u/pl8doh

The certainty of what appears, the sense that “this is,” that being is solid, present, and self-evident, is invalidated by the mirror’s reflection. The reflection appears with complete vividness. It has color, form, depth, movement, even the apparent certainty of existing and yet stands on nothing. It is not in the glass, not behind the glass, and not in the space in front of the glass. The moment you look for the place where the reflection actually is, no location can be found.

In the same way, the certainty that accompanies ordinary appearing feels absolute. “This is real. This is happening. This is.” But the mirror reveals that such certainty does not require a foundation. Appearance can carry the full conviction of being while remaining groundless.

The reflection does not become less vivid when its lack of location is noticed. It simply continues to appear without the imagined support that certainty once claimed for it. What is invalidated is not the appearing, but the certainty that appearing needs a solid “being” underneath it.

naming itself into existence. Understand that fabricating the one that it appears to, is child's play.

The inner monologue can no longer hide behind 'you' so to speak. In the clear light of day, the inner monologue is unmasked. Realization is the mask removing itself.

The realization that the difference between existence and nonexistence is imagined.

When the imagined difference between existence and nonexistence falls away, the imagined difference between sage and ordinary person falls with it.

There is no stored past from which patterns are extracted. There is only this appearance that seems to echo previous appearances. The mind reads those echoes as “the same thing happening again,” and from that reading it generates another appearance: “therefore this will happen next.” The sense of repetition and the forecast itself arise now. They have no actual foundation in a history that occurred; they are simply further folds within the current appearing, the same mechanism that produces the ember’s trail and the feeling of personal persistence.

The predictive ability is real as an appearance, and often functionally effective within the dream of continuity. Yet it remains a fabrication, a present happening that refers to a past that never was, in order to project a future that has not yet appeared.

What we call the past is a happening now, not what happened.
It is only this appearance referring to what never was.

Reflect for just a moment on the trail created by a fast-moving ember in the night sky. The trail appears to have an independent existence continuous with the ember.

Now, consider the apparent continuity of experience as the slow-motion version of the ember’s trail: successive appearances, none of which persists, generate the illusion of an unbroken flow that never actually exists.

Forget for just a little while that one is consider an illusion and the other considered real.

How can there be freedom and will at the same time? Once it is seen that free will is only a construct of imagination an after-the-fact story, there is no going back. You will never be at liberty to reverse that realization.

Reality doesn't include imagination. Imagination invokes reality. We call it the present. That is short for presentation. The duality between the imagined and the real is itself imagined. Any declaration of what is real, and even the idea of “real,” is imagined. Real is only an idea. All ideas are imagined. To imagine what imagination is, is simply more imagining. Imagining and imagination are themselves imagined.

An idea of what this is or even that this is, cannot be extracted from this. If it could, absolutely nothing would remain. If you can't imagine what imagination is, how can you imagine it's absence?

It can never become its own object. Like a dog chasing its own tail, the pursuit is endless because the pursuer and the pursued are the same. What you seek is what seeking is. It was never something to be caught.

The only way to “see” is to realize the light we are looking with is the light we are looking for.

Taken all the way, even that remaining status must fall. Ignorance is simply the idea of being a person, a lasting someone who can be either deluded or enlightened.

When that idea is no longer credited, there is no ignorant person left to awaken and no Buddha left to become. Nothing needs to be realized. The idea of a person was the only obstacle, and it was never real.

Taken all the way, even that remaining status must fall. Ignorance is simply the idea of being a person, a lasting someone who can be either deluded or enlightened.

When that idea is no longer credited, there is no ignorant person left to awaken and no Buddha left to become. Nothing needs to be realized. The idea of a person was the only obstacle, and it was never real.

The idea of something persisting, something material, some 'thing' actually standing out, independent and long lasting in any form, is a bastardization of nonduality. Reality isn't actually any 'thing'.

What was born was an idea of persistence, not persistence itself. Nothing is persisting. How could anything persist when there is no duration? What persists is an idea of persistence, not persistence itself.

The knowledge of a beginning persists. The idea of a beginning is what began, not an actual beginning. A relative beginning is what is mistaken for an actual beginning. The content arises and, in the same movement, takes itself to be actual, solid, independent, lasting. The content is the mistaking. That is what is going on.

We name things like mind, knowing, imagination, infinite, time, space, as if they have an actual referent, something to which they point. They do not. That is all.

The idea of something persisting, something material, some 'thing' actually standing out, independent and long lasting in any form, is a bastardization of nonduality. Reality isn't actually any 'thing'.

What was born was an idea of persistence, not persistence itself. Nothing is persisting. How could anything persist when there is no duration? What persists is an idea of persistence, not persistence itself.

The knowledge of a beginning persists. The idea of a beginning is what began, not an actual beginning. A relative beginning is what is mistaken for an actual beginning, identical to a dream. The content arises and, in the same movement, takes itself to be actual, solid, independent, lasting. The content is the mistaking. That is what is going on.

We name things like mind, knowing, imagination, infinite, time, space, as if they have an actual referent, something to which they point. They do not. That is all.

Intrinsically our transcendent nature is empty, with nothing that can be grasped or attained.

This is the platform sutra on the great perfection of wisdom. It asserts a difference, that of a buddha, and simultaneously negates a real difference.

It's the difference between knowing the magic show is part of the magic and not knowing. So even this difference, between knowing the magic and not knowing it, is another appearance within the magic show.

There can be no equality nor inequality in nonduality. By referencing any 'thing', such as 'this', a duality is created. The thing and the reference at a minimum. There simply are no claims nor claimant. Nonduality is nonnumeric this includes non zero. There is simply nothing that can be said regarding nonduality as that would create a reference, claim, equality or inequality.

What is pointed to by the word “nonduality” cannot be spoken without ceasing to be what the word attempted to indicate.

'You' are not thinking. Thoughts simply arise. The 'I' thought arises. That is not evidence of an 'I'. Prior to the 'I' thought there was no 'I'. Durability arises and that is mistaken for an 'I'. Durability has no actual duration.

Thoughts are no less substantial than feelings and sensation and from those an external world is fabricated. This includes 'you'.

From clouds arise formations. Clouds come an go. Think of 'this' as a clouding. There is no separation of the knowing of ''this'' from 'this'.

Depending on a separate self to determine what is a dream is a fool's errand.

That is the problem then. Nothing is noticed when no one's noticing and no one is noticing when no one is not noticing. The seeker is waiting for something that is never going to happen.

The seeker waits for a decisive recognition, a clear arrival, a moment that can be registered and claimed.
That moment never comes. Not because it is delayed, but because the one who would notice it is the same construct that must dissolve for anything to be resolved. The waiting itself is the last movement of the seeker.

Nothing is being misrepresented. No thing is being. Existence and nonexistence are irrelevant. there is no way to measure the degree to which this is unstable. Any attempt to relate this to itself is simply another appearance. If it were real, there would be no knowing of it. The knowing cannot be known. Until the knowing can be known, there is nothing to know.

"This" as a reference is all that appears to be, not "this" as a referent, a thing to be referenced. With that being said, "Emptiness" seems to be a better fit, so to speak. It seems pretty clear that "emptiness" cannot reference any 'thing' whatsoever.

Until then, all conclusions are inconclusive. Silence is not a teacher. It is the absence of any conclusion about what cannot be concluded, including this one.”

If understanding is beyond examination and beyond understanding, then the declaration “this is beyond understanding” is itself an act of the very capacity that cannot be examined or understood. There is no external vantage from which the declaration can be grounded. The claim is made from inside the limit it tries to name, using the instrument whose nature remains opaque.

The grounds dissolve, the word 'thought' having no referent. What remains is not a secure map of what lies beyond understanding, but the recognition that every such map is drawn by an understanding that is already beyond itself. The question does not open a further investigation; it closes the possibility of standing outside the circle.

The declaration of what is beyond understanding is itself beyond understanding. It's a little bit like trying to see your eye without the aid of a mirror.