say that I was doubting intelligently, nor was I particularly sane, and I’m glad that nothing survived (as in no part of me that could hold to nihilism, self pity etc)
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The human mind is clever enough to find a way out of almost everything.
Should all else fail, it can simply shut down and deny.
Sometimes, rarely, all its best efforts fail, and you stand f2f with anguish, like you did.
Only once in my life (of over 55 years) - so far. And I can’t see why it would happen again (I lack ambition - its not strong in my conditioning).
And I certainly didn’t choose to get stuck in such doubt - where all solutions seemed so obviously wrong. And I did not consciously choose to feel responsible for myself and my actions.
The thing that reminds me the most of the experience of “embracing the anguish” would be running a marathon (something that I am happy to avoid doing)
You’ve only stared long and deep into the Abyss once?!! In 55 years?!! Count yer blessings.
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Yes - I was only forced to be honest once, all the other times I was able to take an aspirin or blame someone else. (PS. Hallelujah)
That may be all it takes?
I think so - with the caveat that people I trusted were fans of HuangPo (and K and Huineng), who said that falling into the abyss was most excellent, that the fear that pulled us back from the abyss was the status quo.
Excuses that there is some magical, ultmate knowledge of some really hidden or tricky business that must be resolved first before I let go, are just excuses me reckons.
Depends I think on what abyss or what level of abyss you fall into. For a Buddhist, falling into the emptiness abyss is probably seen as good, if painful. Falling into the despair abyss might not be all that salubrious.
Only when escape is its only function. Otherwise, it can be sensible and reasonable enough to consider things as they are and not as they should be.
Should all else fail, it can simply shut down and deny.
If it is more reactive than reasonable.
Sometimes, rarely, all its best efforts fail, and you stand f2f with anguish, like you did.
Facing failure is anguish only for those determined to succeed.
Hi James,
This description brought to mind a David Bohm one-liner that was significant to me.
“Change of meaning is change of being”.
So it is the meaning we give to a concept that leads to the being situation.
This reminded me that David Bohm explored the question of the self in his own way, which I think is relevant to this topic. The following extract (from the book Thought As A System) is also relevant to the thread on Conditioning, but it fits here just as well :
[The self] image has several parts… The word ‘I’ stands for the subject, the one who sees, who acts, who does, who determines everything, who has will… ‘I’ is the active agent: I will, I determine, I see, I choose, I think. And also there is ‘me’ to whom it’s all done. ‘Me’ is the object, everything happens to me. Then, the basic concept, the ‘self’, is what unites those two. I and me are two sides of myself. So there are me, myself and I. That’s a concept of the self.
We’ve discussed this many times, that the word ‘I’ by itself means almost the same as God. It’s the ultimate source of everything. In the story of Moses who came to the burning bush in the desert and asked the voice what was its name, the voice said that His name was ‘I Am That I Am’. ‘I Am’ was His first name and ‘I Am’ was His second name. Later the voice said again that ‘I Am’ was his name; when Moses asked ‘who shall I say sent me?’ the voice said ‘You shall say that “I am” sent you’. Evidently ‘I Am’ was considered to be the name of God, which was very sacred, not supposed to be repeated, and so on… the phrase ‘I am’ by itself represents the pure subject, the pure source, the one, the source of everything; and that ‘me’ represents the object. But we identify or equate ‘I am’ with ‘me’, saying ‘I am this, I am that, I am what I am, I am all the things attributed to me’. However, there comes a problem in equating ‘I am’ with ‘me’, because ‘me’ is always limited…
The essential point is that the ‘me’ is always limited, but we feel that ‘me’ is the same as ‘I am’, as ‘I’. Now, this creates a conflict. People want to say: ‘I’m the greatest. I’m the best. I’m the most wonderful.’ We have this great, bright and shining image. And then the world comes along and says ‘You’re nothing. You’re just fooling yourself. You’re nobody.’ It deflates that image, which becomes a shock and creates a great pain—the fantasy of pleasure can equally turn into the fantasy of pain and fear and horror…
[That is,]when the image is punctured it hurts. The fantasy of this great, glorious, shining being is then turned into a fantasy of somebody who is despised and looked down upon and limited—who is nothing much, and all that sort of thing—which creates pain. And that creates the need to have other people tell me how great I am and it creates the sense ‘I need to get proof of how great I am by what I do or by what I own’, and that sort of thing…
If that ‘thing’ which is perceived in that way were actually there, it would be extremely important and precious, wouldn’t it? It would be this great, glorious shining God—or at least it ought to be. It would be the centre of existence and everything. For the little child it is. And in fact, it never goes away for anybody. So that which is inside here has tremendous importance and necessity. It’s not merely the chemistry, but the chemistry is given extremely high value by the importance and necessity attached to the meaning… [the] neurophysiological effects of such a great shining image…
Thus this self-image becomes central. And everything becomes arranged to feed and sustain it in as good a way as possible. We try to arrange thoughts that way. We try to get people to support it. We try to produce situations, such as acquiring wealth—people will make a lot of money to show that they are really very great people. They make far more money than they need for whatever they want to do. They keep on making money. And if the mere making of money isn’t enough, then they buy all sorts of things—far more than they need—to show that they are great people.
Why do people do this? It’s accepted, it’s taken for granted that they will do it. But we need to look into this. Why? What’s behind it? You can see that there is a process going on here which involves the whole system [of thought and society]. And people will reinforce each other in all of it, because people get their identity from one another—everybody says ‘you are this, you are that, you are the other’. Or else you get your identity by what you do, or by thinking of where you came from, or what your ancestors were, and all that. So you get a sense of identity built up out of thought, which says ‘that’s terribly important’. You have to prove that you’re there.
But this structure actually has no basis whatsoever except thought, which is a very flimsy base. And since that structure apparently is all-important, it would be very important to prove that it is solidly grounded. Otherwise it will be rather alarming to see this all-important structure with no ground…
The question is: do we need an identity? Clearly in some limited sense we do need to know who we are—we have identity cards, we have memories and needs and certain relationships, and all the rest. We keep that all straight. But is that identity the supremely important thing that it seems to be? …
There was an ancient view: ‘I don’t know what I am. What I am is unknown, but constantly revealing itself.’ This is another view of what you are. Let’s look at it for a moment.
‘I’ am unknown. If there is something which is infinite—the universe, or something beyond the universe—I am somehow grounded in that. Maybe the whole physical being, and probably even matter, is infinite in its subtlety. And there may be something beyond. Therefore, whatever I am, that must be the source of it. That is unknown—but it reveals itself.
We don’t need the notion of an identity, of an all-important identity on to which we are going to hold, because that gets in the way of the need to change our reflexes. Once we identify with something, our reflexes are that way—it’s very important, ‘necessary’. And we will want to preserve that identity even though it may involve ideas that are false… that identity will give us a certain chemistry. And also we feel that we want to preserve that. The whole body gets used to it. The body itself can get used to a certain chemistry, and demands that that chemistry be preserved…
It’s like the rainbow; we see a rainbow, but what we have is drops of rain and light—a process. Similarly, what we ‘see’ is a self; but what we actually have is a whole lot of thoughts going on in consciousness. Against the backdrop of consciousness we are projecting a self, rather than a rainbow. If you walk toward the rainbow you will never get there… I’m suggesting that if you try to touch the self, it will be the same difficulty as trying to touch the rainbow. We have a representation of the self, which is really arising in a process. We don’t know this process very well; but the attempt to treat the self as an object is just not going to mean anything.
So instead, suppose we say that this self is unknown. Its origin, its ground is unknown. And it is constantly revealing itself, through each person or through nature.
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I was reflecting on the extract above from David Bohm, and also on a post by Adeen (on the Experiments’ thread), in which they have both been saying that when ‘I’ is identified with an image (of oneself) it turns into to ego or self; but left untouched (by any identification at all) it may be “the unknown… constantly revealing itself” (in Bohm’s words), or “awareness” (in Adeen’s words).
This made me reflect that if one asks oneself what is meant by ‘I’, one is really asking what is the nearest thing (to oneself, to what one is). And the nearest thing (to oneself, to what one is), is just the sense of being aware - awareness prior to being identified with anything in particular (whether it is thoughts, emotions, feelings, memories, bodily sensations, etc).
So if awareness doesn’t identify itself with anything, this may be the closest we can get to being what we are.
What then (I am thinking out loud here) is the relationship between this awareness and all the various contents of consciousness?
The contents are, for example, worry, anxiety, dull background sorrow, etc? All these contents are the ‘me’ with which the brain is identified, habituated. Usually these are in the background of experience, but when acute they are as close to oneself as the sense of being aware: one is one’s fear, one’s sense of hurt, etc.
So what is the relationship between the immediate awareness we have of simply being alive, and the immediacy of a content such as anxiety or sorrow? - Is the latter merely a ‘pollutant’ of the former? Must the former ‘descend’ into the latter to dissolve it? - Is the statement ‘You are fear’ or ‘You are sorrow’ pointing to this immediate, direct meeting of awareness with (the contents of) consciousness?
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Is this the same as asking : what is the relationship between awareness and the things we are aware of?
Or between noticing that there is consciousness and simply reacting to the contents of consciousness?
These differences do feel conceptually different - can we say that the difference between them is all about degrees of focus, or perspective? That experience depends on focus?
I like that way better than “The self is __________ <whatever>.” It embraces the Mystery.
What would the consequences be of taking that understanding of self to heart?
Do I sense a yearning for the known here?
There’s no hard and fast conclusion in there post - it is just an investigation, so all apparent conclusions can be taken as being merely provisional.
Awareness is not a ‘Mystery’, something to be worshipped, or made ‘mysterious’ - it is something immediate, it can be explored. To label it ‘self’ is unnecessary and distracting.
At the level of provisional description it seems as though there is
- awareness (by itself as it were, standing freely), and
- awareness trapped (trapped in psychological conditioning of one kind or another).
Awareness trapped seems to be the ordinary state of consciousness. Fear, anxiety, hurt, psychological suffering, are all forms of awareness trapped.