ZD's Mistake

I'm just curious whether you can answer the simple questions that I asked. What I point to doesn't involve ideation; it requires direct seeing. Do you think that you are a separate volitional entity? If not, what is it that sees or thinks?

Tenka: I must of explained myself a thousand times about the nature of mind and self awareness of the world . I have spoken about not being able to prise apart awareness of self and a thought of oneself .

If you are aware of the dishes and the world in reflection of self then this is based upon mindfulness. Mindfulness is thought based .

This is why I have explained myself in relation to the nature of thought.

Thinking or not thinking about the annoyance of dish washing is mindful, hence thoughtful .

I get it that some folks want to entertain the definition of thought in a way where it just reflects the chitter chatter, but it's not my definition. You need to broaden your horizons like said, because no matter how many times I ask folk to try and prise apart awareness of oneself and a thought of oneself one cannot .

This should be enough said to clarify where I am coming from, but for some reason it doesn't make any difference to folk that want to stick by the narrow minded definition .

Zendancer:
Max: Reefs is correct, but he's pointing to Zen people who have attained non-abidance in mind, SR, etc. Noticing internal desires arising, and thinking that one is a SVP noticing whatever is noticed, is an early stage on the path. The tenth ox-herding picture of Zen points to a sage who lives life spontaneously and non-reflectively.

By the time one is an adult, one has subconsciously internalized millions of abstract distinctions (trees, clouds, humans, etc), the most fundamental of which is the idea that one is a separate volitional person who is at the center of whatever is happening and is exercising control over whatever is happening. Because the distinctions are internalized, it's not necessary to engage in mind talk about them (even though most adults do that). People on the path to sagehood have numerous realizations that result in freedom from attachment to thoughts, a recognition that THIS is undivided and infinite, that awareness is primordial and unchanging (beyond birth and death), that selfhood is an illusion, etc. Those kinds of realizations lead to a state of freedom and spontaneity that can't be captured in words, and that is what Reefs is pointing to.

Zen people rarely talk or write about this, but the ten ox-herding pictures represent the progressive evolution of a beginning Zen student who thinks like most adults (subscribes to the concensus paradigm) and eventually becomes a Zen Master/sage whose primary motivation is helping other people discover the "living truth" of THIS.

ZD:I'm throwing this out there for discussion, but I wonder if it would be worth distinguishing between the kind of effortless flow that occurs after SR and what might be called "deep flow?" Ramana once told a seeker, "Nirvikalpa samadhi is the deepest state but sahaja samadhi is the highest state." I pondered that statement for many months until Satch posted another quote from Ramana that seemed to suggest that sahaja samadhi was equivalent to what I was calling "flow." In this sense sahaja samadhi is a permanent state of flow versus intermittent states of flow/samadhi that most people fall into on a regular basis. The brick-laying guy is a good example of intermittent flow. He would lose himself in his work, and the sense of selfhood would only return after he finished work for the day and he started reflecting about what he had done. This kind of intermittent flow/samadhi is something most adults have a reference for, and the only reason the flow isn't permanent is because self-reflection along with the sense of being a SVP returns after one's focus or concentration on a particular activity ceases.

However, Ramana also referred to "nirvikalpa sahaja samadhi" when talking with seekers, and I wonder if he used that term to point to something slightly deeper than sahaja samadhi that might be distinguished as "deep flow?"
When Eckhart Tolle woke up the morning after falling into what he called "a vortex" (triggered by his suicidal despair and sudden thought that there couldn't be two of him), he woke up to a completely different world that some people have called "a living presence" and that some people have called "heaven on earth." He did not know what had happened to him, but he later realized that 80% of his thinking had ceased. During the next year or two he sat on a park bench in a state of bliss and people were automatically attracted to him. The same kind of thing happened to Satyam Nadeen, Helen Courtois, Bernadette Roberts, Ramana, and many other people. It appears to be a state that is quite common after big CC's. I have a reference for that state even though it only lasted for three days before the mind got cranked up again and self-referential thoughts returned.

What characterizes that state? First, the ordinary sense of selfhood has vanished. Second, there is almost no reflective thought. Third, there is a kind of current, as if one got plugged into some unseen electrical circuit. Fourth, other people can feel or sense something that attracts them to the one who is in that state--almost like a magnetic field. Fifth, one lives totally in the moment with no thought of past or future. Sixth, there is no desire for anything to be different than it is and no self concern at all. Ms. Courtois wrote that even her vision changed, and there are other strange phenomena that other people have written about.

Ramana is one of the few people who seemed to remain in that state of deep flow for the rest of his life, but that may be because he had spent years sitting in nirvikalpa samadhi. I assume that when Ramana subsequently talked about "killing the mind," he was pointing to a way of being in which the mind is substantially quiescent, and that may be necessary for remaining in a state of deep flow.

While thinking about this issue, I remembered that after ZM Seung Sahn was discharged from the Korean military (in which he had been a chaplain), he went to see Ko Bong, the ZM who had initially sanctioned his enlightenment. Ko Bong looked at ZMSS and said, "You have Army eyes; go spend a year in silence."

I'm curious whether anyone else thinks that a distinction between flow and deep-flow might be pointing to something significant? It may only be a pointer to what happens when the mind becomes extremely silent rather than relatively silent. Thoughts?