>start practicing meditation. >begin to witness my thoughts. >realize I'm not my thoughts

>start practicing meditation
>begin to witness my thoughts
>realize I'm not my thoughts
>realize we're simply conscious of our minds thoughts
What in the frick. What are we if not our thoughts then?

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >What are we if not our thoughts
    The observer

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      that would imply that you can observe(know) this observer, but then who's observing the observer?and so on and so on, the idea of an observer lead you to an inifnite regress
      pure conciousness can't be reified into a thing(observer,knower,atman etc) without self defeating it's original purpose, being pure awareness, the "spontaneous presence" of Dzogchen, a presence that is uncreated and not based on anything causally extraneous to itself
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_mind

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        When awareness recognizes itself, the observed and the observer become one

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          okey, but then you recognize that the knower is just a relative self dependent on the object, is not a "pure knower" and thus when the relative knower become one with the knowing it becomes something beyond the self

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        You could've just googled for like 2 minutes to find how this critique is answered instead of assuming that their entire philosophy crumbles from this rudimentary argument.
        "The self-illumination of witnessing consciousness accounts for the immediacy of cognition without falling into an infinite regress of mental modes. There is no need to apprehend the witness because it is self-established. If consciousness cannot become its own object, yet does not require a second, subsequent, or higher order cognition to reveal itself, than an infinite regression fallacy does not arise.
        Śaṅkara also critiques the view of some Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophers, Vasubandhu and Dharmakīrti for example, who argue that a given cognition or mental state can simultaneously reveal itself and its object. Their self-illumination thesis is quite similar to Advaita Vedānta but endeavors to be more parsimonious by eliding the witnessing consciousness. Śaṅkara counters that a self-illuminating cognition is incoherent because it is subject to the reflexivity fallacy. Just as a knife cannot cut itself, so too is cognition unable to objectify itself. A cognition requires a different source of illumination to be known. This is also a matter of direct experience, for we are aware of a cognition’s changes such as its origination and destruction and the arising of a new cognition. A source of illumination distinct from the cognition itself is required to know such changes. Śaṅkara contends that the self-illumination of witnessing consciousness does not similarly fall to a reflexivity fallacy. Even though consciousness is immediately known, it does not objectify itself. Self-illuminating consciousness does not come into a relationship with itself. It does not entail being subject and object simultaneously, which would be incoherent, for there is no distinction to be made between itself and consciousness of itself."

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          As awareness turns in on itself, it loses its object, yes, since it is zeroing in on its point of origin.
          As long as awareness looks at an external object, there is something of a point-to-point relationship. When these two points have been revealed to be the same point, what relationship can there be said to exist between them other than self-identity?
          So once awareness has identified its point of origin, the point vanishes into the totality of awareness, and Self is realized as that. Non-dual Brahman.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          this not answer the problem of inifinite regress, it only says it doesn't do it because its" self established" without explaining why, how something can be self established if the way in which he establish things is why a dichotomy of subject/object cognition? if a thign is self-established then that thing is an opbject and a suject at the same time, which is a contradiction in terms and break the law of non-contradiciton, a thing is A and B at the same time

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >There is no need to apprehend the witness because it is self-established.
          the act of witnessing is self-established, but "a witness" is not, since to be a witness that would imply that "someone (A self)is witnessing", thus witnessing that witness would need a second(self) witness, and thus you end up in the infinite regress, Shankara is just mixing the act of witnessing with an abstract witness to artificially make his point self-evident, but by doing that he destroy the very notion of awareness he want's to posit as self-evident, since now witnessing is an abstract action that requieres a third aspect, a subject, an object and a self
          >A cognition requires a different source of illumination to be known
          not at all, cognition is know by a proces sof abstraction, we know we're aware of things inma general sense by being aware of particular things and then developing by it's articulation a general notion of awareness itself, we don't need a third aspect of cognition, which again by it's own deffinition would then entail a fourth aspect of cognition in order to know that third one, and so on and so on, once again falling into inifnite regress
          >Even though consciousness is immediately known, it does not objectify itself
          exactly because it's not an object thus not a self, is not something(a self) but an action applied to things, or as Hegel would say a negation in the world of the spirit, SHnkara is just a crypto-madhyamaka Buddhist preaching the Sunyata doctrine but using Vedanta nomenclature to save face

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Doesn't seem like you've read the quote carefully enough as you misinterpret it at several points, for example you completely misunderstood the point of that 2nd quote you greentexted, if you've read further you'd see it agrees with you on that point. Why are you in such a hurry to disagree with views you don't really have a good grasp of?

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    You are multitudes. Sometimes you say the "thoughts" are "I", sometimes the the thoughts thinking about the thoughts are called "I". But you don't have to call anything "I"! Or you can call everything "I". It's whatever you want!

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >what if we are not our thoughts
    I forget where I heard it, but there's a blissful ignorance in the dark abyss of deep sleep. It's only as your mind arises that you remember you have a body seperate from the infinity that surrounds you. You are actually nothing but thoughts arising in the mind that arose this morning. It's all you all the time. Even the worst aspects of the world like murderers and rapists are just aspects of the self expressing its infinite love for itself. You want to pick and choose what parts are or aren't you because you're stuck in the illusion that you are a body separate from the universal consciousness.
    Are you the inert matter that comprises your body that results from vibrations at varying frequencies? Technically yes. But because you vibrate differently from the ground beneath you or even the person next to you you think you're separate? Just because you're different? It's all you all the time. Welcome to consciousness, enjoy your stay

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    reading.
    god bless the writer.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Thoughts are conceptions of will before their expression. It's what preceeds action, but you aren't merely your actions. You need to enter the outdoors & manually sense monocots in the family Poaceae.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >monocots
      >poceae
      more on this anon?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        an overly pedantic way of saying 'touch grass'

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >What are we if not our thoughts then?
    Tada drashtuh swarupe'vasthanam(yoga sutra 3)
    And the last sentence: "purushartha shunyanam gunanam pratiprasavah kaivalyam swarupa pratishta va chiti shaktir iti"
    We are part of the energy of God's consciousness

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >What in the frick. What are we if not our thoughts then?
    nothing, you're not a thing, a subject can't never be an object
    you're the emptyness that let existence manifest
    here's a good metaphysical explanation: https://youtu.be/4kC8ovIkN54

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    watching the watcher

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I had an ego death on psychedelics and I was nothing. Spirit is just an awareness in the moment with no past.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >What are we if not our thoughts then?
    we are, by decree, forever. the simplest truth is hardest to understand.

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    You've become aware of the monad - it is the silent witness... everyone and everything contain a monad - and they are identical in kind (like a singularity - it is identical to all other singularities... numerical identity).

    That catchy, new-age saying, "we're all one" - it's unfortunately true.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      That is... Eerie. I was just thinking about life as a line across a circle. We walk the line completely unaware that we are in fact walking from one end of infinity to the other end, which is inversed and opposite but still equal in every way. The idea being we are actually walking the curve of the circle but with an illusion of one end or the next.
      Thought of while listening to this on my walk: https://youtu.be/o2F9L0rL7rY
      Very intriguing stuff. Mind sharing more?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      monad? you should mean keter. it’s the soul keeping you alive when you sleep

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    We are Existence, Awareness, Joy.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    When I meditate my thoughts start to roam around my head like they are balls of energy until my mind quiets down and I get into a deeper meditative state.

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    So we bring our attention back to the breath.

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Read the Diamond Sutra

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Undifferentiated luminous awareness.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      You deserved quads for that, but I actually like how little this board cares about numbers. Especially considering how superstitious we are.

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    We consciencely experience change.

  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Observer.

  19. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >What in the frick. What are we if not our thoughts then?
    A collection of components arranged in a particular way that react to perceived stimuli(physical, karmic or otherwise) and spit out thoughts and sensations to be processed and acted upon

  20. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    We are shells receiving transmissions like radio towers.

  21. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Buddhism is a short step to passifism and nihilism. It's not practical unless you live in a utopian pod, floating around hooked up to the singularity hive.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      This.
      That's why Asia has some of the smallest populations on Earth.

  22. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    okay yeah so like nearly everything about us changes right? given enough time etc.
    I've heard people who talk meditation, awareness and the like say that whatever you REALLY are, it's none of those things which change.. something much more fundamental yknow

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >talk
      All talk is easily falsfied by direct experience. I assume that you've experienced being so focused on a task that you completely forgot yourself and everything happened automatically without any thought. Only after ''you'' came out of that state ''you'' started to reflect that ''you'' had such an experience. Yet during that experience there was no observer, no awareness, no higher self, nobody, nothing. That's how you know that ''spiritual'' people are talking nonsense.

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