Seeing Without a Seer
Ver sin un observador
A question about who or what is doing the knowing, and whether the recognition of differences in experience is itself just another activity of the mind.
Seeing Without a Seer
A question about who or what is doing the knowing, and whether the recognition of differences in experience is itself just another activity of the mind.
My question arises from the earlier conversation. Who is it that knows? Who knows how the mind interprets, and how interpretation is just thoughts, different from sensation? It feels like there is a knowing of differences, as if the mind is functioning in some way. But that can also be thought about. The sense of knowing how the mind functions could itself be an interpretation, and the sense of knowing all of this: it's not that someone is doing it, just noticing. But the whole thing is a mind activity.
It depends on what you call "mind." I could call sensation and perception also part of mind, but I separate thoughts from sensation and perception. Perception would be sound and sight. Sensation is the experience of the body, skin, touch, temperature, physical pain. Thoughts, in a sense, are always a kind of reflection of that. Thoughts are made of imagined images, imagined sounds, imagined sensations even. Emotions, you could consider them as imagined sensations.
Now, the question I think you're asking is: who is it that notices this and can notice the difference, for example, between thought and perception? Is that what you're asking?
It's really questioning whether there is a knowing for this, or whether it's all just my interpretation.
The sound and the knowing are not two
When I use the word "knowing," it points to something, but it's not an entity knowing. It's not a thing that knows. In a sense, the sound and the knowing of the sound are not two. There isn't a sound and that which knows a sound. There isn't a thought and that which knows the thought as a separate thing. There's a thought. The thought goes away. There is a sound, and there's just the sound. The challenge comes when we abstract the knowing to be an independent thing.
That's why in the meditation I was talking about emptiness in movement. The movement is what appears: the sound, the sensation, the thought. And the emptiness, you could say, is what it's made of, which is nothing. But "nothing" in the sense that it's not its own thing, with its own origin, separate from that which knows it.
What, not who
So the question is not so much "who is it that knows?" but "what?" Sound is what sounds. But we often talk about "that which perceives" or "that which knows the sound," because it's a useful first step to abstract some form of difference. When we're identified with thoughts, it's good to see: I cannot be a thought, because I'm aware of a thought. There's no way I could be something that is also appearing. But that's just the first step. The same applies to sound and sensations.
Then you can see that that which appears to be knowing or observing isn't a thing that is separate or independent. The mind can understand some of this, but that understanding isn't what matters. What matters is that something can be seen that breaks the identification, that severs the mechanism so that identification can no longer take hold. Identification can still arise as another appearance, but it becomes very obvious. I can speak as if I am a particular person, but it's not deeply my experience. It's just a way to talk. But then if you ask, "What am I?" I don't know. The direct experience of "I" is emptiness and aliveness, not located and not separate from sound, not separate from sensation, not a perceiver of sound.
There's also the sense of infiniteness. But "infinite" starts to point to something like a very large thing, and that's not accurate. In a sense, it's like collapsing infinity into a point, or having both at the same time: no dimension, no size.
It's getting clearer, but I don't fully understand. There's no way I can bridge to it. There is understanding of your words, the basic meaning of what you are saying. The pointing to: that seeing knows seeing, and hearing knows hearing. But I cannot get to what you are pointing to.
The seer is a thought
Let's look at it more simply. Just one thing: there's a sound. The appearance of the sound is total. It does not need an entity that hears. The entity that hears is an assumption, and it's a thought. You could notice the same with seeing. There are forms, images, all of this. Are you sure there is a need for a seer in order for that to be seen?
I don't know how seeing works. I just see immediately.
Don't think about how it works as a function. Look at your experience and your intuition of your experience, what feels and seems more deeply true. I can propose two options. One: there is that which is seen, and then that which sees. I'm not talking about the functioning of the body, just about the experience. The experience right now is seen, and then, in this first option, there is that which sees, which you can call "I."
The other option: there is that which is seen, and that's all there is at the level of seeing. Let's focus on the perception of sight. Does there need to be a seer, or is the seer a thought, an interpretation?
Is that a question to me?
Yes, it's a contemplation. Which one of those two feels more accurate to your experience?
Thought is always after seeing.
And the seer?
"I" is just a thought after seeing has happened.
Seeing is happening. The seer is happening, but it's happening as a thought. It's an image. And this is not something you need to understand.
No, it's an experience.
Touching the water
Yes. It's like going to a river as a two-year-old, touching the water, and knowing it. Not understanding what it is, not understanding any of it, but you know there's water. You touch it. This is what I'm trying to point to: the experience that is happening right now, to touch it, to look at it. In the experience, is there a seen and a seer? And if so, what is the seer? Is it a thing, or is it a thought?
It is a thought.
Yes. It's not a mechanism that sees. The seeing is independent. It's free from the need of a seer.
Could you repeat that?
The seeing appears, and it's free from the need of a seer.
Yes, yes. It always appears and then subsides. Just that.
Yes. And there's no need for it to be one way or the other.
Any story or understanding of how appearing appears is just the mind. It can just be ignored.
Yes, or you can have fun observing the story. If you ask me how all of this happens, I don't know. It's a big mystery.
One nature
It's our own nature. It's already our nature.
Yes, and it's one nature. Your nature is not different from my nature. At one level, the nature of an apple and the nature of an orange have a difference. But at a deeper level, it is the same nature. It is nature itself. It is aliveness itself. It is. And that's where there is no two-ness.
But when we say the mind has no answer, the trueness of this common nature doesn't come from the mind. It comes, or it will come, from a place where I wouldn't know. I don't know.
The sameness, the common nature. I'm just trying to make sure I heard you.
It's all the same thing. The same as you, as me, as everyone. The mind doesn't know that.
No, the mind doesn't know that.
The one knows itself. It comes, and it's not something you arrive at by looking. It comes naturally. There's no way to get to it. It is just life by itself, revealing.
Yes. You can't get to it, because that's what you are.