Inside and Outside - Duality or Not?

"

Anything experienced is mediated by mind.

"

Nama rupa. Name conditions form, form conditions name.

"But I really, truly, don't understand what EndInSight is saying, and I'd like to figure out if I'm just really dense or it's just so far from my experience I can't grok it or what. "

I suggested something you might try in order to understand what I'm talking about...did you try it?

Nick, with all due respect, let's try to keep this in English and understandable by everyone who might read it and does't want to Google "nama rupa.". Can you please explain in commonly used terms? If it is important enough to add to the conversation it's important enough to make it understood.

Thanks.

"@Nick So this tension is attraction or aversion to sense-experiences? Same idea as clinging, aversion, grasping, rejection or other terms often used in meditation practice? It's not a physical tension, right?"

As far as I see it, yes. Any vedana can be experienced as just vedana in vedana. Pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Inmy experience any 'tension' that seems to accompany vedana of any tone will be 'extra' mental overlay ontop of the vedana already arising.

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). Each will result in a mental 'tension to some degree. This tension I would say is the craving link in action. The mind's attention will keep landing on the vedana and keep craving its cessation, re-occurence, or wish to space out in the dullness, jumping back and froth from vedana to middle of the brain (this is what I see in my own experience. This opinion could change in future). This part is the clinging part. As it continues it results in 'bhava'/becoming, or a sense of existing/duality/me-ness/being/mood and 'I' thoughts: "I hate that person!" (maybe the person said soemthing that was evaluated as bad for 'me' and gave rise to an unpleasant vedana in the chest setting off the whole sequence of craving, clinging, becoming.

Essentially, in my experience, vedana , any vedana, can be experienced as vedana in vedana and there will be an absence of 'tension'. 'Tension' seems only to arise when there is ignorance of the sequence due to a lack of paying attention.

This is my current experience subject to change.

No absolutes.

@ End, if I try this that you mentioned earlier:
1) that there is tension in various parts of your body, especially along the midline of the body, especially during emotional or excited moments,
2) that when tension is noticed, sense-experience is not noticed,
3) that these moments of not noticing sense-experience are not blank, but include qualities which, pre-path, are often thought to be "self", and, post-path, include a variety of qualities...the grossest of which (during emotional or excited moments) are "feelings / low-level opinions about things"

re: #1, if I notice tension it is merely sense-experience - some kind of body sensation. I don't notice sense-experience not being noticed when tension is noticed, because I can't differentiate tension from sense-experience.
If i redefine tension as attraction-aversion, as might possibly be what is meant by "tension", I don't notice that particularly. For the sake of argument, I just stomped on my arthritic left toe as hard as I could. My eyes squeezed shut for a moment, I exhaled sharply, and then I began laughing.

So I don't think I can apply the practice.

"
Nick, with all due respect, let's try to keep this in English and understandable by everyone who might read it and does't want to Google "nama rupa.". Can you please explain in commonly used terms? If it is important enough to add to the conversation it's important enough to make it understood.

Thanks.

"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namarupa

"This term is also used in Buddhism, to refer to constituent processes of the human being: nāma is typically considered to refer to psychological elements of the human person, while Rūpa refers to the physical. The Buddhist nāma and rūpa are mutually dependent, and not separable; as nāmarūpa, they designate an individual being." END OF QUOTE

Or also known as the 5 Khandas.

Buddhist doctrine describes five aggregates:

RUPA

"form" or "matter"
external and internal matter. Externally, rupa is the physical world. Internally, rupa includes the material body and the physical sense organs.

NAMA

"sensation" or "feeling" (not emotion) "feeling tone"(vedanā):
sensing an object as either pleasant or unpleasant or neutral.

"perception", "conception", "apperception", "cognition", or "discrimination" (saññā):
registers whether an object is recognized or not (for instance, the sound of a bell or the shape of a tree).

"mental formations", "impulses", "volition", or "compositional factors" (saṅkhāra) :
all types of mental habits, thoughts, ideas, opinions, prejudices, compulsions, and decisions triggered by an object.

"consciousness" or "discernment" (viññāṇa):
cognizance, that which discerns

" so why are we making a distinction and saying that tension is not sensed when it obviously is? How else would we know it existed?

"

I think we are saying that tension is not a sense-object as other things that are touched are, nor is it vedana, and so we use the word "mental" to indicate that this phenomenon, which appears to be one of those things, is neither.

Same for tingling.

More specifically, the reason that *I* am making a distinction is that, according to dependent origination, there is sense-contact, then vedana, then craving-clinging-becoming...and these phenomena are associated with craving-clinging-becoming.

""When you fall asleep, things get still and then you just let go totally, let go of all your mindfulness, all your alertness, and move off into another stage of becoming, as the texts call it. Whatever little dream world happens to appear in the mind as we fall asleep, that's becoming in action..." (Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Three Levels of Concentration)"

Here is a non-technical explanation of what I mean by "mental representation". The imagery and cognition that occurs when falling asleep is of the same quality as the representations that are (spatiotemporally) overlaid on experience due to sense-contact. In other words, all the tensions, all the negative emotional states, all the tingly stuff in the body, all the dualistic cognition that one has, etc. is just one long, persistent daydream that one has while otherwise awake...and the experiential quality of a daydream-experience is obviously different from the experiential quality of a non-daydream experience.

"As far as I see it, yes. Any vedana can be experienced as just vedana in vedana. Pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Inmy experience any 'tension' that seems to accompany vedana of any tone will be 'extra' mental overlay ontop of the vedana already arising.

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). Each will result in a mental 'tension to some degree. This tension I would say is the craving link in action. The mind's attention will keep landing on the vedana and keep craving its cessation, re-occurence, or wish to space out in the dullness, jumping back and froth from vedana to middle of the brain (this is what I see in my own experience. This opinion could change in future). This part is the clinging part. As it continues it results in 'bhava'/becoming, or a sense of existing/duality/me-ness/being/mood and 'I' thoughts: "I hate that person!" (maybe the person said soemthing that was evaluated as bad for 'me' and gave rise to an unpleasant vedana in the chest setting off the whole sequence of craving, clinging, becoming." -- Nick


Can we assume "vedana" means "feeling?" Are you saying that mind makes judgments about feelings that arise, and that those judgments lead to craving and/or aversion, and that craving and aversion are more or less functions of the subject-object duality that mind creates?

""Anything experienced is mediated by mind.""

Chris, what this amounts to is that experience *is* mental representation.

Why not avoid all the metaphysics and epistemology altogether, and just use the word "experience", without positing anything that it pertains to?

Alex

"
Can we assume "vedana" means "feeling?" Are you saying that mind makes judgments about feelings that arise, and that those judgments lead to craving and/or aversion, and that craving and aversion are more or less functions of the subject-object duality that mind creates?

"

To avoid others reading 'feeling' as a full blown emotion or mood, I will clarify vedana as a sensation with one of three feeling tones (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral). I generally run with vedana meaning 'feeling tone'. So that is how I will use it from now on.

So with that clarified, yes, the mind makes judgements about the sensations with a feeling tone and gives rise to craving (experienced as an overlaying mental tension), clinging (the mind's attention keeps getting pulled to the vedana and middle of brain back and forth continuing the process of craving which gives rise to the subject/object duality (becoming).

Edited for clarity. This is my current take on it. No absolutes.

"I think we are saying that tension is not a sense-object as other things that are touched are, nor is it vedana, and so we use the word "mental" to indicate that this phenomenon, which appears to be one of those things, is neither."

Dependent origination will work on anything that is experienced/sensed/noticed/observed. It cannot be otherwise. I'm sorry, but all these distinctions appear to me to serve one purpose -- confusion. I'm sure it's not intentional but it IS confusing. So why? Why not go with the commonly understood terms, like craving, aversion, clinging, and so on. I'm really baffled by this.

So this started out being about whether there are things inside and outside in perception. Then it wandered off into observations about sensations generating clinging or aversion. Now what?

All this, like everything else, is empty

"What this amounts to is that experience *is* mental representation.

Why not avoid all the metaphysics and epistemology altogether, and just use the word "experience", without positing anything that it pertains to?

Alex
"

The communicative advantages of this move are notable. If we use "mind" to refer to the 6th sense consciousness, and representation to refer to something mind does, we have a phenomenologically useful set of definitions for this conversation.

Because now an important distinction can be made: between the facticity or phenomenal presencing of a (6th consciousness) representation, which itself is a sense impression, and the *content* of the representation, which is itself representational per se. (EX: imagine a dog. The act of imagining and the presencing of the image are a sense impression at the 6th door; the content is a representation of a dog. thus we can distinguish between representations like "I had a black dog when I was 9", and "it's raining outside"-- both of which could be accurate or not-- from representations of subjects and objects inherantly existing, which are *never* accurate yet tend never to be questioned unless one gets interested in insight, and which will pervade all other representations, like the ones in my example, until questioned and seen through).

While I agree that *all experiences* are mediated by something or other, I don't think its meaningful to use the word representation for that, because representation pertains to one specific kind of mediation, namely one that *takes place in consciousness*-- it's a re-presentation of something that was already present.

This speaks to another point: yes, there must be something arising in experience prior to representation (as so defined), or else mind (6th sense) would *have nothing to represent*. (whether that's all mind does, 'nuther question..)

"Dependent origination will work on anything that is experienced/sensed/noticed/observed. It cannot be otherwise. I'm sorry, but all these distinctions appear to me to serve one purpose -- confusion. I'm sure it's not intentional but it IS confusing. So why? Why not go with the commonly understood terms, like craving, aversion, clinging, and so on. I'm really baffled by this.

"

We went with the "commonly understood terms" in a past discussion, but when I asked people to attempt to discern the particular experiences that I claim are involved in dependent origination, there was an apparent unwillingness to participate.

So, they are not "commonly understood" (in the sense of agreed upon) after all.

In noticing the tingling on my skin, I discern

1) pleasantness
2) tension
3) 'attention'
4) daydream

With the "tingle" being 2)-4) and the experience of looking at it being 3).

Do those things correspond to vedana, craving, clinging, and becoming in your estimation? Because if so, that would simplify this discussion greatly.

"The fact is, though, Jake, that even though you, for example, can get quite geeked-out in your discussions (enough to require several readings on occasion!), I rarely don't understand what you are saying. I have talked to people from a wide variety of backgrounds and practice styles, and rarely do I really not get what they are talking about. But I really, truly, don't understand what EndInSight is saying, and I'd like to figure out if I'm just really dense or it's just so far from my experience I can't grok it or what. And honestly, meditation and awakening and so forth are not benefitted by unnecessary complexity. Actually, maybe that really does benefit people who thrive on complexity, and I am not one of them. So if it comes to that, I'll stop trying to understand and go to bed. "

You see, I think this points to my second suggestion--- that different forms of practice, engaged by folks with different temperaments, lead to different experiences, conceptualized differently... but nevertheless, after going through or at least deeply into our respective processes, we differently tempered, differently practiced, differently experienced folks share the sense that we have transformed in remarkably similar ways-- experience is more interesting, less suffering than before, it's easier to be kind and open and calm, etc for starters. Yet we can look at each others' practices and experiences and go "wtf?". Perhaps you and End represent two relatively extreme ends of a spectrum of temperament and technique?

I'm very happy to substitute Alex's version for mine. "Experience *is* mental representation" it shall be. It's a good improvement on a flawed original.

"I'm very happy to substitute Alex's version for mine. "Experience *is* mental representation" it shall be. It's a good improvement on a flawed original."--Chris

I don't know... what do you think about the point that, technically (in English as i understand it) representation refers to something that happens within experience... it's an operation which is done on another experience, which first experience is 'merely' presented... it can't happen outside of experience, by definition, although other forms of mediation can (which are probably irrelevant to this conversation). The initial 'presencing' of experience may be at the end of an infinite chain of mediations, sure.

But re-presentation is like a snapshot of a living experience; we can differentiate, phenomenally, between living, live-feed experience and the snapshots the 6th consciousness takes of the live feed to "report back to itself" on what is happening (and, significantly, to edit what is happening for various purposes from the pragmatic to the twistedly neurotic!!!).

The snapshots are *part* of the live feed, but the live feed is never part of the snapshots. The unawake state is characterized by not even noticing this distinction, and living in the snapshots and reports and commentary. The awake state is characterized by degrees of living in/as the live feed, which can include the snapshots, yet is not bamboozled by them...

"The snapshots are *part* of the live feed, but the live feed is never part of the snapshots. The unawake state is characterized by not even noticing this distinction, and living in the snapshots and reports and commentary. The awake state is characterized by degrees of living in/as the live feed, which can include the snapshots, yet is not bamboozled by them..."

EDIT: Do you think that the experience of the snapshots, in itself, in the very moment a snapshot is experienced, is different between a person who is "awake" and a person who is not?

Jake, I don't know, either. I can speak from experience but sometimes, as Alex has pointed out, the philosophy gets out ahead of the experience. So I'm going to think about this and get back to you.

"We went with the "commonly understood terms" in a past discussion, but when I asked people to attempt to discern the particular experiences that I claim are involved in dependent origination, there was an apparent unwillingness to participate." -- EndInSight

Please don't take this the wrong way but this may be putting the cart before the horse. From observing all the conversations here over time is it possible their unwillingness to participate is caused by the daunting and often confusing language you tend to use, EndInSight? I would suggest that you consider the possibility. Engaging with you tends to lead to a lot of... complexity, let's say. Most people here probably aren't willing to bring an electron microscope to the conversation

Jake & Chris, this controversy is a good example of why I prefer to stick with the word 'experience', because it comprises both (apparent) 'presentation' and (apparent) 'representation' without assigning anything a higher ontological status or making any claims about the ultimate nature of reality (or, for that matter, ruling out any possibilities about the ultimate nature of reality).

Alex

"Please don't take this the wrong way but this may be putting the cart before the horse. From observing all the conversations here over time is it possible their unwillingness to participate is caused by the daunting and often confusing language you tend to use, EndInSight? I would suggest that you consider the possibility. Engaging with you tends to lead to a lot of... complexity, let's say. Most people here probably aren't willing to bring an electron microscope to the conversation

"

As you in particular were unwilling to describe what you could discern, you can analyze your motives in that case, and have the answer to your previous question.

"Why not go with the commonly understood terms, like craving, aversion, clinging, and so on. I'm really baffled by this."

Anyhow, I do not know how to simplify things any further...take any vibratory experience, such as a tingling sensation on the skin, and see whether it has more components than it first appeared to. If you can break it down into smaller components (not by making it vibrate faster, but by seeing what the vibrations are composed of), my language should become quite clear.

I have also described another method, i.e. cultivating pleasurable sensations where vibrations are prominent and using that to help make distinctions...it is fairly straightforward...and yet, those who have professed bafflement at what I've said appear not to be interested in trying & reporting on what I suggest they try in order to reduce their bafflement.