Joseph Maynor

Just let go and let reality do whatever it does. You have no control and you never had any. Don’t plan too much. Just sit back and watch.

This sounds Egoic to me. There is no you controlling anything.

I do nothing. Just let go and let whatever happens happen.

What is reality?

What is the Ego?

You get it intellectually, but do you feel like reality is like that.

But do you feel permanent or unchanging?

Reality doesn't need a point. A point would be a belief. Being just is. Any consideration of purpose would be a thought within awareness or being. See? There's no purpose to reality. Purpose is a belief or hope about reality. Reality doesn't need a belief. Beliefs and reality pass each other like two ships in the night.

@Saumaya Do you have a sense of being unchanging or permanent?

Curious

Foster is basically complaining that other Enlightened people are more enlightened than he is. And he’s trying to redefine Enlinghtenment to suit his own Egoic preference to life. His essay is probably the most elaborate rationalization I’ve ever seen. Sure dude — keep believing that. But the dudes you criticize are still more enlightened than you are. That’s what I kept saying as I read and then re-read the article. Pure rationalization of his own Egoic beliefs about reality. His problem is that he hasn’t found the unchanging Soul.

The materialist paradigm is just a conceptual projection upon reality as all paradigms are. It’s not a bad assumption for science to operate with loosely. But when you’re doing ultimate truth, it’s just a belief, and no belief is ultimate truth. Ultimate truth is the unchanging Self. So, instead of looking at paradigms to be true, we should appreciate the pragmatic use of models of reality. The deeper problem is our belief and faith in conceptual-truth — our belief that truth is captured by language. We can model reality with thought — and we can even model processes that happen with regularity. But the idea that we’re obtaining knowledge about reality — or truth in the strong sense — is a misperception. The only truth is right now — and it ain’t conceptual at all. Sure, I’m sensing thoughts in reality — but as sensations. All stories take one into fantasy land, model land, Maya. Now — models can be useful! But they ain’t true. Paradigms ain’t true. Thoughts ain’t true. So stop expecting paradigms to be true. That’s a wrong expectation to have of them. That’s your underlying faith and belief in the paradigm of conceptual-truth. Let Science do it’s thing without trying to fit it into the category of truth. That is a silly error that almost all of us are culturally programmed to do, even the scientists themselves! We are judging Science using the wrong metric. Pragmatically, Science is capturing — through models —patterns that come up over and over again. We need to take a pragmatic view of paradigms rather than looking for them to be true — tacitly accepting the conceptual-truth paradigm of truth is the error. That’s the linchpin belief that’s in error. One of them anyway. There’s at least one more of belief of this caliber that I’ve found. It’s the belief that reality and words share a relation to each other. The belief that our words are a window into the true nature of reality. That’s another deep paradigm that seems to go all the way back to when we learned about reality as babies by learning the names of objects. And we just kept going with that language-reality corroboration as a habit as we got older. It’s a habit — but it’s a habit that’s based on a belief. And that belief can be outed and examined. That’s what we do here! Enlightenment is the removal of ignorance, and ignorance is plainly about none other than the issue of beliefs. So, beliefs are our work. We are basically scientists that deal with beliefs. We examine them, take them apart, see relations among them, see differences among them, etc. We take a meta view of beliefs, paradigms, culture. This leads ultimately to removal of ignorance and therefore Moksha.

I want to travel to India. I want to travel to Japan.

What? The Neo-Advaitans like to argue about beliefs moreso than other do?

Sure. How could I disagree with this? There is a sense in which things are reasonable, but it's not hard and fast. All thought is not truth, but some thought is closer to it than others. That's what makes a wise person. Their imperfect thought points better at the truth than others' do. That's plain to see in experience. Philosophers aren't stupid. There are much worse ways to spend one's time than thinking about important issues in Spirituality.

Deep said: @Joseph Maynor @Shanmugam @SOUL Don't you guys get tired of intellectualizing? // My Reply: Questioning beliefs is what reduces ignorance which is what gets you Enlightened. It's odd that this needs to be pointed out. There's always someone who chimes in like clockwork at regular intervals on this Forum challenging thinking with more thinking! Seen that before haha? Do you see a paradox there? It's like -- dude if you were really against thinking you wouldn't be on here. Common sense right? Let's not have a double-standard. Pretending to be "anti-thinking" sounds good, but upon reflection it's quite silly and trite. And predictable to boot!

POINT AT ISSUE: "[T]hat story isn't an absolute truth, it's just yours so be at peace with it." MY COMMENT: Ok. Let's assume you're right. But then that you be your story, would it not! There seems to be an infinite regress problem with your position. I wanted to believe you, it sounds plausible at first glance. But them I'm like -- ah! there's a problem with that too. There is such a thing as empirical reality that can be appealed to. Reality is not unreal. Reality can be appealed to. It's not hidden from us. So, in that sense, the relativity thesis regarding belief is technically unsound. Reality is right there, simple, and not hiding. There is an objectivity to reality that is plain to the eye and the eye of the mind. So, not all beliefs are relative. Some beliefs are more sound and grounded better than others. Reality is not subjective. Our thoughts are subjective, puzzled, relativistic, confused -- but not reality! Reality is simple, readily observable, and never puzzled. So, no it's not just my story! That implies there's a me and a not me. Reality is one. That relativity paradigm gets used like a sword in this work -- and it shouldn't be, because it's false. Video on point to watch:

@Shanmugam I don't like the Levels of Reality idea. There are no levels of reality. That's a story. I don't want to have any stories like that about reality. Reality doesn't need a story! That's the whole point of Enlightenment is to dislodge all your stories about reality. Reality needs a story like a dog needs fleas!

I read the article. I think I resonate more with the Radical Advaitans, as portrayed in the article. LET GO OF BEING HUMAN The Soul is not a human being. You can't have both! The Truth is not two, it's one. You hear some Enlightened people say -- oh I'm a human being. No no no! That's wrong! You're not a human being. You can't be a human being if you're Enlightened. All your "human stuff" is Ego. Reality does Ego stuff, but don't attach to it. People appear to be very confused about this. Emotions and thoughts are not yours. That's a belief. That's not reality. There is no Ego in reality. That's a made up metaphor that we've unfortunately taken to be the truth. But that theory ain't the truth about reality. It may be the truth about some fantasy, but not reality. This can be confirmed, if you watch reality as it is. There is no Egoic you in reality. This is dead literal! This language is not a story. It points to language that attempts to have an analogue in reality -- "the Egoic self". But it's this assumption that is false! Reality is not an analogue of language. Reality is not rational. What is rational is theory. Models are rational. Mind is rational. But it's a false assumption to think that reality is rational. That is a mistake that almost everybody makes! That goes way back in the history of Philosophy, both Eastern and Western.

I guess the relevant question here is what does a person need to become sustainably awake? That's probably what's at issue with all teachings that purport to be a self-sustaining curriculum, teaching, school, method, etc. Would the Enlightened Taoists agree with the Enlightened Advaitans or the Enlightened Zen Buddhists? These schools differ so much in teachings -- but are the ends really that different? The end seems to be the same, right? You are deprogrammed from culture -- beliefs -- in some sense in all three of those teachings. And in that you discover that reality was not what you thought it was. That's awakening. There's more than one path. But I think getting up under cultural beliefs is the common denominator in all of them. Shankara was right, Moksha (Enlightenment) is the result from the eradication of ignorance. And ignorance is either clinging to the wrong beliefs or failing to cling to the right ones (if any). But if you study the Taoists and Zen Buddhists they imply the same thing, just in a different way. If you study Taoism, you'll be amazed! I'm doing that now. Zhuang Zhou and Nagarjuna both thought that messing around with categories and forming beliefs from them about reality is a foolish quest -- that language and theory is a trap in this work. And that mentality informs the Zen Buddhists from its Chinese heritage. You can read Zhang Zhou here. His book is called the Zhangzi. I recommend it. After the Tao Te Ching, it's the classic Taoist text. https://ctext.org/zhuangzi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi_(book) // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Shankara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuang_Zhou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjuna

Beliefs are thoughts taken to be true. This is why Western Philosophers came up with the concept of propositions, although that is a kind of secondary belief. The first statement that beliefs are thoughts taken to be true can point to real things in reality. Notice when you perceive a belief. It's always a thought taken to be true. You can see that empirically. Propositions are a secondary kind of theory that is intended to model certain aspects of a belief using another thought -- namely a proposition. So, beliefs are not propositions and propositions are not beliefs. Belief is a word, a vocalization, but it refers to things in reality, namely thought that is taken to be true. Now, what does it mean to take something to be true -- well, again, that's a secondary sort of consideration. You don't need any philosophy to understand that you have beliefs. And you don't need to know what beliefs are to understand that you hold beliefs. So, the safest way to define belief using language is as a pointer as follows -- beliefs are thoughts taken to be true. Notice how I'm avoiding defining it as beliefs are thoughts taken to be true about reality. That over-complicates it. We don't need that part! My intent in using the language is not to define beliefs, but to point out that they are real thoughts with a certain kind of feature; namely, that they're taken to be true, or held to be true in some manner in some context. So, we use language pragmatically and don't confuse the words with the real phenomena that we're using the words to point to. This is something I want to stress moving forward, this kind of pragmatic understanding of language and theories.

Just be without trying to control. Reality just happens. Acceptance is the only virtue. Love comes as a byproduct, it's not a virtue in itself. Trying to love is egoic. Trying to avoid thinking is egoic. Trying to do anything is egoic. Just accept reality as it is, and for what it does. Be that. It's amazing. That's the unchanging Self. Rest as awareness and open yourself up. Open up. The Ego wants to close off. You wanna open up, but don't try to do that. Just be aware of how the Ego works and stop trying to control. You will open up naturally as you walk the path.

You do not control anything.

There's no you that's writing anything. Reality is just playing itself out. It's clinging to beliefs about reality that makes it seem like there's a you controlling stuff. Writing is just an experience in reality. A happening. Everything is just happening, but you're taking it as a you doing certain things. That's a belief laid up on top of the happenings. And that belief or lack of it has no impact on the happenings! The happenings are independent of beliefs about the happenings.