thenatureofmind

How to Be Free When You're Not

It’s not hard for any moderately observant person to see the oppressiveness of the state all around us. We are taxed, regulated, coerced, controlled, patted down, pulled over, censored, cited, and sued anytime we step outside of the ever-changing boundaries prescribed by the political and bureaucratic classes. Many take umbrage at these violations of our innate human freedom and dignity. We engage in all kinds of activities to push back against the state.

It doesn’t always work, and certainly not immediately. It’s all well and good to try to change the world, but how can we live fulfilling lives in the meantime? The world as it is is unfree. Today, I’m going to talk to someone whose focus is not on how to make the world freer, but on how to live free in the world as it is.

How to Be Free When You're Not

"Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.”

~ Mahatma Gandhi

Puppetji vs Meditation

Profits

“Nothing profits the world as much as the abandoning of profits.”

Nisargadatta

Ken McLeod: There is No Enemy: A Toolkit for Change

The Society of the Spectacle

Guy Debord's 1967 text, remade into a contemporary context. Also includes Marshall McLuhan and John Berger.

Made by Aska (check the credits for more) Sound by the amazing Pippin Kenworthy (check out his channel) www.pippinkenworthy.com

A Papaya Mandala: The Implicate Order

Often when I see things like this I am reminded that this order arose by chance, not the blind chance that we usually think of when we use the word chance, but something far deeper and more profound. When I was studying engineering in college, every semester we had to take some form of Calculus and Differential Equations. As we got into our other courses: Engineering Physics, Mechanical Engineering, Circuit Analysis, etc. two things became obvious to me. One was that the development of these branches of mathematics were actually older than the disciplines that made use of them. These equations were developed entirely in the abstract by mathematicians who did not have a thought as to there being a practical application for these equations. The second thing was that in various applications as different as a tuned circuit in an electronic application, the springs and shocks of an automobile and the stress on a beam, the same type equations would describe what was happening.

No Self, No Other

There are no sentient beings to be delivered by the Tathagata. If even self has no objective existence how much less has other-than-self! Thus neither Buddha nor sentient beings exist objectively. -Huang Po, Wan Ling Record

The Circle of Awareness - The Phenomenal and the Noumenal

Just looking, notice that in the circle of your awareness there are many things which constitute the world of your awareness. Notice also that in your circle of awareness there is also something else and that is an awareness of what you call your own body, what you call yourself. So your circle of awareness contains both what you call yourself and what you call all that which is other than yourself. There is also in the circle of awareness something that you can't see but which is the basis and that something is awareness. Notice that no matter how you search for that awareness, you can't find it, yet it is the basis for the experience of this circle of awareness. Also notice that although the circle contains both self and other, there is no boundary between them, all co-exist inseparably in the circle of awareness and in fact if you were to identify with the awareness everything in the circle of awareness would seem to be other. The awareness however no matter how hard you search can not be found. The reason is that the awareness is the Noumenal. But what is the Noumenal?

The Noumenal is by definition without characteristics so we can't define it except to say just that. It is that which exists apart from our thinking. Having no characteristics, it has no location spatially or temporally. It does not exist in time and space but rather time and space exist in it. Having no characteristics, it has no boundaries and hence has no outside or inside thus it encompasses everything we call the phenomenal world. So in this circle of awareness, the awareness is not separate from anything in the circle. The Phenominal and the Noumenal are inextricably woven together.

There is only this. This circle, whole, undivided. No self, no other, just intrinsic awareness. No future, no past, no present, just this. There is no one looking!

When you return, the only thing that you can bring back with you is the excruciating love and compassion for this glorious whole. All beings wandering in a dream.

Thought <---> Thinker

In our ordinary way of thinking, if a bad thought arises in our mind, one that is unpleasant or is offensive in some way, we might also think: why am I thinking this? If a great thought arises, one that seems insightful or brilliant, we might say: I'm really smart for thinking this. Invariably, however it seems that one lets call it a primary thought arises and that is that I am thinking this. There is always the thought that if a thought arises, there is a corresponding thinker, but "I am thinking" is just a thought. In fact "I am" codependently arises with thoughts, persists in the presence of thoughts, but disappears when the thoughts disappear. When there are no thoughts, there is no thinker. In fact, there never has been a thinker, the thinker is just another thought that arises.