Reflection 1

10/11/07

Each thought is from a certain point of view. As long as a point of view is there you will keep thinking. The point of view is itself another thought. When you can trace the thought to the point of view and question the point of view, the thought is gone. The point of view may be just any hang-up or hook-up (or attachment of some kind).

Playing the Skeptic: The big skeptical question is that this whole approach reduces one to ashes. One might claim that something might take over and that might act in some fashion. But the plain fact of the matter is that you won’t be there to know or experience or enjoy or suffer it. Take enjoyment, for instance: What I notice is that you couldn’t even use the term ‘enjoyment’ anymore, when the experience only lasts a split second and then something else is there in its place.

And when you recede into the awareness, it looks like everything in life is falling apart and people, actions, events, relationships etc. don’t make any difference. Then I could as well be dead!

Then what is the virtue of all this teaching? Just that I’ll supposedly be free from suffering? To be sure, psychological pain is pulverized, being broken up into pieces. But physical pain is always there drawing it to your attention. You are never going to be free from. It doesn’t even matter if you don't concatenate different sensations into a state of mind which has continuity or you do.