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Piet,
You mentioned "suchness, or Being, [or] naturally occurring timeless
awareness" as possible ways of expressing the reality-paradox of
"nothing, yet there." Another Buddhist statement that really captures
it for me is
"Things are not what they appear
to be, nor are they otherwise."
In my way of thinking, such paradoxical statements arise when I try to
talk about Consciousness using the language of Material reality. But
what seems incomprehensible in Material language is actually the very
fabric of everyone's normal, natural, everyday, every moment, life
experience. The incomprehensible is only incomprehensible because it is
so close to us.
I cannot escape consciousness (or if I do, I won't know it). There is
no such thing, for humans, as "not-consciousness." So when I try to
describe consciousness I am led into bizarre linguistic concoctions
that almost always involve paradox, and usually entail an infinite
regress. I am the looker looking at myself looking at myself....
And yet, consciousness is always there in blazingly vivid reality for
everyone of us, all of the time, and is not at all mysterious or
difficult. It is not something we have to try to do. It does it itself.
Consciousness does consciousness for me, so profoundly so that there is
no "me" other than my consciousness.
So the radicalness that we're trying to explore is not radical at all.
It's the most fundamental fact of human existence. It is simply being
aware. And yet, being aware is supremely difficult to describe in
conventional language. How strange!
Here's a start on analyzing the radicalness you expressed:
Consciousness exists in the here & now, or rather, consciousness IS
the here & now. And the here & now is always moving on, never
static, never stopping. For each of us, consciousness is all that ever
was, all that is now, and all that ever could be. There is no
not-consciousness, and yet consciousness is nothing. Nothing is outside
of consciousness, and yet consciousness cannot be held or stopped or
frozen in space & time. So in a very profound sense, all awareness
is timeless because time is nothing but the movement of consciousness.
Rod