UnbornTao

An assumption is an unrecognized belief you operate from - like the water a fish swims in. Your sense of reality is based on a set of unexamined assumptions. What do we assume assumption is? A judgment is a positive or negative value assessment of something. The point of contemplation is to start from scratch, though. Thinking existentially. Wrestling with that process in order to personally find out what's true.

Hard to tell. The work done beforehand probably did help - the act of openly dwelling on something - yet the realization itself is always immediate. In a sense, we are always starting anew with this ontological work.

You might find this read inspiring: https://archive.org/details/PerfectBrilliantStillnessDavidCarseEbookPDF/mode/2up Apparently, Terence Stamp narrated the audiobook version.

The power of "stop it": https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/jul/21/id-had-28-years-of-depression-now-it-was-gone-comic-paul-foot-on-three-seconds-that-changed-his-life? Doesn't need to take 28 years, though - three seconds.

A bubble bursting.

I think you were helpful to her.

@Anton Rogachevski As long as we are moving in the direction of 'authentic experience,' we’re making progress.

@Anton Rogachevski GPT:

Cool. May have some sexual undertones, on the other hand, haha.

Where can that be found? This are the people you generally can trust had something real going on with them - probably some sort of awakening.

But where is the fucker? There's a story of a renowned Chan (Zen) monk who taught for many years, giving lectures all over China. After having done that for a time, at some point, upon attaining enlightenment, he burned all of his previous teachings, considering them worthless. It's an interesting perspective. I did some research - my story is a largely fictional interpretation. It might have been based on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangyan_Zhixian --- Burn my sutras ✅ Watch for tiles hitting the ground ⬜

Thank you for the doubt!

@Vali2003 No problem.

That's part of the trick, isn't it? Until we've had several enlightenments, it's just an educated guess, a possibility. Don't we all already assume we know what enlightenment is? Getting clear on what's actual and what's conceptual is a theme that keeps coming back to bite us. The mind lies a lot. Thank you, I often appreciate our discussions. This is challenging - even the Zen guys fall into the trap of "admiring the Buddha when you meet him on the road." In other words, they still confuse customs, teachings, traditions, and assumptions with actual breakthroughs and insights. How can we use thinking in a way that stays within the ballpark of genuine discovery? How do we create a useful and effective perspective or framework for this ontological work? Your work might already be moving in that direction. Instead of becoming just another belief system, it has to become increasingly real.

The article has merit and is certainly an intelligent take. I also appreciate its underlying pointer toward authentic experiences and the direction it proposes. Still, it's challenging to provide feedback right now, as I'm focused on more grounded inquiries - picture a Zen monk destroying every belief he holds. For what it's worth, I still think we tend to believe we are our minds, and that we can think our way to what's true.

That it is a dynamic that must be continuously balanced, rather than a static trait that stops being a consideration once learned and adopted. Like tightrope walking, standing on your own two feet is not necessarily easy.

@ExploringReality @Natasha Tori Maru It's easy to confuse language with the symbols, medium, or concepts being used. At the risk of oversimplifying, communication (and everything else that language allows for) is analogous to a painting, while language is the canvas. You can leave the canvas empty, but it must exist in order to be left empty. Leaving it empty might be akin to non-verbal or non-symbolic communication. The canvas is the context. If something cannot represent something else, it is not language, and no transmission can take place. Not even the notion of getting something across would occur to you. Otherwise, a thing would simply be that particular thing, and it wouldn't signify anything else. A sound is made; a drawing is made - and they exist as themselves. Uttering "chair" would be that sound: chair. Or: silla, chaise, 椅子, Stuhl. Just imagine how those would sound in your mind. It is hard not to operate from language - you still read chair and immediately associated the term with your image of a chair. This principle applies to all forms of communication. Notice that even if you don't know what those symbols mean, you still know that they signify something, that something is being conveyed - this is the distinction of language being operative. Not only that - without language, what would be left of what we now call "thinking"? It would be radically different, likely more immediate and objective - like a biological function akin to the body burping. The influence of language isn't limited to symbols; it creates whole worlds. Helen Keller created the context of language when she learned to associate the touch of water on her hand with the word "water" spelled into her palm by her teacher. This was based on feeling physical sensations. Intent is conceptual in nature, yet pre-linguistic - it is an impulse based on want and co-arises with action. With this I want to suggest that not all forms of concept are linguistic.

Glad to hear that. It's true, balancing that dynamic can also feel uncomfortably open-ended.

Hire a high-quality personal psychotherapist.

@Vali2003 Thanks for the advice. She requested a 3-month account pause to focus on other things.