Gesundheit

The truth is that "nothing" is here and now, and this seemingly-full here and now is not any different from the empty nothing that's meant originally. Appearance is in fact empty. Only the fabrications of the mind, which are another appearance, can make it look like it's not when one forgets that they're just fabrications/appearances and then believes them to not be fabrications/appearances but actual things. Consider this equation: since appearance exists as appearance; that makes: isness = isness + appearance. Therefore, isness = appearance. And by flipping the terms, nothing = everything. It's not that the mind cannot grasp emptiness. The mind itself is assumed to begin with, but it's usually taken to be actual, that's what makes things confusing. If it's seen through the fabrications of the mind, it's already done. The mind will know its place as a misperception of truth, and thus get dismantled. It can be explained, but if there's no point of reference it's not going to make sense, no matter the amount of mental gymnastics we may provide. This is the problem with awakening and with everything we try to learn. We don't know until we know. @Fran11 I thought you might want to read this too.

If isness is only nothing, then you're right. No words can ever describe nothing (except the word nothing ). But luckily isness is everything too, therefore the distinctions are true and included in isness. So you have nothing and you have everything as two different things, yet at the same time only one thing. This paradox allows for both correct and incorrect interpretations. Someone may be identified only with nothing and then deny the everythingness of reality, and someone else may do the opposite and identify only with everything and then deny nothingness. Wouldn't you say that that would be a misinterpretation of isness? And that the only true interpretation has to be that nothing = everything, necessarily?

How about oneness, totality, or infinity?

The thought experiment provided here is just a thought experiment happening here and now. And since it's not actually the case, then it's invalid. The substance of isness is simply the present moment, however it may be, which is infinity. That one word does describe the absolute truth fully to me. Therefore that one word is absolute truth.

I can't. This is a new insight for me which may or may not be correct, and I'm still looking for more coherent understanding. Maybe I'll eventually be able to convince you

I wouldn't say it's external but still, isn't reality objective and universal? The absolute truth that is prior to language or evidence or interpretation is objective and universal, isn't it?

It's normal to feel identified with humanity at stage Green. Green is a human-centric stage.

Nothing unnatural about having the same food every day. There's no rule against that. It may become boring to a lot of people though.

The first thing here is that you're probably judging yourself harshly. You probably have high standards for how you should be in order to feel the satisfaction you want and deserve. Keep in mind that marriage is not exclusive to certain qualities. A lot of people, both men and women, who don't have very appealing qualities still find a partner and end up marrying them. In fact, most people fit into that category. It's only rarely that someone is too special that they're desired too much. The point is that most likely it's not about how you are right now, but rather about how judgemental and unloving of yourself you currently are. You can fix that with self-love. Watch Leo's video for more info. The second thing is that I get the feeling that you feel obliged to get married, like it's the only right path to take, and that if you didn’t take it you'd get lost and end up miserable for the rest of your life. This is probably because of two factors: indoctrination, and what I call the herd effect. You're probably indoctrinated with the storyline of a good girl who does this and that and then marry her knight with the shining armour. And the herd effect is what you said about your friends getting married and you feeling left out. The reality is that all of that is nothing but a huge myth. Your inner peace and happiness aren't found in external relationships and achievements and all that. They are found within a healthy, loving, and nurturing relationship with yourself. Find your inner princess and love her. She deserves that love more than anyone or anything else.

It depends on whether or not the thoughts are understood properly. For example, to say that I robbed a bank is a true thought, we first have to understand that: time, a self, others, a bank, and an act of robbery and all of its terminals, are all originally assumed within that statement for the sake of making sense/communication. If we don't understand this properly, the communication will be flawed and the thought will be false for the recipient regardless of whether or not it was articulated well by the sender. Furthermore, the sender could spend years talking about that one thought explaining it in all ways and nuances but still get nowhere as long as the recipient does not understand things properly. If the recipient is unaware of certain things, the communication will always be flawed and therefore false for them, even though the communication represents the actual truth of what happened to the best of language's capacity. If the recipient would receive the message correctly it would be something like this: "okay, so there is a story being told here about some person who took money from a place called a bank through means that are considered against the laws that humans constructed". And we can go into infinite technicalities and nuances considering the story, like what is a person and what is a bank and what is law, and what is a story and is the story here vocal or visual etc... but see, that would be irrelevant as long as the story is perceived correctly as a story with all the assumptions acknowledged. This is the kind of understanding that's based on being present in the moment, therefore it's based on the absolute, therefore it's absolute. This one understanding would be the correct one, even though limited, and all other interpretations would be false. For example, to say that the person is real and not assumed would make the understanding a false interpretation of the actual event. This one false assumption would make the understanding into a misunderstanding, thus making it a misinterpretation of the absolute truth, thus making it a false thought. The thought: "someone robbed a bank" would not the whole of truth, obviously. It would be just one true thought out of the infinite set of true thoughts, since it described only certain aspects of what happened and not everything that happened. We can add another true thought about the timing of the story. Let's say the event happened a week ago. If the recipient understands what time is in the present moment and that it's a made-up concept, that won't hurt their understanding, it will rather only expand it to include another aspect of the absolute. But to think that time is a real thing that exists will corrupt the message and create a misunderstanding. To ask during which hour exactly did the robbery occur is fine because it does not affect the trueness of the story. However, to say that the event happened one day or one month ago, that would be a false thought relative to the true one, since it would be a fabrication without any basis to it that it would be referring to.

Any symbol is meaningless unless it represents something in the real world. The thing a symbol represents is not the symbol itself. In fact, it can represent absolutely anything except that one symbol. The things symbols represent cannot be grasped or captured by the symbols themselves, but by the observer of the symbols, and thus language is a useful medium for sharing/transferring information. It's not a perfect medium, nobody said that it is, but it's good enough for the most part as far as mediums can go. A symbol represents a point of reference that two observers can relate to (or one observer at two different points). The point of reference is absolute truth. A point of reference of an apple, for example, is not just an idea of an apple. When we say apple, there is a range of points of reference that we refer to. It's not like I have to tell you the exact qualities of the apple. That's not even possible, let alone sharing the same problem as I will have to tell you the exact qualities of each quality, and so on to infinity. Instead, the accumulation of all the memories of all the apples that you've experienced so far gets triggered instantly when you hear the word apple. That's how communication and language work on a basic level. This explanation does not describe everything that happens. It just describes certain aspects that you can most definitely make sense of so that the point can get across. Thus, making this explanation true and not false. Now at this point one may want to get more technical and scrutinize what was said. But that would be a pointless activity unless there's something wrong with the communication. If everything was clear, there would be no need to deconstruct language. If the deconstruction happened while there's no need, then there's no point in that process because it's endless. The whole point of deconstructing language is to get a better understanding that can enhance the communication. But to get overly technical about abstract terms would be a pointless activity as stated above.

I could, but that's not my current experience. My current experience is non-duality (best term I could find). No self or source or cause or anything like that, at least to a good degree. There is perception, and when I contemplate it, I see that it's the same thing as consciousness or emptiness. The distinction between perception and consciousness didn't exist in the first place except in thought.

Not that I disagree with anything said here but what are you actually trying to say exactly? We can't get very far with oneness when talking about it because what are we even talking about? What I see here is just a few meta observations that don't address what I'm asking about. I'm asking whether or not the term relative means that the thing we're talking about is not actual. You give me meta observations on the question, not addressing the question itself, and mainly begging the same question. You said actual vs not actual involves another distinction. And that's correct. But is there a hidden metaphysical value attributed to the term distinction? This is the question here. Are you, by saying that there is a distinction, saying that the distinction is false or not? You'll probably just give me the same answer, which is a detached observation that false and true is yet another distinction. See, this will never end. We can go meta forever.

I don't appreciate your projections. Just because I don't agree with you doesn't make me closed-minded. I am expressing my authentic thoughts and trying to see what you're saying. If I can't see it for some reasons that doesn't necessarily make me closed-minded. It just makes the communication not very helpful up to this point. Also you have to consider to be the one who's not understanding my perspective. Please don't assess my open-mindedness again.

Except that it can because the finger is just another hand. It's not just a hand and some fingers and that's it. The hand is infinite and all of its parts are infinite too. The hand has no beginning and no end, and it's indistinguishable from the fingers. The analogy talks about an actual finger and an actual hand. Both of them are actual, and therefore absolute. To say the finger is relative, is delusion. The actual finger was never relative because it's whole by nature but the concept that there is a separate finger is relative, and there's no arguing against that. But does the relativity of the concept of separation affect the absolute nature of the finger? Or are they two irrelevant issues? And since it's relative, the concept of a separate finger is subject to trueness or falsehood. If the finger is actually separate then the absolute truth would be that it's separate. If the finger wasn't actually separate then the absolute truth would be that it's not separate. Now at this point, you can argue that what does separation mean? And where does the hand end and the finger begin? Etc..... But these are abstract questions that are of no actual validity because they don't have a context. Let's say the context is some person who had lost his right index due to certain conditions. You can easily understand what I'm saying and pointing to even though I'm using relative words basically. The essence/meaning has been shared with you. Now you may say that the trueness of the story is relative to the context. And that's precisely the point. The story is the map, and the context is the territory. Therefore there's one context that's happening, that is absolute truth. And there are both true and false stories about that context. I hope this clears things up.

Just because you don't understand what I'm saying doesn't mean it's nonsense. Maybe you're just being deluded. The set I'm talking about is infinitely large so don't get caught up on that.

Elaborate pls.

You said Atman and Brahman are different so I disagreed with that. You said that Atman is a mirage, and that only Brahman is actual. But in this sense, both Atman and Brahman are concepts that are not actual. It's like you identify Brahman as nothing but then deny that nothing = everything. And then at some other point, you identify Brahman as everything, but still deny that everything = nothing. What am I missing here?

When we say relativity doesn't exist, we initially admit that it exists by necessity and then deny that with language. It seems like you want to maintain an idea of what the absolute is like or should be, and then you compare it to another idea of what relativity is like or should be. So there are two ideas, one of the absolute, and one of relativity. But the absolute is not the idea. It's the raw being, whether of ideas or not. The fact that there's only the absolute doesn't exclude the thing we call relativity, but rather makes it absolute. Appearance is appearance, and since it's there, then it's actual. Otherwise it couldn't be there. To say that appearance is not actual is to create a false distinction.

And arrogant and condescending, but you'll get used to it very quickly if you disagree with his philosophy enough times.

You can't know and there is no difference.

Talk about subtle dualities.

There's no distinction between absolute and relative. Everything is absolute. Whatever is, is absolute. Otherwise it couldn't be.

Luck. There's nothing else but luck. It gets more interesting, there's no difference between being successful or a loser. The only difference is the appearance. But the quality of life is technically identical to every other creature. People who talk about success and link their current place to certain things and believe that they actually did something to be where they are, are delusional. What they actually do is that they focus their thoughts on less than 0.0000000000001% of reality, and disregard the rest 99.999999999999% of reality. They think that by maintaining the 0.0000000000001%, they should be able to maintain their position or double their achievements. And while that may be the case, it's not because of the 0.0000000000001%, but rather mainly because of the other 99.999999999999%. They choose to focus on one finite set of events, which has no proof to be any more valid or better than all other sets of events. And also, they forget that they couldn't be there if me and you weren't here. People's success hinges upon other people's losing, and vice-versa. The gratitude rich people feel is not actually gratitude, but rather ego. They're only grateful that they "are better" than others. Nobody knows anything. All advice is BS, literally. It's like buying fish that isn't yet caught. There's no way you can better yourself or gain more. And finally, life is a gamble. You can never predict the future. You could be doing the worst shit you could think of and then out of a sudden you become a millionaire. Or you could be doing self-help seriously and non-stop for 40 years and still get nowhere.

Appearance = the absolute.