Frank's Summary

Jake wrote me a response last week: "Frank about your question, 'What is it like to be this knowingness?', I was wondering what it is for you to be unknowingness?"

Thanks. Good question. Makes me smile. And immediately leads into several of the paradoxes that appear when talking about these things. Using memory, I'd answer that being unknowingness, is very familiar to me, namely being caught up in something while forgetting the consciousness or rigpa animating everything. On the other hand, when instead of using memory or thought I try to actually find unknowingness in my direct experience, I can't find it. When knowingness looks for non-knowingness, things get quite tricky, because Subject and object can not really be separated here. I feel tempted to conclude that unknowingness never really exists, except then as an idea.

I was seriously challenged, even made quite angry, by the sponsor of one my projects at work. Applying wh to this situation, brought again the interdependence in the field of experience. He is playing his part, I am playing mine and others are playing theirs. That's how we make a world. And then as suggested in Piet's and Miles' exchange after dropping the "I" and the "we" there here is just aliveness happening. Sometimes when I appreciate wh in the last few weeks, I rather appreciate the dynamics of the interconnected life, rather then individual content. In that sense even that the guy and I have some disagreements, is not personal but just part of the show and in a sense even enjoyable.

I sometimes have a longing in which I'd like to develop a relation to practice in which I never really depart from being conscious of my true nature. It feels like occasionally say after a nice morning meditation, I can't bear being separate from it, e.g. when beginning my work. When I am typing emails I'd like to be aware of the truth who and what it is who is typing. An enquiry like Jake's above yields, that this is absurd, one can never be separate from one's true nature.

But still, but still…
 

Response

Miles wrote: " In trying to define the boundaries of my body, there was a realization that this was an impossible task - at what point does my body stop and the cushion begin? Where does the air/body boundary lie? In this contemplation, my body becomes very fluid and loose, and a tingling sensation arises throughout it."

How interesting! How the body feels, when it notices its own fluidness or connectedness with the universe. This brings about one of these other tricky issues, that puzzled my mind before. It seems to be very helpful to stabilize realizations to feel them in the body, so they can sink in. But now, the realization that I and the body are a mirage should be felt in the mirage??? My logical mind thinks this is a contradiction of sorts, and comes to a grinding halt. My minds with its either/or categories, and assumptions and projections is sometimes not satisfied and then does not let me rest. Of course maybe I could up-level my conceptual descriptions and thereby "resolve" this type of paradox, but from past experience I would say, that the next paradox is just around the corner, waiting to haunt me. Maybe rational thinking just can't swing this, never…and everything we say is just transactional rather then "true".

Nicole wrote: "This afternoon, while immersed in the seeming reality of insanity/misery - I looked at the sky and trees and asked 'who is miserable? who is suffering?' Silence. only wind. The blue sky seemed to open and unfold. One full breath, before I heard "me! me! me! I'm suffering...!!!" I had to smile."

Thanks. I asked myself this question this Sunday afternoon for a mild discomfort. The I could not be found, the whole suffering is seen as a story I am telling myself. Then it might come back of course, though seen through. That really gives rise to a compassionate smile, just for the conditions I believe myself to be in most of the time.