Thank you for yet another insightful reading. I have just recently finished a book by H.H. The Dalai Lama about learning who you really are and this particular entry of yours kind of reminds me of what he mentions in this book.

Beyond the thoughts, emotions, and decisions that make up our daily life, when it all is broken down to its most minute form, there is essentially nothing. The microscopic molecules that we are made of, which in turn creates combinations of internal chemical and physical reactions, manifests these ideas and such within our mind. These ideas and internal conversations are most often the cause for our suffering. Until we learn to let them go and realize what it is we are in our truest sense, we will continue to potentially suffer as we deal with them in the way we think best.

@Chris Edgar, Thanks for your comments. That’s a very interesting mantra. Pretty tricky, to unravel too. It’s the I that has the thought, but the I is just the I, it is not the real you. Crazy

@Evan, As you say, through experience I have learnt that ideas are not primary experience. It’s not “just another idea”. Experience is experience, it’s not an idea. One is lived, one is thought. I have learnt nothing through meditation, I do nothing when I meditate, there is no idea, no growth and no goal of meditation. Meditation is simply primary experience.

I like this quote from Zen Open Circle, about teachers….”A teacher cannot give you what is yours already, your own essential nature. What you are looking for is the actual nature of the one who looks. Fortunately, you cannot take hold of it and you can never lose it. Realizing and actualizing your fundamental nature is a lifelong practice. It never stops opening. Teacher and student are the same in this respect.” (FYI They are based in Newtown, Susan Murphy Roshi is fantastic http://www.zenopencircle.org.au/zenteacher.htm)

I also like that you continue to challenge me with your ideas, they make me question and explore. Thank you for not following, but questioning yourself. It’s through our differences that we become aware.

@Terry, That’s a great awakening. There’s Buddhist, from the Pali Cannon, that view the teachings as a raft crossing a river, and that once you get to the other side, you must take the raft off your back. There’s no point carrying it over land.

@MonkMojo, thanks for linking me to the comic, it made me laugh.

@Liara, agree In the same vein that mercurious was talking about. So much freedom opens up when we stop taking it all so seriously.

@Gregor, Thankyou, I bow to the Buddha in you, Gassho.

May all beings be peaceful.

Gassho,

Wade

You really have a knack for blowing me away with your posts. This one was particularly mind blowing. I can tell it came from a deeply personal place. Yet at the same time the universality of it cannot be denied.

Thank you so much . . .

your friend,

Greg

I did a webcomic on Reality a couple days ago some might enjoy.
(I got this article linked up now.)

http://mojo1000.com/1000cuts/i-flunked-reality-101.html

@Evan: As a teacher you may have a special interest in it.

love & Light

I think the distinction between ideas and more primary experience is important. (I’m avoiding the term ‘reality’ – after all if ideas weren’t real they wouldn’t be a problem; would they?)

What is missing from this account is a meangingful place for education (I don’t mean schooling). A newborn is quite different to a mature adult, and I don’t see the progress to adulthood as only unfortunate (though it does have its downsides). One difference is what the person has learned. And I don’t see this as only unfortunate either.

I think our ideas can influence our primary experience. The one who has achieved competence has a different immediate response to the novice. Training in any art involves the training of perception (immediate experience).

You have through experience come to understand that ideas are not primary experience. Is this really ‘just another idea’ equivalent to ‘the moon is made of green cheese’. I can’t see that it is. And your meditation has improved through a process of learning – in which ideas have their part, it seems to me.

So I hope this long rant makes clear my problem with education being missing from this account of consciousness. (Disclosure of personal interest: I’m a teacher – and quite attached to the value of learning for people.)

It marked an important turning point in my own practice, this recognition that everything that caused me suffering, was, in the end, nothing more than a mind state, and as such, it was the most ephemeral and impermanent of all things.

We regularly imagine that moods and mind states are somehow as real and tangible as concrete. Extraordinary freedom comes when we stop taking them with deadly grim seriousness.