Many Individual Awarenesses or One Universal Awareness?

[Ariel]

Use this thread to discuss the following blog post:

Many Individual Awarenesses or One Universal Awareness?

[Marko]

Fascinating post and video.

Is not the answer "Both" to the question "Many Individual Awarenesses or One Universal Awareness?"

The small picture has many, the LARGER only one.

In the small picture we can experience both, that's the advantage the small picture has over the LARGER picture. The Larger picture there is only one to be experienced.

[CaterpillarWoman]

Is not the answer "Both" to the question "Many Individual Awarenesses or One Universal Awareness?"

That's how I would answer.

It's like asking, Is a Seurat painting a picture of people at the seashore, or is it a bunch of dots of paint on a canvas? Well, it's both. It just depends on how closely you look and what you make of all the dots.

[Ariel]

Yeah great question... working on a response to it now. s'gonna be the topic of the next post.

Edit: Nevermind.. had an 'aha' about the difference between separation and individuality and decided I'd rather not.

[Jinzang]

The famous Tibetan teacher Karma Chakme (famous to Tibetans) wrote this about his own experience:

As I was receiving the instruction on the introduction to the nature of mind, I felt the inseparability of all the minds of the buddhas and myself. Not only did I feel the inseparability of all the buddhas' minds, I also felt the inseparability of all the minds of beings in the six realms and my own mind. Not only that, I also felt inseparable from, or beyond, all time and space--past, present, and future. Everything, my mind and the minds of enlightened and sentient beings became inseparable like mixing water and water.

Although I experienced this inseparability, I could at the same time clearly experience the innate energy and essence of all beings separately and individually, just like a clear, precise reflection of something in a mirror. The reflection of something in a mirror has no substance. Similarly, although each thing is so precise and so distinctive, it is also empty of existence.

[(i)con]

Reality, both relative and absolute, all at once, eternally culminating in Now.

[David6372]

Dear Ariel, You decided not to answer?

Well, that's not very nice, to post an interesting question and then not answer. Why not delete the entire thread and have done with it, rather than expose us to your changing your mind?

From the standpoint of mind, the question is very interesting, for it explores the strange nature of the language used by those who are Awakened. To an Awakened person, it is totally without interest, swallowed up by the immensity and ultimate simplicity of reality. To a pre-Awakened person (we need better terminology), the question seems to have a very precise meaning that gets at the heart of what Nonduality claims. That is why it can seem so important.

On another point: the video is interesting because, usually, Awakened people just talk about the transition from ignorance to knowledge of reality. Here is a rare case where the two Awakened people don't have to correct and teach each other. They can enjoy a free exchange of observations, hampered only by the use of language (words require compressing a profound meaning into distinctions and other mental operations). The viewer can enjoy the exchange and see its ordinariness, even if the viewer has not had a clear experience of the subject matter.

[Ariel]

haha, I hadn't posted on this blog for a long time. I came back to the forum and found something like 200,000 spam posts, and the only way of getting rid of them all was deleting a lot of content in mass. Hopefully it was mostly spam that got deleted, but some of the original comments may have gotten caught up in the mix unfortunately.

Sorry about that.