Sorry for the long message, even with this I didn't address all you had to say !
No worries Nik. Trying to keep up with everything I have to say is likely a fools errand. Type as much or as little as you wish, and know I'm enjoying the read.
Yes, the notion of a thinker is just another thought that passes in and out, although there is a superstitious attachment to its importance. All sorts of thoughts come and go, as do feelings, perceptions the lot.
Ok, like watching clouds blow by in the sky overhead. Here they come, here they go.
If you think you exist, you need to be enlightened into knowing that you also don't exist.
As aspiring Jnana yogis, we might wish to stop here a bit, and examine the process of becoming. As ever skeptical philosophers, spiritual travelers if you prefer, we shouldn't just assume that we need to be on a journey up the mountain.
For decades I had chronic lust over the glorious landscapes of American northwest. I'd only been there very briefly years ago, and these landscapes had become for me the promised land, the glorious mountain top, the perfect destination I hoped to someday reach.
Various obstacles (including my own laziness) kept me from returning year after year, decade after decade. Then I made a bunch of money. And I still didn't go!
At this point I gave up the dream, and began exploring north Florida nature instead. Whereupon I discovered something amazing.
Everything I'd been looking for had been here, right under my nose, the whole time. I just wasn't paying attention to it.
You are suggesting we might climb the glorious mountain. As an aspiring Jnana yogi, I am asking, why? Why shouldn't I just sit down on the trail right here where I am now at the base of the mountain, pick up that pine cone, and begin to examine it in earnest?
Everybody is always suggesting we become.
If we are fat, we should become thin. If we are poor, we should become rich. If we are dorks, we should become popular. If we are stupid, we should become smart. If we are unenlightened, we should become enlightened. There's always someplace we're supposed to be other than where we already are.
If I am a fat stupid unenlightened dork, why not just be that?
Is being a fat stupid dork really the problem? Or is the problem really my rejection of being a fat stupid dork? Is the problem that I never really get around to knowing and embracing where I already am, because I always have my eye on someplace else?
It is Typist#1 who needs to be enlightened,
Why? Being unenlightened leads to all kinds of exciting dramas!
Why not just dive in to the dramas and enjoy them? As Ben Franklin once famously said, there's plenty of time for sleep (and peace) in the grave.
When you are in front of your computer you blowhard about the life you have in nature - a life of silence and direct appreciation of reality without the divisive interference of thought.
Yes, that's true. I have an endless supply of thoughts about experience outside of thought. This is the nature of the cartoon character I am playing.
I may be wrong here but you seem to hold the hiking typist in higher regard than the typing typist, although perhaps you deny this.
Yes, I would agree with that. On my better days I would hold a holistic balance between the hiker and typist higher than either alone.
For me, if you were really so accepting of your thinking side you would be an everyday rationalist, and not one who seems to find thinking a constraint and advocates aphilosophy.
I am accepting of the rather unglamorous act of going to the bathroom too, but I don't want to do it all day long every day.
What I'm really advocating is balance. Thinking is great. Thinking all the time without end is not. As example, many wonderful things can happen during the day while we are awake. But this would soon stop being true if we never stopped to sleep.
I think its great that you try and be so accepting of yourself, but it seems to me that the hiking Typist has the upper hand in your mind and will grow stronger while the typing typist withers away.
In your dreams buddy.
Seriously, I doubt the typist will ever fade away. I accept the typist as a life long friend, I just hope to have a sense of humor about some of his more ridiculous antics.
But yes, I accept your point. In a perfect world, I do sincerely feel the hiker is more interesting than the typist. And I promise all readers here, you would like the hiker much better.
But perhaps you disagree, you often talk of your blowharding as somethign almost hard-wired.
Yes, just as my blue eyes are hardwired.
This tendency goes as we start to recognise the relativistic nature of truth at the highest possible levels. We stop expecting a right answer, THE solution. When we stop expecting the truth we are able to very quickly see our neighbours perspective with our head AND our heart because there is no belief in the truth holding us back.
Then it would be reasonable to declare that everything you've typed in this thread is utterly wrong?
The jnani yogi attempts to challenge their deepest held beliefs and it takes a lot of courage.
Philosophy is usually a process of construction, the careful building of a comfortable house of conclusions. And you are suggesting we set this house on fire, yes?
I think until we disarm thought by thought,and show it for what it is, we are always going to secretly fear it, secretly think that it yields fruitful knowledge about the 'world'. Any attempt to switch it off prematurely won't work - it will continue to haunt us.
Would it be fair to say that one of the chief differences in our approaches is that you are charting a path to a permanent type of solution, whereas I'm interested in management tools?
You are looking for the perfect food that will end our hunger once and for all, and I'm just trying to cook up a nice lunch for today? Fair summary?
To many spiritual seekers, especially of the eastern persuasion, thought is portrayed as something bad - a divisive force that tends away from the eastern ideal of unity.
Chain saws are not bad. They are quite useful. But they will divide anything we apply them too.
What's bad is allowing the chain saw to rampage randomly throughout our life, dividing anything and everything it touches. It might be nice to have some things that aren't divided too, that would be good.
Actually, thought is very harmless and signifies nothing - its just a passing breeze in the mind. But we have to learn that it is intrinsically toothless if we are to disregard it.
And a way to see that is to learn how to take a break from thought, so we'll have some basis of comparison.
For the overwhelming vast majority of people, the serious step is taking that next little break, not dreaming of the glorious mountain top.
