Is this just a logic or experience about mind(reality)?

Question

While doing self enquiry kind of meditation(also doing vipassana) there is feel of understanding/experience/logic that make myself convinced(but not strongly) that "me" is not the thoughts or the body or sensual experience. I don't continuously feel this, but I find concentration, calmness etc getting better.

What is this am I experiencing?

How to go beyond this?

And some teachings says that if you can disassociate ourself from mind and body then we can experience oneness(or conciousness), but I don't experience oneness or anything that I haven't experience before except the feeling of dissociation, why?

Answer 1

Sounds like the hinderances have been temporarily tamed to some degree.

💚Oneness as I experience it using metta, self investigation and mindfulness just means there doesn't nessasarily have to be a distinction made by us human beings between me and other, us and them, tree and it's background, hand and fingers, sky and ground, good and bad, out and in, foot and ground, right and left, eyelid and eye, you and me, up and down and so on. If no distinctions are taken for granted one can transcend only perceiving distinctions and percieve everything as one yet distinct.

Dissociation with the concept of oneness or dissociation with needing to bring on oneness might be desirable as oneness can so easily be clung to.

How do you get beyond? Simply don't try to get beyond, that detached kind of attitude is in harmony with getting beyond. Keep at it, it sounds to me like your doing alright.

Answer 2

You are starting to observe things with more clarity, noting that there is nama and rupa (mind and body) and also noting an awareness of both. In other words, you are experiencing awareness (knowing, consciousness) as its own object, distinct from the sensations it accompanies. This is good.

Continue sharpening your mindfulness. Maintain your continuous mindfulness longer, and observe more detail about whatever arises. Observe them the very moment they arise, and watch them change, and disappear.

Maintain your calmness and concentration - these are 2 factors that are helping you along the path. (There are 7 factors of enlightenment - mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration, and Equanimity)

If things progress, observe the 5 aggregates. This may open further depths of knowledge and experience.

The oneness you refer to is a concept, one which you're now desiring. During practice, there may be times when you experience oneness as a feeling, and sense that you are everything and everything is you. Don't strive to seek it out, or build up strong expectations or desire for it. It will occur naturally as long as your mindfulness, concentration, equanimity, etc. continue to develop.

Oneness is simply another experience to observe with mindfulness and Equanimity. It occurs with increasing strength as you let go more and more of your concept of self, and know that everything you sense is in your mind. That sound you hear isn't out there, it's within your own mind. When you experience the whole the world within, then you feel a oneness.

Answer 3

Thinking is of two kinds: 1. About the seen; smelled; tasted; felt with the body; or heard. 2. About 'thinking' itself

In this sense thinking is one of the six and can model a representative expression of that which can be thought about, figuring out how things work, imagining and understanding how reality, which would be what the senses present, works rather than what it is.

That word which is 'self' is an abstract concept in that it is unquatifiable, unmeasurable, undefined and is therefore a product of imagination and fantasy, delusion if you want to be precise. It is entirely in the realm of fiction this idea of self.

The idea of self is contained to the 1 of the 6, the ideation & ideas. We can't see a self; can only see forms & colors. Can't taste...smell...sense... or hear a 'self'.

It is only possible to think 'a self' much like it is only possibly to think of fictional stuff like spiderman or santa claus.

It is basically a made-up attribute loosely based on misapprehension of obserevable reality.

Ideas can be true or false and so can models. Therefore it is natural that ignorance would corrupt understanding and worldview would have 'holes & contradictions' and various faulty ideas would be like a way of working around that.

Answer 4

I cannot answer what you are experiencing. Only you would know that. And you would know that in a language. Therefore, if there is confusion in what you are experiencing, it is possibly due to not knowing the language in which the 'talk' of meditative experience is taking place. That you can easily read and make yourself understand. The meditative experience, Vipassana, the technique of Buddha, is many times talked about as a path. Since you are practicing Vipassana, you are walking the path. How does, then, one go 'beyond' the path? By walking the path to its end! In a manner of speaking, going beyond in Buddhist talk means not thinking in terms of concepts but realzing through exprience- going beyond this very conceptual construction in which you seem to find yourself.

The goal in Vipassana is not to have this or that experience, but to be aware and be equanimous about whatever experiences you have. (Experience in Vipassana would mean experience of the sensations) If you get caught up and start looking for some type of experience, you wont be observing the sensations equanimously (and therefore coming out of the samsaric becoming). Rather, because of the expectation of this or that, you would land up creating more samsaric fuel.

I suggest that you continue with your practice. Let questions come- if you have answers then perfect. If you dont, the dont get lost in looking for them- that is, dont stop your walk on the path because you cannot find some answers. Continue meditating, contiue walking the path. Either you would get the answers (and thus have gone beyond those questions) or the questions would dissolve (or seem incorrect or useless or will be answered).