Painting the Sidewalk with Water

In Reality, there are no problems. We create problems with the stories we add, the thoughts we use to divide things up, the illusion of the self. Each level is a more subtle story than the last.

In Reality, there are no choices. Everything happens on its own, including us creating the stories.

• Reality is one, indivisible, whole.
  • Variety and distinction, but no separation or division.
    • Forms have flow, motion, change.
      • 🏹 Look closely for solidity, substance, continuity in any form.
    • Subject and object, arise as a pair in consciousness.
    • Manifestation requires contrast to appear.
• Concepts divide Reality up, labels things, invents stories. Language in particular.
  • Concepts make Reality appear abstract or mysterious or elusive.
• The infinite causes and conditions of nature and nurture in Reality is the source of all our thoughts, noticing thoughts, actions.
  • The “doer”, “thinker,” the “author,” the “chooser”, the “self” is only an image, an idea, another thought.
    • 🏹 Look for the doer in non-human things. Is there an entity in there that is changing from a seed to a tree?
    • 🏹 Look for thinker of thoughts and notice the absence.
  • That implies a separate controller and controlled.
• Nothing needs to be different to how it is. Nothing can be different to how it is.
  • Nothing is really a problem. Concepts, including the self, and their stories create problems, confusion, suffering.
    • 🎯 Notice that the need to solve the problem is a story.
    • 🎯 Notice the problem itself is a story.
    • 🎯 Notice that the self is a story.
    • “No-self” doesn’t mean no responsibility, no potential for change. Awareness can bring more choices and possibilities.
    • 🎯 Bring open attention, simply notice what is. Without any agenda or goal. Without wanting to change or control or correct.
• Some sense of self is functionally necessary and unavoidable.
  • 🏹 Look for the looker. If you see the looker, look for who’s looking at that. Notice that you are prior to any object you can see.
• The cosmos is exploring and realising itself, playing hide and seek. It enjoys finding and being found, again and again.
  • 🎯 Notice the playful nature of everything.

Second-order thoughts are still thoughts! Thoughts and stories can be very subtle.

• There is only one, indivisible, whole.
  • Forms and appearances in the whole have flow, motion, change.
    • There’s variety and distinction, but no separation or division or autonomy.
      • No separation as in “they show up together”, not as in “there are no apparent borders”.
    • Look closely for solidity, substance, continuity in any form.
    • Every object is a concept.
    • There’s relative differences or absolute oneness.
  • Thought divides Reality up, labels everything, then invents stories.
    • Words create boundary lines, create opposites, create the illusion of separation.
      • Separation creates room to grasp.
    • The manifestation requires contrast in order to appear at all.
• The whole is not in control. That would require the division of the controller and the controlled.
  • Everything happens effortlessly, including effort and confusion and resistance and rumination and indecision.
    • There’s only impersonal happening.
• All our thoughts, noticing thoughts, actions, come from Reality, infinite causes and conditions of nature and nurture, not from a separate self.
  • All action arises without a doer. The “doer”, “thinker,” the “author,” the “chooser” is only an image, an idea, another thought.
    • Is there an entity in there that is changing from a seed to a tree?
  • The actual experience is that thoughts simply pop up out of nowhere.
• Nothing can be different to how it is. Nothing is really a problem. Nothing needs to be any different from exactly how it is.
  • Concepts are what create our confusion and suffering
    • Including the concept of self.
      • Some sense of self is functionally necessary and unavoidable.
      • See if you can see the seer. If you think you’re seeing a seer, then ask yourself what is seeing that seer. You are prior to any object you can see.
    • Any concept adds a story to story-less Reality.
    • Including thoughts analysing thoughts!
    • The problem and the need to solve it are in the story.
  • Waking up is seeing that all problems are imaginary, including the one who needs to wake up.
    • The whole problem of being stuck is imaginary.
    • True freedom is not needing any particular experience to come or go. Not wanting things to be any way than they are.
    • The problem and the need to solve it are in the story.
    • There is nothing that needs to be liberated. To see that is liberation.
• “No-self” doesn’t mean no responsibility, or no potential for change. Awareness can bring more choices and possibilities.
• There is only ever unicity exploring and realizing itself.
  • It enjoys playing hide and seek. It enjoys finding and being found, and then hiding again, and again being found.
• Reality is beyond words and ideas. It only appears abstract or mysterious or elusive when we think about it.
• Bring open attention, simply notice what is.
  • Without any agenda or goal. Without wanting to change or control or correct.
  • Without judging, without moving away, without seeking a result, without doing anything at all.
  • Seeing the whole story for what it is – thought and imagination.
  • There is nothing that needs to be liberated. To see that is liberation.

Authors to look up:

Radical nondualists like Tony Parsons, Sailor Bob, Wayne Liquorman, Nathan Gill or Karl Renz.

• There is only seamless unicity, unbroken wholeness, thoroughgoing flux and change.
  • There’s variety, but not separation. Distinction but not division.
  • No separation, no autonomous parts.
  • Seamless as in “they show up together”, not as in “there are no apparent borders”.
  • See if you can locate the boundary between awareness and the content of awareness.
  • The absolute includes the relative, but it doesn’t mistake the map for the territory.
  • Everything happens effortlessly, including effort and confusion and resistance and rumination and indecision.
  • If we start to look closely into all the things that seem so solid, we don’t find solidity. We don’t find substance. We don’t find continuity in any form.
  • Everything is impermanent, constantly changing, and interconnected with everything else. There is no inherent, independent, autonomous existence.
  • This (one, eternal, timeless) present moment is ever-present. What changes are the forms or the appearances that this formlessness takes (sensations, perceptions, experiences, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, stories).
  • It has no location, no boundaries, no color, no shape, no form. And yet, it is every location, every color, every shape, every form.
  • The jewels in Indra’s Net, every part contains the whole. Your world contains me, and my world contains you.
  • Every object we can name is a mental concept, an abstraction, a reification of what is actually seamless flux.
  • Unicity is not in control because control takes two, the controller and the controlled, and unicity is undivided.
  • We can find relative differences or we can find absolute oneness.
  • True compassion sees wholeness, not lack. It sees perfection, not imperfection.
• Everything is unicity. Nothing can be different to how it is. Nothing is really a problem.
  • Unicity is appearing as awareness and the content of awareness.
  • The separate self wants to banish some experiences and acquire others.
  • When something’s a problem, try and stop it. And if you can’t, ask “is this preventing me from being free?”
    • If there is tension or seeking or thinking going on, there’s no need to judge it or take it personally. It’s just something that’s appearing, an impersonal happening, like a thunderstorm or a cloudy day. The pain still hurts, sadness is still sad, but the suffering disappears.
  • True freedom is not needing any particular experience to come or go.
  • Confusion is always about words and ideas, never about reality itself.
    • All our confusion and suffering is in this conceptual overlay, never in Reality itself.
  • Wanting to be somebody who never gets upset is just more concern about my self-image rooted in the illusion that there is a separate self.
  • Waking up is simply seeing that this problem is imaginary. There is no one who needs to wake up. Nothing needs to be any different from exactly how it is.
    • There’s no “I” who is stuck in the I-story, that’s part of the story.
  • None of this is personal and that none of it could be any different, in this moment, from exactly how it is.
  • Not the freedom to do whatever you want, but the freedom that wants nothing other than exactly what.
  • In that moment of complete acceptance and total attention, the problem ends completely.
  • The decider is an illusion and the so-called decision is nothing more than a way of describing what happened.
  • Katagiri Roshi said, when he was dying of cancer, “Enlightenment is not dying a good death. It is not needing to die a good death.”
  • The way out and the one who needs a way out exist only in the dream. The whole problem of being stuck is imaginary.
• Consciousness loves playing.
  • It enjoys playing hide and seek. It enjoys finding and being found, and then hiding again, and again being found.
  • The ocean is waving. Likewise, the universe is people-ing.
  • The apparent conundrum is only in the words, the conceptualization, not in the actuality.
  • There is only ever unicity exploring and realizing itself.
• All our desires, inclinations, interests, abilities, actions, thoughts, noticing thoughts, and impulses come from the totality, not from some separate self.
  • We’re moved by the infinite causes and conditions of nature and nurture.
  • All action arises without a doer. The doer is simply a thought that is added on afterwards.
  • You are not a “me,” the “me” is in awareness.
    • See through this illusion of separation and encapsulation.
  • “No-self” doesn’t mean no responsibility, or no potential for change. We can shine the light of awareness on things so there are more choices and possibilities, allow better choices. It’s all part of the show.
    • Guilt, blame, shame, vengeance and hatred dissolve. It doesn’t mean you don’t try to overcome or cure certain tendencies.
    • Although everything is a manifestation of unicity, not everything is a manifestation of enlightenment.
  • What seemingly obscures this simple beingness is neurochemical smog, Maya, samsara.
  • We can’t control what desire emerges in any given moment, or how our neurochemistry and our genetics and our conditioning will respond to it.
  • The “thinker,” the “author,” the “chooser” is only an image, an idea, another thought.
  • “Restlessness” is a label for a mix of neurochemistry, thoughts and sensations. Then a thought pops up and take ownership of the “restlessness.”
  • The actual experience is that thoughts simply pop up out of nowhere.
  • The illusion of an executive self is hardwired into the human mind as a way of functioning and surviving, and to some degree, it will continue to show up as needed in the waking state.
    • To some degree, the sense of identity with a particular bodymind is a survival function, having a sense of location and boundaries, working to keep this organism alive.
    • This urge to make sense of everything, to nail it down, to get a grip, is undoubtedly a survival function, an evolutionary impulse, part of our human nature. We’re not trying to eliminate this urge to make sense of the sensations, or to find meaning and construct stories. This is an aspect of life that can be functional and beautiful.
    • Some degree of being identified as a particular bodymind organism is functionally necessary and unavoidable.
  • Is there an entity in there that is changing from a seed to a tree?
• Thought divides the present moment up into separate things, labels everything it has created, and then invents stories about how it all works.
  • We’re taught to see boundaries.
  • Words draw boundary lines where none really exist, create opposites, creating the illusion of separation.
    • As soon as we use words, they create this mirage of duality or separation.
  • Every relative experience always contains its opposite.
    • Nothing can appear without polarity and contrast.
    • We are always trying to achieve the impossible: a world of up without down, good without bad.
    • The manifestation requires contrast in order to appear at all.
  • The mind likes to analyse: “So what? What’s next?” These too are thoughts to let go.
  • The mind loves complexity, packaging things up.
  • Our suffering is always in the conceptualization, the thinking.
    • The suffering is when we are attached to our preferences or identified with them – feeling
  • In pure perception, there is no body, no mind, no me, no you, no inside, no outside. Those are all ideas, concepts, abstractions, mental images.
  • Asking how to wake up is a form of postponement, a form of distraction. It’s much closer than that.
  • The only real answer is beyond words and ideas and pictures. Not mysterious and obscure, it simply can’t be objectified or grasped.
  • Unicity isn’t abstract or intellectual or mysterious or ellusive until we start analyizing it and thinking about it.
  • The nature of thought is to divide up and freeze what is actually indivisible and fluid.
    • Without words, there is no division.
  • Awareness is not bound or limited by the imaginary map-world that thought creates.
• Move from the story of separation to the immediacy of nondual experiencing.
  • Practice is the expression of enlightenment.
  • Bring open attention, simply notice what is. Without any agenda, without wanting to correct it or manipulate it or change it.
    • See through the whole fixation on getting to someplace better.
    • The disappearance of this very impulse to change and control and engineer and improve and fix.
  • When meditation is motivated by the desire for a future result, then instantly it becomes suffering again because we’re focused on an outcome.
  • Over time, we increase our ability to discern the difference between conceptualization and perception, between thinking and awareness, between map and territory.
  • Direct perception is always nondual, undivided, whole.
  • The mind turns meditation into a method or a goal or a project or a desired result, so it becomes drudgery.
  • The postponements, the ways we move away, get subtler and subtler.
  • We can see directly how the idea of “me” and the story of “my life” are created by thought and imagination.
  • Seeing the whole story for what it is – thought and imagination.
  • Nonconceptual sensory awareness and spontaneous action without fore-thought, after-thought or self-reflective commentary.
  • The wonder of life is in presence, it’s not in the scenery that happens to be showing up.
    • When the need to figure it all out drops away, beauty and joy emerge.
    • The wonder, the ecstasy, the joy, the beauty is in the quality of the looking.
    • What makes it miraculous is not the content but the awareness that beholds and illuminates and breathes life into the momentary forms.
  • Stop taking expansion and contraction personally.
  • Eventually, it is noticed that this story of “me” going back and forth is nothing but a conceptualization that comes and goes in awareness.
  • Meditation is an invitation to not move toward anything or away from anything, but simply to discover what actually is
  • Awareness is what sees through and dissolves old habits and fixations. But awareness isn’t a technique that “you” can use to achieve “your” goals – that’s thought again.
  • See if you can see the seer. And if you think you’re seeing a seer, then ask yourself what is seeing that seer? Eventually, you’ll discover that what you truly are can’t be found as an object, that you are prior to any object you can find.
  • Notice how you deny that this awakeness is already present, how you postpone, how you look elsewhere.
  • Listening, seeing, feeling, sensing – without judging, without moving away, without seeking a result, without doing anything at all.
  • It’s about developing a sensitivity to what brings happiness and what brings suffering.
  • The more sensitive we become to how that actually affects us, the wiser our actions become and the less suffering we create for ourselves and others.
  • Thoughts have a way of seeming like an objective report on reality.
• The problem and the need to solve it are in the story.
  • Liberation is the absence of any concern about grasping, fixating or seeking.
  • Waking up isn’t about vanquishing thoughts or eliminating them, it’s about seeing them as what they are and not being taken in by them.
  • There is nothing that needs to be liberated. To see that is liberation.

Added 2024-04-20, last updated 2024-04-24.