I do not choose disappointment and pain - this is what choice, pain and I mean. My reason for existing is to choose desire over aversion. This is what choice, pain and I is.
There might be a teapot floating in orbit between Mars and Jupiter.
The 0s and 1s processed by my computer may be unemotional, pure thought. We may be able to provoke pure emotion via some carefully placed electrodes on the brain. (though it could be argued that my PC isn’t really thinking, or that the thought “that’s nice” may accompany the electrically imposed joy on the brainwaves)
I will nearly join @charleycannuck in questioning the validity of idle speculation.
Speculation, or thought experiments, can of course be very useful in understanding, communicating a hypothesis (for example Einstein’s elevator thought experiment in order to apprehend and explain gravity and acceleration)
But surely we speculate for a reason? As in something indicates that whatever may be the case, or at least we are trying to deliver a message.
Are you trying to shine a light on something important? Or does anything indicate the existence of purity in the psyche (and what does that mean)?
PS - you may already have addressed this by associating purity with non-dependance on time.
When we choose what to learn, we are choosing. When we pay attention to a select few items, we are being selective. Yet we call this choosing and selecting ‘learning’ simply because of our own limited involvement in the process. When we choose or select, there is a reason or a motive behind it. We treat love with exactly the same disregard for our own limited involvement in the process. Is there not a watching, a learning, a loving, that is entirely without motives and limitations? So watching, learning and loving as one inseparable movement.
When we know what we are choosing, when we choose between what we know - this is not learning, this is definitely not choiceless awareness - this is the “pure” essence of self.
When I know that I am paying attention to a thing of my conditioned conception, a chair for example, all those concepts/knowledge exist due to, are created by, are a part of self - they are a vision of the world projected by me.
If, in meditation, I know what I am paying attention to, what difference is there with habitual knowing?
Will success and happiness cause people to question their choices and beliefs?
Will intellectual pleasure and interest provide the necessary energy essential for psychological death?
You don’t see this? You think it was some kind of advice? There is no way in. I was pointing to distress which leads to totally not knowing what to do.
Then it is not doubt. Doubt based on experience allows no room for doubting all forms of experience. Putting aside common sense, which is a slightly different matter, is it possible simply to listen to the question - to any question - without bringing in the past? Common sense is necessary in order to have a common sense understanding of the words involved, that’s all. At the moment, it is simple enough. Can I watch and listen without motive? This means I am not concentrating on selected areas and making those areas more important than the rest of my view. If I can do this then there is no problem. And if I cannot do this then the very awareness of my motives is what brings about a change. But if I allow experience to answer the question, the motive to arrive at an answer destroys any possibility of just looking and listening afresh, free from experience. So we are learning now that the past always has a motive: it wants more experience.
When you give complete attention to your own inattention are you being attentive or inattentive? In other words, don’t break it up into attention and lack of attention, or complete and limited - it is all the same movement. Inattention is not an opposite of attention. Inattention is one aspect of attention.
This is the 2nd time I read this and can’t help but laugh, and laugh, so thanks for the early morning humour. Nearly, eh? Darn…but we’re not talking science, eh?? So, what will it take?? lol
Try snail mail, or even email, it works better, *G
! Yes, and this gets me in trouble with people who see the kind of inquiring we do as a means to an urgent end (healing the self, others, world).
100% free? I doubt it. We are saturated, from head to toe, with desire and ego. But close to 100%? Sure. We’re capable of amazing things, I have little doubt we can ‘transcend’ the hand we’re dealt to a large extent.
Sure it does. Doubt can be applied universally, the doubter can doubt their doubting.
‘The past’ is just a conceptual construct. (Unless you’re an eternalist, and I don’t think there are many of those here!) It doesn’t want anything. The mind, which is always in the present, and memory, which is also always in the present, want more experience, more pleasure, more safety, more money, more fame, more more more more more!
Either we are free of me, me, me, or we are not - I take it you don’t believe the self ever ends then? This talk of of being free of me, or psychological death, choicelessness etc is just poetry? What then is zazen? admiration of the known?
When I’m out walking my dog on a long leash, letting him gambol, sniffing amongst the bushes with no tension on the lead - is he free? Maybe he is a little bit free? nearly free?
Yes, and this gets me in trouble with people who see the kind of inquiring we do as a means to an urgent end (healing the self, others, world).