Dear Rupert,
I don’t know if the final awakening will happen to ‘my’ body or not. Also, why does enlightenment happen to some body-minds but not others, and why do some kinds of thought happen to ‘my’ body-mind but not others? Is it related to our past conditioning? Is it correct that all apparent objects (including thoughts and sensations) are conditioned to be as they are?
Thanks a lot,
Nguyen Quang Ninh.
Dear Nguyen,
Nguyen: I don’t know if the final awakening will happen to ‘my’ body or not.
Rupert:The ‘final awakening’ does not happen to a body. The body is simply a sensation and/or a perception. This ‘body’ knows or feels nothing. A sensation or a perception is known of felt by awareness.
Everything that is known or experienced is known or experienced by awareness. Awakening, which is the experience of awareness knowing its own unlimited being is, like everything else, known only by awareness.
Awareness is in fact always already knowing its own being, although this is sometimes overlooked. All that is necessary is to see that this is so, by removing or seeing through whatever it is that makes it seem otherwise.
Why does enlightenment happen to some body-minds but not others?
Enlightenment does not happen to a body or a mind. The word ‘enlightenment’ means ‘to make light’. However, the light in all experience is already fully shining. It cannot, nor need it, be turned on or made brighter.
What is it that illumines this current experience? Whatever it is, is known as awareness. Without it there would be nothing. That which illumines this and all experience is fully present here, now, as the knowing-being element in the current experience. It always knows itself, although it sometimes seems to be veiled by the apparent objects of the mind, body and world.
Why do some kinds of thought happen to ‘my’ body-mind but not others?
Thoughts do not happen to a body-mind. They happen ‘to’ awareness. The mind isa thought; it does not havea thought.
Is it correct that all apparent objects (including thoughts and sensations) are conditioned to be as they are?
We could say that every object comes freshly made straight out of awareness. In fact, even that is not quite true – there are no thoughts, as objects, that come ‘out of’ awareness. Nothing is ‘out of awareness.’ However, it will suffice as a formulation for our current purpose.
From a more relative point of view, thoughts are conditioned by many factors, such as the language that the mind has been trained in (your thoughts do not appear, for instance, in Greek). Perceptions are conditioned by the condition of the senses (for instance, if you are colour-blind, the perception of colour will be conditioned accordingly).
With love,
Rupert
