Oh yeah out of context that looks pretty wrong. I’ll change it still.
I said that to mean I agreed with the moral behind this, but not really with its relevance.
It is not that when thoughts cease, you cease. It is not that when a nice feeling is replaced by a painful feeling, you perceive that the pain is felt by a totally different you. In jhana, whatever you experience, you never experience the cessation of a me who abides in jhana and tastes all these changes. In our life there is this constant factor, this one who knows. I do not say that it is always present, but if present it always has the same tone, sphere, quality.
For me the practical import is that i do not really have to fear cessation of formations because that does not mean i will cease. When i first started meditating, 20 years ago, and i noticed no thoughts at all, fear arose.
The mind sees formations as a proof one exist. It looks like this…I exist because there are formations coming and going, and formations are coming and going, so I exist…
It is like we all the time confirm this way that we exist. This does really happen in the mind.
That is, i feel, the key of all ignorance. That is why all beings live in fear and become restless seekers.
Sorry Bran, the way you see things is, for me, a bit disturbing. I do not even know what to say.
I think that the one who knows is in all our lifes felt or perceived as the same but what he/she knows not.
This one who knows , i do not yet know what it is. Maha Boowa says that connected to a body it is experienced as personal and local, a me. And also as arising and ceasing. But one can also know and see some day that the one who knows is in fact a mere knowing that does not really arise and ceases
But this cannot be seen from a personal perspective.
Maybe because I didn’t to mention that chasing an animal to eat it is indeed a bad action, and abusing someone is also a bad action. Again, you don’t have to suffer, nothing in the world says that.
You should check the other thread I linked, but I will make a tiny summary:
Nancy Reigle:
the Buddha when teaching his basic doctrine of anātman, no-self, only denied the abiding reality of the personal or empirical ātman, but not the universal or authentic ātman.
Bhante Sujato (criticizing the above):
When the suttas are saying the aggregates are not self, they are not saying, “These things, which we all know are empirical realities, are not-self”. They are saying: “These things, which you take in a metaphysical way as a self, are in fact conditioned empirical realities”. It becomes obvious that “consciousness is not self” is specifically referring to the Upanishadic doctrine (i.e. that of Yajnavalkya).
Thanissaro Bhikkhu:
when all experience of the six senses ceases, there is no thought, “I am” (DN 15). So, concepts of self and not-self don’t apply.
I see it like this that the Buddha saw, knew, that all phenomane are in essence without sign. He knew that the nature of mind is not making signs but he knew this sign-making is the mental factor of sanna.
The signs or meaning mind instinctively, by the force of habit, projects upon phenomena,- signs as nice, attractive, ugly, repulsive, me, mine, my self, not me, not mine, not my self,- whatever signs, that is not really seeing things as they really are, but this is perception, this is the meaningful world of vinnana, the magician. But there is also the signless, empty nature of mind which is different.
Vinnana in the sutta’s is only refering to a moment of awareness. The conscious experience of a sound is the arising of ear-vinnana (many of them), a smell is the arising of smell vinnana , the awareness of an arising emotion, idea etc is a moment of arising mental vinnana.
Like waves on the ocean of the mind.
If you study the brain you will see that vinnana relies on the brain. If you damage part of the visual parts of the brain, no eye vinnana’s arise, you are blind, etc. That vinnana can survive without brain is hard to belief but it is taught like that. I believe it would be absolute impossible if there is no intelligent ground.
Also neurologic science support the idea that things we perceive have no fixed meaning but the brain makes a best guess. This meaning is attributed and can change drastically. The meaning ‘my woman’ can change drastically when certain parts of the brain are damaged. One might suddenly even see that woman that was always yourbeloved spouse, as a fraud who only says she is your woman.
The brain is always constructing meaning. Seen from introspection, we live in a meaningful world. There are signs. The most important meanings that the brain or mind attributes are me, mine, myself.
I believe Buddha discovered the domain of the signless, the domain in which perceptions can arise and cease but have no meaning as me, mine, myself or attractive and ugly, not me, not mine etc.
I believe the Buddha teaches this as the escape.
Thanks for this, but one can also not say that suffering is caused by oneself…that is i feel very important.
One must not burden oneself nor other people with this idea. Because suffering is arising with avijja as conditions, PS. Suffering is not something to blame or some fault or conscious decision. It is only a consequence or result of a wrong Path the mind takes.
This does not happen as choice of a self. There is no self as instigator. That is what anatta really means, i believe. We tend to project an instigator in ourselves and others that starts all.
This is the idea of atta Buddha rejected, i believe. There are only processes and no instigator.
That is why he taught Paticca Samuppada, i believe. To adress this wrong idea of an instigator at the beginning of thinking, speaking and acting.
But this idea of an instigator is very hard to abandon, while it is extremly easy in a rational way to understand that there is no instigator, only instigation. Emotionally this lies very different.
We tend to think, analyse, judge, feel, project that behind all that happens is an instigator. A personal self or a God etc.
@Green The idea of oneself can change, and the mind & body in themselves are always changing or flowing though there are consistent themes. I cannot make the comparison to the examples you are making because I do not think in that way. I cannot compare the mind-body to a room.
The idea of aliveness here is another term that points to consciousness. The idealogical sense of self i.e. ‘I’, a mental formation, is not the entirety of the mind-body in the same way the word hand isn’t 
- the idea of oneself arises in dependence of the mind-body and aggregate factors. I have clearly defined this earlier on. Emptiness is only a beginning.
Dispassion is not aversion. It is possible to develop the means to rest in that peacefulness and that is the noble path. Ignorance is not-knowing, to put it plainly. It is not knowing how something actually is. Awakening is connected with insight, but the reality is, that one develops knowledge and insight. You are not born with the insight into the four foundations of mindfulness and such. This knowledge is developed.
Nibanna is when one undoes an entanglement and experiences relief. That is a minute slither of nibanna.
Ones sense of self has only ever come to arise in relationship to feelings, form, perception, mental formations and consciousness (aliveness). There is no this without that.
I am quit sure: All that can change is not you, such as habits, tendencies, inclinations, drifts, mentallity, feelings, desires, sensations etc. Not you.
I believe, it is not true that if, suppose, the tendency to become angry, dosa anusaya is uprooted, that you have changed into someone else. You might feel less burdened but you still have that same sense of self. The one who knows, minds essential knowing nature, cannot change. It will not happen.
Ego notion, asmi mana, is also not the same as the knowing essence of the mind which is a bare awareness, according Maha Boowa and also mahayana and vajrayana teachers, and i believe this is consistent with what EBT teaches.
I totally agree with later buddhist. Ignorance means that the nature of mind is not known as a bare awareness that is beyond all bhava, cannot be called human, cannot be affected, has no objectifying characteristics. The bacis problem is that we do not clearly see the nature of mind.
Our ideas and perceptions of mind are distorted due to the influence of lobha, dosa and moha.
Mind is not restricted in any way, it is free of limits like AN10.81 says be that is not what we perceive.
If you and I experience the mind as local, because we see, experience the world from a local point in space and time, this is not the nature of mind. This is only the result of processing sense info via senses, brain. That creates a perspective. It gives the impression that mind is something local.
Maha Boowa, like mahayana and vajrayana teachers, tell from practice, experience, that real self will be seen when the whirlpool effect of the khandha’s ceases, and it reveals we have never been isolated whirlpools in water but the water. Then one knows for sure, there is no cessation. Cessation of existence, the whirlpool-existence, is indeed happiness, but not a mere cessation. It is Home.
Nibbana is home. The Buddha sought a home for himself according Sutta Nipata. That is what he found in Nibbana, Home. That is the light of the world a Buddha brings. He has no hopeless message of a mere cessation. In stead he has the positive message that there is a Home.
Whether it is ‘you’ or ‘not you’ is beside the point. These terms are mental formations, i.e. ‘you and not you’. What they point to and arise from are not just mental formations. Feelings, form, perception, consciousness and mental abstraction all come together to enable you to say ‘I’. When the causes and conditions are correct, one is able to say ‘I’.
The path is less about whether or not someone becomes a different person but the sense of self is just the feeling of being alive. Then there is the idea of oneself which is subject to change. The sense of self is just the sense of self, when wakefulness is present, it is, when lucidity is present in dream, it is, but in itself this sense of beingness in deep sleep seemingly disappears (as one is no longer conscious of themselves). Therefore, it is subject to change.
The capacity of the mind to ‘know’ is beyond framing it into ‘it changes or it does not’. Knowing is knowing and it is a faculty of mind. This is a focus that I would personally discard.
Avijja, ignorance, means not-knowing. Vipasanna is insight. And samatha is calm. The definitions in english point towards the heart of these terms.
The objective of the Path is a life rooted in wellbeing and practicality.
The ideas of ‘limited and limitless’ arise in dependence with mind and language. The mind for sure is limitless in it’s capacity to name. Both space and mind are simply ‘what they are’ i.e. simply thus. There are consistent themes of both.
This is all still far too intellectual. Real self, false self - binary dichotomous language is very limiting and doesn’t speak from the middle. When A is, B is, when A and B are, C happens. This is the middle. The point isn’t believing because Maha Bowa said it but to experientially work to realise things for yourselves. The aggregate factors are just aggregate factors and nibanna is experienced in waking life whilst still endowed with the senses as well as with the operant aggregate factors as ones operating system. They are unhelpful when clung to, but when understood, are the base and means by which insight and wisdom of the way is developed.
Nibanna is release from the causes of suffering born of wisdom, concentration and ethical noble conduct leading to unalloyed freedom and recognition of perfection. Birth, old age, sickness and death aren’t the problem. Even the fact of one’s becoming isn’t a problem. It is one’s relationship to these factors that initially happened outside of your control, and transforming your response to life: one garners control and regulation over mind-body, and takes life in their stride: once the existential dilemmas have been put to sleep.
Only conventional ideas. In reality one cannot change. All but oneself can change.
Some can stay present all the time i have heard
For you, not for them. We talk here about the deepest things of Dhamma that cannot be understood by logic of reasoning.
I believe, in general, Dhamma is much deeper than many understand it. But that comes with resistance.
Not for me. People always only talk about khandha’s, formations seen arising and ceasing and there is no knowledge of that what is not seen arising and ceasing. It is like Dhamma is reduced to a mere focus and awareness of arising formations and one does never ever look into the nature of mind itself.
That feels for me as limited.
I very well understand what you say, because i experience this my self. That growing sense of control and regulation over body and mind gives joy, give self-esteem, gives faith in the Buddha and Path, but i believe it is very good to realise how extremely vulnerable this all is. One small blood clot and it is gone.
So you’ve found an atta that is permanent, stable and not subject to change. 
Change is always happening whether or not we are here to see it or not. The mind and body is always growing & changing. New thoughts, feelings, growth, and so forth. There are consistent themes however like the general shape of body or mechanisms of mind.
This has been reported but is not too relevant to the point I have made.
We are talking of your idea of what it is that you think they are saying. This is how nuanced things can get. No need to believe it: dhamma is deep, and it requires that one dives deep to reap the gold.
“The Tathagata is beyond coming and going”. “He is awake and Holy”. This to me says: totally present in ways the mind will have difficulty wrapping itself around. One who has come to discern suchness of things as they are.
That is possible, but why worry? Doesn’t that only perpetuate pain, stress, dissatisfaction, worry and suffering in the present?
Probably a good idea not to get to attached to ideas about oneself then when with one small blood clot it is gone, yeah?
No, the signless, emptiness, desireless , uninclined cannot change. It cannot be affected. Merit does not make it better. Demerit not worse.
You’ve said that only oneself cannot change. So I guess you’re saying that oneself is the signless, emptiness, desireless, uninclined and cannot be affected. Merit doesn’t make that oneself better. Demerit does not make that oneself worse. And that when you look at your own sense of self it is that very oneself we’re speaking of right now. Is that what you’re saying?
I feel it is just a mistake that people equal non-change with atta. Also the sutta-Buddha talks about what is not seen arising, ceasing and changing in the meantime, asankhata, right? But he clearly does not refer here to an atta, soul, permanent self.
In my opinion he refers to the signless, desireless, uninclined, open and empty nature of the mind without limits. Yes, indeed, i believe this is what makes us feel we do not change. Like we in depth do not change. Because this element, aspect or dimension in our lifes does not change.
I believe this element or aspect of no-change in our lifes is no delusion but something that the sutta-Buddha teaches as asankhata element. He also says we must know this element. But we cannot see this element if our minds are so focussed on arising formations and has only eye for what comes and goes.
My impression is that the asankhata and sankhata form one reality as in ocean and waves.
So we cannot say that we are seperate from the khandha’s but also not that we are the khandha’s.
But i believe when paribinnana occurs only the wave aspect in our lifes ends not the asankhata element. So, there is an end to the stream of vinnana’s, an end to rebirth, but there is no mere cessation.
So if i see this correct this also would mean that there is surely no merging of a soul with God, an atman with Brahman, a small self with a great self. All such ideas as merging still hold on to the idea of a self that will merge into something greater. I do not believe this happens. All will only become cool, meaning, waves will cease, the winds of kamma will stop.
Yes and No. There is also the asankhata, that what is not seen arising, ceasing and changing in the meantime. Change is just one aspect or element of our lifes. I believe the sutta’s refer to this as the element or aspect of sankhata. Seeing only sankhata is like seeing only one side of the coin.
At least that is what makes sense to me.
I agree
I have met people who share they have reaped great fruits of practice but they also think very differently about Dhamma. Their understanding of Dhamma can be totally different. That i found interesting.
Often reaping good fruits is seen as a proof, a sign that one MUST understands Dhamma correctly. But how can this be true when people have such a different understanding of Dhamma and still both feel they reap great fruits?
I have ideas about this but what do you think is happening here?
Eh.
Krishnamurti referred to himself as “the speaker”. Prince referred to himself as “the artist formerly known as Prince”.
My suspicion is that anyone who achieved unbinding wouldn’t really care about telling people what s/he achieved.