🧘💻Interested in joining my weekly online meditation group or listening to guided meditations by me? Then do check out my Patreon: www.patreon.com/rogerthis
Started typing a comment but apparently it got deleted? Anyways came back and rewatched this for the 3rd time... why has nobody commented on the jump in production values between this and your other videos? (At least the ones I've watched) Not only is it obvious the amount of care and intention put into the technical and creative side, but you've also clearly thought a lot about the topics and it's really nice to see you being vulnerable and volunteering your thoughts on more sensitive issues. I also started taking your advice recently about meditating an hour each day and feel like it's represented a leap forward for me in my ability to face and integrate some currently challenging stuff with courage and presence. Your words on the shape of awakening brought the lyrics from one of my favourite songs to mind, Coded Language by Saul Williams, "Light years are interchangeable with years living in darkness." Feels like I'm prone to this, getting stuck or stagnant and then making a ton of progress when I change my approach because that was all that was really needed to shake the dust off. It's nice to see someone being so real who's given so much thought to what "real" even is. Healing, even. Keep doing it.
I love how this dissolving into the humanity kind of frees me of this toxic need to be special. Every great piece of art, every revolutionary mathematical equation was "made" by the same force that makes me eat honey at 02:33 am. Ps. How isn't eating honey at 02:33am not an act of genius on part of Creation? 👉👈
I have now rewatched this three or four times in its entirety. Idk what it is, but this video just hits the spot for me. I’ll go get into samadhi (so I can appreciate it more) before listening to it while walking at the park.
Man... what a phenomenal video, Roger. You have such a gift for teaching. It feels very aligned, my partner and I were speaking of these same subjects this week! Realization is too often thought of as a finality. A big threshold to 'cross over', and while some aspect of that may be true it's very much a lifelong devotional integration. Fuelling the fire of Bodhicitta. Often a surprise to many because, before realization, we are looking for a solid answer to life and an end-point. If anything we find the opposite 😂 Fewer answers and more mystery. I also love that you touched on the imagination and how there is no separate inherent objective reality apart from that. The importance of deepening the realization so there won't be any reifying of any particular 'reality', nor any preference for how that looks moment to moment. There is no way that things are 🥲💕 Thank you for all the videos!!!
What is the "enlightened" (someone who's completely lost sense of me or mine) perspective on metaphysics? I'm always going between no-Self and Self as truth, each one seems valid in it's own right depending on the definition one uses for "existence". If existence/thingness/experience is synonymous with perceiving and feeling, then a Self becomes impossible because there is no room for an Observer if every-thing is objective. This makes sense to me because I can't imagine a "thing" apart from objectivity (objectivity meaning experienceable or observable, in opposition to the subject which is the experiencer/observer). At the same time, it could be argued a thing exists beyond perceiving/feeling, that it is necessary in order for there to be perceiving/feeling, but by it's own nature can't be perceived/felt, this would be the Self. There's a relevant discourse about this between the Buddha and a follower of the upanishads that goes "'In seeing, there’s the unseen seer. In hearing, the unheard hearer. In sensing, the unsensed sensor. In cognizing, the uncognized cognizer-that is your atman, your soul, your self.' And the Buddha says, 'No, it’s not. In seeing there’s just seeing.'” What's put so succinctly is how convoluted it can be to make a logical abstraction of something that exists beyond sensing. What I find interesting is in one of your previous videos "How Consciousness Evolves and Complexifies" you present the idea of an ontological source, a no-thing represented with the yin/yang symbol, which I think could be interpreted as the Self. I find it curious though how you also purport the phenomological "truth" of no-Self. So is metaphysics still relevant in some way to model reality, do you think there could be a thing beyond observing/measuring, or are you just agnostic on the whole notion?
The process seems to be that all these dualities, dichotomies and even trichotomies (metaphysics, ontology, phenomenology) are understood to be not fundamental distinctions that are carving out reality into its fundamental categories. All these existential wrestles are resolved with complete apprehension of emptiness (and the emptiness of emptiness). A useful way of seeing it is that minds can access different levels of abstractions and that mind may have understood a different number of those levels to be empty and others not yet as empty. The limits of our emptiness insight and the limits of how unified a mind is create the problems and attempted solutions to those problems. Mind with more or less internal integration perceive different aspects of reality - or different refractions of consciousness. So, the Self/no-self 'issue', so long as it is really believed to be real, is born of a mind that is compartmentalised in way, the same with the perceived split between 'in experience' and 'beyond experience'. And this will literally correspond to somatic tensions (how subtle this gets is beyond what most will ever detect). If you really want to get at the root, one most locate the pure concepts of 'thing' and 'nothing' (almost in a platonic sense) and find them emergent, not fundamental. At this point of insight, it is understood it doesn't really make sense to talk about things outside of perception, nor are there things in perception, or is perception really a thing itself either.
@@rogerthis Thank you for the answer, I find interesting the idea of a "truth" so applicable it even applies to itself. I find emptiness similar to something called the münchhausen trilemma, basically the idea that there is no intrinsic truth, no attempt at proving truth that does not fall under infinite regress, circular argument, or axiomatic argument, but this also applies to the munchausen trilemma itself. I get how, in regards to emptiness, everything conceptually can only understood interdependelty, light/darkness, good/bad, past/present/future, this/that, here/over there. Does emptiness also imply that it's not only concepts that can only be understood interdepentently, but also the rest of reality, even that notion of concept/reality not being ultimately substantial, but rather just a convention? So just how truth is only conventional, the totality of reality is just conventional, no intrinsic truth or more "real" reality/underlying substrate/source?
Delson Armstrong mentions Jesus sometimes. Will refer to him as a good symbol for forgiveness since Delson is big on forgiveness as his #2 after #1 of 6R
![Ram Dass - Talks & Stories of the Mind and Heart | [Black Screen / No Music / Full Lecture]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/i9eApiAv7n0/mqdefault.jpg)
🧘💻Interested in joining my weekly online meditation group or listening to guided meditations by me? Then do check out my Patreon: www.patreon.com/rogerthis
Started typing a comment but apparently it got deleted? Anyways came back and rewatched this for the 3rd time... why has nobody commented on the jump in production values between this and your other videos? (At least the ones I've watched) Not only is it obvious the amount of care and intention put into the technical and creative side, but you've also clearly thought a lot about the topics and it's really nice to see you being vulnerable and volunteering your thoughts on more sensitive issues. I also started taking your advice recently about meditating an hour each day and feel like it's represented a leap forward for me in my ability to face and integrate some currently challenging stuff with courage and presence. Your words on the shape of awakening brought the lyrics from one of my favourite songs to mind, Coded Language by Saul Williams, "Light years are interchangeable with years living in darkness." Feels like I'm prone to this, getting stuck or stagnant and then making a ton of progress when I change my approach because that was all that was really needed to shake the dust off.
It's nice to see someone being so real who's given so much thought to what "real" even is. Healing, even. Keep doing it.
I love how this dissolving into the humanity kind of frees me of this toxic need to be special.
Every great piece of art, every revolutionary mathematical equation was "made" by the same force that makes me eat honey at 02:33 am.
Ps. How isn't eating honey at 02:33am not an act of genius on part of Creation? 👉👈
😆
I have now rewatched this three or four times in its entirety. Idk what it is, but this video just hits the spot for me. I’ll go get into samadhi (so I can appreciate it more) before listening to it while walking at the park.
Need a 3 hour talk :)
Man... what a phenomenal video, Roger. You have such a gift for teaching. It feels very aligned, my partner and I were speaking of these same subjects this week!
Realization is too often thought of as a finality. A big threshold to 'cross over', and while some aspect of that may be true it's very much a lifelong devotional integration. Fuelling the fire of Bodhicitta. Often a surprise to many because, before realization, we are looking for a solid answer to life and an end-point. If anything we find the opposite 😂 Fewer answers and more mystery.
I also love that you touched on the imagination and how there is no separate inherent objective reality apart from that. The importance of deepening the realization so there won't be any reifying of any particular 'reality', nor any preference for how that looks moment to moment. There is no way that things are 🥲💕 Thank you for all the videos!!!
Beautiful, thank you 🙏
Exqusit dharma geek out :)
What is the "enlightened" (someone who's completely lost sense of me or mine) perspective on metaphysics? I'm always going between no-Self and Self as truth, each one seems valid in it's own right depending on the definition one uses for "existence". If existence/thingness/experience is synonymous with perceiving and feeling, then a Self becomes impossible because there is no room for an Observer if every-thing is objective. This makes sense to me because I can't imagine a "thing" apart from objectivity (objectivity meaning experienceable or observable, in opposition to the subject which is the experiencer/observer). At the same time, it could be argued a thing exists beyond perceiving/feeling, that it is necessary in order for there to be perceiving/feeling, but by it's own nature can't be perceived/felt, this would be the Self. There's a relevant discourse about this between the Buddha and a follower of the upanishads that goes
"'In seeing, there’s the unseen seer. In hearing, the unheard hearer. In sensing, the unsensed sensor. In cognizing, the uncognized cognizer-that is your atman, your soul, your self.' And the Buddha says, 'No, it’s not. In seeing there’s just seeing.'”
What's put so succinctly is how convoluted it can be to make a logical abstraction of something that exists beyond sensing. What I find interesting is in one of your previous videos "How Consciousness Evolves and Complexifies" you present the idea of an ontological source, a no-thing represented with the yin/yang symbol, which I think could be interpreted as the Self. I find it curious though how you also purport the phenomological "truth" of no-Self. So is metaphysics still relevant in some way to model reality, do you think there could be a thing beyond observing/measuring, or are you just agnostic on the whole notion?
The process seems to be that all these dualities, dichotomies and even trichotomies (metaphysics, ontology, phenomenology) are understood to be not fundamental distinctions that are carving out reality into its fundamental categories. All these existential wrestles are resolved with complete apprehension of emptiness (and the emptiness of emptiness). A useful way of seeing it is that minds can access different levels of abstractions and that mind may have understood a different number of those levels to be empty and others not yet as empty. The limits of our emptiness insight and the limits of how unified a mind is create the problems and attempted solutions to those problems. Mind with more or less internal integration perceive different aspects of reality - or different refractions of consciousness. So, the Self/no-self 'issue', so long as it is really believed to be real, is born of a mind that is compartmentalised in way, the same with the perceived split between 'in experience' and 'beyond experience'. And this will literally correspond to somatic tensions (how subtle this gets is beyond what most will ever detect). If you really want to get at the root, one most locate the pure concepts of 'thing' and 'nothing' (almost in a platonic sense) and find them emergent, not fundamental. At this point of insight, it is understood it doesn't really make sense to talk about things outside of perception, nor are there things in perception, or is perception really a thing itself either.
@@rogerthis Thank you for the answer, I find interesting the idea of a "truth" so applicable it even applies to itself. I find emptiness similar to something called the münchhausen trilemma, basically the idea that there is no intrinsic truth, no attempt at proving truth that does not fall under infinite regress, circular argument, or axiomatic argument, but this also applies to the munchausen trilemma itself. I get how, in regards to emptiness, everything conceptually can only understood interdependelty, light/darkness, good/bad, past/present/future, this/that, here/over there. Does emptiness also imply that it's not only concepts that can only be understood interdepentently, but also the rest of reality, even that notion of concept/reality not being ultimately substantial, but rather just a convention? So just how truth is only conventional, the totality of reality is just conventional, no intrinsic truth or more "real" reality/underlying substrate/source?
@@soldatnerd Yes, you got the spirit. Eventually you want to integrate the relative and the absolute such that they are the same.
Christ
Delson Armstrong mentions Jesus sometimes. Will refer to him as a good symbol for forgiveness since Delson is big on forgiveness as his #2 after #1 of 6R