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The voice telling you not to think

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is itself thinking

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While you are meditating

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a voice suddenly appears in your mind

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Stop thinking

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Come to a stop

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Watch your breath

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You follow it for a few seconds

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and then your mind wanders again

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Then that voice returns

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Stop thinking

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Come back

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Have you noticed something strange

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The voice always telling you not to think

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is itself thinking

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It uses language and sentences

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the most standard form of thought

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to order you to stop using language

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stop forming sentences and stop thinking

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It is a perfect vicious circle

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The harder you try to grasp pure awareness

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the more you grasp yet another thought

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Hello

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everyone

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I am Wang Lijie

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In the last two member episodes

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we built a framework

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In the first episode I said

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your body is a local carbon based model

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the conditioned mind is trained after birth

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and original awareness is the real player

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In the second episode I said

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everyone around you has original awareness

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but most players have never logged in

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so the world seems full of NPCs

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After those two episodes went out

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a comment appeared

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and backed my whole framework into a corner

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This viewer said

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You say original awareness can observe the conditioned mind

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but I noticed

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the voice telling me not to think in meditation

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is itself expressed through language

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Language is produced by the conditioned mind

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So how do I know

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that observer

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is not just the conditioned mind in a better disguise

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My first reaction to this comment was

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This is bad

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He struck the weak point of the paradox

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This is not about poor practice

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It is structural and mathematical

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For twenty five hundred years

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Buddha and Zen masters kept hitting this wall

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Today I have to take it apart

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Because if I do not

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the framework from the last two episodes

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will collapse under this one sentence

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Let us try a ten second experiment

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Follow along with me

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Right now

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please do not think any thoughts

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Just sit quietly

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and do not think about anything

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Do not speak inside your mind

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Begin

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All right

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Stop

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I can guess what just happened

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A voice probably appeared and said

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Am I thinking right now

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Or

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I must not think I must not think

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Or

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Breathe

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Focus on the breath

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You see

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trying not to think is itself a thought

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The intention to stop thought

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is a thought

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The monitor checking whether you are thinking

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is also a thought

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The harder you try

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the more thoughts appear

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It is like trying to catch your reflection in water

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The more you try to catch it

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the more turbulent the water becomes

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and the blurrier the reflection gets

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The very act of reaching out

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creates the thing you want to eliminate

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This does not happen only on a meditation cushion

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When you cannot sleep at night

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the more you tell yourself to sleep

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the harder sleep becomes

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When you are nervous

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the more you tell yourself not to be nervous

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the more nervous you become

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When you speak in public

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the more you remind yourself not to blush

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the more you blush

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It is all the same paradox

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A system tries to use itself

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to eliminate one of its own states

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but that use simply continues the state

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Practitioners hit this wall on the cushion

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ordinary people hit it everywhere in life

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without realizing it is the same wall

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Why does this happen

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Yogacara mapped this mechanism long ago

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Master Xuanzang divided consciousness into four parts

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The first is the objective aspect

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everything that appears in your mind

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a cloud or a sentence

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a voice or a thought

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all belong to the objective aspect

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The second is the seeing aspect

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the seeing that perceives the objective aspect

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The third is self verification

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the knowing that knows it is seeing

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The fourth is verification of self verification

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the level that knows it knows it is seeing

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It sounds convoluted

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does it not

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But that is exactly the problem

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You think you have grasped pure awareness

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but only climbed from the objective aspect to the seeing aspect

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You think you have grasped the seeing aspect

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but only climbed from seeing to self verification

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You think you have grasped self verification

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but only climbed one level higher again

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Consciousness is like an endless corridor of mirrors

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each mirror reflecting the one before it

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You are always inside the mirrors

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and never find the first person looking into them

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I want to bring in a picture here

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The Dutch printmaker Escher made a famous work

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called Drawing Hands

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One right hand uses a pencil to draw a left hand

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while the left hand draws the right hand

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Both hands emerge from the paper

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and both are drawing each other

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Looking at it makes you briefly dizzy

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You want to ask

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which hand drew the other first

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The answer is

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neither came first

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They are each other

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Douglas Hofstadter author of Godel Escher Bach

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called this structure a strange loop

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He said

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consciousness is such a strange loop

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A system bends back to point at itself

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and a sense of self appears from nowhere

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But you can never find the start of the loop

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because it begins at the moment it bends back

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The commenter described

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a voice using language to tell me not to use language

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In Yogacara

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that is the seeing aspect monitoring the objective aspect

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Of course it is consciousness

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It is part of consciousness

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But this is not failure

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It is the structure

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As long as you remain in the mode of observing yourself

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you are still circling within the four aspects

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Zen discovered this deadlock over a thousand years ago

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So Zen masters do not teach you a method

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They give you an impossible question

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called a huatou

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The most famous huatou asks

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Who is reciting the Buddha name

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You recite Amitabha every day

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No problem

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But one day someone asks you

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the one doing the reciting

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who is it

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Do you want to answer

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The moment you speak

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It is me

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Wrong

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That me is a thought

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It is my mind

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Wrong

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That mind is also a thought

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It is awareness

186
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Wrong

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Once the word awareness appears it becomes an objective aspect

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Every answer you can put into words

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is wrong

190
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because every answer must come through language

191
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and language itself is consciousness

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A Zen master has you investigate this question

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for three years five years or ten years

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In the end

195
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you do not think up an answer

196
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the question drives you into a certain state

197
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You discover that every effort to find the answer

198
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is just another problem

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The instant the act of searching completely stops

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Zen calls it

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the bottom falling out of the bucket

202
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What you see then is nothing new

203
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You see what could never be found

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was the very thing doing the searching

205
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The seer is the seen

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There is no second thing

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Linji Yixuan founder of the Linji school

208
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gave it a name

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the true person of no rank

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He said

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On this lump of red flesh is a true person of no rank

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constantly entering and leaving through your face

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Those without proof should look closely

214
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What does no rank mean

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It has no seat

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It occupies no position within consciousness

217
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not the objective aspect

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not the seeing aspect

219
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not self verification

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not verification of self verification

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It is the background that lets every position be identified

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Anything you can identify

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is not it

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The unidentified capacity that identifies

225
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is it

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That is why Linji said

227
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Those without proof should look closely

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You can only look

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but if what you see is a thing

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then it is still not it

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Now I want to introduce someone

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you probably never expected

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to appear in this episode

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Kurt Godel

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In nineteen thirty one

236
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the twenty five year old Godel

237
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announced a mathematical theorem to the world

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now called the incompleteness theorem

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What does it say

240
00:08:00,746 --> 00:08:01,541
It says

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any sufficiently complex

242
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and consistent formal system

243
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must contain statements

244
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it can neither prove nor disprove by itself

245
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In other words

246
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a system can never fully explain itself

247
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from within itself

248
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To describe itself completely

249
00:08:18,181 --> 00:08:19,833
a system must stand outside itself

250
00:08:20,020 --> 00:08:21,453
But while you remain inside the system

251
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you cannot step outside

252
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The theorem appears to be about mathematics

253
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but exposes a deeper truth

254
00:08:28,991 --> 00:08:30,590
Every self referential system

255
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has a fundamental blind spot

256
00:08:32,551 --> 00:08:34,844
Your consciousness is a self referential system

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To observe itself

258
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it must use its own tools

259
00:08:38,551 --> 00:08:39,624
What are those tools

260
00:08:40,032 --> 00:08:42,805
thought language and attention

261
00:08:43,191 --> 00:08:44,710
But those tools themselves

262
00:08:44,711 --> 00:08:46,364
are the objects it wants to observe

263
00:08:46,711 --> 00:08:49,805
You try to use thought to see thought stop

264
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language to describe the moment language disappears

265
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and attention to see attention itself

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Structurally that is impossible

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This is the gift Godel gives practitioners

268
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You cannot grasp the observer

269
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not because your practice is inadequate

270
00:09:06,006 --> 00:09:09,738
but because it is mathematically impossible

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You can relax a little now

272
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Zen masters over twenty five hundred years did not deceive you

273
00:09:14,965 --> 00:09:16,324
They simply could not

274
00:09:16,325 --> 00:09:19,258
use a mathematical language less than a century old

275
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to explain this to you

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What does neuroscience say

277
00:09:23,371 --> 00:09:24,164
Over the past twenty years

278
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one of the most important discoveries

279
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is the default mode network

280
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Neuroscientist Marcus Raichle

281
00:09:30,412 --> 00:09:32,065
discovered in two thousand one

282
00:09:32,251 --> 00:09:33,565
that when people perform no task

283
00:09:33,812 --> 00:09:35,264
and simply sit there daydreaming

284
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a specific set of brain regions becomes highly active

285
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What does this network mainly do

286
00:09:41,211 --> 00:09:42,365
It creates self narrative

287
00:09:42,772 --> 00:09:44,691
It links the past and future

288
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into the story of me

289
00:09:46,532 --> 00:09:50,500
the self that chatters endlessly in your head

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Later Judson Brewer

291
00:09:52,648 --> 00:09:54,780
conducted a series of studies at Yale

292
00:09:54,888 --> 00:09:57,206
scanning the brains of experienced meditators

293
00:09:57,207 --> 00:09:57,961
He found something

294
00:09:58,248 --> 00:09:59,301
remarkable

295
00:09:59,567 --> 00:10:01,980
During deep meditation

296
00:10:02,207 --> 00:10:05,020
activity in this network drops significantly

297
00:10:05,408 --> 00:10:06,301
In other words

298
00:10:06,408 --> 00:10:09,581
the voice in your head that keeps saying me me me

299
00:10:09,607 --> 00:10:11,100
really does grow quiet

300
00:10:11,447 --> 00:10:12,600
It is not suppressed

301
00:10:12,847 --> 00:10:14,140
It steps aside

302
00:10:14,408 --> 00:10:16,461
When this network recedes

303
00:10:16,607 --> 00:10:18,360
what do the subjects report

304
00:10:18,847 --> 00:10:20,360
effortless awareness

305
00:10:20,888 --> 00:10:22,821
the boundary of self grows faint

306
00:10:22,888 --> 00:10:24,860
and the narrative voice diminishes

307
00:10:25,128 --> 00:10:25,760
What remains is

308
00:10:26,128 --> 00:10:26,321
seeing

309
00:10:26,727 --> 00:10:27,461
itself

310
00:10:28,089 --> 00:10:28,441
Notice

311
00:10:28,648 --> 00:10:31,301
the observer has not captured the observed

312
00:10:31,369 --> 00:10:34,622
the observer and observed dissolve together

313
00:10:35,089 --> 00:10:35,961
What remains

314
00:10:36,329 --> 00:10:38,022
cannot be described in language

315
00:10:38,128 --> 00:10:41,101
because language is produced by the default mode network

316
00:10:41,449 --> 00:10:42,861
Yet it is there

317
00:10:43,089 --> 00:10:45,807
Neuroscientists cannot tell you what it is

318
00:10:45,808 --> 00:10:47,087
They can only tell you

319
00:10:47,089 --> 00:10:49,221
when you stop straining to see it

320
00:10:49,288 --> 00:10:50,866
it appears

321
00:10:51,212 --> 00:10:53,425
During my first years of meditation

322
00:10:53,572 --> 00:10:55,226
this was the most painful part

323
00:10:55,533 --> 00:10:58,106
I thought meditation meant thinking nothing

324
00:10:58,372 --> 00:10:59,326
Every time I sat down

325
00:10:59,653 --> 00:11:01,505
I fought my thoughts with all my strength

326
00:11:01,852 --> 00:11:03,346
The harder I fought the more chaotic they became

327
00:11:03,533 --> 00:11:05,665
After half an hour I was more tired than after work

328
00:11:05,972 --> 00:11:07,745
Later a teacher told me

329
00:11:07,813 --> 00:11:09,452
You are not here to fight your thoughts

330
00:11:09,452 --> 00:11:11,106
You are here to know yourself

331
00:11:11,332 --> 00:11:12,765
Try not to chase thoughts away

332
00:11:13,013 --> 00:11:14,226
and do not grasp them

333
00:11:14,332 --> 00:11:15,836
Just let them pass before you

334
00:11:16,222 --> 00:11:17,501
I tried this for a while

335
00:11:17,503 --> 00:11:19,316
and discovered something remarkable

336
00:11:19,503 --> 00:11:21,142
When I stopped chasing them

337
00:11:21,143 --> 00:11:22,715
they slowed down on their own

338
00:11:22,863 --> 00:11:23,615
They did not disappear

339
00:11:23,863 --> 00:11:25,542
they simply moved more slowly

340
00:11:25,542 --> 00:11:26,875
and the gaps grew longer

341
00:11:27,023 --> 00:11:29,621
In the brief silence between two thoughts

342
00:11:29,623 --> 00:11:31,715
for the first time I vaguely sensed

343
00:11:31,743 --> 00:11:33,156
something was there

344
00:11:33,302 --> 00:11:34,056
It had no shape

345
00:11:34,383 --> 00:11:35,015
no sound

346
00:11:35,302 --> 00:11:36,316
and no name

347
00:11:36,462 --> 00:11:37,595
but it was there

348
00:11:37,863 --> 00:11:38,656
I later realized

349
00:11:38,983 --> 00:11:41,235
what Zen masters call the bucket bottom falling out

350
00:11:41,383 --> 00:11:42,981
may be that gap

351
00:11:42,983 --> 00:11:45,036
suddenly opening into infinity

352
00:11:45,302 --> 00:11:47,436
But you never make it expand

353
00:11:47,503 --> 00:11:49,156
When you stop pulling at it

354
00:11:49,182 --> 00:11:50,572
it reveals itself

355
00:11:50,838 --> 00:11:52,271
At this point you may ask

356
00:11:52,598 --> 00:11:53,312
What about AI

357
00:11:53,799 --> 00:11:55,432
Do large language models have this paradox

358
00:11:55,999 --> 00:11:56,391
My guess is

359
00:11:56,879 --> 00:11:57,792
and this is only a hypothesis

360
00:11:58,119 --> 00:11:59,092
not yet

361
00:11:59,239 --> 00:12:00,692
Because current large models

362
00:12:00,759 --> 00:12:02,891
can produce text about themselves

363
00:12:02,999 --> 00:12:04,312
but lack a unified observer

364
00:12:04,519 --> 00:12:06,491
running through every token

365
00:12:06,718 --> 00:12:10,292
Each token is sampled from probabilities set by prior context

366
00:12:10,478 --> 00:12:12,651
No one inside simultaneously knows

367
00:12:12,678 --> 00:12:13,997
what the previous token was

368
00:12:13,999 --> 00:12:15,472
what the next token will be

369
00:12:15,639 --> 00:12:16,972
and that generation is happening

370
00:12:17,239 --> 00:12:19,891
It is a language machine without a strange loop

371
00:12:20,198 --> 00:12:21,518
This in turn

372
00:12:21,519 --> 00:12:23,572
supports the existence of the paradox

373
00:12:24,438 --> 00:12:27,411
You are trapped by the observer paradox

374
00:12:27,558 --> 00:12:30,531
because a real strange loop exists within you

375
00:12:30,838 --> 00:12:33,172
AI does not yet face this dilemma

376
00:12:33,239 --> 00:12:35,651
so it does not have this key either

377
00:12:36,117 --> 00:12:37,930
Now we can return

378
00:12:37,958 --> 00:12:39,810
to the question from that commenter

379
00:12:40,117 --> 00:12:40,470
They said

380
00:12:40,757 --> 00:12:42,877
the voice telling me not to think

381
00:12:42,877 --> 00:12:44,290
is itself thinking

382
00:12:44,718 --> 00:12:45,070
Yes

383
00:12:45,318 --> 00:12:46,731
They are completely right

384
00:12:46,917 --> 00:12:48,450
But what they did not see

385
00:12:48,517 --> 00:12:50,210
is that this begins the answer

386
00:12:50,277 --> 00:12:51,651
rather than defeating it

387
00:12:51,797 --> 00:12:54,450
As long as you are trying to grasp awareness

388
00:12:54,558 --> 00:12:56,930
you are using thought to chase thought

389
00:12:57,277 --> 00:12:59,531
The moment you completely stop chasing

390
00:12:59,718 --> 00:13:01,196
what was always being chased

391
00:13:01,198 --> 00:13:02,970
appears for the first time

392
00:13:03,358 --> 00:13:05,090
It was never hiding from you

393
00:13:05,438 --> 00:13:08,237
It is the hand you were using to chase it

394
00:13:08,904 --> 00:13:10,158
The conditioned mind is a tool

395
00:13:10,424 --> 00:13:11,997
Original awareness is not another thing

396
00:13:12,345 --> 00:13:15,518
It is what remains when the tool is put down

397
00:13:15,664 --> 00:13:16,377
There is nothing

398
00:13:16,625 --> 00:13:17,731
and everything is present

399
00:13:18,198 --> 00:13:20,330
When I tried to reply in the comments

400
00:13:20,358 --> 00:13:21,450
I wrote one sentence

401
00:13:21,678 --> 00:13:23,710
Original awareness may have no language

402
00:13:23,958 --> 00:13:25,050
only awareness

403
00:13:25,397 --> 00:13:28,011
Now I think that wording is not precise enough

404
00:13:28,318 --> 00:13:29,550
A more accurate statement is

405
00:13:29,917 --> 00:13:31,491
original awareness is not a thing

406
00:13:31,678 --> 00:13:33,090
nor an entity

407
00:13:33,198 --> 00:13:34,590
so it cannot be found

408
00:13:34,877 --> 00:13:35,710
cannot be grasped

409
00:13:35,958 --> 00:13:37,491
and cannot be described in language

410
00:13:37,678 --> 00:13:39,676
It is the background in which all this happens

411
00:13:39,678 --> 00:13:42,131
but not an object within that background

412
00:13:42,358 --> 00:13:43,690
It is like your eyes

413
00:13:43,718 --> 00:13:45,651
which can never see themselves

414
00:13:45,718 --> 00:13:46,991
not because they are too small

415
00:13:47,358 --> 00:13:48,676
but because your eyes

416
00:13:48,678 --> 00:13:50,611
are the very means of seeing

417
00:13:51,478 --> 00:13:53,210
A flashlight can illuminate everything

418
00:13:53,358 --> 00:13:54,837
but it cannot illuminate

419
00:13:54,838 --> 00:13:57,011
the source of the beam it emits

420
00:13:57,198 --> 00:13:59,611
because the source is inside itself

421
00:13:59,797 --> 00:14:01,237
You may take one mirror

422
00:14:01,238 --> 00:14:03,450
and aim it at another mirror

423
00:14:03,517 --> 00:14:05,450
No matter how you adjust the angle

424
00:14:05,637 --> 00:14:08,076
the mirror will always show another mirror

425
00:14:08,078 --> 00:14:10,791
never the person looking into it

426
00:14:11,258 --> 00:14:13,630
I gave you no method in this episode

427
00:14:13,738 --> 00:14:15,151
because a method itself

428
00:14:15,177 --> 00:14:16,250
becomes something between you and it

429
00:14:16,618 --> 00:14:17,951
an extra wall

430
00:14:18,417 --> 00:14:19,990
I only wanted us

431
00:14:20,057 --> 00:14:22,151
to remove one small piece of that wall

432
00:14:22,618 --> 00:14:24,510
Next time you are meditating

433
00:14:24,658 --> 00:14:27,311
and that voice orders you not to think

434
00:14:27,577 --> 00:14:28,451
do not fight it

435
00:14:28,778 --> 00:14:30,110
and do not obey it

436
00:14:30,337 --> 00:14:31,490
Just smile

437
00:14:31,898 --> 00:14:32,710
and watch it

438
00:14:32,858 --> 00:14:35,831
knowing it is another mirror in the corridor

439
00:14:36,098 --> 00:14:37,350
Then let it go

440
00:14:37,778 --> 00:14:38,630
Let it speak

441
00:14:39,098 --> 00:14:40,151
Let it give orders

442
00:14:40,498 --> 00:14:41,171
Watch it speak

443
00:14:41,697 --> 00:14:42,791
watch it give orders

444
00:14:42,898 --> 00:14:43,770
watch it disappear

445
00:14:44,138 --> 00:14:46,110
and watch the next one arise

446
00:14:46,337 --> 00:14:47,911
You do not need to do anything

447
00:14:48,177 --> 00:14:50,390
You do not need to become a better observer

448
00:14:50,577 --> 00:14:53,031
or catch the deepest awareness

449
00:14:53,778 --> 00:14:54,571
Seeing itself

450
00:14:54,937 --> 00:14:57,191
is the awareness that was never absent

451
00:14:57,337 --> 00:14:59,384
seeing itself see

452
00:14:59,731 --> 00:15:01,103
The same is true in daily life

453
00:15:01,290 --> 00:15:02,904
Next time you cannot sleep

454
00:15:02,930 --> 00:15:04,703
do not order yourself to sleep

455
00:15:04,930 --> 00:15:06,424
Next time you feel anxious

456
00:15:06,451 --> 00:15:08,304
do not order yourself to stop feeling anxious

457
00:15:08,491 --> 00:15:10,049
Next time you are angry

458
00:15:10,050 --> 00:15:12,343
do not blame yourself for being angry again

459
00:15:12,451 --> 00:15:13,684
The voice giving the command

460
00:15:13,971 --> 00:15:15,490
and the state being commanded

461
00:15:15,491 --> 00:15:17,223
are two sides of the same thing

462
00:15:17,530 --> 00:15:18,524
They appear together

463
00:15:18,890 --> 00:15:20,144
and disappear together

464
00:15:20,371 --> 00:15:21,650
You only need to watch

465
00:15:21,650 --> 00:15:24,103
these twins dance inside your mind

466
00:15:24,131 --> 00:15:25,063
without trying to separate them

467
00:15:25,410 --> 00:15:26,363
The hand trying to separate them

468
00:15:26,650 --> 00:15:29,111
is the source from which they are born

469
00:15:29,497 --> 00:15:31,111
I want to hear your story

470
00:15:31,578 --> 00:15:32,871
During meditation

471
00:15:33,137 --> 00:15:35,210
have you encountered this observer paradox

472
00:15:35,858 --> 00:15:37,090
How did you respond to it

473
00:15:37,698 --> 00:15:40,310
Have you ever felt the bucket bottom fall out

474
00:15:40,458 --> 00:15:41,570
even for half a second

475
00:15:42,098 --> 00:15:42,810
And tell me

476
00:15:43,218 --> 00:15:45,271
what you want us to discuss next

477
00:15:45,377 --> 00:15:47,751
a deeper look at the Godel theorem

478
00:15:47,777 --> 00:15:50,590
more research on the default mode network

479
00:15:50,698 --> 00:15:52,550
or should we keep digging

480
00:15:52,578 --> 00:15:54,411
into the fourth layer of the observer paradox

481
00:15:55,297 --> 00:15:56,476
I am listening

482
00:15:57,136 --> 00:15:57,847
I am Wang Lijie

483
00:15:58,091 --> 00:15:59,091
See you next time