Buddhism is about watching the process of the mind and body when you react to an external stimuli.  The crux of the matter is for one to understand the process of perception and how the mind creates the illusion even of your very existence.  It is the understanding of this process by the thinking mind is what finally brings this process of perception to an end or at least allows you to have control over it.  To know it is the mind that is the creator of your existence, you have to take your mind to its ends to, “the cessation of sensation and feeling”.  This final state of nothingness is beyond the sensation of nothingness.

“Dhamma really means “experience”, or even better, it is the process of experiencing.  In more detail, experience is the perceptual and conceptual process of seeing, hearing,smelling,tasting, touching, thinking and feeling. The concept “existence” is a product of the process of experiencing and therefore experience precedes existence.  To exists is to occupy space and time.  Therefore space and time are products of experience.”

What you want.

Everything that you are and feel and experience is a mental process.  Buddha was not about gardening or painting: he was about what goes on in your head when you are experiencing the process of gardening or making a painting. He was not about the object but what the mind subjectively creates about the object in the mind. You see what you see and feeling what you feel and the created space and time around you ONLY EXISTS IN YOUR HEAD/MIND.  You exists only because your mental processes says you do.  When you bring your mind to experience beyond nothingness – then existence is not anymore.  The feeling of existence does not materialize when the mind does not allow it to happen.  Existence is just a mental process.

The most productive part of making a painting is the journey in the artist mind so he can see himself better with the relationship he has between himself and his painting in his mind. That is between the object and the inner self. The end product is only an object of this process.  When the viewer see’s the painting on the wall the best he can do is try and imagine what the artist went through in his mind with what he experienced when making the painting. Or the viewer could make it his own and create his own images in his mind as to what the painting means. Even that is an illusion of imagination as almost surely he will not know the experience of making a painting unless you struggle with it yourself while watching your mind at the same time.

WORD.

Paintings are made in various ways: there are narrative types – they will tell you a story, then there is the sliding scale of part narrative and part abstract gestures, enough information for you to guess what the purpose is (with you making some of it yourself), then you have the pure abstract paintings.  The abstract painting is a wide open portal for your mind to make what you want of it.  Feel free to make it an experience in your mind.  Remember you only exists because your mind says so, so this experience of the painting is only that, an illusion created in the mind for what you are experiencing by being in front of the painting.  But if you are a within/without person it will help you see your mind.  The city minds have created a commodity of it.  They have made us believe in our minds that it is a valuable commodity and a place to invest money as they found that the value escalates with time and this further makes us believe that because of its high value it might be an important object.  Such is Fashion and Music etc.  The hype in our minds is an illusion created by others for us to experience.  

What you want?

So one can take one’s mind to the state of an “absence of all experience”.  It is , “similar to the state of hibernation”.  WHAT! Then how do you live in that state. Zero mind.  Silly you.  You see, your mind has to be experienced at that state or get to that state so when you come out of it, you will see that it is the mind that is the creator of all things, silly.  When you “see” that for real, by going through the process and your cognitive mind seeing, following and understanding the state and process – you will then realise that it is your mind that creates all these illusions for you.  Just knowing this because someone’s tell you is not enough.  You have to see it with your thinking/cognitive mind for it to become steadfast in you, such that a great windfall of money from a lottery say, will not be able to sway you away from the fact that nothing is real and it is your mind that is the creator of the fact that you feel like you are existing.

“….when one awakens from this state of absolute stillness of mind, one begins to become consciously aware of the process by which perception and conception takes place, culminating in the “world” and the “self” coming into being”

(level 3 – Awakening from the dream of existence) by Ven. Dr. Madawela Punnaji Maha Thera.

Let me first tell you what my sources are for coming to or reminding me of this realisation.  First as an artist the process of painting has an element of watching of the mind.  So I am familiar with this aspect of me.  I know what it is like to watch ones mind and seeing how the mind turns and in that process seeing some aspects that are natural intangible facts as experience that repeat itself and also processes that plays itself out only due to circumstances and you never see them again. You give the mind a thing and it will spin it a thousand ways – none of it true but all made up.  You experience all this and by a chance encounter  you find someone, a priest or a temple that reminds you of what that process of enlightenment might just be from what the Buddha had left behind through his disciples.

I find that the new spirituality is not from hiking in the Himalayas anymore and it might just come from a more modern setting in the city.  From a temple and a priest with a quest to bring to the public what the Buddha really meant when he described his path to enlightenment.  You will find all your answers in your mind and the more progressive approaches are in city like settings from progressive educated minds.  I have found these settings in Malaysia from a Buddhist temple in Kuala Lumpur and from a Buddhist Monk who is also a doctor of medicine and with his followers who lecture in English and find the Truth by looking at the detail of what Buddha Taught in terms of the sciences of the mind and body and its esoteric observations.

http://www.buddhistmahavihara.org/home.php

[youtube]http://youtu.be/yXxya7Fhb1c[/youtube]

It is in understanding of the cognitive process of perception that finally brings the mind to a standstill.  It is the understanding of the various stages of perception that will later bring stillness.  Or rather stillness comes gradually as the mindbodysoul “shuts” down its drive to personalise all its experiences.  To personalise is to become.  It is the wheel of perception that drives the emotional part of you that generates the personality from the illusions it creates in your mind.

But there is a ding dong of a path to this process.  It starts from your 5 senses.  The senses bring in the information.  Then the mind spins this information.  After the first second of the senses seeing an object, the rest that turns up in your head is a lie, an illusion.  The mind makes the rest up.  Just like a painter that wants to paint a certain content or subject matter has a 100 million ways to put this idea together.  He/she is just making it up and finally the viewer is looking at it from one aspect he/she has chosen – the object on the wall called a painting.  You are watching it, an external object on the wall, admiring it.  You admire your garden.  You admire how beautifully the shadow from your chairs falls on the floor of your kitchen.  Everything you notice is external to you.  You have no inclination of what is going on inside you or as to why you are emotionally affected by what you see.

So you are a IN or an OUT person.  An out person is only interested in how he fits in with the objects and the external aspects of society.  He knows nothing of what happens to him internally in his mind when it interacts with those external objects. “Out looking” only deal with sense observations, sight,touch, smell, taste etc.  “IN looking” looks at what goes on in his mind.

MInd? What mind where mind. What you talking about.  MInd brain – no? NO! But yes too as the mind is the result of what happens in your brain and your brain stem and all connected to your spinal cord.  Mind data all comes from the nervous system, BUT it is something intangible, not located anywhere, but somewhere.  The mind created this whole new data from observation and spun and processed in time to create personality.  It is like “cloud storage” in computing.  Perception and cognition in the brain of what you experience creates the illusion in your mind.  You see yourself as alive or dead only if your mind says so.  When the mind shuts down you dead, man, as you don’t see yourself anymore.  If in deep meditation you go past and beyond nothingness, you “dead” too, and you will see this when you drift back into reality. Just a shifting of the state of the mind from “alive” to “dead”.  So it is the mind that gives you that experience of existence.  That feeling that you are alive comes from the illusion created in your mind.

So realising this you take your first big step towards realising the Truth of “existance” and that it is an illusion. You start observing within yourself and within your mind as to why you react to objects, the emotions that comes up, and what goes on in your mind as your mind perceives external objects.

You have to know your mind.  More rather still you have to know how perception works and why it generates an emotion in you and see how you personalise these experiences and then you become in you a personality that only stares at the corner and know and live only in that corner of your life.  You have now become an F-dink with a narrow corner for a mind.  You will be this if you do not take your first step to internalise and to look inwards and to look at the processes of the mind that drives you into a corner.  Personalizing all your experiences does this.  You become the illusion that your mind has spun for you.

“Saying, “spirituality, understand spirituality”, alone is not enough. The path to enlightenment comes from understanding the processes on the mind and the drive of perception that makes you react to your experiences.  Perception is just a word to describe the illusion making process in the mind and the word is not the thing as J.Krishnamurti would say.  Perception is something, a thing that makes things look real and important in your mind.  If you really only keep looking out then you will react to everything you experience like a feral human being.  It is going within and understanding why you react such and understanding how the working mind reacts to your external experiences that finally brings stillness in the mind.

Nirvana is where the spiral and the counter spiral meets when the mind knows its habits and it sees them and understands them with the same mind that drives the process of perception.  “When the conscious mind sees the unconscious mind” the illusion created by perception does not come up anymore or at least when it does come up you know it and see it as an illusion.

So whats the purpose of understanding how the mind creates the illusion of existence.  Finally you have control over the creator of illusions in your mind because you understand what it does as you have experienced the process of creating illusions with your own mind. Then what.  How do you live after this experience with this mind of yours.

Firstly, you can see how the structure of the city is created with perception.  It is created out of an illusion in your mind.  I have always said that the structure and working of the city and society is a mirror image of your mind and the process of perception.  You see the city working – you see your mind working.

What you want?

You can see how culture developed from this mind.  People have a cultural costume – 100 people do and the rest follow.  Made to happen by the mind.  Perception drives this forward.

When an observation gets past the first fact in the first second which is real and true, then comes perception that spins it any which way.  The mind takes this observation and makes images out of it in your mind.  You live by not letting this happen when you don’t need it.  The west has coined this as living in the now. Living by the observations in that first second only.  When you live in that state there is no unnecessary image making and hence no suffering.  You live in Samadhi.

In samadhi the mind becomes still, one-pointed or concentrated while individual awareness remains present. (wiki)

When in action, that is when you have a project to do or a painting to paint, you come of the center which is the home of Samadhi, to create.  Perception starts to operate and imagination and images flourishes in your mind and you act like the creator.  When the project is complete, because you now know how the mind works and how it is the creator of unnecessary illusions, your minds returns to that experience of Samadhi (and that is all it is, a state and experience) in the mind.  Your very existence is an experience of the mind.

You want to go from here,

to here and completely harmonized by the energy fields around you.

You do his by experiencing how your mind turns, by understanding and experiencing perception, its driving force and by knowing that your very existence is an illusion of your mind.  You think you exists because your mind has created an image of your existence which is an illusion.

When the spiral of experience mirrors the counter spiral of understanding the inner self, the mindbodysoul is centered and harmonises with the energies of the space around you.  When you are clear how the illusion takes shape to make a lie – you would want to have nothing to do with it psychologically.  When you need to make a meal, you come off the center, you imagine all you want, spin the illusion wheel and cook like a Michelin star chef, have your meal and drift back to that state of samadhi at the center, because you know that if you let your mind, it will drive you into a corner with a lie.

Buddha was thought to have said, “All  normal human beings are insane”, because he is not fully awake, but is dreaming, or suffering from a delusion, the delusion of existence. I am not making this up, OK – you mad feral mindless person.

You crazy, you know that don’t you.  You don’t see too good? Buddy.

What you want?

Also art has an installation for this state of mind: It is an installation by Michael Craig Martin called, “The Oak Tree”.  On the wall was a glass of water on a shelf:

The silly silly man. Really, titled “An Oak Tree”.

It was first met with surprise but the Americans has described it the best I think as:

“It has been described as “questioning the nature of reality.” (wiki)

They all called him a silly man at first, but if they knew what Buddha knew 5000 years ago, that the mind created the illusion that you think is the “reality” in you they would have known that the mind makes what it wants and you give a name to it.  The glass of water could have easily been, “an oak tree” today if the mind wanted it to be so.

You are just a slave to the illusions the mind creates for you.

This is today’s work of Michael Craig Martin called: “Handcuffs”

The viewer gives meaning to the associations he makes with the different objects.

Personally for me: it is just a blessing to be looking at them with no need for my mind to give it a meaning.

Art can find the pattern.

 “Lost and found” – a process of lost and found of the mind.

 siri

23 April 2015.

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