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[AlexW]

How can there be no voluntary or involuntary?

Try this:
Put your hand on the table in front of you. Now count to three and then lift or not. Repeat this about ten times...
Did the hand go up? How many times out of 10. Was this action voluntary or involuntary?
If you think it was voluntary, where is the one making it happen - doing it?
Can a thought make the hand go up? Or is this just an illusion? Can thought make anything happen at all?

[Serendipper]

If the teacher understood that there is no teacher, then why would he fear crucifixion?

Don't know... I guess not everyone thinks it is necessary to suffer for getting across a teaching...

Here is what the teacher said:

Now, be careful how you formulate this philosophically. This could correspond to the sort of person who feels unafraid and he feels very free because he is a complete fatalist. A lot of people are and are very happy in their fatalism. They feel they don't do anything and it just happens to them. They won't die until it's time to die so why worry?

That's too passive. That is, he has felt that there is still some kind of little differentiation between himself as the experiencer on the one hand and force or set of forces called fate on the other. He is pushed around, but he witnesses being pushed around. In this state he still has a little impurity left... and that is the sensation of being pushed around. There is still a fundamental division between the knower and the known. In this case, the fatalist case, the knower seems to be the passive thing and everything known, the objective world, appears to be the active end.

The important thing to find out is this: That the sensation of being the knower and the experiencer of all this, is not, as it were, aside from everything else that's going on, but it's part of it. Although you experience your existence subjectively, you are nevertheless part of the external world. You are in my external world just as I am in your external world. So in this way, the final barrier between the knower and the known is broken down. There is nobody being carried along by fate; there is just the process... and all that you are is part of the process.

He experiences no longer a passive relationship to the world, he simply sees that all that he is and all that he ever was, was something that the entire process was doing. At the time, when he felt himself to be separate, he sees in a certain way that that was just what he should have felt because that was what the process was doing in him, in exactly the same way as it was giving him brown or blue eyes. And that's going through the door and turning round to see there was no door. You're not fated, you're not trapped because there's nobody in the trap.

If that is what one believes, then why fear death? What difference would it make if one ate an apple or shot themselves if there is no one to eat or get shot?

How can there be no voluntary or involuntary?

Because both are ideas. Both exist in the way we navigate the conceptual world, but reality knows nothing of such ideas.

Then where do the ideas come from if not from "reality"?

I found that the world works perfectly fine without worrying about ideas of voluntary/involuntary.

Who is "I" and what is "the world"? How do you apply a nondual concept in a dual world where there is a "you" and a "world"?

[Atla]

But you can't logically have the box containing all boxes because it would have an inside, but no outside.

If you'd rather hear Alan say it, fwd to 2:30 here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbc0qQnc4sU

Why not?

Sure it does. If you say reality is "all that exists", then you've made a box with an inside (object), but no outside (subject).

Which is why there is no such box, that's a dualistic idea. I think and write in nondual metaphor only.

I'm glad you think so. I regard Watts as one of the smartest persons to ever leave evidence of himself on this planet and I've endeavored to hear everything he has ever said at least 30 times repetitively. I'm almost as proficient at quoting/referencing Watts as I am the bible.

35:06 https://youtu.be/TyL5-rpPZzM?t=35m6s

So, you see, you couldn't have the experience you call being a "voluntarily acting self" without the contrast of the involuntary happening. Now, do you want to be without the involuntary happening? You want to get rid of that? Alright... if you get rid of it you won't have the experience of the voluntary self.

Or would you like to turn it the other way around? Would you like to have the experience of no voluntary self and, on the other hand, everything just happens to you? Then you say "well I'm not sure about that because then I would feel at first that I was floating, see, that I've no further responsibilities as if walking on air." And we do get that feeling sometimes if we take the ideas of determinism and fatalism to their final conclusion, you do have that sense of freedom from all responsibility, freedom from worry and care, and you float along for a while but it wears off. You don't somehow seem to be able to follow-out that philosophy consistently, especially if you have children and society begins to push on you to be responsible as it pushes on children to be responsible.

And so this nagging duality keeps coming back, that I cannot realize the nice irresponsible condition of involuntary behavior unless I have the contrast of the possibility of the voluntary and vice versa. And what does that mean? Obviously it means that these two aspects or sides of our experience which we can call the voluntary and the involuntary, the knower and the known, the subject and the object, the self and the other, although appearing to be two, are indeed one, because you can't have one without the other. And when that state of affairs arises you know at once that there's a conspiracy, that two things which look as different as different can be, for that very reason, the same.

Dualities are not one because they are the same, but because they are codependent (one cannot exist without the other).

No, Watts says here and in several of his other talks that voluntary and involuntary are an apparent duality that collapses when seen through. So they are realized on another level as the same.

Yang and Yin are quite different from each other, but just because they are different, they're identical. This is the important idea of the identical difference. The saying goes, in both Taoism and Buddism: difference is identity; identity is difference. The Chinese word for "is" is not quite the same as our word. This word, which is usually used, has rather than meaning of "that", so they would say, "difference that identity; identity that difference", and so this doesn't mean quite "is exactly the same as", but it means rather "is in relation to" or "goes with" "necessarily involves". Difference necessarily involves identity; identity necessarily involves difference. So Yang and Yin: there is no Yang without Yin no Yin without Yang.

When I was first studying these things I was terribly bothered by how on earth I was going to see this multiple-differentiated world of the unity. What was going to happen? What would it be like to see that all things are one? The sages keep saying "all things are one" and they all look to me so different because here was all those "tttttt" going on a round one and it was doing it in different ways and all these people came on in different ways and they had all their houses and all their cars that all their this and that, the whole world looked full of the most bony prickly differences and I thought, "well what's supposed to happen? Is there supposed to be a kind of, as if, your eyesight got blurred and all these things flowed together? What is it? So what is this experience of nirvana and liberation supposed to be? Because so many of these, especially Hindu, sages write about it as if it was just this kind of dissolution of everything; that it all becomes like slug with salt on it.

Well, it took me a long time and suddenly one day I realized that the difference that I saw between things was the same thing as their unity because differences: borders, lines, surfaces, boundaries don't really divide things from each other at all, but they join them together because all boundaries are held in common.

Let's think of a territory which has all been divided up into property: your property, my property, etc, etc by the fences. If I live next to you, your fence is my fence; we hold the boundary in common. We may make up silly arrangements as to who is responsible for the maintenance of this fence, but nevertheless we hold our boundaries in common and we wouldn't know what my plot of land was or where it was unless we knew the definition of your plot of land and your plot of land that is adjoining so boundaries are held in common. And I could see then that my sense of being me was exactly the same thing as my sensation of being one with the whole cosmos. I didn't need to get some other weird sort of different odd kind of experience to feel in total connection with everything. Once you get the clue, you see, that the sense of unity is inseparable from the sense of difference, you wouldn't know yourself or what you meant by self unless at the same time you had the feeling of something other.

Now, the secret is that "the other" eventually turns out to be you. I mean, that's the element of surprise in life when suddenly you find the thing most alien... We say now what is most alien to us? Go out at night and look at the Stars and realize that they are millions and millions and billions of miles away. Vast conflagrations out in space and you can lie back and look at that say "well, surely I hardly matter, I'm just a tiny tiny little peekaboo on this weird spot of dust called earth and all that going on out there billions of years before I was born, billions of years after I will die", and nothing seems stranger to you than that; more different from you. There comes a point, if you watch long enough, when you will say "why that's me!" It's "the other" that is the condition of your being yourself, as the back is the condition of being the front. And when you know that, you know you never die.

Existence is conditional/relational. Self needs other and because of that conditionality/codependency, they can be regarded as one process which we call reality.

You must pay careful attention to Watts that you do not confuse what he advocates with what he is simply teaching of what other schools advocate. It's easy to get the two conflated.

You must pay careful attention to Watts that you do not confuse what he advocates with what he is simply teaching of what other schools advocate. It's easy to get the two conflated.

No, he says existence is or appears relational on the surface but is then transcended/underlying as nondual. Though Yin and Yang seems to take the surface level codependent relations one step further, takes this apparent duality too seriously, that's a mistake imo.

Also, remember this: although I have constantly used in this talk the word ‘one’ to apply to the Self—and ‘central’—the Hindus don’t use this word except speaking poetically and loosely. The Self is not one. The Self is called ‘non-dual’—because, you see, the idea of one has an opposite. The opposite of one is many—or none. But the "which than which there is no whicher" has no opposite; there’s nothing outside it, so you can’t call it ‘one.’ Because ‘one’ is an exclusive idea, it excludes ‘two.’ So they call it, instead of ‘one,’ they call it ‘non-dual,’ which is advaita. This is from the word, you see—dva is the root meaning ‘two;’ the ‘v’ becomes ‘u,’ so we get ‘dual;’ and ‘a’ is the meaning—in Sanskrit, often—‘non.’ Non-dual, advaita.

And so it doesn’t exclude anything. ‘One’ is an exclusive word. Advaita is meant to be a totally inclusive kind of unity. Now, of course, this word itself—when you look at it from a logical standpoint—is a dualistic word, just like ‘one.’ It’s the opposite of dvaita. Dvaita and advaita. But the idea here, in Indian philosophy, is to use this word in a certain way. Now, you know that on a flat surface you can’t draw three dimensions. Anything you draw will be in two dimensions. But why do we see three dimensions? Because of an artistic convention called one-point perspective, which will give you the illusion of a third dimension.

Now, in other words, a two-dimensional line is being used to imply a third dimension which can never be expressed on a flat surface. So, in exactly the same way, advaita is a word used specially to designate what lies beyond all logical categories.

There he was simply teaching what Indian Philosophy teaches and nothing more. Did he really believe there is logic beyond logic? Maybe, but it's tough to say. He has described himself as "semi-buddhist, semi-hindu". And since "buddhism is hinduism stripped for export", according to Alan, I have to wonder why he considered himself any buddhist at all... unless it was to escape the nondual in favor of the Middle Way.

Alan can be a tough one to pin down and sometimes I wish he just be forthcoming rather than all these mental gymnastics. Although, he once played god for 10 minutes and took questions.

He came from the Zen Buddhism angle, but also excessively (perhaps even too much) liked the Hindu idea of existence being a drama.
But his Zen Buddhism and the nonmonistic understanding of Advaitan nondualism pretty much say, arrive at the same thing. It's just said that their approaches of reaching this understanding are different.
Alan's central message is Tat tvam asi / You're it, which formula is from Advaita.

[AlexW]

If that is what one believes, then why fear death? What difference would it make if one ate an apple or shot themselves if there is no one to eat or get shot?

If that is what one believes then fear of death would be found to be an illusion and thus not feared. Not fearing something doesn't mean you are going to kill yourself just to prove a point. If you are not afraid of heights you wouldn't jump from a bridge just because of that fact, right?

Then where do the ideas come from if not from "reality"?

Nothing comes from reality - everything IS reality. The funny thing is that, while thoughts are reality, the structures they seem to erect are not. They are as such not real and never truly existed. Direct experience confirms that - there is the experience of thought (dualistically speaking), but you can never experience an idea/concept that thought has been manufacturing (even you might think you can).
Lets say thought states that you are afraid, that you experience fear. Now try to find this fear... you will never succeed.
This is actually true for all concepts. Try to experience tree, or car, or body. You will find it is impossible. All you can experience is seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touch and thought (but not its concepts).

Who is "I" and what is "the world"? How do you apply a nondual concept in a dual world where there is a "you" and a "world"?

Still chopping wood and carrying water. But in a different way than before. The world and its people are now seen as equal companions that are all part of this dream of separation - sometimes the dream sucks you in, sometimes its clear as day. But clarity will always win as it comes naturally while keeping the dream going is hard work.

[Belinda]

Atla wrote;

Another way of expressing it is that whatever is happening, whatever experience is happening, is always happening on an invisible "screen" that's always there but can't be found when we look for it. So what is the screen?

I like and accept the analogy. The textile (canvas?) screen with its projected images is peculiar to me; yours is a different screen with different images. Of your separate screen and my separate screen there are commonalities which are largely cultural commonalities although we all of us do share a few inherited animal instincts. We both bleed when we are cut .

However if we abstract the (canvas?) screen itself from the variable images we have a commonality, a universal screen, as the screen itself with no images is devoid of personal attributes .It is blank. Trying not to introduce a final cause here, the screen has no purpose. It matters not that what you or I purpose for the screen's images , the screen is no more and no less than possibility itself.

My take on possibility is that possibility is determined by necessity. The images cannot be otherwise than they are, were, or will be. Therefore necessity and possibility are finite. The finity of necessity is a function of reality, or 'nature'. Another function of reality or 'nature' is duality. Duality the indeterminate, and nonduality the determinate, are functions of reality or 'nature'. Those are two attributes of us that we use for accessing reality: the dual and the non-dual. The dual is our common experience and the nondual is also experienced by philosophers such as Alan Watts, and many others some of whom are participating here. However for all we know there may be an infinity of attributes of reality or ' nature 'of which we know two only, the dual and the non-dual.

Alex,many thanks, I do intend to do the exercise you prescribed but will have to get on with my dual life right now.

Serendipper, I have highlighted one of your useful responses but cannot reply right now.

[Atla]

I like and accept the analogy. The textile (canvas?) screen with its projected images is peculiar to me; yours is a different screen with different images. Of your separate screen and my separate screen

Let's stop here. Why do you think that your screen and my screen are separate to begin with? I'm speaking literally here.
If there is no separate, individual I, then why whould there be a separate screen?

(Please don't bring Alan watts into this, what you wrote is not what he's saying. Actually what you wrote is not what most such teachers are talking about.)

[Serendipper]

Which is why there is no such box, that's a dualistic idea. I think and write in nondual metaphor only.

"think" = container
"write" = container
container = "box"

35:06 https://youtu.be/TyL5-rpPZzM?t=35m6s

So, you see, you couldn't have the experience you call being a "voluntarily acting self" without the contrast of the involuntary happening. Now, do you want to be without the involuntary happening? You want to get rid of that? Alright... if you get rid of it you won't have the experience of the voluntary self.

Or would you like to turn it the other way around? Would you like to have the experience of no voluntary self and, on the other hand, everything just happens to you? Then you say "well I'm not sure about that because then I would feel at first that I was floating, see, that I've no further responsibilities as if walking on air." And we do get that feeling sometimes if we take the ideas of determinism and fatalism to their final conclusion, you do have that sense of freedom from all responsibility, freedom from worry and care, and you float along for a while but it wears off. You don't somehow seem to be able to follow-out that philosophy consistently, especially if you have children and society begins to push on you to be responsible as it pushes on children to be responsible.

And so this nagging duality keeps coming back, that I cannot realize the nice irresponsible condition of involuntary behavior unless I have the contrast of the possibility of the voluntary and vice versa. And what does that mean? Obviously it means that these two aspects or sides of our experience which we can call the voluntary and the involuntary, the knower and the known, the subject and the object, the self and the other, although appearing to be two, are indeed one, because you can't have one without the other. And when that state of affairs arises you know at once that there's a conspiracy, that two things which look as different as different can be, for that very reason, the same.

Dualities are not one because they are the same, but because they are codependent (one cannot exist without the other).

No, Watts says here and in several of his other talks that voluntary and involuntary are an apparent duality that collapses when seen through. So they are realized on another level as the same.

First thing he said was "So, you see, you couldn't have the experience you call being a "voluntarily acting self" without the contrast of the involuntary happening."

And then "although appearing to be two, are indeed one, because you can't have one without the other."

So a coin is one only because heads is NOT the same as tails.
A magnet is one because north is NOT the same as south.
Sound is unified only because the impulse is NOT the same as expulse.

Difference necessarily involves identity; identity necessarily involves difference.

This is why I've come to the conclusion the Buddhism is the religion of death because dissolving or melting yourself into the universe ends any possible experience. Alan said "If you identify with the universe, when the grim reaper comes, there is no one there to kill" (implying that you're already dead by practicing buddhist meditation). He also said, "If you can't let go, don't worry, it happens automatically at death LOL"

Yang and Yin are quite different from each other, but just because they are different, they're identical. This is the important idea of the identical difference. The saying goes, in both Taoism and Buddism: difference is identity; identity is difference. The Chinese word for "is" is not quite the same as our word. This word, which is usually used, has rather than meaning of "that", so they would say, "difference that identity; identity that difference", and so this doesn't mean quite "is exactly the same as", but it means rather "is in relation to" or "goes with" "necessarily involves". Difference necessarily involves identity; identity necessarily involves difference. So Yang and Yin: there is no Yang without Yin no Yin without Yang.

When I was first studying these things I was terribly bothered by how on earth I was going to see this multiple-differentiated world of the unity. What was going to happen? What would it be like to see that all things are one? The sages keep saying "all things are one" and they all look to me so different because here was all those "tttttt" going on a round one and it was doing it in different ways and all these people came on in different ways and they had all their houses and all their cars that all their this and that, the whole world looked full of the most bony prickly differences and I thought, "well what's supposed to happen? Is there supposed to be a kind of, as if, your eyesight got blurred and all these things flowed together? What is it? So what is this experience of nirvana and liberation supposed to be? Because so many of these, especially Hindu, sages write about it as if it was just this kind of dissolution of everything; that it all becomes like slug with salt on it.

Well, it took me a long time and suddenly one day I realized that the difference that I saw between things was the same thing as their unity because differences: borders, lines, surfaces, boundaries don't really divide things from each other at all, but they join them together because all boundaries are held in common.

Let's think of a territory which has all been divided up into property: your property, my property, etc, etc by the fences. If I live next to you, your fence is my fence; we hold the boundary in common. We may make up silly arrangements as to who is responsible for the maintenance of this fence, but nevertheless we hold our boundaries in common and we wouldn't know what my plot of land was or where it was unless we knew the definition of your plot of land and your plot of land that is adjoining so boundaries are held in common. And I could see then that my sense of being me was exactly the same thing as my sensation of being one with the whole cosmos. I didn't need to get some other weird sort of different odd kind of experience to feel in total connection with everything. Once you get the clue, you see, that the sense of unity is inseparable from the sense of difference, you wouldn't know yourself or what you meant by self unless at the same time you had the feeling of something other.

Now, the secret is that "the other" eventually turns out to be you. I mean, that's the element of surprise in life when suddenly you find the thing most alien... We say now what is most alien to us? Go out at night and look at the Stars and realize that they are millions and millions and billions of miles away. Vast conflagrations out in space and you can lie back and look at that say "well, surely I hardly matter, I'm just a tiny tiny little peekaboo on this weird spot of dust called earth and all that going on out there billions of years before I was born, billions of years after I will die", and nothing seems stranger to you than that; more different from you. There comes a point, if you watch long enough, when you will say "why that's me!" It's "the other" that is the condition of your being yourself, as the back is the condition of being the front. And when you know that, you know you never die.

Existence is conditional/relational. Self needs other and because of that conditionality/codependency, they can be regarded as one process which we call reality.

No, he says existence is or appears relational on the surface but is then transcended/underlying as nondual. Though Yin and Yang seems to take the surface level codependent relations one step further, takes this apparent duality too seriously, that's a mistake imo.

No, he maintains that existence is relational:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkXL_0SqPbA

47:45 is it real or is it not real

When an oriental says "for something that is not real" the first thing he means is "it's not permanent". And so the quality of change of the smoke-like and that, they say, the dream-like because the dream vanishes, you see, and so they say "life is like a dream".

As you get older, you're more and more aware of the speed at which things change. With a child, it seems to be slow; children easily get bored, but as you get older, life is a like bzzzzp! Especially if you live in California where you can't keep a steady mailing list for more than two months because every two months a quarter of the addresses change lol. And, you know, the bulldozers come in and they change the shape of everything; knock down all the old buildings and up go new ones and then they get knocked down or they're so jerry-built that they fall apart, but there it goes, you see, and so there is this quality, he means, the "dream-like"; the thing is in constant flux, but he also means "illusion" in showing the extent to which what is going on in this flux is a creation of the perceiving organism.

So that by "illusion" the oriental also means "relative" as in the relationship between the air vibrations in the ear, between the cloud, the Sun, and the observer these things produce rainbow, sound, and so on, but these are "relative reality" and so when Buddhists used the word "void", "Sunyata", in sanskrit as designating the nature of the world, this should rather be translated "relativity" than "nothingness".

The great scholar strugatsky (sp?) made this very plain: it is relativity that we should think of rather than our ideas of non-being. So from that point of view, as also from the standpoint of quantum mechanics and modern physics, the illusory nature of the world is very clear. It was so much so that one physicist, who was a little daft, used to go round in the most enormous padded shoes for the fear of dropping through the atomic structure of the floor lol.

He even redefined the word "sunyata" to mean "relativity" instead of "void". Wikipedia is not even privy to that info. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9A%C5%ABnyat%C4%81

This world is not real in any abstract sense, but only exists relatively, which is the only way anything could exist. Existence outside of relativity makes no sense.

Also, remember this: although I have constantly used in this talk the word ‘one’ to apply to the Self—and ‘central’—the Hindus don’t use this word except speaking poetically and loosely. The Self is not one. The Self is called ‘non-dual’—because, you see, the idea of one has an opposite. The opposite of one is many—or none. But the "which than which there is no whicher" has no opposite; there’s nothing outside it, so you can’t call it ‘one.’ Because ‘one’ is an exclusive idea, it excludes ‘two.’ So they call it, instead of ‘one,’ they call it ‘non-dual,’ which is advaita. This is from the word, you see—dva is the root meaning ‘two;’ the ‘v’ becomes ‘u,’ so we get ‘dual;’ and ‘a’ is the meaning—in Sanskrit, often—‘non.’ Non-dual, advaita.

And so it doesn’t exclude anything. ‘One’ is an exclusive word. Advaita is meant to be a totally inclusive kind of unity. Now, of course, this word itself—when you look at it from a logical standpoint—is a dualistic word, just like ‘one.’ It’s the opposite of dvaita. Dvaita and advaita. But the idea here, in Indian philosophy, is to use this word in a certain way. Now, you know that on a flat surface you can’t draw three dimensions. Anything you draw will be in two dimensions. But why do we see three dimensions? Because of an artistic convention called one-point perspective, which will give you the illusion of a third dimension.

Now, in other words, a two-dimensional line is being used to imply a third dimension which can never be expressed on a flat surface. So, in exactly the same way, advaita is a word used specially to designate what lies beyond all logical categories.

There he was simply teaching what Indian Philosophy teaches and nothing more. Did he really believe there is logic beyond logic? Maybe, but it's tough to say. He has described himself as "semi-buddhist, semi-hindu". And since "buddhism is hinduism stripped for export", according to Alan, I have to wonder why he considered himself any buddhist at all... unless it was to escape the nondual in favor of the Middle Way.

Alan can be a tough one to pin down and sometimes I wish he just be forthcoming rather than all these mental gymnastics. Although, he once played god for 10 minutes and took questions.

He came from the Zen Buddhism angle, but also excessively (perhaps even too much) liked the Hindu idea of existence being a drama.

Yes, he said butterflies have spots on their wings because nature is a poet and insists that is just as valid an explanation as the efficient hypothesis.

But his Zen Buddhism and the nonmonistic understanding of Advaitan nondualism pretty much say, arrive at the same thing. It's just said that their approaches of reaching this understanding are different.
Alan's central message is Tat tvam asi / You're it, which formula is from Advaita.

Yes, you're it, but define "you". That's the problem because in order to have a "you", there must be an "other". That's the point where Alex and, presumably, you will say that "you" exists abstractly in a nondual state which cannot be verified by logic because logic is dual which is flawed and illusory and that's the point where I ask: why not assert Jehovah, Zeus, or the Easter Bunny which also cannot be verified logically nor empirically?

Nondual is not one, because one excludes many. It's not nothing because nothing excludes something. So it's that which doesn't exclude anything; therefore it's the box that contains all boxes and is a box with an inside, but no outside, which isn't a box. It seems easier to believe in Santa Claus since at least he isn't a direct contradiction, but merely exceedingly unlikely.

So, the Middle Way of buddhism is is different from the nondual. The Middle Way is Mark Twain's "Moderation in all things, including moderation" because one can't make a religion from no-religion lest he defeat the purpose of not having religion.

One cannot manifest without contrast. A stew must contain salt like a guru needs some eccentricities/vices lest purity itself become a contaminant.

[Serendipper]

If that is what one believes, then why fear death? What difference would it make if one ate an apple or shot themselves if there is no one to eat or get shot?

If that is what one believes then fear of death would be found to be an illusion and thus not feared. Not fearing something doesn't mean you are going to kill yourself just to prove a point. If you are not afraid of heights you wouldn't jump from a bridge just because of that fact, right?

Alan said "If the game is not worth the candle, you may as well commit suicide." Of course, he was talking to the atheists who believe they are machines, but from his point of view, he's just an actor in a play, so either way, it doesn't matter what people do: dying is no different than living because there is no one living in the first place.

Dying to prove a point would be a manifestation of self as if there existed anyone to prove a point, but to fear crucifixion is also a manifestation of self since there must exist someone to be crucified.

Then where do the ideas come from if not from "reality"?

Nothing comes from reality - everything IS reality. The funny thing is that, while thoughts are reality, the structures they seem to erect are not. They are as such not real and never truly existed. Direct experience confirms that - there is the experience of thought (dualistically speaking), but you can never experience an idea/concept that thought has been manufacturing (even you might think you can).
Lets say thought states that you are afraid, that you experience fear. Now try to find this fear... you will never succeed.
This is actually true for all concepts. Try to experience tree, or car, or body. You will find it is impossible. All you can experience is seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touch and thought (but not its concepts).

That proves everything is relative to our means of detection. We have 6 means of perceiving the world and nothing can exist beyond that.

Who is "I" and what is "the world"? How do you apply a nondual concept in a dual world where there is a "you" and a "world"?

Still chopping wood and carrying water. But in a different way than before. The world and its people are now seen as equal companions that are all part of this dream of separation - sometimes the dream sucks you in, sometimes its clear as day. But clarity will always win as it comes naturally while keeping the dream going is hard work.

Yup, that's what Alan said happens: people go back to their lives as normal with a different view because there really isn't anything else to do. After crossing a river, one doesn't carry the raft around with him eternally, but leaves it on the shore.

[Atla]

"think" = container
"write" = container
container = "box"

Don't know what you mean

First thing he said was "So, you see, you couldn't have the experience you call being a "voluntarily acting self" without the contrast of the involuntary happening."

And then "although appearing to be two, are indeed one, because you can't have one without the other."

So a coin is one only because heads is NOT the same as tails.
A magnet is one because north is NOT the same as south.
Sound is unified only because the impulse is NOT the same as expulse.

Difference necessarily involves identity; identity necessarily involves difference.

This is why I've come to the conclusion the Buddhism is the religion of death because dissolving or melting yourself into the universe ends any possible experience. Alan said "If you identify with the universe, when the grim reaper comes, there is no one there to kill" (implying that you're already dead by practicing buddhist meditation). He also said, "If you can't let go, don't worry, it happens automatically at death LOL"

Don't know what you're getting at. We divide the happening into voluntary and involuntary, the coin into heads and tails, the magnet into north and south, the sound into impulse and expulse, the universe into existence and nonexistence.

No, he maintains that existence is relational:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkXL_0SqPbA

47:45 is it real or is it not real

When an oriental says "for something that is not real" the first thing he means is "it's not permanent". And so the quality of change of the smoke-like and that, they say, the dream-like because the dream vanishes, you see, and so they say "life is like a dream".

As you get older, you're more and more aware of the speed at which things change. With a child, it seems to be slow; children easily get bored, but as you get older, life is a like bzzzzp! Especially if you live in California where you can't keep a steady mailing list for more than two months because every two months a quarter of the addresses change lol. And, you know, the bulldozers come in and they change the shape of everything; knock down all the old buildings and up go new ones and then they get knocked down or they're so jerry-built that they fall apart, but there it goes, you see, and so there is this quality, he means, the "dream-like"; the thing is in constant flux, but he also means "illusion" in showing the extent to which what is going on in this flux is a creation of the perceiving organism.

So that by "illusion" the oriental also means "relative" as in the relationship between the air vibrations in the ear, between the cloud, the Sun, and the observer these things produce rainbow, sound, and so on, but these are "relative reality" and so when Buddhists used the word "void", "Sunyata", in sanskrit as designating the nature of the world, this should rather be translated "relativity" than "nothingness".

The great scholar strugatsky (sp?) made this very plain: it is relativity that we should think of rather than our ideas of non-being. So from that point of view, as also from the standpoint of quantum mechanics and modern physics, the illusory nature of the world is very clear. It was so much so that one physicist, who was a little daft, used to go round in the most enormous padded shoes for the fear of dropping through the atomic structure of the floor lol.

He even redefined the word "sunyata" to mean "relativity" instead of "void". Wikipedia is not even privy to that info. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9A%C5%ABnyat%C4%81

This world is not real in any abstract sense, but only exists relatively, which is the only way anything could exist. Existence outside of relativity makes no sense.

He explained that the relative is the everyday, illusory, apparent "layer" of reality. Once we see through the relative, we realize existence as fundamentally nondual.

Yes, you're it, but define "you". That's the problem because in order to have a "you", there must be an "other". That's the point where Alex and, presumably, you will say that "you" exists abstractly in a nondual state which cannot be verified by logic because logic is dual which is flawed and illusory and that's the point where I ask: why not assert Jehovah, Zeus, or the Easter Bunny which also cannot be verified logically nor empirically?

There is no separate you, so the "you" can't be properly defined. We can verify logically/empirically that there is no evidence for separation.

Nondual is not one, because one excludes many. It's not nothing because nothing excludes something. So it's that which doesn't exclude anything; therefore it's the box that contains all boxes and is a box with an inside, but no outside, which isn't a box. It seems easier to believe in Santa Claus since at least he isn't a direct contradiction, but merely exceedingly unlikely.

An understanding that there are no fundamental divisions requires no faith and runs into no contradictions. Actually it's the simplest picture of existence I can think of.

So, the Middle Way of buddhism is is different from the nondual. The Middle Way is Mark Twain's "Moderation in all things, including moderation" because one can't make a religion from no-religion lest he defeat the purpose of not having religion.

I didn't say that the Buddhist Middle Way was another word for nondual. I disagree with many Buddhist beliefs actually and prefer Zen and Mahayana to the other forms.

One cannot manifest without contrast. A stew must contain salt like a guru needs some eccentricities/vices lest purity itself become a contaminant.

Sure, but that which it is manifested from is the nondual. Those eccentricities help us be grounded in the everyday apparent dual.

[Serendipper]

"think" = container
"write" = container
container = "box"

Don't know what you mean

A thought contains an idea/concept. It expresses/embodies some *thing*, therefore it's a container.
Writing is expression of thoughts which are a containers of containers.

A statement itself is a concept for conveying other concepts and the truthfulness of a statement is a property of the statement which is itself a concept and therefore a concept of a concept expressed in a concept. And all concepts are containers (boxes).

We can't have the box containing all boxes because the box would have to contain itself (division by zero). This is like saying that all bodies in the universe are moving without allowing for at least one body that is still in order to reference that all other bodies are moving. It is illogical and meaningless to make statements about all things.

Don't know what you're getting at. We divide the happening into voluntary and involuntary, the coin into heads and tails, the magnet into north and south, the sound into impulse and expulse, the universe into existence and nonexistence.

A happening couldn't happen without the involuntary and voluntary.
A coin couldn't exist unless one side was different from the other because, otherwise, if the sides were the same, the coin would have zero thickness like a mathematical plane.
A magnet couldn't be a magnet without the difference of north and south.
Sound wouldn't be sound unless there was positive and negative pressure.
The universe couldn't exist unless there was potential for nonexistence.

It is difference that makes unity. Two puzzle pieces fit together because they are not the same shape, but mirror each other. The peg goes in the hole, but we can't put a peg in a peg nor a hole in a hole. It is difference that makes unity and borders therefore join rather than separate. If there were no borders to create differences, there could be no unity and therefore no nondual. So the nondual is codependent with the dual.

No, he maintains that existence is relational:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkXL_0SqPbA

47:45 is it real or is it not real

When an oriental says "for something that is not real" the first thing he means is "it's not permanent". And so the quality of change of the smoke-like and that, they say, the dream-like because the dream vanishes, you see, and so they say "life is like a dream".

As you get older, you're more and more aware of the speed at which things change. With a child, it seems to be slow; children easily get bored, but as you get older, life is a like bzzzzp! Especially if you live in California where you can't keep a steady mailing list for more than two months because every two months a quarter of the addresses change lol. And, you know, the bulldozers come in and they change the shape of everything; knock down all the old buildings and up go new ones and then they get knocked down or they're so jerry-built that they fall apart, but there it goes, you see, and so there is this quality, he means, the "dream-like"; the thing is in constant flux, but he also means "illusion" in showing the extent to which what is going on in this flux is a creation of the perceiving organism.

So that by "illusion" the oriental also means "relative" as in the relationship between the air vibrations in the ear, between the cloud, the Sun, and the observer these things produce rainbow, sound, and so on, but these are "relative reality" and so when Buddhists used the word "void", "Sunyata", in sanskrit as designating the nature of the world, this should rather be translated "relativity" than "nothingness".

The great scholar strugatsky (sp?) made this very plain: it is relativity that we should think of rather than our ideas of non-being. So from that point of view, as also from the standpoint of quantum mechanics and modern physics, the illusory nature of the world is very clear. It was so much so that one physicist, who was a little daft, used to go round in the most enormous padded shoes for the fear of dropping through the atomic structure of the floor lol.

He even redefined the word "sunyata" to mean "relativity" instead of "void". Wikipedia is not even privy to that info. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9A%C5%ABnyat%C4%81

This world is not real in any abstract sense, but only exists relatively, which is the only way anything could exist. Existence outside of relativity makes no sense.

He explained that the relative is the everyday, illusory, apparent "layer" of reality. Once we see through the relative, we realize existence as fundamentally nondual.

Where did he say "Once we see through the relative, we realize existence as fundamentally nondual" ?

He is saying that all reality is illusion and the "void" underlying the illusion should rather be translated as relative, which is void of abstractness (absolutely real, objectively real <-- there is no such thing = void). Reality is empty (void) and relativity is the only thing producing a reality.

Yes, you're it, but define "you". That's the problem because in order to have a "you", there must be an "other". That's the point where Alex and, presumably, you will say that "you" exists abstractly in a nondual state which cannot be verified by logic because logic is dual which is flawed and illusory and that's the point where I ask: why not assert Jehovah, Zeus, or the Easter Bunny which also cannot be verified logically nor empirically?

There is no separate you, so the "you" can't be properly defined.

But that's why they say about Jehovah (he can't be properly defined), so why believe Brahman over Jehovah?

We can verify logically/empirically that there is no evidence for separation.

I agree because if there are things, then we have to show how one thing affects another thing. But the million $ question is how does one thing with no separate parts manage to observe itself? How is the origin of conscious attention also the focal point of that attention? How does a gun shoot down its own barrel?

Nondual is not one, because one excludes many. It's not nothing because nothing excludes something. So it's that which doesn't exclude anything; therefore it's the box that contains all boxes and is a box with an inside, but no outside, which isn't a box. It seems easier to believe in Santa Claus since at least he isn't a direct contradiction, but merely exceedingly unlikely.

An understanding that there are no fundamental divisions requires no faith and runs into no contradictions. Actually it's the simplest picture of existence I can think of.

Except for a gun shooting down its own barrel, boxes containing themselves, boxes with insides but no outsides.

So, the Middle Way of buddhism is is different from the nondual. The Middle Way is Mark Twain's "Moderation in all things, including moderation" because one can't make a religion from no-religion lest he defeat the purpose of not having religion.

I didn't say that the Buddhist Middle Way was another word for nondual. I disagree with many Buddhist beliefs actually and prefer Zen and Mahayana to the other forms.

My point was suggesting that Alan may have considered himself semi-Buddhist to be in favor of the Middle Way rather than the nondual.

"Buddhism is Hinduism stripped for export." https://youtu.be/xfKfKul7vnM?t=14m2s

If that is what he believed, then why consider himself Buddhist at all? Clearly he preferred the dramatic/poetic interpretation of the Hindus, so then what did he object to?

One cannot manifest without contrast. A stew must contain salt like a guru needs some eccentricities/vices lest purity itself become a contaminant.

Sure, but that which it is manifested from is the nondual. Those eccentricities help us be grounded in the everyday apparent dual.

The eccentricities bring us into existence.

[Atla]

A thought contains an idea/concept. It expresses/embodies some *thing*, therefore it's a container.

An idea/concept is the thought (or part of a thought as neural activity).

Writing is expression of thoughts which are a containers of containers.

Writing is an activity. When you write something, as far as I know containers of containers don't magically fly into the paper.

A statement itself is a concept for conveying other concepts and the truthfulness of a statement is a property of the statement which is itself a concept and therefore a concept of a concept expressed in a concept. And all concepts are containers (boxes).

We can't have the box containing all boxes because the box would have to contain itself (division by zero). This is like saying that all bodies in the universe are moving without allowing for at least one body that is still in order to reference that all other bodies are moving. It is illogical and meaningless to make statements about all things.

No, really, where are these containers/boxes you speak of?

A happening couldn't happen without the involuntary and voluntary.

Existence is probably happening of itself; and so are we; the ego and free will is illusory. So technically there is only the involuntary, it just doesn't seem that way. So a happening can happen without the voluntary.
But that's beside the point. There is human activity, human happening and we divide it into these two categories.

A coin couldn't exist unless one side was different from the other because, otherwise, if the sides were the same, the coin would have zero thickness like a mathematical plane.

Some coins are the same on both sides. And yet they have thickness and don't disappear huh.
But that's beside the point, even if the sides are different, they are still the same coin. We just divide the coin into two things.

A magnet couldn't be a magnet without the difference of north and south.

A magnet can be completely symmetrical, we arbitrarily divide it into north and south. And yet it's still a magnet.

Sound wouldn't be sound unless there was positive and negative pressure.

Positive and negative are also symmetrical.

The universe couldn't exist unless there was potential for nonexistence.

Potential has nothing to do with it. The universe doesn't "exist", that's just a convention. It is of course beyond the human-made duality of existence and nonexistence. But this is one of the deepest insights and it doesn't make much sense to casually bring it up.

[Serendipper]

A thought contains an idea/concept. It expresses/embodies some *thing*, therefore it's a container.

An idea/concept is the thought (or part of a thought as neural activity).

Idea
noun
1. any conception existing in the mind as a result of mental understanding, awareness, or activity.
2. a thought, conception, or notion: That is an excellent idea.
3. an impression: He gave me a general idea of how he plans to run the department.

Thought
noun
1. the product of mental activity; that which one thinks : a body of thought.
2. a single act or product of thinking; idea or notion: to collect one's thoughts.
3. the act or process of thinking; mental activity: Thought as well as action wearies us.

Concept
noun
1. a general notion or idea; conception.
2. an idea of something formed by mentally combining all its characteristics or particulars; a construct.
3. a directly conceived or intuited object of thought.

Either thoughts, ideas, concepts contain something or they're random nonsensical noise, in which case they still contain the noise.

Writing is expression of thoughts which are a containers of containers.

Writing is an activity. When you write something, as far as I know containers of containers don't magically fly into the paper.

Since your writing does not contain anything, I am unable to discern meaning from the random scribbling you posted. How can you convey meaning to me without a container?

A statement itself is a concept for conveying other concepts and the truthfulness of a statement is a property of the statement which is itself a concept and therefore a concept of a concept expressed in a concept. And all concepts are containers (boxes).

We can't have the box containing all boxes because the box would have to contain itself (division by zero). This is like saying that all bodies in the universe are moving without allowing for at least one body that is still in order to reference that all other bodies are moving. It is illogical and meaningless to make statements about all things.

No, really, where are these containers/boxes you speak of?

Are you having trouble understanding or are you being dogmatic?

A happening couldn't happen without the involuntary and voluntary.

Existence is probably happening of itself; and so are we; the ego and free will is illusory. So technically there is only the involuntary,

Impossible.

it just doesn't seem that way.

No it really is impossible to have half a duality (the involuntary).

So a happening can happen without the voluntary.

Nope.

But that's beside the point. There is human activity, human happening and we divide it into these two categories.

Because it's real.

A coin couldn't exist unless one side was different from the other because, otherwise, if the sides were the same, the coin would have zero thickness like a mathematical plane.

Some coins are the same on both sides.

Impossible

And yet they have thickness and don't disappear huh.

Then the sides are not the same. I don't mean the same in terms of appearance, but the exact same in every way possible, including their positional coordinates in space time, which puts the two sides in the same place. Something cannot be the same thing if it is in two different places at the same time.

But that's beside the point, even if the sides are different, they are still the same coin. We just divide the coin into two things.

Nope, we just see it as one coin when it really has 2 sides.

A magnet couldn't be a magnet without the difference of north and south.

A magnet can be completely symmetrical, we arbitrarily divide it into north and south. And yet it's still a magnet.

Nonsense and hilarious.

Sound wouldn't be sound unless there was positive and negative pressure.

Positive and negative are also symmetrical.

The hook your car battery up backwards and report what happens.

The universe couldn't exist unless there was potential for nonexistence.

Potential has nothing to do with it.

Yes it does.

The universe doesn't "exist", that's just a convention.

Existence is convention??? 1375-1425; late Middle English convencio(u)n (< Middle French) < Latin conventiōn- (stem of conventiō) agreement, literally, a coming together. Ah, you mean relativity. I agree!

It is of course beyond the human-made duality of existence and nonexistence.

So is the Easter Bunny, Jehovah, Zeus, Flying Spaghetti Monster beyond duality.

But this is one of the deepest insights and it doesn't make much sense to casually bring it up.

You're perfectly right that it makes no sense.

You've made a claim that nonduality exists abstractly/objectively and is both "beyond" and "deeper" than logic/duality which are human-made and therefore illusory which means you're unable to substantiate your claim other than repetitiously restating the claim over and over and dogmatically insisting it's true.

[Atla]

Either thoughts, ideas, concepts contain something or they're random nonsensical noise, in which case they still contain the noise.

You don't seem to understand what thoughts are. You are saying they are made of two distinct elements, which is directly refuted by neuroscience. And the same idea, concept can mean different things to different people, obviously.

Since your writing does not contain anything, I am unable to discern meaning from the random scribbling you posted. How can you convey meaning to me without a container?

If you say so. Where are the containers embedded in your post? Or do you directly transfer containers into the minds of others?

You've made a claim that nonduality exists abstractly/objectively and is both "beyond" and "deeper" than logic/duality which are human-made and therefore illusory which means you're unable to substantiate your claim other than repetitiously restating the claim over and over and dogmatically insisting it's true.

I'm telling it as it is, and it's dead simple; what you are saying requires faith however, because the evidence is against it.
You misunderstand and misrepresent what I wrote because you are looking for it like you were looking for an object, which defeats the whole point. Also, nonduality is anything but abstract. The dual is abstract.
Also, I wrote that there is a shift in logic, that doesn't mean that logic ceases to exist.

[AlexW]

That proves everything is relative to our means of detection. We have 6 means of perceiving the world and nothing can exist beyond that.

It only proves that there is *that*/reality/whatever we agree to call it. It doesn't prove relativity, perception, not even that there is a world.
When you try to prove something you are always operating from a dualistic point of view, from the split mind. Its like being in a dream, looking for dream proofs, proving dream things. A proof is only necessary in the relativistic world that we have made up - never in reality. Reality is its own proof, it requires no external confirmation - where would this external be? We believe we can prove reality from inside the dream (duality), but this is perfectly impossible. Reality actually doesn't know anything about the dream - it cant access it because it cant know it. Why? Because the dream/duality is not real and reality only knows reality/itself. It knows nothing about ideas, stories and beliefs...

[AlexW]

Sorry, forgot this part...

Alan said "If the game is not worth the candle, you may as well commit suicide." Of course, he was talking to the atheists who believe they are machines, but from his point of view, he's just an actor in a play, so either way, it doesn't matter what people do: dying is no different than living because there is no one living in the first place.

Well... he (or you) is ultimately not an actor in a play, but the reality that makes the play possible in the first place. Funny thing is that reality doesn't know anything about the play, it doesn't even know that it is happing. Actually: in reality the play is NOT happening - it only happens in your mind (a dream doesn't affect the real world - and neither does the play affect reality).
This doesn't mean that while playing/dreaming we shouldn't play it in a way that it reflects our true being.