Hi everyone,
Soooo after many years of study here what I found regarding the mind and going beyond it:
The mind is nothing but thoughts
When thoughts stop, Silence is.
That Silence is not our conditioning BUT we have been conditioned.
The Silence or Emptiness is also characterized by Clear Awareness or in other words, It views/witnesses without any interruption.
This is what is called Dzogchen & Mahamudra and what Advaita Vedanta & Kashmiri Shaivism all teach.
Comments?
Thanks
Stefos
Welcome to the forum.
You are right. Eventually, all rivers join the sea.
Hi Stefos, welcome to the AYP forum
Do you have a meditation practice?
“Study” leads to a conceptual representation of non-duality.
It is practice that leads to the experience of non-duality. Only through experiencing it can we really know it.
Hi BlueRaincoat,
I understand…You are right study DOES lead to a conceptualization.
I do my Dzogchen and Mahamudra practice along with Atma Vichara.
I have received Gayatri mantra diksha and Mantra diksha as well.
The problem I have is that Satsang/Sangha is really nonexistant here in New Hampshire where I live…It’s ridiculous actually.
Stefos
Yes, it helps being able to talk to other practitioners. Do you ever meet other people following the same teaching? I’m thinking of retreats. Do you have a teacher you can talk to?
I’m afraid I know next to nothing about Dzogchen and Atma Vichara. Most of us here practice the AYP method.
What I can say based on my experience is that one needs to be ripe for non-duality. You might like to read the AYP lessons on self-enquiry. If you’ready for it, the self-enquiry will bring you closer to non-duality. If you’re not ready for it, i.e. if self-enquiry feels more like an intellectual exercise, then you need to continue with meditation and your other practices to develop the Witness (what we call Inner Silence in AYP) further. Yogany explains it very clearly in Lessons 322 - 325.
atma vichara, I presume, is the self inquiry method.