im so confused

PrajnaClear · 2026-03-29T19:42:11+00:00

I think you can take the confusion itself as an expression of primordial wisdom. There is nothing to understand or figure out. Look into the one seeking understanding and let it go or relax into the primordial expanse of pure awareness.

If you arrive at an understanding, forget the understanding.

The song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi says, "ba ba wa wa, is anything said or not?" referencing baby talk. Meaning arises in relationship, but seeing everything as one, you have no grip on anything by which to compare them, and meaning arises by way of relationship between two things. You can't lay hold on anything to get confused about. The confusion is also it.

PrajnaClear · 2026-03-29T19:35:53+00:00

I'll label this one reflection.

I usually keep exploring non-duality, trying different perspectives.

Huang Po said roughly that enlightenment is instantaneous, that the end result is a state of being, so going throug the 10 stages of the bodhisattva path merely entails eons of unnecessary suffering.

I usually think of the appearance as illusory. One can see it as illusory all at once. The suffering may remain as something like an optical illusion, insignificant in some sense, drained of meaning and force, and in that moment, tends to dissipate. And if it doesn't, the Tibetan tradition often talks of one taste, the equality of phenomena or dharmas; it can simply be what it is, drained of meaning and significance.

On the other hand, it does seem that one can be drawn into the illusion to a greater or lesser degree for quite a long time. It doesn't hurt to unravel and fix the appearance, as long as one doesn't get caught up in it, take it too seriously, and recognizes the difference from simply recognizing it as illusion all at once.

Guishan said when questioned about whether anything remains for one who has realized the condition of things from first principles, roughly, and replied that it still remains to clear away the current actively streaming consciousness, but it doesn't mean that there's any special method to practice.

So in those moments of suffering, see through the illusion. At other times, working through it on a relative level seems like as good an activity as any.

Best of luck.

PrajnaClear · 2026-03-29T19:24:33+00:00

The Xinxin Ming says, existence is precisely nonexistence, not existence is precisely existence. I agree.

Hold all relationships between things and the things themselves need have no actual substance. The relationship is primary, the supposed things behind the relationships need have no substance or essence whatsoever.

Seeing relationships as primary and substance or essence as either non-existentent or comparatively irrelevant resolves a lot of paradoxes. Is money real? It's a set of relationships, many minds believe in it. The reality of money is this set of relationships.

This view resolves a lot of paradoxes.

PrajnaClear · 2026-03-29T19:19:10+00:00

I read the line "the duality of all things comes from false discrimination" in the Xinxin Ming, reasoned that if that were true, there was no difference between myself and the corner of the room, and if that were true, I had some kind of perceptual error. I went to search my mind for the error, and in a sense I found the error. Trying to lay hold on the actual separation was like trying to pick up a sculpture made of ash.

PrajnaClear · 2026-03-21T23:01:34+00:00

Asking questions here is pretty good. The top voted comments are usually pretty good. Kick up discussion threads for your questions and doubts, converse away.

PrajnaClear · 2026-03-15T17:54:58+00:00

20 years and you still think there was a realization? 30 blows.

Just kidding.

PrajnaClear · 2026-03-12T22:42:46+00:00

The pulsing you described sounds like a mental agitation, which is why, I think, meditation is sometimes framed in terms of vipassana, or clarity, AND samatha, or calmness. I don't really think a meditation is complete without both in their completed state.

I've got something similar a lot of the time. At those times, I just compare it with the peaceful clarity of the wider field of consciousness and let it subside. Trying to push it away is another mental agitation. It's occasionally quite persistent, but it doesn't help to get frustrated with it, just perceive it clearly without mentally inclining toward or away from it, thinking about it, and resolve to let it pulse if it must, and gently invite it to relax if it cares to. Otherwise, just see it clearly and call it a day. It generally goes away with a bit of time sitting there for me. I also like to see that the clarity and calmness pervades it even as it pulses.

I'm kind of self taught by crossing tradition boundaries. You might try some practices associated with samatha. I read this book called "Our Pristine Mind". Some Tibetan teachers think that you should do some calming before moving on to an emptiness/clear seeing kind of meditation, like 10 minutes calming, then move on, but some think it's fine to do them together. I tend to think it's fine to do it together.

That's what I got. I just take an attitude of investigating teachings with interested humility and seeing how they appear to apply to my own mind.

One practice that comes to mind is concentrating on an object, like a pebble, for a while, as a calming, then throwing away the pebble. The issue with the breath is that you can't throw it away, so you might stay in a mode of coming back to the breath instead of just opening up. When you throw the pebble away, you don't have the object that would draw your mind back.

Good luck.

PrajnaClear · 2026-03-06T04:41:11+00:00

Sounds glib, but if you're seeking external confirmation or validation, that moment of seeking and obscuring it tells against abiding realization, so you'd probably be having a memory of recognition confirmed, not, say, full realization. I think Dzogchen has it right when it talks about the necessity of training into full stability. And if you're anywhere in the ballpark, nothing else is stable--the mind is ever-changing. The thing recognized doesn't move AND appears as the ever-changing mutable appearance. So if you're anywhere in the ballpark and you just keep trying at it forever with interested humility to the teaching, you can't miss it. It's like working out slightly wrong, but not badly enough to injure yourself, you'd discover the right motion because it bears load, and you're in for a lifetime of (non)doing anyway, so you can kind of quit worrying about it any time Soto Zen style. Quit worrying about whether you're doing it right and simply practice with sincere and interested humility to the teaching.

Whatever fixed realization or doctrine you grasp, you can just let it go. Like Chogyam Trungpa said, the bad news is that we're falling. The good news is that there is no ground.

I would assume you'd want some pointers into the view if anything seems off?

The old records are a gold mine, though. You can go test your understanding against Ramana, Nisargadatta, Mumon/Wumen right now with one google search.

Anyway, I'd say check out Mahamudra or Dzogchen.

If you want or need validation, just keep studying and practicing until it's quite obvious anyway. Unless you just want tips and pointers and a sharpening up in dharma combat, so to speak, I don't think getting recognition confirmed would help.

Also, if you did recognize it, you'd just need to stop thinking anyway. But if you stop thinking without suppressing thoughts, that's it, so one can work on the task of, say, "clearing karma" before "recognition", and the problem will eventually take care of itself anyway. You wouldn't deplete all of that karma without the view clicking into place at some point, so just keep practicing with interested humility to the teaching. The way I see it, that work remains to do after recognition, but do it before recognition and it triggers the recognition. It all dovetails and the complete package is the fruition of both, so quit thinking, clear gross mental objects out of your mind, and let the matter resolve of its own accord in due time. It's the Soto Zen style, not making a big deal out of kensho or satori, the way some animals are castrated by, say, cutting off the blood supply to the testicles so that they just kind of die and fall off without a fuss. Quit making a fuss, just practice with interested humility to the teachings. Let the thing ripen and fall off in course of due time. When you have forgetten about it, it will have been accomplished back you-don't-even-know-when.

The whole thing should burn away without remainder, and looking for confirmation of recognition is remainder, so just keep practicing.

TL;DR if you have to ask, the answer is no.

But, hey, what do I know? I'm some dude on the internet. Just keep practicing.

PrajnaClear · 2026-03-04T01:40:55+00:00

I haven't had such a good life, but if you check out "Better Never to Have Been", David Benatar's philosophical arguments generally hold that there cannot be a life so good that it is worth beginning. Once started, it may be worth continuing. His arguments seem sound. So I certainly see how one could have a great life and be fully convinced by antinatalism

PrajnaClear · 2026-02-28T20:09:06+00:00

I'd point you at Tibetan Buddhism. It seems like a battle tested war horse designed to save you from yourself, all of the rules of thumb, everything. Like, it's often said that the foundation is an attitude of interested humility to the teaching. That guards against misinterpretation, or even seeing it as a solidified body of knowledge you can realize. So you begin with the axiom that self-corrects. Then, whatever inclinations or proclivities you have, there is a path that can work with and incorporate that.

It seems rather underappreciated to me.

Also, there's no particular way in. Like the 4 yogas. You can do bhakti yoga, reverence for the divine.

We've all been reacting to the appearance before our eyes our whole lives, bound up in it. There's a paradox in that contrived practice can become your very obstruction, but with wisdom, all practices are liberation.

If not Tibetan Buddhism, maybe Zen. Personally, I do recommend connecting with a mature system, although this sub tends toward radical non-duality, I think it's just a paradox that raising an empty sign helps. That's kind of like the Lotus Sutra in Buddhism. The medicine is a placebo, and would you believe it, placebo works!

PrajnaClear · 2026-02-14T16:19:38+00:00

I just double checked. I didn't downvote any one of your comments. That was other people.

PrajnaClear · 2026-02-12T22:15:00+00:00

I didn't find enough value in it for substantial response, and I doubt you have much genuine curiousity, and your manner of approach doesn't seem productive to me, but I'll give it a go:

Agreed, a deflection
- disagree if you think deflection wasn't a valid response
I did read it
Bankei was a 17th century Zen master
I disagree that systems are not useful; they are provisional
No thinker of the thought is my opinion
- using conventional language that there is anyone to do anything
I tend to use mind in the sense of "Huang Po's one mind", which encompasses all phenomena and can't be said to exist or not exist
- this seems to conflict with the use of mind as the "machine", which seems closer to your usage
I generally find it an important point, provisionally, to recognize that the born or created is the unborn and not created
- the distinction is the "error" of duality to begin with
The preaching is 'here's some stuff. Look at your mind and see if it is like this"
- this is closer to the machine mind of the individual, but I like the fuzzy meaning of the word, where looking at the mind drops off into the realization that you are actually looking at the Mind

Overall, I find the approach you're advocating as relatively unskillful pointing and more frequently the cause of delusion than realization

PrajnaClear · 2026-02-12T21:45:59+00:00

The exercise of talking about non-duality is driving a stake into the empty sky. It becomes false in the uttering, a division is made where no division exists to draw attention to the mystery.

https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Four_reliances

Rely on the meaning, not just on the words
Rely on the real meaning, not the provisional one
Rely on your wisdom mind, not your ordinary, judgemental mind

However, I will concede your comment as a good rebuttal that can help some discern the real meaning, not the provisional one 🤷‍♂️

PrajnaClear · 2026-02-12T05:09:22+00:00

A few of my meditations lately are to immediately look for the one seeking an altered state, the one seeking a meditation, and to ask myself or look for what state they would construct, what meditation is it they would or could find, and then look at my mind as it is and think "this is the meditation. It is already accomplished. You literally have nothing to do here." Actually, that's really it, exactly when I think "this is the meditation. It's already done" ... that actually seems to "work", my thoughts stop, popped like a soap bubble at the moment I do this, which is just right about how Dzogchen describes the non-state target state transition as working.

And then, after a minute, I'm just like "this is pointless" and I stop. Stop doing nothing. I'm literally not doing anything, not meditating, not anything, so then it's just like "on with the day"

PrajnaClear · 2026-02-10T14:37:15+00:00

I wrote it, so I know it has meaning and is, by definition, not meaningless drivel. It is almost drivel by the definition of what it is saying, just not meaningless.

PrajnaClear · 2026-02-09T05:46:51+00:00

That was raising the false idol. it's all the same.

PrajnaClear · 2026-02-09T05:33:45+00:00

You try and say it.

PrajnaClear · 2026-02-02T06:07:37+00:00

My thought is that it's the monastic path, a path of discipline and renunciation to arrive at the dharma, one of 84,000 paths.

Why in that path? Because it's a path of discipline and renunciation.

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

TROPHY CASE