That’s not at all what he is getting at. It was mostly how I showed him that you aren’t awareness but the brain behind it. All I got was really being called closed minded for it (a common theme there).
But again I don’t think you get what I’m saying here. There isn’t a direct experience, just the perception of it. If I dropped all my values and judgments then I wouldn’t do anything, because there would be no action more valuable than another. As such to do so would be paralysis. Knowing how the mind works and being at peace don’t really go together. Neither do peace and truth always do. What the guy in the OP is getting at is that if you don’t feel the same or experience what they do then you are the problem, that their position is unquestionable.
The point I’m getting at is that one cannot achieve such a state and still live life.
I mean that by dumping all values and judgments you aren’t different from a corpse.
But at the surface the argument seems sound since all you really know is that awareness is there. Of course we know that the brain is responsible for it, but back then at the time this philosophy was formed they didn’t know so from mere observation it would seem so
"There is nothing personal happening anywhere whatsoever. All is as it is, a stream of phenomenal “appearances” arising in awareness, as awareness.
Let it all go. Rest effortlessly in the silence of your untainted Self, empty of the mind.
Your present view seems to be very nihilistic. I can assure you that if you release your hold upon the concepts that you have become preoccupied with, you will find relief in inner silence. Ultimately, any view is the wrong view. No belief is true. Let it all go."
The term concept comes up a lot, but even if you didn’t call a brain a brain it still would produce awareness. Science tends to work regardless of what you want to call it, we just name things to make it easier.
Who said the goal is to live life? The Buddhist goal is to end suffering. If people with different goals to you also use different methods than you, that’s hardly surprising. That said, I think a lot of people are happy with using Buddhist-type techniques to relieve some of their here-and-now suffering without ever following it through to the reaching Nirvana stage.
Do you mind sharing where ‘there’ is? PM me, if you don’t want to post it.
By “there” I mean among the “spiritual” types. They say to question everything but when you question them they call you still in ego or deluded. It’s sort of passing blame in a sense.
But they seem to think that anything less is just choosing to suffer or to live a lie.