meditation and 'no thought'

[trigs]

darb suggested that i start this thread here. he and i briefly talked about attaining a level of consciousness where one has 'no thoughts'. he has a direction he wants to head, so i'll just start it off.

i used to practice some meditation techniques in the past. i would use deep breathing exercises (taking complete breaths (with your stomach and chest), fully inhaling and exhaling as much as possible - usually i'd do this for 20 minutes a day, sometimes i'd include yoga as well). you are supposed to focus solely on your breathing. if your mind wanders just bring it back to your focus. with practice, you are able to achieve a level of consciousness where there are literally no thoughts in your head. buddhism considers this a sense of enlightenment.

[JodaB.]

Ahhh perfect, so you have had some experience with it. And we can get into buddhism and all those things too.

Were you able to obtain such a state? That is were you able to clear the mind completely for any period of time?

We have quite some dialog ahead I think, but your interest should be at its fullest after only a small dialog.

Nonetheless we want to explore the question of whether or not a mind can produce such a state, and more importantly can it hold this state forever?

[trigs]

i was able to hold the state for short amounts of time. maybe like 5 minutes at most before my mind would wander. in my defense, i probably didn't practice it long enough. however, even during those few minutes, i would definitely feel completely relaxed. also, i would sometimes have this other feeling that is kind of hard to describe. maybe similar to an out of body experience for lack of a better term. it was kind of like i was not a part of existence if that makes any sense. and afterwards i'd always feel much more relaxed and stress free. i really think that everyone would benefit from this practice.

[JodaB.]

Do we feel this state can be held forever?

What is the relationship of time in this state? What happens to it? We are talking about psychological time, and the self, what happens to the self when we are in this state....

these are the things I want to go into...

[trigs]

funny. this was just posted today.

http://www.pokernews.com/news/2013/04/stay-stacked-what-s-the-big-deal-about-meditation-14660.htm

[JodaB.]

funny. this was just posted today.

http://www.pokernews.com/news/2013/04/stay-stacked-what-s-the-big-deal-about-meditation-14660.htm

Yes i just want to be clear where we are at and clear some of the semantics but we shall definitely discuss and define meditation.

[trigs]

Do we feel this state can be held forever?

What is the relationship of time in this state? What happens to it? We are talking about psychological time, and the self, what happens to the self when we are in this state....

these are the things I want to go into...

people do feel that this state can be held forever. definitely not an easy task and might take years of practice, but arguably it's possible.

as far as the perception of time in this state of mind, one could argue that it is non-existent. at the very least it becomes pointless.

hey darb, not sure if you checked out my (limited) blog posting, but i did write up something about what i referred to as the 'perpetual now'. it seems to maybe relate to the notion of time you are talking about. check it out if you're interested.

http://survivinganomie.blogspot.ca/2012/09/a-perpetual-now.html

[JodaB.]

Sick buddy,

Ok a lot of this isn't a jump for you. Most 'trained' people argue that you cannot hold this state forever. By trained I mean formal, almost religious type people (where as eckhart tolle or something like that would prob agree with us;I don't follow him or anything just a rando). This essentially touches on the 'two truths doctrine' in buddhism, which describes the thoughtful state, and the thoughtless state (conventional/non conventional). If you read and understand it from a certain perspective the doctrine will suggest you cannot separate the two eternally.

Many words are going to lose their meanings in this conversation but we should just re clarify them as we go.

Your article is great and completely relevant, and I want to go even further into all this, as far as it can be gone into.

So you realize that there is no time in the thoughtless state, in this world maybe time still exists while I am in the thoughtless state , but in 'my' world it clearly ceases.

Also obviously the me, that is made up of all my worries, hopes, fears, past anxieties, goals, memories, dreams, all that is gone. In this (temporary) thoughtless state, there is none of that, I'm sure you agree.

In this I wonder if we can describe the connections of thought, self, and time?

[trigs]

Sick buddy,

Ok a lot of this isn't a jump for you. Most 'trained' people argue that you cannot hold this state forever. By trained I mean formal, almost religious type people

i've studied a little bit of buddhism in the past in university and i was under the impression that some religions definitely argue that this state can (and should) be held forever.

So you realize that there is no time in the thoughtless state, in this world maybe time still exists while I am in the thoughtless state , but in 'my' world it clearly ceases.

agreed.

Also obviously the me, that is made up of all my worries, hopes, fears, past anxieties, goals, memories, dreams, all that is gone. In this (temporary) thoughtless state, there is none of that, I'm sure you agree.

agreed.

In this I wonder if we can describe the connections of thought, self, and time?

i defer to your expertise on this. i've always had issues simply explaining the self alone. i would assume that normally the self is in constant flux. however, that seems like this could change while in this state of mind.

[JodaB.]

i've studied a little bit of buddhism in the past in university and i was under the impression that some religions definitely argue that this state can (and should) be held forever.

Right. There is the Two Truths Doctrine

The two truths doctrine states that there is:

Relative or common-sense truth (Sanskrit samvṛtisatya, Pāli sammuti sacca, Tibetan kun-rdzob bden-pa), which describes our daily experience of a concrete world, and
Ultimate truth (Sanskrit, paramārthasatya, Pāli paramattha sacca, Tibetan: don-dam bden-pa), which describes the ultimate reality as sunyata, empty of concrete and inherent characteristics.

The Sanskrit term for relative, "samvṛti", also implies false, hidden, concealed, or obstructed, as well as other nuanced concepts.

The conventional truth may be interpreted as "obscurative truth" or "that which obscures the true nature" as a result. It is constituted by the appearances of mistaken awareness. Conventional truth would be the appearance that includes a duality of apprehender and apprehended, and objects perceived within that. Ultimate truths, are phenomena free from the duality of apprehender and apprehended.[1]

These seem to describe the thoughtful state and the thoughtless one. I should mention I don't necessarily subscribe to such things but they are helpful for discussion. There are a few other examples from different religions on the same wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_truths_doctrine

It really depends of course who you ask, but many will suggest there is a certain mutual exclusiveness to the two states. They take this to mean that they can never be truly separated. So this happen obviously between different branches of the same religion.

So I wonder if you have any study time with the Vedas? Many feel Buddha threw away the vedantic wisdoms and achieved his higher state his higher state without any help from knowledge. Not sure if this is how you understand it but we'll get into after getting into the relationship of time self and thought.

i defer to your expertise on this. i've always had issues simply explaining the self alone. i would assume that normally the self is in constant flux. however, that seems like this could change while in this state of mind.

I think by flux you mean a few things that should sorted out, but I am not fully sure what you meant.

Flux meaning 'change' or 'flow' I think you meant we go in and out of this thought ful state, to the thought less. Sometimes for simplicity (maybe) I call the thought state, State A, and the thoughtless State B.

(I'm going to post this and continue so I don't lose it through accidental shutdown or something )

[JodaB.]

You say flux and my guess is you are referring to allowing the constant shift from State A to State B. This would be 'intelligent' in the context of the conversation (just meaning most don't see it this way), and I would like to go into it more. Perhaps you meant something else to, but I will try and sort it out regardless.

In state A we have thought and the self and time as we know it. When for whatever reason, state b arises, none of these thing can arise. That is, if we observe the process, we might agree, and see intellectually for ourself that time is just a manifestation of thought.

It is either a reflection of the past, or a projection of the future. And the divisions of past, present, and future, are created by thought. In this we might begin to see the illusory nature of time.

[JodaB.]

The self shares these qualities. I does not arise in state B, and we can see this in action. Self arise when thought arise. So we might see that the thinker IS the thought.

So its a new way of looking at the issue, that may be more correct, but first we must understand it perfectly. That the self is tied to thought, and time as well. They (possibly or obviously perhaps) inseparable.

We may or may not achieve the ability to sustain state B, but in the inquiry into the possibility of it, we may notice the interconnectedness of self, time, and thought.

This is not the solution though, we are still putting things in their place. I should stop here and await your response, to clarify anything that isn't immediately obviously a fact. This should all fit in with logic.

Afterwards we can go onto whats bigger and more important. It doesn't get much more interesting than this, so by now you should know if its worth your while too I suppose!

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