The Chronic said:

i see it as simply being true to life, true to myself

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No it's not

The Chronic said:

Every religion seems to have some kind of negatory philosophy that penetrates into its core, they all have sages within the religions umbrella that spread these teachings, its a reoccuring theme among hinduism, buddhism, christianity & all the other majors, albiet in the backround

I've found that practicing neti-neti, rejecting all bodily/mental acivity as 'not me' the most consistent & powerful pratice to abide as awareness, dismissing/rejecting everything i can see, everything phenomenal, as not what i ultimately am, whatever that is - leaving it unknown/open... Being unattached without any definition

A christian may see it as rejecting all notions of god in order to be in direct communion with god, a buddhist may see it as rejecting vaccha (any position/viewpoint) in order to see clearly, i see it as simply being true to life, true to myself

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Once you come to understand "yourself" and "reality" any other position becomes suspect at least.

Now from there we may take different paths of understanding.

deff said:

rejecting phenomena as not-self seems to be a very good practice

another approach is in honing your awareness in on the phenomena and trying to find them, which to me seems to leave me empty handed - in that all phenomena aren't actually there like we think they are. a good way to see this is to try and mentally grab at them, like a mirage they disappear as you approach them.

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Quote:

the mind is so used to imputing and creating the illusion of things that this takes a lot of time and practice to become stable in i think (as does neti-neti) - it's easy to get a glimpse but then the mind goes right back to imputing self, imputing phenomena. but after a while that seems to subside a bit, revealing ever-increasing "states" (?) of emptiness / no-mind / sunyata

so imo while neti-neti is great, it still affirms the existence of the phenomena that are not the personal self. so in mahayana buddhism, this would be seen as realizing the emptiness of persons but not the emptiness of phenomena (which together they lead one to buddahood in that system). also, negating things can leave a residue of 'conceptual absence', so the negation has to be let go of too, of course.

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philosophically i agree with this, but experientially when i see that 'I' (the personal self) can't be found in phenomena, it reveals the emptiness of that personal self & reveals the emptiness of phenomena automatically/simultaniously, its like perceived phenomena are only imputed as having real substance when the imputing of 'I' has taken place (i like that word btw!) so if you see the emptiness of 'I' the rest follows, phenomena have no ground to stand on if the emptiness of I/self is seen

what you say still makes sense & could happen, i think the reverse could happen aswell, you could see the emptiness of phenomena & somewhat not see the emptiness of self, but metaphysically i feel that both realizations carry the seed of the other

basically realizing emptiness is nice

and yeah eventually the negating is negated aswell, theres a passage from the ribhu gita that negates beautifully, i'll try find it...