Question for Advanced Meditators: Cessation

[Water by the River]

36 minutes ago, Javfly33 said:

What you say seems correct but Your view seems just another Non duality view. 'Just let go and focus/rest in ___Infinite Being/Awareness/Etc".

This might bring some peace and solace but it does not get you into the Driver seat, so to speak, therefore does not provide complete Liberation.

I do not belief you are Liberated by what you write. 

Nonduality is not Enlightenment. That comes way later (at least for most).

„With the passage of time one’s thoughts are stilled and one experiences a void like that of a cloudless sky. You must not, however, confuse this with enlightenment. Putting aside logic and reason, question yourself even more intensely in this wise: “Mind is formless, and so right now am I. What, then, is hearing?” Only after your search has permeated every pore and fiber of your being will the empty-space suddenly break asunder and your Face before your parents were born appear. You will feel like one who abruptly awakens from a dream.“

““Your physical body, composed of the four basic elements, can’t hear or understand this preaching. The empty-space can’t understand this preaching. Then what is it that hears and understands?” Meditate fully and directly on these words. Take hold of this koan as though wielding the jewelsword of the Vajra king. Cut down whatever appears in the mind. When the thoughts of mundane matters arise, cut them off. When notions of Buddhism arise, likewise lop them off. In short, destroy all ideas, whether of realization, of Buddhas, or of devils, and all day long pursue the question “What is it that hears this preaching?” When you have eradicated every conception until only emptiness remains, and then cut through even the emptiness, your mind will burst open and that which hears will manifest itself. Persevere, persevere—never quit halfway—until you reach the point where you feel as though you have risen from the dead. Only then will you be able to wholly resolve the momentous question, “What is it that hears this preaching?”

Bassui

So what is it that believes that over here is anything not liberated 

 

 

[Javfly33]

24 minutes ago, Water by the River said:

„With the passage of time one’s thoughts are stilled and one experiences a void like that of a cloudless sky. You must not, however, confuse this with enlightenment. Putting aside logic and reason, question yourself even more intensely in this wise: “Mind is formless, and so right now am I. What, then, is hearing?” Only after your search has permeated every pore and fiber of your being will the empty-space suddenly break asunder and your Face before your parents were born appear. You will feel like one who abruptly awakens from a dream.“

 

That´s the issue i see. That that which is Hearing can not be understood. It can only Appear/Be. 

So basically no mind or ego can 'trap' Enlightment. Enlightment is beyond mind, or any kind of trapping or grasping. 

The ego or mind or imaginary self can not grasp the 'Real' . Because the Real is always outside of that.

 

 

Quote

So what is it that believes that over here is anything not liberated 

Hahaha... yes, That does not exist .

It was just a thought 😉 As is usually said. 🤭

 

Edited July 11 by Javfly33

[Breakingthewall]

@Water by the River  

Imo you may be enlightened in the sense of being open to your true nature, but that does not mean you understand what the cosmos is like. You can understand the substance of reality but not its structure, and you can be open to the substance of reality in its empty facet and not be open to its full facet.

[An young being]

8 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

@Water by the River  

Imo you may be enlightened in the sense of being open to your true nature, but that does not mean you understand what the cosmos is like. You can understand the substance of reality but not its structure, and you can be open to the substance of reality in its empty facet and not be open to its full facet.

1 hour ago, Javfly33 said:

 

That's what an open minded scientist would do as well, which is a wonderful thing to do ( as long as he sees it as a wonderful thing to do)

[Water by the River]

2 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

@Water by the River  

Imo you may be enlightened in the sense of being open to your true nature, but that does not mean you understand what the cosmos is like. You can understand the substance of reality but not its structure, and you can be open to the substance of reality in its empty facet and not be open to its full facet.

These two disagree a bit:

They dont know what appears on the other side of the world. But they know a thing or two about the structure of Reality. 
 

form does not differ from emptiness,
emptiness does not differ from form.
That which is form is emptiness,
that which is emptiness form.
The same is true of feelings,
perceptions, impulses, consciousness.
 

Selling

and the mind is no hindrance,
without any hindrance no fears exist.
 

By the River

 

 

[Breakingthewall]

11 minutes ago, Water by the River said:

form does not differ from emptiness,
emptiness does not differ from form.

Emptiness is impossible since always is being, then only fullness exist, emptiness is an Illusion, because who perceive the emptiness fills it. 

But my question was about the structure, about the forms that appears in your perception. 

[Arthogaan]

15 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

Emptiness is impossible since always is being, then only fullness exist, emptiness is an Illusion, because who perceive the emptiness fills it. 

But my question was about the structure, about the forms that appears in your perception. 

Emptiness is not to be understood as a noun but as an adjective of form. The purpose of insight into emptiness is not to reject form - it is to understand it's structure. It is to understand that it is fabricated by the source. Everything is a fabrication. And does not deny aliveness and fulness.

When it comes to structure of reality Roger Thisdell describes it very well here: 

And back to the topic of the thread - > Cessation/Nibanna is when all fabrication, all fixations of the mind cease to be and the pure Awareness/Void/Mind is reavealed and you can not say anything about it because there is ZERO information there. Zero fabrication. No space, no time, no self, no god, no infinity. Zero information. And yet the subtlest YOU is that. It's when the God's computer stops computing anything. When the dreams stops being dreamed. It is beyond god realization.

 

Edited July 11 by Arthogaan

[Carl-Richard]

The moments leading up to cessation (while meditating eyes closed and seated in half-lotus position), I would describe as a progressive sense of stillness, both in the mind and in the body. The progressive unwinding of tension in the body that occurs in meditation starts coming to a conclusion, and your body becomes very still (close to zero movement). The tiny muscle twitches in your legs start to disappear and you can distinctly sense them relaxing at another level. The space between thoughts become wider, and the thoughts themselves become quicker and more subtle and faint.

The very last moments leading up to cessation, I would describe as slowly getting injected with an anesthetic, where all your senses slowly dampen and "equalize", until you lose all sense of being in a body and having a mind. The visual static behind your eyes gets smoother and more clear, and the visual field expands and zooms out slightly. The now unmowing body starts losing its sensation (interoceptively as well as externally, like the pressures under your butt and the feelings in your face and head), and it feels like you're slowly fading out of existence. This loss of bodily sensation is maybe what is most reminiscent of anesthesia, and the sense of being headless is an experience all by itself. The sounds in the room get dimmer and slowly disappear. The mind is now essentially quiet.

The moment of entering cessation itself, I would describe as entering an enormous "place" which has no sense of time, no sense of space, and you feel that it's a place that will last forever and has lasted forever. It existed before you were born and it will exist after you're gone. And it's a place of perfect stillness, tranquility and bliss. Of course, the main "attraction" or challenge of the experience is the sense that you're going to disappear forever and never come back, that your sense of identity is fundamentally collapsing and that you're being erased from existence. This can feel extremely terrifying, literally like you're dying, but this is only the last throes of the ego before it can choose to rest and you identify yourself with the larger identity of Consciousness.

Edited July 12 by Carl-Richard

[Breakingthewall]

15 hours ago, Arthogaan said:

. It is to understand that it is fabricated by the source. Everything is a fabrication.

A fabrication of what? Of the source? What source? God? 

15 hours ago, Arthogaan said:

 

When it comes to structure of reality Roger Thisdell describes

 

Thisdell describes his realization when he meditate. 

where he arrives at an empty space that according to him is the source of all perception. Well, what if he's completely wrong? You can reach the absolute emptiness of the mind by meditating. and? The only thing it means is that you have stopped mental processes. Does this mean that you understand something? I would say no, since people who meditate a lot tend to think that everything is a creation of their mind, and that nothing exists outside of it. How they know that? 

One thing is to arrive to a point where you perceive yourself as existence, that is legitimate because you perceive what you are without content, and another very different is understanding what is the reality, how is it structure. 

Edited July 12 by Breakingthewall

[Arthogaan]

1 hour ago, Breakingthewall said:

Well, what if he's completely wrong?

You can have that objection to any spiritual claim. 

Everything Roger says was validated by my personal experience. I am sure water by the river would agree. And it aligns with what many teacher say: Ingram, Massaro, Yang, Brown and many many others.

In the end all dualities colapse. Fullness vs emptiness. Aliveness vs death. 

 

1 hour ago, Breakingthewall said:

understanding what is the reality, how is it structure. 

Roger's Video that I posted is the best and most detailed video about structure of reality I have seen, and it perfectly aligns with all my psychedelic, meditative experienced as baseline daily life after dissolving the ego. 

But in the end there is no way around your direct experience and your own instincts. Who knows maybe awakening can be qualitatively different for different brains.

[Breakingthewall]

21 hours ago, Water by the River said:

With the passage of time one’s thoughts are stilled and one experiences a void like that of a cloudless sky. You must not, however, confuse this with enlightenment. Putting aside logic and reason, question yourself even more intensely in this wise: “Mind is formless, and so right now am I. What, then, is hearing?” Only after your search has permeated every pore and fiber of your being will the empty-space suddenly break asunder and your Face before your parents were born appear. You will feel like one who abruptly awakens from a dream.“

I have had that realization many times with 5meo. I am the timeless being, I have always been here, my freedom is total and my joy is absolute. but there is a small problem with this: it is personal. I am. there is self. an eternal, indescribable self, but a self that perceives itself as self and knows what it is with absolute clarity. It is not empty vastness, it is infinite self. So, I think there is still identification.

On the other hand, only with meditation with one or two puffs of weed, I have had an experience of total opening. There is no self, there is infinite emptiness, and this emptiness opens and shows its essence, it is totality. I look at it and in a moment I am it, but not as a self, but as a total indefinite, impersonal reality. It is extremely difficult to maintain this because the natural human self needs to be a self, it cannot be indefinite, so they are brief openings, a minute or two.

Then, how to be sure of anything? Right now im not having those perceptions, so are they real?

Edited July 12 by Breakingthewall

[Breakingthewall]

2 hours ago, Arthogaan said:

Roger's Video that I posted is the best and most detailed video about structure of reality I have seen,

Id say it's about the structure of the mind, to achieve a point of total openenss, or emptiness. But does he understand how reality is structured? What are the things that appears? Why there are sensations, things, others,  cosmos? What are them? He knows how to meditate and reach his essence, be totally free of obstacles, but until what point? Maybe there is more . 

[Breakingthewall]

21 hours ago, Water by the River said:

and then cut through even the emptiness, your mind will burst open and that which hears will manifest itself.

Then, there is someone or something that hears? Id say that sounds arise from the totality. 

[gettoefl]

4 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

A fabrication of what? Of the source? What source? God? 

Thisdell describes his realization when he meditate. 

where he arrives at an empty space that according to him is the source of all perception. Well, what if he's completely wrong? You can reach the absolute emptiness of the mind by meditating. and? The only thing it means is that you have stopped mental processes. Does this mean that you understand something? I would say no, since people who meditate a lot tend to think that everything is a creation of their mind, and that nothing exists outside of it. How they know that? 

One thing is to arrive to a point where you perceive yourself as existence, that is legitimate because you perceive what you are without content, and another very different is understanding what is the reality, how is it structure. 

cessation is awareness empty of experience namely sleep but aware in it

enlightenment is awareness full of experience but not attached to it

Edited July 12 by gettoefl

[An young being]

4 minutes ago, gettoefl said:

enlightenment is awareness full of experience but not attached to it

Let's assume you are enlightened by your definition. What will you do if somebody gives you an option to choose a pizza or a burger to eat? How will you stay unattached while making that decision?

[gettoefl]

8 minutes ago, An young being said:

Let's assume you are enlightened by your definition. What will you do if somebody gives you an option to choose a pizza or a burger to eat? How will you stay unattached while making that decision?

yours truly does so at the supermarket every week, who cares what goes into the body, anything is fine, what looks nice to these eyes today

i mean i do prefer coffee but am perfectly satisfied to drink tea every day

in any case i was just giving an acceptable-to-many definition of enlightenment to show that it is opposite to cessation

in short, enlightenment is engaging but seeing through it and cessation is disengaging

Edited July 12 by gettoefl

[An young being]

7 minutes ago, gettoefl said:

yours truly does so at the supermarket every week, who cares what goes into the body, anything is fine, what looks nice to these eyes today

i mean i do prefer coffee but am perfectly satisfied to drink tea every day

in any case i was just giving an acceptable-to-many definition of enlightenment to show that it is opposite to cessation

in short, enlightenment is engaging but seeing through it and cessation is disengaging

Got it, and I started a separate post so as  not to disturb the serious discussion!

[Arthogaan]

1 hour ago, Breakingthewall said:

But does he understand how reality is structured? What are the things that appears? Why there are sensations, things, others,  cosmos? What are them? He knows how to meditate and reach his essence, be totally free of obstacles, but until what point? Maybe there is more . 

Well true understanding of what things are cannot be put into words.

It's beyond categorization and conceptualization. That's what you realize, that holding any structure any conceptualizing leads to distortion in perceiving. 

As Rob Burbea says - " there is no perception without conception " - to have any perception at all you have to have some very very subtle construction/obstruction going on. Which is distorting by nature. 

Another way to say this is that you are always looking through some lense/view. 

So when you want to get to the Essence, with no conceptualization at all (so no distortion) you unbind next and next such graspings and conceptualizations -> that process makes you more and more open and dissolved -> you reach the point of dissovling the concept of self, so self disappears -> you also dissolve the conception (and therefore perceiving) of "Thinginess" so everything becomes empty and radiant.

You keep on unbinding and dissolving any structure, any conception, any obscuration and grasping -> and it turns out that this leads to Cessation/No Perception/Nibbana (or in daily life to seeing Emptiness of phenomena).

It is a great surprise (at least it was for me) that with no distortion at all you are left with no perception, no consciousness, no nothing even.

And that is the deepest Freedom. That may sound empty and nihilistic but it isn't - only language makes it seem so.

Actually it's the most beautiful freeing realization ever.

Edited July 12 by Arthogaan

[An young being]

13 minutes ago, Arthogaan said:

It is a great surprise (at least it was for me) that with no distortion at all you are left with no perception, no consciousness, no nothing even.

Is there anything to experience there or simply nothing?

[Water by the River]

1 hour ago, Breakingthewall said:

Then, there is someone or something that hears?

Oh yes... 

So now, what is it?