Aho, Enlightened Guy,
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 10:56 PM, jp EnlightenmentGuy < [email protected]> wrote: > I have heard many spiritual teachers just dismissively say things > like, > > "You can't be anything that changes, right? You are not the body, or > mind, or memories, or personality or whatever." > > Really? > > I'll bet 99.99%++ of all humans who have ever existed would agree with > what is written below. Can you say, clearly, why this is not > accurate?? > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > > Who or what am I? I am a body, with certain attributes and abilities > (physical and mental), born to parents, exposed to things in the > environment, having had experiences I have collected memories, and > developed beliefs and a personality (with all its many sub- > attributes). > > If I had been born to different parents (or adopted as an infant), or > born at a different time, or born into a different body, or born in a > different place, or in a different culture/society, then I would in > fact be a different person. > > That is what a "person" is -- a unique, ever-changing, body/mind/ > personality, that is born, lives for a while, then dies. > > That is what I am. > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > > How clear can you be in pointing out how, exactly, this is inaccurate? > Who says the above depiction is inaccurate? But it is a depiction. And a depiction is always limited. Just like a painting of the sky...may in fact be far more beautiful than the actual muggy polluted sordid of a sky... ..........but a painting no matter how wide the canvas .....is only a bounded version. The depiction as above........as........ what seems to be an absolute truth...... is an arising and maybe persisting ...........conviction....within what is once again termed(depicted).........as the dreaming-while-awake-drama. What happens to the content of this dreaming-while-awake-drama.........with all it's seeming so real, so absolute postulates.... ....of the seemingly so real existence of a sentient biological object with identifiable parentage........and which seemingly acts so independently, so volitionally........while relating with an array of equally so real sentient and non-sentient other-than-itself-objects.... .....what happens to the entirety of this hoopla.....when this dreaming-while-awake-drama..........ceases? As in going to sleep. The entirety of all that seemingly so real., so absolute postulates, including the unshakable conviction of one's existence as "a" distinguished person...... .......goes pooooooooooooof. As gets poooofed..........the beloved wife, the beloved son, the beloved mother, the revered icon of material or spiritual authority............the sense of identity/person which has made such a tremendous mark in life, all the accumulations, material/spiritual, all the convictions, realization, understandings, assertions, denials...... .....all the profane joys and profound sorrows, the sublime and the ridiculous, the awe-inspiring moments and the pissing- off-events....... ......all vaporizes. And is replaced with another entire set of postulates and an equally unshakable conviction of one's existence as "a" distinguished dream-character-person.... ...which seemingly acts so independently, so volitionally........relating with an array of equally so real sentient and non-sentient other-than-itself-dreamt-up objects...... ......making up the hoopla of sleep-dream-drama. Which also goes poooooooooooooof.......when the state of deep sleep dawns. A state in which is the absence of the dream-while-awake hoopla and the dream-while-sleep hoopla. Seemingly so real and so dear to life...............convictions(which are nothing but thoughts maybe deeply entrenched).... ...which appear and disappear, which arise and dissipate.... ....whose longevity are only minute fractions of time.... .....of what import are these convictions? The usual refrain (or the "clever" rejoinder)..........is "But when I wake up I find the same world the same relationships, the same body with-the piles-in-the-rectum, the same job etc etc. So all that must have continued to exist, while I was away........either sleep-dreaming or deep-sleeping or whatever". The cognized world in the moment with the entirety of it's content, which includes the sentient biological body-mind object through which the very cognizing of the perceived-world is taking place.... ......is never the same, moment to moment to moment. Just seems like a persistent constant. Just like flowing waters of a river gives rise to a conviction about a constant entity termed as a river. Just like a gathering of trees gives rise to a conviction about a constant entity termed as a forest. Or two criss-crossing lines drawn on a blank paper...........appear to have a point at which the two lines criss-cross. There is really no "river", no "forest", no "point".... ....just conventions .........which no doubt serve a useful purpose. Language for example is an agreed convention. And it is also not that there is something which changing into something else. This moment now and here..........has no connectivity to the next. A "next moment" itself being a thought in this now and here. "Now and here" has never moved to or morphed into a "then and there". So is the no-hoopla-persistingly constant deep-sleep state.........the truth of one's identity? Nope.........for that too is a durational event. That in which...........all these three states happens...... ......that, which is all the three states ............in its seemingly objectivized form(s)..... .....that-which-has-no-space-to-admit-an-other...... ------that to which, neither appearance or disappearance, neither arising or dissipating, neither existing, or non-existing..........has any relevance....... ..can that be an identity even to itself? Can "it" even admit the relevance of a need for an identity itself? A pointing as "Awareness-not-aware-of-itself"... .....while possessing the widest expanse of a canvas......is still a depicting. So now what is to be done............with the Who am I .............vuvuzela whining? No matter what the arising answer to that question in the moment...... ..... no matter how deep the conviction about that answer in that moment .... ..... no matter how lofty the authority from whom the answer has been borrowed, heard, imbibed....written down and memorized...... ....the quest......just for whom is that answer............an answer? Who is it that is has taken delivery of the thought............in the form of the answer? Who is it that has taken the delivery of the thought............in the form of the question... ...Who am I? Who is it.............for whom the relevance of the need of an identity? Who is it to whom this play of thought, in the form of questioning/answering.... ....is a cognizable array of eventing? It is not a coincidence that the Sufi dervishes go Hoo Hooo Hoooo while whirling away.
