Playing With Perspectives

[UnbornTao]

Quote

Man is a moving being. If he isn't moving towards what's good, he inevitably moves towards that which is not.

- Chozan Shisshai

Commitment makes up your character. Whatever you focus on -- whatever your attention and energy go to -- grows. You become whatever you're committed to. Don't take this for granted. With time, the consequences of your commitment will become obvious, whether positive or disastrous. Don't delay taking empowering actions, no matter how small they may seem. The sooner you do, the better.

Contemplate:

• You become what you think
• What are you committed to?
• What do you devote your energy and attention to on a daily basis? 

Edited August 6, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Freedom is being able to do something and not do it. Freedom requires not being dominated by a self-agenda.

Think of anger. Freeing yourself from that emotion implies the choice and the capacity to either be angry or not. Choosing to become angry would depend on what a given moment calls for, whether appropriate or needed.

Edited August 23, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Being capable of taking action is about self-awareness rather than will.

Edited September 22, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

[UnbornTao]

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 28, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

How can you distinguish between authentic teachers and charlatans?

[UnbornTao]

Moe regrets:

Edited August 12, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Take any everyday physical object in your vicinity.

Strip away all of the meaning, value, associations, concepts, knowledge, and memory that you have about it.

Stop perceiving it as it relates to you. Get it as itself. 

What is actually there? What is that when all of your additions and activities related to it are set aside?

Notice what happens when doing this practice.

Edited September 23, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Boredom can be experienced when distracted. It shows up as the feeling of loneliness which is by itself a painful experience. It seems to be accompanied by an excruciating despair that could be plainly expressed as: "God, I hope this isn't all there is."

What motivates the need for distraction? Why the drive for distraction in the first place? What do you get and avoid by being distracted?

Avoiding pain could be the motivation for pursuing distraction.

Edited September 23, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Quote

To his disciples: The people studying Zen nowadays spend all their time on old Zen words and stories, quoting this fellow and citing that one as they deliberate fruitlessly over their koans. Trailing doggedly after other people's words. Feeding on their dregs. Caught in another man's tub, unable to break out into real freedom. They're down in the dark caves, living with the disembodied spirits. You won't find any of those musers or cogitators around here. Here i make people stand absolutely alone and independent right from the start, with their eyes fully open, so they can reach out through all the universe. Each one of the words and sayings uttered by the worthy teachers of the past was given in response to a particular occasion, according to changing conditions - they were trying to stop a child's crying by showing him an empty hand. How could anyone who belongs to the family of Zen have even a single Dharma to preach! If you chase after phrases and get muddled up in words, you're no better off than a man who loses his sword over the side of a ship and then marks the spot where it fell in on the railing.

- Bankei.

Edited August 28, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Observe the tendency to remain closed-minded, stuck within one's knowledge, preferring comfortable ignorance as opposed to questioning. You try to quickly fill the space that arises when questioning some matter. Retreating to the safety of the "known" in order to feel safe is the preferred strategy, albeit a superficial and temporary one. You want to protect your conceptual world -- your worldview --, which is make-believe. Your deeply-held beliefs are unconsciously cherished and very personal to you. Why is that?

What if your convictions on the world are perspectival, believed, and conceptually-constructed rather than the thing itself? Thoughts themselves are not what they're pointing at. They can never be true. In my view, this subtle and significant point is easily missed by many.

What if all of your knowledge is actually ignorance that is disguised and covered by an amalgamation of assumptions, in an attempt to better handle survival?

Openness can be threatening to self and worldview. It unveils one's core ignorance. At the very core of your experience, you can see that you don't know the fundamental aspects of existence, self and life.

Being open in your investigations is a requisite for discovery and learning. The deeper the openness you are able to embody, the more powerful learning gets.

Edited October 7, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

What is generated for a purpose of survival other than what is is a manipulation. Since it is not what something is for itself, it is done to accomplish some end, to affect (produce an effect on) the perceived condition.

For example, you may assess that others are not perceiving you as you would like them to, so you set up to affect that condition so that the desired result is produced, which is to be perceived a certain way.

Everything we do, think, say and emote is a manipulation. In other words, it is created to change conditions. You get angry in order to protect yourself from the hurt underlying the anger. The purpose of anger is manipulating your condition of hurt. You tell a joke so that another likes you. You act in such a way that another finds endearing, etc. This is an on-going dynamic in your experience.

What is for itself is not useful for survival. Within the context of survival, there is no reason for experiencing something for itself. Survival is all about what things are to me. It occurs within a self-referential perception of conditions. It is about how something relates to you, not about the thing itself. Can you begin to see the difference?

Now, there are two distinctions that can be made within the domain of manipulation:

1. Direct manipulation: being straightforward and transparent about how you manipulate. Example: "Give me the pencil please"
2. Indirect manipulation: the one commonly called manipulation. It is indirect, covert, deceptive. It is made to appear as not a manipulation. It entails hiding away your motives, not showing your actual intention by deliberately misrepresenting it, playing coy, etc.

Edited September 23, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Belief undermines openness, curiosity, questioning, learning and discovery.

Don't take them seriously and extinguish as much disempowering ones as you can find.

Edited August 28, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

[UnbornTao]

Thoroughly enjoying the Foundation show. Highly recommended. Beautiful visuals and scenery.  Have to read the books.

 

Edited September 29, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Self-doubt is a universal experience. At the core of self's apparent existence, you're afraid it might be empty, that the existence of you is a facade or illusion. This shows up as a fundamental sense of inauthenticity, of unreal-ness. A nagging sense, underlying your experience, of being incapable of life. Self doesn't experience itself as capable of creating life. Are you your self?

What is this sense about?

Edited October 18, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

Edited September 22, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Got The Historical Jesus by The Great Courses. I find it fascinating to study Jesus as a person and historical figure. What was the individual like? What happened in his "lost years"? Did he study Buddhism?

Edited October 20, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

You can start taking responsibility for your own thinking, feeling and acting. They are activities done by you. Taking ownership of one's experience requires recognising its nature, as an activity done by you. If that's the case, you can choose to do it differently. This is a profound point that needs contemplation on my part.

A few superficial manifestations of this principle:

• If I'm overweight, I can start eating healthy.
• If I smoke, I can stop smoking.
• If I'm unhappy, I can be happy.
• If I feel myself as incapable, I can feel myself as capable
• If I'm uneducated, I can go to college.
• If I'm poor, I can develop valuable skills.
• If I can't focus for long, I can read and meditate consistently.
• If I dislike my environment, I can either move or change my disposition.
• If I do disempowering shit, I can do powerful shit
• Etc.

Edited November 15, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

 

Edited October 1, 2023 by UnbornTao