Mastering the core teachings of the Buddha

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1. ryandvSep 2024
   The tying together of physical locations and audio book contents, or philosophical musings on a drive, are examples of those higher-order representations [0] the author references.

   There is a sibling thread further down regarding the Buddhist take on phenomenology as a linear stream of discrete events. With sufficient practice it becomes possible to observe an individual sense datum - an instant of time in which I am hearing a bird chirp, followed by an instant of time in which I feel an itch on my head, followed by an instant of time in which I experience the thought of "what's for dinner," and so on. This is stepping down a "layer of abstraction," beneath higher-order representations of unity, to observe the lower-level discrete phenomena as they exist prior to the "post-processing" applied by our minds. After this post-processing step, the individual discrete points of "hearing," "itching," "thinking" are melded into the (ultimately illusory) unified experience of, for example, "sitting down for meditation next to an open window." This latter, post-processed view is ultimately an oversimplification, and investigation into the nature of such higher-order representations reveals their constituent parts.

   It's this act of reflection and retrospection that unifies this stream of discrete sensory events into a cohesive whole and weaves the illusion of continuity out of a series of discrete points. Our phenomenological experience is like a pointillist painting viewed from afar; the astute observer with sufficient concentration to examine the painting more closely however can see that it is in fact a constellation of dots which our minds smear together into the higher-order (and illusory) representation of a continuous whole.

   I recommend Daniel Ingram's "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha" for a western, secularized take on this aspect of (Vipassana) Buddhism.

   [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-higher/

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2. ilrwbwrkhvJun 2024
   For me a game changer was reading: Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha

   https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/

   I moved from Transcendental Meditation (which I had learned previously) which doesn't quite get you into these states to concentration and insight according to this book and it got me there.

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3. nicoMar 2024
   There is a technique for achieving this state of consciousness, it’s called noting

   This is an awareness that advanced meditators seek, practice and develop to perceive “reality as it is”

   If you are curious, you might find related discussions, and a great welcoming community at r/streamentry on Reddit

   Also the book Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha talks about it quite a bit, including instructions on how to do it

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4. aruncAug 2023
   Highly recommend reading Mastering the core teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram, available online for free at https://www.mctb.org/
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5. davidscolganJul 2023
   Seconding Daniel Ingram, my mentor says that Daniel Ingram's book "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha" is a great introduction for a developer-minded person. I haven't actually read it so I can't comment on it, but I learned from someone who gained a lot about Buddhism from that book. Also happy to chat further over email.
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6. SirensOfTitanJun 2023
   Maybe Daniel Ingram’s Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha?

   https://www.mctb.org/

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