Quote: I want to understand what liberation means to you.
To me, liberation is what we are. Fundamentally, everything is liberated/awakened/enlightened. However, because of my confusion, delusion, and misunderstandings, I don't realize this. I 'understand' this to be so on a superficial level, but not down to my bones. It's like the difference between stating the name of food, and actually eating, processing, and assimilating the food.
Quote: What, then, will happen if I decide to blow up a building full of little children?
Then the building will be destroyed, little children will be dead, and many people will be very upset.
Quote: The fact that I have no uniqueness other than my subjective experience does not mean that I'm literally nothing! So what should I do???? To what end do "I" cultivate compassion and awareness if I do not exist, if there is no coming or going?
Perspective is key here. From the perspective of Absolute Truth (which is not other than relative or conventional truth), there is no you, no me, no chocolate ice cream, no coming, no going, no compassion, no awareness, no something, and no nothing. From the perspective of relative or conventional, everyday truth (which is not other than Absolute Truth), there is you, there is me, there is chocolate ice cream, there is coming there is going, there is joy, and there is pain.
Absolute Truth and relative truth are not different. A wonderful analogy is with the ocean. The water, in this case, is Absolute Truth, and the waves are the relative truth. Outside of the water, there can be no waves, and outside of the waves, there is no water. Waves are simply the function of the water.
HOWEVER, when waves do not realize that they are in fact part of one body of water, then there is an infinite schism between that wave and every other wave on the ocean.
While really there is nothing separating the wave from the water, the idea that the wave is separate in some way IS what is separating the wave from experiencing its oneness with the water.
Yet so long as the wave maintains its notion of being separate from the water, it strives to do anything and everything to maintain and serve this idea of a 'self', of a 'separated individuality'. It seeks after pleasure and avoids pain.
Yet when it realizes its oneness, there is no more pain and no more pleasure, as such, because pleasure and pain are relative. Something is only painful in relation to something that is not. Something is only pleasant in relation to something that is not. When the wave realizes its intrinsic oneness with the water, that it has always been the water, and that there is nothing outside of the water, then liberation is realized. And with it, true joy that is not dependent on the conditions of the ever changing sea.
Quote: It seems to me that if "I" am void yet "I" am experiencing myself, then cultivating anything is self-serving.
I'm not sure what you mean by "'I' am experiencing myself". In fact, this is another form of separation: the view that there is an experiencer that is separate from the object of experience. Subject and object are just notions imposed on experience. Same with the notions of a subjective and objective world. Perhaps you could say that we ARE the objective world, experiencing ourselves.
Cultivation is not, IMO, what one should strive to do. Cultivating compassion and awareness is like trying to make paint white paint on a wall that is already white. When a wave understands that it is not separate from the ocean, yet observes that so many of the other waves on the ocean still think they are separate, compassion seems to arise naturally, of itself, without any effort on the part of the wave. Likewise, awareness is already here. There is no need to cultivate it. But it is helpful to train it to function properly, so that it doesn't chase after ideas and sensations. Letting it run all over the place has never proved to be conducive to realizing that we are the ocean.
Quote: why not serve myself a bowl of chocolate ice-cream and a plane ticket to the Caribbean?
So long as it is the ocean that eats the ice cream and goes to the Caribbean, it is alright. But if it is the wave that eats the ice cream and goes to the Caribbean, then there is confusion. The wave still thinks of itself as separate.
Since the ocean does not harbor such ideas as 'self' and 'other', there would be no reason for it to seek pleasure in the form of ice cream or tropical vacations. However, if the circumstances were such that doing either of those would be compassionate and beneficial, then I'm sure the ocean would do either of those in a flash.
It's tricky though, because so long as you think that you're acting selflessly, you are in fact acting selfishly. Only when you don't act at all is there true selfless, compassionate action. That's why the sutras say that sages act without acting and speak without speaking.
-------------------- "What is in us that turns a deaf ear to the cries of human suffering?"
"Belief is a beautiful armor
But makes for the heaviest sword"
- John Mayer
Making the noise "penicillin" is no substitute for actually taking penicillin.
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln
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