so in this video we're going to take a trip to one of the most beautiful places
in the world and how not to be attached to anything
and attain max effort freedom
i use my lunch money to get this book here
i used to read this comic book "slam dunk" when i was about
10 in elementary school because i wanted to be like everybody else everybody's
reading and playing basketball and that's how i started playing
basketball in elementary school and then in middle school
and i realized that to jump higher you have to lift weights so i started to
lift weights and I got into powerlifting and
bodybuilding and then i was like hmm physical aesthetics not enough mental
aesthetics! like reading philosophy philosophy and then um
science science and then i was like mental aesthetics not enough so I got into meditation meditation
now here i am so i discovered something very subtle
the last week or so
you know how i used to talk about all spiritual teachings and religions
and Contemplative Fitness Techniques lead to the same place?
i discovered that that's not quite true it's not quite false but it's not
completely true see Brahman in Hinduism, and Emptiness in Buddhism and
Tao in Taoism...
they are actually pointing to slightly different...
see Enlightenment is a multifaceted jewel you can slice infinity infinite number
my body-mind or my sense of self the big Self
into infinite space my body my my being becomes the entire universe i
was merging with the entire
universe actually emerging is not the right word because there was never a
separation it's like the glass the space inside and
outside the glass it's just there it's connected you just
got to see through the illusion of the separation between the glass and the no
glass you know what i mean? anyway so before in my
meditation i used to feel huge. Recently i've been doing some kind of
"emptiness training" where i say 'not this' 'not
that' 'not this' 'not that' whatever sensation whatever thoughts whatever
images arise emotions, bodies, thoughts
sight, sound i note not this not that Netti, netti, netti
right even when you come to a place of all present Awareness or Consciousness
or Godmind you note not this not that and you're gonna come to a place
where you are completely unlocatable and inexpressible
you are literally beyond time and space. Another way to
tackle this inquiry is to inquire into whatever that you are
looking at so here's the technique whatever that
you're looking at is not-self it's not you. So
it's obvious that when i can see the shoe
that's not me and i can see this book that's not me when i can see my body
that's not me when i can see my mind i'm looking and
observing my mind right now that's not me
and then again people will stop at awareness okay i'm the Observer i'm the
Awareness! Can you be aware of Awareness? can you
look at Awareness if you can be aware of awareness that's not you
either that's why the "aware of Awareness" phase is important but don't get stuck
there and that's why having that 360
full view of Infinite Consciousness is important because can you
observe (The Observer) that can you observe the Infinite Consciousness
if yes then that's not self either you see how tricky this is
this is how you dissolve the observer thoroughly and completely
a lot of people think they have dissolved the Observer or the Awareness
or the Witness but they haven't they haven't
deconstructed it all the way and this is so subtle that some people get stuck
there even very advanced teachers and practitioners for the rest of their
lives maybe. You're gonna come to a place where
yes everything is you but everything's not you
and there's no one watching at all
it's just "God" watching itself. So for True Self when everything is you
versus No Self, emptiness when nothing is you
the two facet of Reality can be experienced and interpreted slightly
differently with different flavors. The Brahman that's kind of like plus think
of it as an a plus method to Enlightenment and then the
emptiness method is the a minus
method to Enlightenment. See what's interesting is that a lot of people from
the no self/emptiness school of Buddhism
would criticize the True Self/Brahman/Infinite
Consciousness/Awareness school saying that they haven't taken it all
the way because emptiness teaching says that no ground at all groundless
ground groundless ground no Ground Of Being
groundless ground you cannot hold on to anything not even Brahman. The Buddha
said even consciousness is dependently originated from whatever
consciousness is aware of. So the observer and the observed
dependently arise with, through, and as each other there's no observer
without the observed there's no all-knowing God Brahman Consciousness
apart from whatever object it's being conscious of
right now so it's not like you can hold on to that
eternal timeless Being because that goes against the rule
of impermanence. This is the teaching of Dependent Origination
and a lot of people think that's the highest teachings in Buddhism
because all phenomenons and objects and concepts, anything and everything
in the universe is dependently
originated from other things
so each thing is no-thing intrinsically in and of itself it's all
just a process of interactions. Even emptiness is empty
you see this graph of all those different nodes each of those
represents an object and every object is completely empty
and what makes up the object is the millions of other connections that is making
through millions of other connections
see Emptiness and Dependent Origination are actually two sides of the same coin
you can't truly appreciate the beauty of Dependent Origination
without recognizing or Realizing no self or Anatta or emptiness
and it's not nihilistic at all because when you truly recognize
dependent origination through emptiness every action that you take
it feels like it's the best possible outcome that is the result of the doing
of the entire universe even if you're just shooting hoops and
you missed 10 in roll and when other people talk shit about
you when you see this interconnected way that things are occurring through the
force of nature and interconnectedness nothing can hurt you brah. That's one
way to perceive emptiness and another way to perceive
emptiness is more direct like i'm at the point where i've seen
through the illusion of solidities thoroughly
that when i look at a cup it's completely holographic like my
vision is sort of just... it's like a huge hologram with no end to
sight 360 degrees and and this it's just like
i'm just penetrating through
i can't explain it man. I take the Middle Way, again i can expend
awareness so i can concentrate on Infinite Space through one-pointedness
the next moment i can just pull back and reduce
my sense of self down to the zero pointness of
not even nothing. A bunch of paradoxes and contradictions i know
if infinity does not include paradoxes and contradictions it's not infinite is
it? for the a millionth time your level of consciousness
is directly correlated with how well you can juggle
paradoxes and contradictions with one hand or no hand
emptiness dependent origination, impermanence, no-self all of them
are different ways to slice the same no
thing
"look at this God's Natty Mind". Different life situations
calls for different versions of enlightenment
however they're going to be some scholars or some practitioners
that argues that they are actually talking about something different
i'm going to venture to say that they're actually describing the same thing
there's one minor difference is the matter of identification
see often times when you identify with everything
the character tends to, in a very sneaky sort of way
identifying consciousness as the new self from the perspective
of a subject, the subject being the character
the object being the Self with a capital s or
awareness of consciousness but there is no such duality see
objects in the world and humans whatever they're not arising and passing
in and out of some kind of substance or container
that is unchanging and unconditioned
(Awareness is just another mental fabrication. More sensations to Vipassanalize)
going to the stream
i think the only way to know whether those two schools
are talking about the same thing is if you pin down their best
practitioners the practitioners from either school...who have taken
this practice this Realization to the end point
and then you sit them down kind of like martial arrtists fighting
and you put them in fMRI machines and they scan their brains and see if
they're experiencing the exact same thing
it's never gonna be exact but you know what i mean or if you have them
write down their moment-to-moment experiences
and comparing notes to see if they're experiencing
similar states or have them access their highest states of consciousness
and then see what's going on in their brain but again all those things you
know all this phenomenology really transcends
your neurology and science in some sense. But who
gives a fuck really who gives a fuck. Just be a shape
shifter find the Middle Way imagine that imagine mental
athletes they just sit in a circle and then
meditate and see who can access cessations the fastest or who can access
the most cessations and Nibanna in one hour or who can access the highest state
of Jhanas, who can become more Infinite than the next Infinite Brah
and then it's a competition just like athletics
we can hook their brains up into the computer and then
people can experience we can sort of record experience not just images but
the feelings of it the mind state the consciousness, not
just putting it on the screen so people can watch like a movie although that's
really very impressive, what if in the future other
people who aren't accessing those states could experience those
states as if there are accessing those states i wouldn't have to try so hard to
communicate with you how i feel what i experienced moment to moment to
moment you can just experience it, kind of like Being John Malkovich you come