What is subjectivity?

The Watercooler
41

Retreat - periods of seclusion - is something many of us benefit from. The practice of seclusion is clearly in the Buddha’s teachings - for good reasons.

It’s therapeutic to escape the frenetic pace of living in the mainstream. Taking a break from the hustle and bustle, even if we can only do it now and then, its always welcome.

However, it may not be helpful to cling to the view: I must have seclusion or my practice will never flower. If we ‘cling’ to this view it may impede our deepening in the Dhamma, when the circumstances don’t fit our preset notion of the ‘ideal’.

This doesn’t mean seclusion is not of great benefit, if we appreciate it and, respond to the opportunity skillfully. We may also enter seclusion and waste the opportunity it provides.

It’s clearly not a case of either/or - is it? We can also goof-off in seclusion. I learned this without even trying!

A practitioner can still enjoy beautiful meditation and not get overwhelmed by the world even when they have a timetable that would leave most of us in a mess. We need to ask why this is so?

I think part of the answer can be found when we reflect on our own journey in the Dhamma - over time. When we first start meditating we are easily distracted by what we call the world.

The barking :dog2: seems to intrude on our search for peace and clarity. When our practice improves we come to understand Ajahn Chah’s teaching: we go out and disturb the noise!

The noise doesn’t come to us and announce: I am here to distract you? I have arrived at your ear-door to take you away from peace and clarity.

This is not what the sound of barking - the so-called world - is doing. It’s a misunderstanding of what is actually going on when, there’s a reaction?

We will not always be able to find a peaceful situation, we are going to lose any semblance of control, the illusion of control. We are going to meet the reality of no control head on - sooner or later.

If, we insist that seclusion from difficult states and circumstances are an absolute prerequisite for our practice we may need to reflect more carefully about the way it is.

We can find peace and clarity anywhere if we know how to let go and, let things be. With bare awareness there is no need for complete seclusion but there must be reaction-free attention.

We can still work and perform our daily duties in the midst of people, ordinary daily life, if we have the Sila, the Samadhi and, the Panna, unfolding in life.

Instead of insisting - habitually - that this is beyond us, why not let this fixed-idea go? It’s just another thought-bubble that arises and ceases along with everything else in the parade.

A wise man once said: cling to naught?

What do you think ‘sakaya ditthi’ (personality view) is, if it isn’t what you have said above? In your opinion, is it something else?

If, it isn’t something else and, personality-view ‘is’ an erroneous view that is ‘lost’ when the first glimpse of reality takes place - at stream entry - then, what are we to make of what you have said?

What has it got to do with the truth of the matter - what is actually going on - if you have not factored-in the teachings on personality view? Or, are you simply saying: this is how things seem to be, before we wake up?

42

I thought the Buddha taught - unambiguously - 'this is not ‘I’, this is not ‘mine’, this is not ‘myself’? He seemed to imply that this includes everything.

He taught that ‘everything’ - the socalled world - is found in this fathom-long body with its perception and intellect and, it’s ‘all’ not-self - is this ‘not’ the case?

He taught that we cannot reach the end of the world through traveling far away. It can be found here and now, not somewhere else?

If the formations of self and other are seen-through, where is subject/object dualism?

Where are the commonplace objectifications like, the sun and the :waxing_crescent_moon:, self and other, the ten-thousand things?

Perhaps, these celestial-bodies/forms were never ‘objects’ in the first place? Perhaps, they are something else that cannot be captured - from its own side?

What did the Buddha teach about the ultimate reality where, the sun and the moon are absent? Is that ‘sphere’ somewhere else? Somewhere, we go to when we are ‘good’ as, the ultimate reward of Buddhist practice?

Exactly, ‘who’ is going anywhere or, is there nobody going nowhere?

43

I think when the Buddha talks about contact and consciousness, he is talking about something utterly simple and straightforward. Take visual consciousness, for example. In order for visual consciousness to occur, you need an eye, and you need something that is seen. And somehow, the eye has to come into some kind of contact with what is seen in order for an episode of visual consciousness to occur.

How that contact occurred was something very mysterious to thinkers in the ancient world. Some believed in “eye-beams” that were projected out of the eye like little feelers that literally touched the object seen. Others thought the object emanated little copies of its surface in all directions, some of which entered the eye. The account in the suttas is so sketchy it is probably impossible to know which of these the Buddha held, or if he had some other view. Similar remarks hold for the other forms of consciousness.

But the details don’t matter. The important point is that there is no vedana without consciousness, no craving and clinging without vedana. If you don’t see something, you won’t aesthetically respond to it as visually pleasant -as beautiful or sexy or whatever - and if you don’t experience something as pleasant, you won’t crave it, or desire to hold and hang onto it.

So to begin doing away with the whole mass of suffering you withdraw into some kind of seclusion. You guard your sense doors and limit your sensory input to avoid getting drawn into the world of sensory craving and attachment. And after that, you can withdraw into even deeper seclusion in meditation, entering deep states of absorption where you have really checked out of sensory contact with the sensible world altogether. If you go far enough, we are told, you drop more and more of the painful burden of the world and its phenomena until you have detached altogether from the world of living and dying things, and from the stream of being and becoming.

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44

Our various theories need to be tested in the crucible of practice. We need to live the Dhamma if we are going to understand it.

Just like a goldsmith tests a piece of gold, through rubbing, by heating it etc. This is how we realise the Dhamma. This is what the Buddha taught.

We can make our experiments, gather the data and, analyse the findings.

If we honestly believe that the only chance we have to realise the liberating Dhamma is to live as a recluse or, take on the role of a monastic then, logically, that’s what we will need to do - right? Otherwise, we are wasting valuable time.

If, this is not our working-hypothesis we will need to understand how to live in the midst of an ordinary situation and, not react to the barking :dog2:-s, the complexity of everyday life, like a lotus that has risen above the mud into the light.

To ‘believe’ something even if we are persuaded that it must be so, through logical analyses, is still not the real-thing, not even close.

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45

Yes, but still… The conclusion would be simple: I take that small screwdriver from the drawer, ram it through my eyes and ears, and why not, also through the frontal lobe - voila! No more contact → nibbana

Something essential about subjectivity still would be there, untouched by the ‘contact’ from the screwdriver. We don’t get rid of the senses, but transform their processing.

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46

:see_no_evil: :eyes: :scream:

Actually, I just take off my eyeglasses. Less blood.

:white_check_mark:

47

I don’t believe I expressed a fixed view as you imply here. I simply said that it is easier to identify individual instances or the arising and ceasing of thoughts, feelings, and consciousness, if one is not plugged into mainstream, interactive life. That seclusion (whether by retreat or otherwise) is a great opportunity to deepen mind training - that’s all - nothing more :slight_smile:

Yes :slight_smile:

See above answer :slight_smile:

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48

:smiley: :anjal: :dharmawheel:

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49

That depends doesn’t it? If, the casualty is still alive but completely unresponsive they may be put on life-support - if there are still vital-signs. They may be brain-dead - in a vegetative state - where is their essential ‘watchamacallit’ then?

In some situations like this, a determination may be made by doctors that, the body is still alive but that’s about it! Then, the right to survive may be withdrawn from the patient.

There status as a ‘subject’ of experience is not recognised by health professionals and, they are able to turn off the machine.

How can there be a subject if there is only a biological process and nobody home? That would make a carrot or, a lettuce, a subject - as well. There are life-signs in a carrot when it’s in the garden. Does it have a subjective existence? Does it have what you called: a personal core?

50

Ajahn Brahm never fails to challenge us with regard to our deluded views and perceptions when it comes to the formations of self and other. We are attached to these views due to myopia.

We are invited by him, to question our commonplace, humdrum beliefs and perceptions - how things ‘appear’ superficially.

The Buddha did the same thing in his teachings on the fathom-long body, with it’s perception and intellect. He declared: it is the world! This is the only world we actually know, it’s the only world in which we find - what we call - our-selves.

In the ‘Bahiya Sutta’ we find a teaching that also challenges our delusional system, our myth-conceptions.

From the Bahiya Sutta: “When there is no you in terms of that, there is no you there. When there is no you there, you are neither here nor yonder nor between the two. This, just this, is the end of dissatisfaction (dukkha).”

Can someone please explain to me what the Buddha is teaching in the quote - cited above? It ‘seems’ to be saying something about the absence of a ‘somebody’ who is the locus of experience.

How, do you explain this anomaly - is it a poor translation? What’s the explanation - please help me to understand what this teaching actually means? Please help!

I thought these are profound Buddhist teachings that challenge us to ‘see’ in a fundamentally different way?

51

I just went and checked out a number of teachings to check over a number of things (BSWA has a great repository of them, as I’d think you are aware . I find it beneficial, to go back over things after discussions like this - it’s amazing what previously unseen/unheard information one can pick up. Perhaps going over them may help you as well :slight_smile:

metta

52

Good, so what did you discover that helps you to understand the meaning of the following quote? That was my question? How do you see it? It seems fairly obvious but I could be missing something. Can ‘you’ help a Mitta - like Bahiya - who cannot wait for an answer any longer.

From the Bahiya Sutta: “When there is no you in terms of that, there is no you there. When there is no you there, you are neither here nor yonder nor between the two. This, just this, is the end of dissatisfaction (dukkha).”

Is there a locus of experience that is being affirmed in this teaching?

Does it mean something like the following?

Best wishes, Laurence :slightly_smiling_face:

53

I do experience a duality, the sense of a knower and the known. Or at least a separation between awareness, and the objects of awareness.
I practice satipatthana, but I still haven’t worked out who or what is being mindful. :wink:

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54

It may not be a who or, a what, perhaps these conventional options, these conventional frames of reference are inadequate?

Are you open to this possibility, freedom from the knower and the known. An entirely new discovery. A complete surprise with no precedent to compare it with.

We need to be care-ful not to reduce the Dhamma to dead-concepts. Something that fits a preset conclusion - same old same old.

Just repeating a pattern of conditioning because it’s comforting, familiar. It lulls us into an ideological stupor that is difficult to wake up from.

Realisation is a complete surprise, astonishing, it cannot be captured inside a habituated brain that seeks security in the known, the familiar.

Cling to naught!

Yours in the Dhamma, Laurence :heart_eyes:

55

From DN33 we have an explanation (from the section on restraint):

When a mendicant sees a sight with their eyes, they don’t get caught up in the features and details. If the faculty of sight were left unrestrained, bad unskillful qualities of desire and aversion would become overwhelming. For this reason, they practice restraint, protecting the faculty of sight, and achieving its restraint.

Unrestrained, our eyes see a pretty person.
Unrestrained, our eyes see an ugly person.
Restrained, our eyes see a human being.

The human being was always there, but in our lack of restraint, we topple into grasping consciousness. “Pretty” and “Ugly” are born in self and desire.

This restraint is much more critical when walking meditation out on the streets. Sitting on a cushion there is little need for restraint because the very sameness of what is seen while sitting (eyes closed or open) diminishes consciousness. Walking meditation provides a constant change of scenery day by day through the seasons, so walking meditation is very helpful as an exercise in restraint that carries forward into non-meditative daily life.

56

Bare awareness is not an exercise.

The perception of a human being is dependent on re-cognition. It ‘can’ arise without further elaboration, proliferation, no further projection.

Reaction-free attention helps in revealing the projections in the mind. The reactive patterns of conditioning are ‘revealed’ in bold-relief. As bare awareness continues to gain momentum these conditioned forms of reactivity are let go of.

This frees-up the awareness leading to greater ease, less contraction, less clinging to the arising and passing content of experience. There is an effortless and spontaneous present moment awareness.

The perception of beauty, ugliness or, neither arises. There’s no necessary connection between these perceptions and, craving and aversion.

If, there’s a felt need for restraint there’s two things happening not one, the attention is divided not ‘bare’, immediate, not ‘merely’ seeing, hearing… cognising.

In bare awareness, if it’s truly ‘bare’ there is the initial ‘seeing’ of the projection clearly, then, the recognition of what arises as a consequence of the projection then, bare awareness without the projection, then, the awareness continues in this way until it’s broken.

If active, volitional restraint is taking place the attention is divided between seeing, hearing etc. and, what is being done about seeing, hearing etc. Another form of projection is in play.

Initially, there was simply craving, aversion or neither. In restraint, there is the projection of something else ie. ‘I’ should ignore, sublimate or, suppress this craving and aversion.

There is another form of activity taking place - related to the craving and aversion. There’s a relationship - or it’s absence??? This is seen through paying attention to what is actually going on.

The restraint comes into play in dependence on the other. There’s not the simplicity of ‘merely’ seeing… in the thinking just the thinking…

The bare awareness the Buddha spoke of to Bahiya - that was seen and understood directly - must have been free-of craving and aversion. Why?

Because the speaker was the Buddha and the true-seeing of the teaching resulted in Bahiya’s awakening.

Bare awareness is nothing more than direct and immediate reaction-free attention operating through the sense doors. Otherwise, something else is happening, the attention has been broken.

57

Sometimes definitive answers are not available. Especially in a forum like this. There is no Buddha among our participants. That’s why it is good to view the interactions here, as mere stimulus for developing ones own thoughts … and not expecting that one will come away from an internet interaction with anything more > this includes the desire for agreement or consensus among participants, which is completely irrelevant in matters of the Dhamma anyway. Just because a number of people agree, does not make something true.

I’m withdrawing now :slight_smile: Thanks for the conversation :slight_smile:

:dharmawheel::anjal::dharmawheel:

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58

Laurence, the best way for you to teach me is to lead me to the words of the Buddha as in the EBTs. Abhidhamma, as interesting as it is does not have the compact availability of the suttas. As my blindness increases, my world of resources will diminish drastically and this forum will itself become unavailable as well. Thank you for all your kind words and thoughts. Sadly, we are not neighbors and I cannot pester you for nor offer you tea.

:pray:

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59

Remember the context in which the Bahiya-awakening happened. Bahiya had a profound sense of urgency. He stopped the Buddha 3 times in his alms-round before receiving the answer to his heartfelt need to know - immediately - to understand. I will look for the clues in the sutta and get back to you. There was an instantaneous recognition of what the Buddha conveyed, not an exercise undertaken.

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60

There was an instantaneous recognition of what the Buddha conveyed, not an exercise undertaken. Bahiya didn’t come to the conclusion, I will go and practice in this way and see what comes of it. He ‘got it’ there and then, on the spot. He walked away from that encounter a free fully awakened being - an Arahant. It was not a matter of time.