Non-Abiding Awareness
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
Thanks Astus, appreciated.
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
Choiceless awareness isn't a Buddhist term. It is a practice invented by the Hindu teacher Krishnamurti.dgomez wrote:What is the difference between "non abidance", " choiceless awareness", and "mindfulness"?
Mindfulness is a term that means different things and different traditions. Nowadays there is a secular spinoff movement from the Theravada Vipassana traditions that has turned it into a buzz word, but mindfulness as understood in the Theravada school means something much more specific.
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
It is no different from when awake.srivijaya wrote:Nice thread Astus. Do your sources have anything to say about non-abiding awareness during sleep?
"If you stay awake, you stay awake. If you sleep, you sleep. When you sleep, you sleep in the same Buddha-mind you were awake in. When you're awake, you're awake in the same Buddha-mind you were sleeping in. You sleep in the Buddha-mind while you sleep and are up and about in the Buddha-mind while you're up and about. That way, you always stay in the Buddha-mind. You're never apart from it for an instant.
You're wrong if you think that people become something different when they fall asleep. If they were in the Buddha-mind only during their waking hours and changed into something else when they went to sleep, that wouldn't be the true Buddhist Dharma. It would mean that they were always in a state of transmigration.
All of you people here are working hard to become Buddhas. That's the reason you want to scold and beat the ones who fall asleep. But it isn't right. You each received one thing from your mother when you were born—the unborn Buddha-mind. Nothing else. Rather than try to become a Buddha, when you just stay constantly in the unborn mind, sleeping in it when you sleep, up and about in it when you're awake, you're a living Buddha in your everyday life—at all times. There's not a moment when you're not a Buddha. Since you're always a Buddha, there's no other Buddha in addition to that for you to become. Instead of trying to become a Buddha, then, a much easier and shorter way is just to be a Buddha."
(Bankei in Waddell: The Unborn, p 57-58)
and
"Would someone whose mind is really somewhere else be inquiring whether it was or not? If your mind were somewhere else, you would hardly be aware of it. You wouldn't be asking questions about it. You're not even away from it when you sleep, because if someone calls to you and tells you to wake up, you will respond to him and wake right up. You've never been apart from your mind in the past, you won't be apart from it in the future, and you're not apart from it right now. None of you here has ever been separated from your mind, just as none of you is an unenlightened person. You've each been born with the Buddha-mind. It's your birthright."
(p 75)
1 Myriad dharmas are only mind.
Mind is unobtainable.
What is there to seek?
2 If the Buddha-Nature is seen,
there will be no seeing of a nature in any thing.
3 Neither cultivation nor seated meditation —
this is the pure Chan of Tathagata.
4 With sudden enlightenment to Tathagata Chan,
the six paramitas and myriad means
are complete within that essence.
1 Huangbo, T2012Ap381c1 2 Nirvana Sutra, T374p521b3; tr. Yamamoto 3 Mazu, X1321p3b23; tr. J. Jia 4 Yongjia, T2014p395c14; tr. from "The Sword of Wisdom"
Mind is unobtainable.
What is there to seek?
2 If the Buddha-Nature is seen,
there will be no seeing of a nature in any thing.
3 Neither cultivation nor seated meditation —
this is the pure Chan of Tathagata.
4 With sudden enlightenment to Tathagata Chan,
the six paramitas and myriad means
are complete within that essence.
1 Huangbo, T2012Ap381c1 2 Nirvana Sutra, T374p521b3; tr. Yamamoto 3 Mazu, X1321p3b23; tr. J. Jia 4 Yongjia, T2014p395c14; tr. from "The Sword of Wisdom"
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
Thanks Astus. Very informative.
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
I guess what confused me is the difference of attention and concentration. As per this article:
http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamur ... =Attention
So it is the focused kind of concentration which produces duality. The kind of concentration that requires effort.
So as long as one attends effortlessly and choicelessly to sensations physical, mental, and emotionally ( and not even identify these sensations like so but simply as sensations ) then one is in choiceless awareness ( also no mind? also non abiding awareness?)
It might also have been a mistake to categorize attention as narrow or broad as one might be introducing an unnecessary technicality. But simply there should be attention.
http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamur ... =Attention
So it is the focused kind of concentration which produces duality. The kind of concentration that requires effort.
So as long as one attends effortlessly and choicelessly to sensations physical, mental, and emotionally ( and not even identify these sensations like so but simply as sensations ) then one is in choiceless awareness ( also no mind? also non abiding awareness?)
It might also have been a mistake to categorize attention as narrow or broad as one might be introducing an unnecessary technicality. But simply there should be attention.
- LastLegend
- Posts: 5408
- Joined: Sat Mar 19, 2011 3:46 pm
- Location: Northern Virginia
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
In dreams we perceive dreams. Wherever language cannot go, that's it.dgomez wrote:I guess what confused me is the difference of attention and concentration. As per this article:
http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamur ... =Attention
So it is the focused kind of concentration which produces duality. The kind of concentration that requires effort.
So as long as one attends effortlessly and choicelessly to sensations physical, mental, and emotionally ( and not even identify these sensations like so but simply as sensations ) then one is in choiceless awareness ( also no mind? also non abiding awareness?)
It might also have been a mistake to categorize attention as narrow or broad as one might be introducing an unnecessary technicality. But simply there should be attention.
It’s eye blinking.
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
Well Krishnamurti wasn't a Buddhist so I wouldn't be surprised his teachings are confusing from a Buddhist perspective. In Buddhism duality is much more subtle than that, so merely refraining from putting the mind on anything specific is unable to overcome dualism. What is necessary is to have meditative insight that leads a person to gain wisdom, and it is this wisdom that overcomes dualism.dgomez wrote:I guess what confused me is the difference of attention and concentration. As per this article:
http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamur ... =Attention
So it is the focused kind of concentration which produces duality. The kind of concentration that requires effort.
So as long as one attends effortlessly and choicelessly to sensations physical, mental, and emotionally ( and not even identify these sensations like so but simply as sensations ) then one is in choiceless awareness ( also no mind? also non abiding awareness?)
It might also have been a mistake to categorize attention as narrow or broad as one might be introducing an unnecessary technicality. But simply there should be attention.
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
How do you attend effortlessly? If you work on or want to do something, that is already effort. The Buddha taught right effort and the perfection of effort as parts of the path to liberation. Effortlessness is the result, it is liberation itself, when there is nothing more to do.dgomez wrote:So as long as one attends effortlessly and choicelessly to sensations physical, mental, and emotionally ( and not even identify these sensations like so but simply as sensations ) then one is in choiceless awareness ( also no mind? also non abiding awareness?)
The problem lies in the concept that there is a state or mentality to achieve and maintain. That idea comes from believing in some sort of actual reality that one needs to manage. However, there is nothing you can do to make things impermanent and empty. They are already such. What you can do is to understand and experience them as they actually are. How to do that? To understand, study the teachings of the buddhas and patriarchs. To experience, check for yourself if there is any bodily impression, emotion or thought that stays even for the shortest period of time.
1 Myriad dharmas are only mind.
Mind is unobtainable.
What is there to seek?
2 If the Buddha-Nature is seen,
there will be no seeing of a nature in any thing.
3 Neither cultivation nor seated meditation —
this is the pure Chan of Tathagata.
4 With sudden enlightenment to Tathagata Chan,
the six paramitas and myriad means
are complete within that essence.
1 Huangbo, T2012Ap381c1 2 Nirvana Sutra, T374p521b3; tr. Yamamoto 3 Mazu, X1321p3b23; tr. J. Jia 4 Yongjia, T2014p395c14; tr. from "The Sword of Wisdom"
Mind is unobtainable.
What is there to seek?
2 If the Buddha-Nature is seen,
there will be no seeing of a nature in any thing.
3 Neither cultivation nor seated meditation —
this is the pure Chan of Tathagata.
4 With sudden enlightenment to Tathagata Chan,
the six paramitas and myriad means
are complete within that essence.
1 Huangbo, T2012Ap381c1 2 Nirvana Sutra, T374p521b3; tr. Yamamoto 3 Mazu, X1321p3b23; tr. J. Jia 4 Yongjia, T2014p395c14; tr. from "The Sword of Wisdom"
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
These terms are indeed sometimes a bit confusing.dgomez wrote:I guess what confused me is the difference of attention and concentration. As per this article:
http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamur ... =Attention
So it is the focused kind of concentration which produces duality. The kind of concentration that requires effort.
So as long as one attends effortlessly and choicelessly to sensations physical, mental, and emotionally ( and not even identify these sensations like so but simply as sensations ) then one is in choiceless awareness ( also no mind? also non abiding awareness?)
It might also have been a mistake to categorize attention as narrow or broad as one might be introducing an unnecessary technicality. But simply there should be attention.
Consciuosness: Either you are conscious, or unconscious (sleep-conscious). Or somewhere in between, e.g. in dreams (dream-consciousness).
Awareness: The ability to perceive, be conscious. Therefore, some people don't even distinguish awareness and consciousness. Either it is conscious, or not. Of somethings you may be aware, of others you aren't. In dreams you are aware of what you're dreaming. But most of the time, unless you're lucid, you're not aware that you're dreaming. However there is play of consciousness. Of course, you can also say there are different levels of conciousness and the bouquet of impressinons and insights that come along with it are also different That also applies to cognitive phenomena you need to construct, like things, terms, etc. If a certain view of thinking is not yet available to you because you did not construct it, you are not consciuos of them.
Focus: Is usually the result of an active process that narrows down consciuos phenomena. Thus you aware of certain sensations that appear, and others go by unnoticed. Some meditations require focus. Attention is the process that guides this focus. You may either attend to a small part, eliminating other experience (which is in layman's terms called concentration). You may also attend to everything at once, which sets the focus wide, and brought to infinity attends to nothing at all. So your focus is infinite. If your focus is infinite, what you experience as "you" or "observation" is perfectly centered. As far as I'm concerned, that's "con-centra-tion" in Buddhist terms.
Attending to observing (or being) itself, or attending to observing that illusional observer, as Vedanta does, may help create this "infinity-view" where attention does not stick to anything particular. When attention does not attend to anything in particular, you may say that awareness is non-abiding. But it also implies that you don't subsequently react to any stimulus in your environment, otherwise your focus will narrow down instantly again. So this non-reaction can be a practice, for example "just sit".
There are many other practices, each with their own flavour.
Best wishes
Kc
Shush! I'm doing nose-picking practice!
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
Thanks for all your replies.
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
Awareness implies perception, a purely sensate phase of receptivity (Zen and the Brain: David H. Austin,.M.D.). According to Austin, awareness helps describe how our consciousness in one state differs from that in another, and varies according to field (internal/external), intensity (subliminal/absorptive), structure (awareness of organization, e.g., orientation to time, place, person), properties (clear/indistinct, expanded/contracted, meaningful/ -less, *real*/imaginary), and flow (cf. James Joyce, “stream of consciousness”, and the arrest of flow at some points during internal absorption). In Zen, the art is taking the clear awareness that arises during zazen and extending it into natural interactions during everyday life as a means of cultivating prajna wisdom.
Great book, btw, at 844 pages . . . As for the topic of “flow”, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote an interesting book on it from a psychological perspective.
As for a discussion of mind, reference is to Zen Training: Katsuki Sekida, particularly chapter 10, Three Nen-Actions and One-Eon Nen.
- LastLegend
- Posts: 5408
- Joined: Sat Mar 19, 2011 3:46 pm
- Location: Northern Virginia
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
When we concentrate there is an active part of mind that does that intentionally and will cause delusional thoughts.dgomez wrote: ↑Sun Apr 19, 2015 9:24 pm I guess what confused me is the difference of attention and concentration. As per this article:
http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamur ... =Attention
So it is the focused kind of concentration which produces duality. The kind of concentration that requires effort.
So as long as one attends effortlessly and choicelessly to sensations physical, mental, and emotionally ( and not even identify these sensations like so but simply as sensations ) then one is in choiceless awareness ( also no mind? also non abiding awareness?)
It might also have been a mistake to categorize attention as narrow or broad as one might be introducing an unnecessary technicality. But simply there should be attention.
Effortless...what the heck? The original consciousness is already non-abiding and effortless.
It’s eye blinking.
- LastLegend
- Posts: 5408
- Joined: Sat Mar 19, 2011 3:46 pm
- Location: Northern Virginia
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
There are variations of mental states because consciousness manifests.reiun wrote: ↑Mon Apr 19, 2021 7:52 pmAwareness implies perception, a purely sensate phase of receptivity (Zen and the Brain: David H. Austin,.M.D.). According to Austin, awareness helps describe how our consciousness in one state differs from that in another, and varies according to field (internal/external), intensity (subliminal/absorptive), structure (awareness of organization, e.g., orientation to time, place, person), properties (clear/indistinct, expanded/contracted, meaningful/ -less, *real*/imaginary), and flow (cf. James Joyce, “stream of consciousness”, and the arrest of flow at some points during internal absorption). In Zen, the art is taking the clear awareness that arises during zazen and extending it into natural interactions during everyday life as a means of cultivating prajna wisdom.
Great book, btw, at 844 pages . . . As for the topic of “flow”, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote an interesting book on it from a psychological perspective.
As for a discussion of mind, reference is to Zen Training: Katsuki Sekida, particularly chapter 10, Three Nen-Actions and One-Eon Nen.
What on earth is subliminal absorption and internal absorption? What’s absorbing what?
It’s eye blinking.
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
Zen and the BrainLastLegend wrote: ↑Mon Apr 19, 2021 9:59 pm What on earth is subliminal absorption and internal absorption? What’s absorbing what?
p. 296
- LastLegend
- Posts: 5408
- Joined: Sat Mar 19, 2011 3:46 pm
- Location: Northern Virginia
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
Why are you asking me to read 800 something pages?reiun wrote: ↑Mon Apr 19, 2021 10:59 pmZen and the BrainLastLegend wrote: ↑Mon Apr 19, 2021 9:59 pm What on earth is subliminal absorption and internal absorption? What’s absorbing what?
p. 296
It’s eye blinking.
- LastLegend
- Posts: 5408
- Joined: Sat Mar 19, 2011 3:46 pm
- Location: Northern Virginia
- LastLegend
- Posts: 5408
- Joined: Sat Mar 19, 2011 3:46 pm
- Location: Northern Virginia
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
If someone can pull a dialogue between Sixth Patriarch and Fifth Patriarch of Chan in English...
Here is what Sixth Patriarch presented to Fifth Patriarch:
"Ðâu ngờ tự tánh vốn tự thanh tịnh,
Ðâu ngờ tự tánh vốn chẳng sanh diệt,
Ðâu ngờ tự tánh vốn tự đầy đủ.
Ðâu ngờ tự tánh vốn chẳng lay động.
Ðâu ngờ tự tánh hay sanh vạn pháp."
In Vietnamese...
Thanks,
The first line I can translate: Surprisingly Self-Nature is already pure.
Bad thoughts .
It’s not that anything is absorbed.
Here is what Sixth Patriarch presented to Fifth Patriarch:
"Ðâu ngờ tự tánh vốn tự thanh tịnh,
Ðâu ngờ tự tánh vốn chẳng sanh diệt,
Ðâu ngờ tự tánh vốn tự đầy đủ.
Ðâu ngờ tự tánh vốn chẳng lay động.
Ðâu ngờ tự tánh hay sanh vạn pháp."
In Vietnamese...
Thanks,
The first line I can translate: Surprisingly Self-Nature is already pure.
Bad thoughts .
It’s not that anything is absorbed.
It’s eye blinking.
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
If you are a windows user, you can use the "translate" utility thusly:
translate vietnamese english text
"Text" would be the vietnamese words you want to translate to English.
(P.S.: p. 296 means page 296.)
(" P.S." is the abbreviation for Postscript, literally, something that is written after)
translate vietnamese english text
"Text" would be the vietnamese words you want to translate to English.
(P.S.: p. 296 means page 296.)
(" P.S." is the abbreviation for Postscript, literally, something that is written after)
- LastLegend
- Posts: 5408
- Joined: Sat Mar 19, 2011 3:46 pm
- Location: Northern Virginia
Re: Non-Abiding Awareness
No Problem! You can always just ask your teacher.