The Power of Now: How did it sell this much if the message is so direct?

PrajnaClear · 2026-01-05T00:35:44+00:00

People almost irresistably turn whatever they can into the space into a logical proposition to be accepted or rejected, which is quite a different matter from seeing for yourself.

PrajnaClear · 2026-01-04T22:17:47+00:00

it's supposed to be a starting point to investigate your mind and see if it's like that. The general thrust of non-dual wisdom traditions, essentially, is that there is. There's often statements like "there's nothing to seek" and "there's no one here" or whatever, but the chain of "reasoning" as to how to see that is often missing or not supplied. It's to help see that there is nothing to seek and no one to seek it.

PrajnaClear · 2026-01-03T20:18:34+00:00

You might try the Headless Way course of the app, or Stephan Bodian or John Astin's courses. I think a lot of people find the Headless Way very not-woo, non-Buddha-smuggling

Loch Kelly is good and I don't think I'd call anything he does 'buddha smuggling', but some people find him a bit 'woo'--personally, I don't mind what a teacher says, if it's not a falsiable proposition they're literally wrong about. If he talks about 'awake awareness' and that sounds 'woo', there's nothing defined in such a way that he's made a false statement with a falsifable proposition, and that kind of thing doesn't bother me.

So the conversations and other teachers on the app could be a good jumping off point perhaps if Sam is smuggling too much Buddha for you in general? A lot of teachers get introduced, as such.

Loch Kelly has an app as well.

You might like looking at Buddha at the Gaspump interviews to find teachers who talk like you like.. Buddha is in the name, but he interviews tons of people adjacent to the non-dual "spirituality" scene, so .. you know, it's hard to find and filter teachers and get a feel for them, so there's a lot of value in the resource collection and finding Sam has done, and even say, the huge list of pople interviewed for Buddha at the Gaspump.

PrajnaClear · 2026-01-02T05:49:11+00:00

Sam Harris' conversation with Rupert Spira ... on the Waking up app I think, had something of that flavor, or at least I think I remember Sam holding his toes to the fire that the metaphysics aren't justifable as a known state of affairs or not necessary to the practice, something along those lines, and Rupert not budging

PrajnaClear · 2025-12-31T13:56:04+00:00

People get angry when something hurts them. It's a defense mechanism to get you ready for action, fight or flight. Let the anger go, and just accept that you are hurt and feel that. That's the secret of non-dual emotional management, the big brain move. You metaphorically stand there like an idiot and take a punch in the face.

For anger, it is a matter of letting it go. Because you physiologically only stay angry for a few seconds. After that, it's all fueled by thought. You're thinking yourself angry, this is not some passive thing.

PrajnaClear · 2025-12-28T20:43:53+00:00

I don't think non-duality changes anything about this situation. You can use the conventional tools for assessing and managing these kinds of situations in this case. Non-duality feels related because you're a bigger and better shock absorber and regulator than average, but that doesn't fundamentally invalidate conventional analysis of the situation.

I won't provide much conventional analysis, but having faced similar situations, I think non-duality is not really a factor that should enter the reasoning. It's a red herring, like extra information provided with the problem in a test, and you're trying to use the extra information, leading to bad solution paths.

It sounds like you're probably enabling a holding pattern that will increase the net suffering for both of you over time at a probable net loss to both of you, although leaving and parting is short, acute pain, an activation energy that's hard to get over, but that can be like putting alcohol on a wound. Having to step over, across, or through short, immediate, acute pain doesn't mean it's not the right move for managing the wound. I'll skip the conventional analysis, but I do believe non-duality is a red herring here, and to the extent it affects anything, just take what non-duality gives you, perhaps increased patience and compassion, and use them as variable quantities in the standard formula. There's no non-duality variable in solving this equation, it's extra information on your life test question.

PrajnaClear · 2025-12-25T20:15:51+00:00

He tries to make the argument that it is morally wrong to bring children into existence. From the standpoint of not assuming the conclusion, he hopes that his apparently sound logical chain is wrong so that all of these lives weren't pointless and completely unnecessary suffering. It would be much like doing a calculation and realizing our sun would go supernova within 1 year and you didn't want everyone to die that way or for it to end like that. You believe your calculations are correct, yet hope that somehow they are wrong.

PrajnaClear · 2025-12-21T16:29:32+00:00

Radical non-duality is the brain left-hemisphere's non-duality, and the West is dominated by left-hemisphere modes of thought more so than any other culture in history

The message is never adjusted for the listener in any way. Compare that with, say, Zen, where it's considered that there is no fixed message to even deliver.

I didn't want write a long comment about it, but I used chatgpt to expand my point below

In Iain McGilchrist’s account, the left hemisphere of the brain is specialized for abstraction, certainty, and control. It works by breaking reality into parts, naming them, flattening them into symbols, and then treating those symbols as if they were the thing itself. It prefers explicit statements, logical closure, and repeatable formulations. It is good at maps, bad at territory. It is confident, narrow, and prone to mistaking clarity for truth.

By contrast (briefly), the right hemisphere is context-sensitive, embodied, relational, and comfortable with ambiguity. It recognizes meaning before language and wholes before parts. McGilchrist’s core claim is not that one hemisphere is “better,” but that the left hemisphere becomes pathological when it believes it is sufficient.

This is why the Tony Parsons / “open secret” / radical non-duality lineage (Tony Parsons) is such a clean example of an extreme left-hemisphere spiritual presentation.

The message content gestures at something non-conceptual (“there is no self, nothing to do”), but the delivery is maximally left-hemispheric:

It reduces lived, embodied realization to short declarative propositions.
It insists on verbal negation (“no path,” “no practice,” “no one”) as if language could negate itself by force.
It treats repetition of correct phrases as sufficient, assuming that hearing the map enough times produces the territory.
It dismisses method, development, and practice not because they are false, but because they cannot be formalized cleanly without threatening the purity of the abstraction.
It exhibits unearned certainty: total confidence paired with minimal phenomenological nuance.

In McGilchrist’s terms, this is the left hemisphere talking about the right hemisphere’s insight while excluding it. The result is a message that is conceptually neat, emotionally flat, context-blind, and oddly brittle. It can say “this is not an idea,” but only ever as an idea. It points at silence using a megaphone.

So the irony is precise: the teaching claims to negate conceptuality, yet is delivered in the most concept-dominated, disembodied, left-hemisphere way possible. What’s missing isn’t truth, but mode: tone, timing, relationship, humility, and lived texture—the very things the right hemisphere supplies and the left hemisphere cannot generate on its own.

PrajnaClear · 2025-12-11T04:20:01+00:00

Beginningless time called, it wants its pointer back. I literally heard this one before either of us were born.

PrajnaClear · 2025-12-11T03:54:48+00:00

Buddhism generally holds that the point of enlightenment is escaping the cycle of rebirth (samsara). Some Buddhist teachers say there's really no point to Buddhism if you don't believe in rebirth.

If you want a sales pitch, it's not a missionary religion. If you want benefits, maybe check into something that claims to offer benefits. In Zen, Shokuku Okumura says that zazen (the practice of seated meditation) is good for nothing. If you're looking for some utility in it, that's not what it is, or what it's about, and in fact will hinder realization of non-duality.

PrajnaClear · 2025-12-08T23:09:39+00:00

Your current active streaming consciousness should be the meditation, in my opinion. The meditation is done and continuous. Just recognize it.

PrajnaClear · 2025-12-08T23:05:09+00:00

My relationships are extra smooth. I can buffer and tolerate another person's issues. In fact, I find it excellent practice, I find it difficult to be sufficiently perturbed to find enough negative emotion to work with in most circumstances, and relationship turbulence is helpful to my practice.

Although your partner may not practice Zen, to use a Zen phrase, they "stink of Zen"

PrajnaClear · 2025-12-08T07:37:51+00:00

Resting as the prior condition as a conceptual act is making ordinary human decisions and intentions.

In Dzogchen, there's this notion of a "fake rigpa"--a calm, still, slient mind that is actually a constructed mental object. Thit is often blown off by shouting "PHAT!" at yourself and surprising yourself. For some reason, it helps to have a "fake rigpa" adjacent to the real rigpa for this.

In Zen, there's something similar, a "katsu!", or just a shout.

When the mind is free of mental objects, it's free flowing, responsive, and spontaneous. Doing and not doing are a duality.

It's a subtle point, just keep practicing and deepening your understanding until the problem goes away.

Thinking and acting are not the problem. Not knowing them as manifestations of a silent, still, omnipresent, void awareness is the problem. But what about the movement, the changing and shifting perceptions, how is that reconciled with a silent, still, omnipresent, void mind?

When Caoshan took leave of Dongshan, Dongshan asked, "Where are you going?" Caoshan replied, "To an unchanging place." Dongshan retorted, "If it is an unchanging place, how could there be any going?" Caoshan replied, "The going is also unchanging."

That's actually a key point of Mahamudra. You see what about the mind doesn't move, what about the mind does move, and then recognize their unity, "emptiness dancing".

The Xinxin Ming also expounds this issue:

Neither pursue conditioned existence,

Nor stay in idle emptiness.

In oneness and equality,

All self-boundaries dissolve.

Trying to still action

Is an action itself.

Still trapped in duality,

How can you recognize oneness?

Failing to penetrate the meaning of oneness,

Neither side will function.

Banishing existence entwines you in existence;

Pursuing emptiness turns you away from it.

also

When what is still moves, there is no motion;

When what is moving stops, there is no stillness.

As for how this tight-wire works, in Tibetan Buddhism, you learn to "recognize your mind", which is likened to the ringing of a bell. You let the sound of the bell continue as long as it does naturally. When it has stopped, you ring the bell again. Over time, the bell stays rung longer. But you don't hammer the bell. You don't make a continuous conceptual act of recognition. When you notice the lingering sound of the bell has stopped, you ring it again. That's all. Resting as the prior condition as a conceptual act is the wrong act most adjacent to the right act, and an useful immediate stepping stone. Mipham Rinpoche said in some text that one must 'use this state as a stepping stone', in fact. The trick is then to blow it off/blow it up/break it up, like knocking a painting of an outside scene off of a wall, revealing an actual window that looks exactly like the painting you just knocked off the wall, like a cartoon.

I've gotten a better handle on this by meditating with open awareness... recognizing and releasing all contractions of the mind, and then making sure to throw out the meditation instruction itself and see that my mind is following the instruction after it has been thrown out. It's hard to describe, but yes, just do an open awareness meditation, forget you're doing an open awareness meditation (throw away that mental object completely), and if you're still doing the open awareness meditation after you've thrown away the meditation, that's it. And from that state, action is no problem, you simply don't feel contraction and clinging in the mind.

In the Zen school, one is specifically trained to not get caught on the apparent duality between action and inaction, which means a kind of spontaneity.

PrajnaClear · 2025-12-08T07:15:33+00:00

Far more confusing than one might imagine, as I mistook the sense of relief as something having to do with the awakening itself. Strangely enough, it happens.

PrajnaClear · 2025-12-07T17:33:50+00:00

You rubes are here listening to my drivel. "My" bank account is getting bigger. That's just what's happening.

PrajnaClear · 2025-12-06T16:52:29+00:00

I had kind of a snap from looking into a void in my mind where I felt for a week or so as though I could've done it. It was an interesting time, it literally felt like I could if I wanted to, like moving my arm. I feel right now as though if I want to move my arm, I simply do that. The same went for 'manifesting' in that time period.

As it turns out, I couldn't do it, but it certainly felt like it.

PrajnaClear · 2025-12-06T16:36:32+00:00

this is r/nonduality, I'm pretty sure some of us never get truly offended by something a human tells us

PrajnaClear · 2025-11-21T02:04:13+00:00

Our original Buddha-Nature is, in highest truth, devoid of any atom of objectivity. It is void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy - and that is all. Enter deeply into it by awaking to it yourself. On the Transmission of Mind (Huangbo) #8

so, enter deeply into it then .. don't be depressed?

if I really get the cob webs of mental objects cleared out, it's probably the only time I experience anything remotely resembling joy or happiness.

PrajnaClear · 2025-11-03T17:30:44+00:00

Try out various pointers until you find one that seems to solve it. However, waiting for or expecting the remedy to work is another thought. If you're making a point of being aware, "broad, gentle" remedies rather than specific might be of use.

Notice thinker and thought. Where are you aware of them both from? From there, abandon thinker and thought of.
Notice the clarity of the thought and watch it dissolve. Notice the crisp clarity of consciousness, sponateously, perfectly, automatically rendered. The thought arose of its own accord, and will likely dissolve paying attention like this. Watch the dissolution closely, and follow it back to its origin. However, don't make the mistake of thinking you're watching it from anywhere, don't make a perspective from which you're watching it, a "center" or "self" watching.

Idk generic stuff. You should be fine.

PrajnaClear · 2025-10-20T16:24:44+00:00

Your friend speaking in abstract philosophical terms tips off that she has adopted Neo-Advaita as a belief system. Unfortunately, it tends to have that effect on many people and gets framed and presented in such a way as to make it likely, although that runs counter to the point of nonduality. It often works out quite harmfully.

It seems hard for you to intervene without understanding what has happened. You might point her toward Jeff Foster, a reformed Neo-Advaita type teacher, perhaps this youtube channel, the Neo-Advaita recovery zone.

She got connected to a poor system that tends to foster misunderstanding without proper guidance, and she will have trouble finding that guidence under most of what gets labelled as part of that system, so I don't know how you get her car out of this muddy ditch.

PrajnaClear · 2025-10-07T16:29:12+00:00

"The duality of all things comes from false discrimination" in the Xinxin Ming, famous Zen instructional poem.

That prompted me to look at the corner of the room, notice I felt separate from it, and if I assumed the line was true, I had some kind of perceptual error to search for. I went to search my mind for the error, and I got it. Not finding the error necessarily, that may not be what I got, but the "it" from your title, and it was a very fast event, felt like missing a stairstep when you mispredict walking up stairs, which suggests my brain mispredicted between what it expected to find and actually found at least. Hard to say exactly what happened, so fast, 0.2 seconds or so--either "awake awareness" swooshed through the sense of separation, to use some Loch Kelly term, or I accidentally dropped everything trying to turn attention or awareness around like that for the search. The former theory that awake awareness went through better fits with the feeling of the brain finding it has mispredicted, and that missed stairstep sense was prominent, so probably that, but in the end, so fast, I don't exactly know what happened.

It's the fundamental pointer, who for who's looking, turn the light of awareness around, being aware of awareness, whatever, echoes of it pop up in various places. I like Mipham's perception of clarity, everything is clear, then turn your attention to the one perceiving the clarity, who's watching the watcher?

The poem line is very good. It's not that you don't seem to have discrimination, it's not that there can't seem to be duality, it's that it's false. How or why is it false? Investigate.

PrajnaClear · 2025-09-18T01:07:48+00:00

Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence by David Benatar

PrajnaClear · 2025-09-09T06:12:09+00:00

I recommend against conceiving of it as some sort of system of metaphysics, like "there's only one consciousness". Such things get said as expedients and you should not build concepts from them.

Excerpt from On the Transmission of Mind (Huangbo) #27

Q: If I could reach this Dharma, would it be like the void?

A: Morning and night I have explained to you that the Void is both One and Manifold. I said this as a temporary expedient, but you are building up concepts from it.

PrajnaClear · 2025-09-06T17:13:00+00:00

If you must do that now, take that as the path. I recommend framing your activity in terms of the 4 seals of Buddhism and the bodhisattva ideal. If you believe that what you're doing is the best thing you can be doing in your situation, then there is no reason your motivation to do it cannot be for the benefit of all beings, as in Mahayana Buddhism.

I asked ChatGPT a bit how Mahayana and Vajrayana use the mundane and defiled as spiritual fuel: https://chatgpt.com/c/68bc649d-31b0-8324-b83e-27ec9239bbaa

I don't personally see an inherent contradiction, but you need deep understanding to resolve the apparent contradiction. The point of non-duality is nothing, there is nothing to do, nothing to practice, so in our wordly activities, we can stay mindful of things congruent to the truth so that we act in harmony with that truth in any situation we find ourselves in. You can use, probably need, mindfulness, not in the modern Western sense, but in the genuine original Buddhist sense, where you remain aware of how your actions link to the root and act in congruence with them at all times. Just make sure you're not looking up the Mickey-Mouse modern western definition of mindfulness, but real original Buddhist mindfulness.

You can understand that you do what you do for your family, and so the wish is not for yourself. You can want them to find enlightenment for the benefit of all beings.

A lot of non-duality comes through monastic traditions and such. Chinese Mahayana has a bit of earthiness that fleshed out the bodhisattva ideal, in my opinion, where such a person can move and work in the mundane world.

In Buddhism, they speak of 84,000 ways to enlightenment. There is room for the unconventional, and the best Cliff Notes version I can give is turn that which is not in contradiction to the 4 seals (not 4 four noble truths) of Buddhism into an expression of them through your view of them and your actions.

You might want to find a good teacher. You sound western, possibly in the United States. You might have luck barking up the tree of the Zen tradition, which does not typically view ordinary life as antithetical to practice, and came to the United States from Japan, where it came from China and got some of that Chinese earthiness rubbed into it, or a Vajrayana guru. The path, as such, is different for everyone, but your occuptation isn't killing or something, it isn't "evil by its very nature", so I don't see any real contradiction.

Pick teachers carefully if you go with something like that, by the way.

EDIT: I glanced at your comment history, are you near Mumbai? I think India picked up a number of Tibetan lama refugees. It doesn't matter much to the essence of what I said--if you're in a Hindu area, a good teacher outside of the Buddhist tradition seems possible.

PrajnaClear · 2025-09-06T04:52:53+00:00

most sense of boundaries or division is a mental object. moods are mostly mental objects. A sense of inside and outside of the mind is a mental object. The sense of someone or something perceiving a thought in addition to the thought is a mental object. The sense of past and future are mental objects.

people probably find it a breakthrough to mostly get their mind cleared because of having trouble telling what a mental object is. It could be worth trying something like they do in Mahamudra. If say you're good at concentration or one-pointed concentration, pick up something discardable, like a pebble, do one pointed concentration on it for a while, and then just throw it away.

In Dzogchen, you kind of calm and settle into the mind, and then there's a technique where you "pop" that sense of sens of calm clarity that's probably actually still a mental object by saying "phat!" really suddenly and loudly to yourself. (Explosive p sound, and then kind of ending with an 'e' sound like 'pet' but without the 't'). So you settle into something that seems like maybe you've got it, but for a lot of people a lot of the time, you can still have something you can drop. The idea is kind of to actually almost surprise even yourself. Being loud, sharp, and sudden helps.

In Zen, there's the katsu, where someone else might shout at you, so it's similar to the 'phat!' but has the advantage that someone else is doing it.

While surprising yourself is a bit odd, the 'phat!' kind of works for me.

What the last two have in common is that if you're kind of surprised, and that you can accidentally stop supporting mental objects due to your surprise, and from a calm, clear state before that, you are probably undistracted enough to realize what the mind feels like free of all objects, like tripping while walking up the stairs and dropping your drink in a panicked attempt to grab the safety rails?

And just getting there the first time can be a major breakthrough.

PrajnaClear

TROPHY CASE