Hello Treeleaf,
I have a little experience I'd like to share with you and I'd like to know your opinions on a question it brought up regarding practice.
Last week, I was having some soup, and obviously, I burned my tongue because I was impatient and I just had to gulp it down right out of the microwave
But later in the day, for some reason, I was thinking of the incident, and I had read earlier in the day about the non-separation of things ("talking from both sides of their no-sided mouth" is something Jundo wrote, I believe, that I had read). At that moment, I worked out that logically, there's no "me", only an assembly of cells, some of which are on the tip of my tongue and send electrical signals to my brain when confronted by a stimulus. Moreover, there's no "hot soup", there's just some water, with some chicken parts in it, and all those molecules were accelerated because of the heating. (For me, subjectively, it's hot, yet compared to lava, it isn't).
Then, the only thing that truely was there was the impermanent relation between what I called soup and what I called my tongue : the burning.
That realization, for some reason, brought me great calm and a feeling of artificial separations weakening between me and the universe. I felt more interwoven with the world, simply not separate from the universe, but part of the tapestry. I could actually feel the little tensions in my forehead melt away. Freedom and lightness of being at last !
Of course, it barely lasted 15 min.
and since then I've been trying to recreate the same understanding. It seems to me that using logic, in that case, actually provoked a deeper understanding of the nature of the self.
My question to you all : do you think using rational thinking and understanding is ultimately counterproductive to "getting it" in our guts? Should I only attempt to drop all conceptual thinking and wait for the "aha" moment to hit me in the face instead?
Thank you for reading
Sim
Sat yesterday night
I have a little experience I'd like to share with you and I'd like to know your opinions on a question it brought up regarding practice.
Last week, I was having some soup, and obviously, I burned my tongue because I was impatient and I just had to gulp it down right out of the microwave
But later in the day, for some reason, I was thinking of the incident, and I had read earlier in the day about the non-separation of things ("talking from both sides of their no-sided mouth" is something Jundo wrote, I believe, that I had read). At that moment, I worked out that logically, there's no "me", only an assembly of cells, some of which are on the tip of my tongue and send electrical signals to my brain when confronted by a stimulus. Moreover, there's no "hot soup", there's just some water, with some chicken parts in it, and all those molecules were accelerated because of the heating. (For me, subjectively, it's hot, yet compared to lava, it isn't).Then, the only thing that truely was there was the impermanent relation between what I called soup and what I called my tongue : the burning.
That realization, for some reason, brought me great calm and a feeling of artificial separations weakening between me and the universe. I felt more interwoven with the world, simply not separate from the universe, but part of the tapestry. I could actually feel the little tensions in my forehead melt away. Freedom and lightness of being at last !
Of course, it barely lasted 15 min.
and since then I've been trying to recreate the same understanding. It seems to me that using logic, in that case, actually provoked a deeper understanding of the nature of the self.My question to you all : do you think using rational thinking and understanding is ultimately counterproductive to "getting it" in our guts? Should I only attempt to drop all conceptual thinking and wait for the "aha" moment to hit me in the face instead?
Thank you for reading
Sim
Sat yesterday night
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