Inside and Outside - Duality or Not?

Justin, it sounds to me like you have a very common sense handle on this. There is wisdom in common sense. MIddle Way wisdom, even

Metta back at you!

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Yes, inclination and personal experience. There are many different practices that lead to different results. Experience talking to others, reading about their experiences and their practices, watching other traditions with respect -- this all makes it very clear that we have our choices to make and those choices should be respected.

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Give the man a cigar, ladies and gentlemen... contemplative ecumenicism, hooray!

Thanks, Chris! Metta! =P haha

"Unless we can just let go of the investigating after a certain juncture, we can miss the larger point, the macro point. People can use both types of practice and do not need to chose one over the other. In fact, I suspect those who have some experience of both are likely to see this.

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Indeed, the "investigating" generally just exaggerates vibrations.

On the other hand, if you give up too soon, you might get stuck somewhere, because not seeing the way that experience works limits your ability to see the bigger picture.

There is a happy medium somewhere: see the mental overlay in whatever detail satisfies you, and then figure out how to see through it / remove it. Then, see whether anything is left to do.

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There is a happy medium somewhere: see the mental overlay in whatever detail satisfies you, and then figure out how to see through it / remove it. Then, see whether anything is left to do."

That's not much of a "happy medium" but rather going back to your preferred approach, no?

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You can chase minute phenomena into oblivion but the returns are not there after a certain point. They are diminishing returns. And yes, all experience is of the same taste, which is both relative and absolute. Unless we can just let go of the investigating after a certain juncture, we can miss the larger point, the macro point. People can use both types of practice and do not need to chose one over the other. In fact, I suspect those who have some experience of both are likely to see this.

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Chris, when you have met people who do "both types of practice" - you don't mean that they are doing them somehow simultaneously, right? Are you talking about using one method at one time (week, day, hour, minute) and the other at other times? Or applying them in a more methodical way? Or do you actually mean simultaneously (which I'm not sure is possible, thus the question).

"That's not much of a "happy medium" but rather going back to your preferred approach, no?
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I found, when letting go, that the overlay disappears precisely to the extent that letting go happens. As Chris has emphasized the importance of letting go in past threads, I assume we are talking about the same phenomenon.

Is your experience different? Is the overlay exaggerated by letting go? Does absolutely nothing happen to it?

Letting go and investigating seem to me very different things. At least as I experience them, investigating is a kind of attentive close looking (perhaps as if counting all the birds in a flock as it flies by); investigating can also be a sort of contemplation (in the common English sense) - pondering, asking a question, feeling the response, asking it again; while letting go is a very passive inclusive surrendering - not "doing" anything. It involves trusting, allowing, relaxing, giving up any control, etc.

And, when you let go, what happens to the overlay (dualistic cognition)? I am sure that it doesn't increase (i.e. you suddenly get angry or mad or zoned out or whatever after having let go). And if there is a newfound freshness, peace, etc. after letting go, that is a fairly sure sign that dualistic cognition has not remained the same, but receded.

However, you tell me!

In my experience, seeing the overlay (via previous investigation) makes it clearer how to let go of it. Further, the overlay can be investigated and let go of in the same sitting...as one piece of it is let go of, one can look around and see what's left, and when something else is found to let go of, that can be let go of next...

Admin Comment:

EbndInSight, if you continue to deny anyone else here their opinion, to keep pushing the conversation back to EndsInSight's practice (which is apparently in your mind the ONLY practice with any efficacy), and insisting that you are always and forever the only authority on everything discussed here, I will deny you access to these boards. I've warned you about this before and you stopped for a few months. Now you're back to doing that again. As we've discussed, this site is not called EndInSight Dharma. It would be really cool if you would learn to reply to at least some comments with things like "I get your point" or even "Thanks for sharing."

Thank you.

End Admin Commment

"Chris, when you have met people who do "both types of practice" - you don't mean that they are doing them somehow simultaneously, right? Are you talking about using one method at one time (week, day, hour, minute) and the other at other times? Or applying them in a more methodical way? Or do you actually mean simultaneously (which I'm not sure is possible, thus the question)."

I mean that I know, have met face to face, conversed with on the phone and online with people in a lot of different practices and traditions. Not usually at the same time but depending on who it is some of them have practiced in more than one tradition. Some more advanced friends of mine one do in fact use practice methods from more that one tradition, but all have a primary tradition that, if asked, they would name as such.

Good question!

"There is a happy medium somewhere: see the mental overlay in whatever detail satisfies you, and then figure out how to see through it / remove it. Then, see whether anything is left to do."

Letting go in the sense that Giragirasol apparently meant it is truly, absolutely, without question and with NO EXPECTATIONS letting go. If you are "letting go" in order to find out what else there is to do it's certainly not letting go. It's continuing your quest for stuff to investigate (provisionally) by just not actively investigating.

JMHO

Chris, I apologize for overstepping any boundaries that I may have out of negligence.

However, I would like to emphasize that I am not denying that other practices are efficacious and have not insisted that I am an authority above all others. I have merely described my experience, and attempted to talk about my and others' experiences in terms that make sense to me. I would say that I agree with Antero's comment

"Even though I use different terminology to describe this phenomenon, I have reasons to believe that we are talking about the same thing seen from another angle and I think that the whole development of meditation practice could be measured in how much we are changing our modes of perception from mental representations to actual sensory experience."

i.e. in my opinion we are all talking about the same stuff, albeit in fairly different ways.

In any case, I'll take a break from posting here for awhile, as, if you have a different impression, then I am clearly not communicating in a helpful or clear way.

I would also like to apologize to anyone (giragirasol, chris, perhaps others) to who I may have given the impression that I think I am the final arbitrer of what works, or that I think that my practices (or my way of thinking about things) is optimal. In reality I have only been attempting to have an interesting and mutually beneficial conversation about this stuff, but, as is the nature of the world, different people have different skills, and talking about this sort of stuff in a helpful and friendly way is a skill that I am deficient in at times and which I would do well to work on further.

EndInSight, I think it would be a great idea for you to pretend to be another poster, say a new poster here. Then go back over this and several other conversations where you've participated over the last six months or so. Read those threads pretending to be that new poster or, frankly, one of the other posters you're conversing with in the thread. If you do this forthrightly I believe you will see how it plays out from these others' POV. See, while yes, you do apologize (and I accept your apology), your additional comments make me think you really don't understand the issue so it is in that spirit that I suggest the exercise.

Thanks, and best to you!

"See, while yes, you do apologize (and I accept your apology), your additional comments make me think you really don't understand the issue so it is in that spirit that I suggest the exercise."

Thanks for the suggestion.

I will point out that I do realize another issue is that I am a fairly opinionated person and do tend to attempt to frame discussion in terms of what makes sense to me and my own opinions about things. Part of this is already included in what I said (not being skilled at talking about these things in a friendly way, as some people will consider this approach to be argumentative and aggressive), but part of it is, as you say, that this is KFD, not EIS-D, and it is reasonable to think that this approach is simply inappropriate here. Although I do realize this (and have in the past as well), there are clearly lapses in my mindfulness of this fact, which is another reason that I will take a break from posting here for awhile.

In any case, best of luck to everyone in terms of their own practice, and take care!

Chris, having thought about this for a bit, I would like to thank you for calling me out on it.

Though an analysis of things might be interesting in a variety of ways, the fundamental issue here is that my approach to discussing the dharma is not the appropriate one at all times in all places and among all people, and my repeatedly not having kept this in mind is a personal flaw. Knowing about my flaws is good, because the more I know about them, the more I can try to work around them, and the better things are for me and everyone else.

As I am aware that I am far from perfect, and yet, as there is value in my particular approach to the dharma when pursued in the right context, I will not disrespect Kenneth or the other posters here (even if accidentally or by negligence), and will pursue that particular style of discussion in contexts where it seems likely to be of value...i.e. not here.

I may stick around in some small capacity to talk about a more limited range of things (e.g. questions about practices of Kenneth's I've done that have helped me, such as Direct Mode), but in general will simply post elsewhere, where my contributions are more likely to lead to my and others' benefit rather than to contention.

Anyhow, my apologies to anyone who I may have offended.

What a wonderful thread. Many of the things I've been seeing in my practice were put into words in wonderful ways by Jake, EIS, Nick and Chris. Gira raised very interesting questions. I like this one:

"Chris, when you have met people who do "both types of practice" - you don't mean that they are doing them somehow simultaneously, right? Are you talking about using one method at one time (week, day, hour, minute) and the other at other times? Or applying them in a more methodical way? Or do you actually mean simultaneously (which I'm not sure is possible, thus the question)."

I believe that if one lets go, surrenders, drops the body/mind, drops whatever rises, then the investigation is released and happens by itself. We can call this "Free Investigation". As EIS points out, when dropping everything discerned, my experience confirms that dualistic cognition is reduced, the One Taste changes (for me it deepens immensely), and like I said before, investigation is released.

Perhaps "Free investigation" isn't the right term, maybe we can borrow from the tibetans: Discriminating Awareness (Shes-Rab), which btw is also prajña within a maha/vajrayana point of view. I don't care how we call this, my point is that when I drop myself, a "higher" seeing happens, and this higher seeing investigates by itself, in several directions at the same time. In this sense, investigation done by myself, as EIS mentioned earlier, creates some sort of subtle suffering. If the tension becomes too painful, I usually endup bouncing back and forth btwn the back of the brain and the pain itself. To ease this, I cultivate some pleasure, hack vedana and to a certain extent I investigate a bit to find the origin of tension/clinging. Then I drop it and the higher seeing/free investigation begins again. Does this resonate with anyone?

I suspect I've become constitutionally averse to descriptions of things that include hierarchical language ("higher" in this case). One of the most fundamental insights (I believe) is that there is absolutely nothing higher or lower, as "higher" and "lower" are just concepts. No hierarchies. "Nothing holy" as they say in Zen. I can relate to what you're saying if you're willing to remove that part and just say that dropping concepts (including self) enhances one's ability to access the non-dual, Awareness, rigpa, whatever we decide to call it, where the discriminating mind is put aside.

Fair? Or am I missing something important, which can certainly happen.

"This makes the vedana seem quite unsatsifactory and due to not seeing vedana in vedana leads to a mental movement to crave for the vedana's cessation (if it is unpleasant) or its re-occurence (if it is pleasant) or craving to rest or space out in a dull cloudiness (if it is neutral). "

Nik: The part about "due to not seeing vedana in vedana" implies that this is the *only* way to break the chain of becoming. This does not ring true to me. In my very recent experience you can also notice the empty and self-arisen nature of *all* phenomena including even a quick moment of tension or self-referencing thought and those phenomena can be automatically self-liberated as they arise in real time.

Sorry to be pedantic, but I do not think this requires a sharp attention to vedana.

"That tension thing I don't get. If there is tension it is a muscular tension or tingling or whatever, therefore simply something sensed through the six senses, no? Is tension the wrong word? Is it a thought? "

I'm just catching up with this thread -

giragirasol: Do you experience a mental tension sometimes? Have you attained stream entry? For me, the tension is highly correlated with the sense of self. Seeing this tension in real time causes self to disappear. I guess "clinging" is the more technical term, but in my unprecise mind it just manifests as tension.

Giragirasol is someone I know quite well online and on a face to face basis, and who is, I believe, very much and quite fully awake. These are very sticky questions, aren't they?

Okay, then that makes sense. Its probably hard to experience tension if its not existing for you

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I suspect I've become constitutionally averse to descriptions of things that include hierarchical language ("higher" in this case). One of the most fundamental insights (I believe) is that there is absolutely nothing higher or lower, as "higher" and "lower" are just concepts. No hierarchies. "Nothing holy" as they say in Zen. I can relate to what you're saying if you're willing to remove that part and just say that dropping concepts (including self) enhances one's ability to access the non-dual, Awareness, rigpa, whatever we decide to call it, where the discriminating mind is put aside.

Fair? Or am I missing something important, which can certainly happen.

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Sounds good to me Chris. "Higher" doesn't make me happy either. The main aspect I wanted to point out is that, to me, it seems that investigation can happen by itself once we drop concepts, self and, of course, investigation done by the self. In no way I find this spontaneous investigation higher or lower, just something very efficient that leads to advancement in practice.

@apriori, it's interesting that in the self-inquiry method I've heard a teacher describe self-inquiry being the practice one does to see through the illusion of self (the first time); after that what arises is "natural inquiry". It's not a very technical approach at all, but I thought the overlap in terminology was interesting.