...to ask his/her questions until the questioning is seen through. Behind every question is the assumption that there is a person asking the question. This is the fundamental illusion. All this stuff about discernment, clarity of purpose, freedom, etc. is mindstuff added on top of other mindstuff. WHO needs discernment, clarity of purpose, freedom, etc? WHO is bound?
Stay "outside" with ATA or go "inside" with shikan taza; take your pick, but leave "checking" at the door, and forget about making "progress." Look (either outside or inside)! Stay with non-conceptual looking and attend the activity of whatever is happening. Don't reinforce the illusion of selfhood with the habit of incessant verbal self-referentiality. The house of cards will collapse in its own good time as long as the cards aren't constantly being re-arranged or re-constructed.
What will happen if personhood collapses? First, an end to the search. Second, the end of trying to control the mind, silence the mind, or direct the mind. And third, the loss of a sense of a "me in here behind the eyes" looking out at "a world out there in front of the eyes." Otherwise, things will go on just as before. The body/mind will go about its business free from the illusion there that is a little person inside the body directing activities. Life will be what it is and what it always has been---THIS, doing what THIS does. THIS writes and types and sometimes listens to ice cubes falling into a cup at McD's. It is really that simple.
One other bit of off-the-wall advice is to read "Collision With the Infinite" five or six times. That book has a strange way of seeping down into the subconscious and loosening things up. Several people I know have been strongly affected by the way Segal writes about the fiction of selfhood. It may not help, but it's worth a go.
Stay "outside" with ATA or go "inside" with shikan taza; take your pick, but leave "checking" at the door, and forget about making "progress." Look (either outside or inside)! Stay with non-conceptual looking and attend the activity of whatever is happening. Don't reinforce the illusion of selfhood with the habit of incessant verbal self-referentiality. The house of cards will collapse in its own good time as long as the cards aren't constantly being re-arranged or re-constructed.
What will happen if personhood collapses? First, an end to the search. Second, the end of trying to control the mind, silence the mind, or direct the mind. And third, the loss of a sense of a "me in here behind the eyes" looking out at "a world out there in front of the eyes." Otherwise, things will go on just as before. The body/mind will go about its business free from the illusion there that is a little person inside the body directing activities. Life will be what it is and what it always has been---THIS, doing what THIS does. THIS writes and types and sometimes listens to ice cubes falling into a cup at McD's. It is really that simple.
One other bit of off-the-wall advice is to read "Collision With the Infinite" five or six times. That book has a strange way of seeping down into the subconscious and loosening things up. Several people I know have been strongly affected by the way Segal writes about the fiction of selfhood. It may not help, but it's worth a go.
