First, I'm new to this forum so I don't know how to title my post or even write content. Sorry if I confuse you. Also, I'm a Vietnamese person living in Vietnam, male 27. I'm currently living in a hired room in Ho Chi Minh City and my parents are living in my hometown that's 3 hours away. I really need help or suggestions. I'll tell you about my journey but it is very long. My journey will include both psychological and spiritual problems. I'll divide it into different parts. ***Disclaimer: I think my journey is pretty hard-core in terms of existential philosophies and I'm pretty ruined at this point. If you're sensitive to such topics, please consider skipping this post.*** -------- **Part 1: DPDR-like symptoms** Around the end of 2021, I started experiencing symptoms similar to DPDR. Everything felt dreamlike or like a video game. My parents and familiar people seemed like strangers, and I often went into autopilot mode, as if watching myself from the outside. Despite feeling weird all the time, I convinced myself I was just sick and tried to live normally - having good times, bad times, and even crushes to keep myself engaged in life. In July 2023, I saw a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. I also went to see a therapist but that didn’t help. No one seemed to recognize my symptoms, which may not be common in Vietnam. Eventually, at the end of 2023, I decided to tackle my symptoms rationally, which led me to existential questions. **Part 2: Existential crisis** I started questioning everything: Why am I here? What is this world? I struggled with solipsism, the idea that only my mind is certain to exist. I also resented being born without consent and found it absurd that people live without questioning their existence. I explored existentialism and absurdism, but the crisis was more than just thoughts - it was an overwhelming, unsettling feeling. I grew up in a culturally influenced Mahayana Buddhist environment, visiting pagodas and praying for salvation. Seeking answers in Buddhism, I found its doctrines contradictory and eventually gave up. **Part 3: A new approach to Buddhism** I kept living, but new questions emerged: Why do I prefer one thing over another? Why do I think certain thoughts? This led me to the Buddhist concept of non-self—the idea that we don’t have a fixed, controlling self; rather, our thoughts and decisions arise from interdependent conditions. I came to see humans as ever-changing combinations of matter and energy. The autopilot mode I felt before is indeed how I function - thoughts and actions in me arise interdependently on the current environment and internal information like memories. Realizing this brought me a deep sense of relief. My existential questions are no longer valid because existential questions usually evolve around the sense of self. For almost a year, I felt liberated and enthusiastically explored Buddhism. However, I struggled with how to perceive my parents. Understanding non-self dismantled their identities as my parents. Every interaction felt like I was just acting the role of a good son. Conventional and ultimate truths seemed irreconcilable. Love, relationships, and social constructs felt meaningless. I ultimately decided to care for my parents - not out of love for parents, but compassion for special people. **Part 4: Denial of existence** On New Year’s Day, I attended a 10-day Vipassana retreat led by Mr. Goenka, which involved complete silence. The meditation was difficult, but the discourses troubled me more - especially those about reincarnation. From my research and the book No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life by Thich Nhat Hanh, I thought that we would dissolve into different dimensions and reincarnation would not only happen after death, it's happening right now. However, he said that consciousness right before you die will decide how you will be reborn. At the retreat, I was still struggling with reconciling the two truths. One night, I broke down thinking about my mother - born into poverty, the only motivation of her life is me and my brother. I couldn't reduce her to mere energy and matter. She was through a lot not to be treated like that from her son - even though she's fine and having a decent life right now with my dad and us. She - just like a lot of other people - wouldn't feel so bad about herself, only I feel that way. By the third night, I began losing my sense of external reality. The lack of social interaction and strict schedule made me forget what the world outside looked like, especially at night. So that problem triggered thoughts in me: I thought about my mom, I thought about how I couldn't reconcile the two truths, and I had fears of my dying grandfather - mostly how haunting the scene of a funeral will look like and especially the haunting imagery of human decay. When you feel love for somebody, it hurts to see them die. I didn't see him as a self, the love died and the fear arose. I remember crying in the 3rd night really hard thinking I would return home with my parents, living with them as if they a fixed selves, diminishing the value of the ultimate truth, and apologizing to them for being a sick child with all the mentioned fears and vulnerabilities. I was feeling so haunted at night that I asked to leave on the 4th day. The teacher - not Mr. Goenka ofc - insisted on me staying for the Vipassana session (because the first three days were introduction, if you know). I stayed but couldn’t make it and left on the 6th day. **Part 5: Returning home** Back to my room, I was still haunted by all the old thoughts and even existential thoughts somehow: how do I view this life, non-self or self - because I still can't reconcile them, life is weird, everything is weird, mom still doesn't feel like mom but she is mom. Nights were the worst - daytime distractions kept thoughts at bay, but at night, everything resurfaced. During that time, life felt like a dream, nothing was clear, the world is real but it's not real at the same time, so are people and all their material and non-material products. Two weeks later, the Lunar New Year came, and I had to go back to my hometown for more than 1 week with my family and my dying grandfather. I was so confused that most of my mind was filled with haunting thoughts and fears. Two days before New Year's Eve, my grandfather died. Surprisingly, his death didn’t haunt me as much as I expected - his body was hidden in a closed coffin. But also, to my surprise, I was having a sense of self so strongly that I started to have existential questions. A lot of times, I woke up in confusion and a strong sense of overwhelming frustration: why I was born just to die, why everyone was born just to die, and how everyone doesn't ask these questions and just live on. Why was I born and now I'm forced to live a life of suffering - or dukkha? Why was I born and now I'm forced to do this, to take care of my grandparents or my parents when they're old, to make a funeral for them? It's even worse when I think of non-self: I'm not me but I can't resist this strong feeling of frustration and suppression, and how everyone doesn't see that they're non-self and just live like they have a self. Life started to feel so strange, so absurd, everything felt weird. **Part 6: Trying to move on** Returning to Ho Chi Minh City, I struggled to function. I tried going out for spaces and to see how life goes on. Some days I woke up feeling absurd about life, and some days I just rushed to work because I couldn't sleep the previous night. The scariest moment wasn’t falling asleep - it was waking up, not knowing what feelings I’d wake up to. Life still feels vague and nightmare-like. Especially, sometimes when I caught myself wanting to do something, even when it was just dinner, I was like: that's not me, I don't actively want to eat, so why would I eat? Even when I caught myself in autopilot mode, instead of understanding it like when I just discovered non-self, now I hated it, like I wanted full control over what I do. Even when I said something, I felt like what I spoke just slipped out of my mouth without my permission. From observing my mind, I started to have moments of denying everything that arose in my mind. Maybe because I feared that just observing phenomena in me, I wouldn't take life seriously and would hurt people: like when I say something to follow Right Speech, who speaks now that we know about non-self, or do we just observe any words slip out of mouth as well? It all felt really frustrating because nothing seemed to solve the absurdity of my existence and this whole universe. I was even looking for answers if non-self implied determinism. Like I was looking for an answer that when I knew it, everything would just be logical and no-one really suffers. **Part 7: Slowing reconnecting with life** Just yesterday, I had a very strong moment of frustration when I just woke up from a short nap, like "Why do I wake up again, in this life, in this body, especially with all these questions and crisis"? Right at that moment, I started to get myself together, thinking I'd fight all the fears of meditation I'd had since the Vipassana course and sit down to face my thoughts. After a short while, I realized that even if life is deterministic and the feeling of control I'm having is an illusion, life still goes on. I’d have to start to live despite them all. I started to slowly pick myself up, cleaning my room that had been left messy since these thoughts got intense, taking a good bath, and listening to a famous Vietnamese monk’s discourse as I found his voice was really calming and his speeches were advocating living life to the fullest. I didn’t always agree with everything he said, but he was a big help. Life was still feeling really vague, but now dream-like, not nightmare-like. I told myself I'm here anyway so the best thing to do now is to live, I should not care so much about the vagueness of the world and live with love and compassion, and I should take advantage of my feet, my hands, my eyes and my consciousness to enjoy life and love people. I also found that the deliberation of non-self to emptiness and the two truths is just interpretations of Mahayana Buddhism, the Buddha actually wanted us to focus how to live and even discouraged useless discussion on the concepts. I also learn a Mahayana interpretation of emptiness that helped reconcile the two truths: Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Both truths are one and because I tried to eliminate the conventional truth, I was stuck. Slowing myself down really helped slow the racing thoughts I've had for a long time. **Part 7: Today’s feelings** This morning I woke up to the feeling of absurdity again, but I soon got myself together, started listening to the monk again, and went back to my hometown. I told myself that I shouldn't hope to view my parents properly, that I may still feel confused but I should fight that and live with love. Just like I thought, the moment I saw them, I had a feeling like "Who is this? Who is this combo of energies and matter? Why do I have to take care of them? I don't feel the connection between us". They still feel very vague and strange to me. I really don't know how to describe it to you, but it still feels like a dream. Maybe I know about non-self so I keep breaking them down till nothing is meaningful anymore. And the worst part is, I feel like the denial of existence is still strong in me: both mine and others'. I occasionally see my thoughts and think: this is not me, it's weird that I have them and I shouldn't be enslaved to them, I see me speaking and think: this is not me speaking. I keep doing that until nothing is left, but the sense of self is still so strong that I have a feeling of conflict in me. Or sometimes, I don’t deny, I freak out. I understand that my reactions are caused by a lot of past actions and my own nature: the human memories, the human senses, the human brain, and all the human conditional and genetic reactions. And I freak out because I am a human. And with other people or the world, I keep being confused about how my understanding of non-self breaks them down into emptiness of self while they’re still interacting with me. It's like sometimes I when I want to have a drink, I realize my body just automatically moves to the exact place of the water. When I just had DPDR, I just thought that I was sick and in autopilot mode. After knowing non-self, I know it's because of a lot of things in me that create the movement. However, it freaks me out. Or when I'm talking with my mom, my mouth just automatically replies with relevant things. I used to think it's just DPDR, but now I think it's because I'm non-self. However, the fact that I'm not in control of my words freaks me out because if I just let the words slip out of my mouth without control, life both feels really weird and vague and I don't know what this body will do anymore. -------- I understand that everything arises dependently, even the way I act, even the language I speak. But it still feels a lot like I don't know what life is. Life still feels very vague and I still find myself questioning a lot of things in life - or actually everything in life, like why I am here as a human, who are these people that I subliminally call parents, why a practice of culture is created and if it's just created out of ignorance. I can tell myself to just accept that they are there, but it still feels like I'm method-acting in life, especially to my parents, who it feels wrong to method-act to. Every time I live life vaguely, it feels like I might hurt myself and people by not being present. But every time I try to connect with life, the lack of control freaks me out. If you reach here, I’m really grateful that you spent time. I’m in deep confusion and hope to find help. Thank you so much.

Before I asked 'how can I hear my thinking? ' Now I'm wondering if I'm forced to hear my thinking? AN6.63 says: > And what is the result of perceptions? > > *Katamo ca, bhikkhave, saññānaṁ vipāko?* > > Communication is the result of perception, I say. > > *Vohāravepakkaṁ, bhikkhave, saññaṁ vadāmi. Variant: Vohāravepakkaṁ → vohāravepakkāhaṁ (bj, sya-all, pts1ed) | saññaṁ → saññā (sya-all, > pts1ed)* > > You communicate something in whatever manner you perceive it, saying > ‘That’s what I perceived.’ > > *Yathā yathā naṁ sañjānāti tathā tathā voharati, evaṁ saññī ahosinti. Variant: ahosinti → ahosīti (mr)* > > This is called the result of perceptions. > > *Ayaṁ vuccati, bhikkhave, saññānaṁ vipāko.* Is the result of perception *vaci-sankara*?

I read this wikipage and it seems like 'reacting to stimuli' is being called perception (saññā). Is 'reacting to stimuli' perception, or is perception itself stimuli? To me, the article implies perception is the condition for expression, i.e. a reaction. Do you agree that for a plant the stimulus-response is a single unitary movement (no karmaphala) and there is no intermission (of perception)? Is it more likely a projection of human knowledge - the personification of a plant? A perception has a result (Karmaphala). The results are perception are explained as such: > "And what is the result of perception? Perception has communication by > speech as its result, I tell you. However a person per ceives > something, that is how he expresses it: 'I have this sort of > perception.' This is called the result of perception. Here is a quote for BSE: > "In the scriptures we have the word sañña. Sañña means distinguishing, > putting a label, telling difference, making distinction, > discriminating." Is labeling perception or the result of perception?

Is perception discriminative thinking? I got the term from the lankavatara sutra, but I think it appears in zen a bit, and I wondered if it means only one type of consciousness, perhaps the 6th or 7th, and if not whether perception itself does not occur during enlightenment?

I have some hunch that when rising from the deep meditative states / jhanas, the mind becomes so slow that the world is perceived in frames. Is this true? My guess is that the speed of human brain perception is proportionate to how much craving there is, the lesser the craving the slower the mind due to disenchantment. Experienced ones please shed some light on this.

S 14.7 The Discourse on the Diversity of Perception says this: > Dependent on the mind-object element, there arises the perception of > mind-object; Dependent on the perception of mind-object, there arises > the thought regarding mind-object; Dependent on the thought regarding > mind-object, there arises the desire for mind-object; Dependent on the > desire for mind-object, there arises the passion for mind-object;Dependent on the passion for mind-object, there arises the searching for mind-object. i want to know if clinging to perception aggregate is causing thinking to occur. i am not interested in thinking (sometimes, more than not, interal verbalization). it's unhappy, tiresome, stressful, etc. if so, how am i clinging to perception aggregate? i am not aware of clinging to this...is it an unknown mind- object? can knowledge be a mind-object?

In the state known as neither perception nor non-perception, it seems impossible to cognize the relative particulates that allow it to occur as an event, but one can emerge mindfully from its attainment, as is stated in the Anupada Sutta. Hence, there is a beginning and an end to the event. In this way, I can only define it by what is absent rather than what is present - similar to exiting a noisy nightclub and resting in the dead of the night, then entering the nightclub again, taking with me only the memory of the still night. > Sariputta entered & remained in the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception. He emerged mindfully from that attainment. > >Anupada Sutta This leaves a trace-memory of the event that can be recalled, but even that itself is tenuous for two reasons, 1) by its very definition (neither perception nor non-perception) - from beginning to end - its particulates are so subtle, so indistinct that one can not confidently declare "I am emerged in neither perception nor non-percpetion". 2. The recall itself poses some accuracy issues, that since it is now in the memory, it is open to all sorts of interpretations including how I have chosen to define it here. In the instance of neither perception nor non-perception, it seems the ability to *discern* and *cognize* are nimittas that are absent. Please correct me? Is it sufficient for the mind to have experienced the presence of neither perception nor non-perception or must it be investigated further?

Sometimes some visual or auditory sense perception gives the taste of no-self. Like, the ego dissolves for a moment and you feel tremendous oneness with existence. For e.g. while looking at the sunset or the night sky, or listening to the rain. But such states don't last for long. So just want to understand what might be happening. I think what happens is that you perceive but there is no reification, but that is what I think. Is it possible to have perception without reification? And is this state the same as "***Yatha-bhuta-nana-dassana***"

If no thing transmigrates, and nibbana is cessation, Is a perception of death - a perception of cessation, then akin to a perception of nibbana?

I had a discussion with one of my friend, who said, there's no such thing as physical reality, as per Lord Buddha. He quoted "The universe only exists inside this small body". As per my understanding, this is about how we understand the universe is different. But his idea is that there's no physical reality, all we are experiencing is a delusion. Any idea about this ?

Reification is a way of conceptualization or objectification or mental modeling through which we form ideas, beliefs, and make an understanding of our surroundings. However, I saw a youtube video which explains that we have to overcome reification and/or social conditioning for spiritual enlightenment. But, the video does not explain the 'how'. So, my question is, how can we change/work-on **our perception** of the surrounding/ environment/society/beliefs, etc so that we see things as they are, like '***yathabhutam***'?

Yesterday, I was eating some vegetable sausages and I noticed that there was just a set of teeth rhythmically opening and closing like a lonely metronome with no meaningful sensory instrumentals. It reminded me of one those animations in a Pink Floyd video where unidentified mechanical machinery rocks back and forth which then took me on various excursions through the woeful realms. Afterwards, the thought occurred to me although with some slight linguistic embellishments here: "isn't it marvelous, isn't it astounding, isn't it stupendous that, amongst the processed and compressed remnants of soy beans shaped into a sausage, one can be brought to the very edges of the cosmos and back again but not actually traverse one single cubic meter of space." Even going down to the shops in the car to purchase various types of cruciferous vegetables, movement is sometimes stillness. In the Diamond Sutra, which I very carefully studied for four years, (I don't mean 'study' in the conventional or academic sense) the Buddha eludes to this by saying, "Subhuti, if any person were to say that the Buddha is now coming or going, or sitting up or lying down, they would not have understood the principle I have been teaching. Why? Because while the expression ‘Buddha’ means ‘he who has thus come, thus gone,’ the true Buddha is never coming from anywhere or going anywhere. The name ‘Buddha’ is merely an expression, a figure of speech.” At this juncture and with the notion and fallacy of time and space falling away, intention and striving seem somewhat superfluous. Striving perhaps takes a new manifestation; one that shimmers ever so slightly rather than presenting as various forms of vigour. In fact, in the Buddhist sense, striving seems counter-intuitive to its original dictionary definition and certainly debunks the overly enhanced ideas derived from the noise that motivates a materialistic-ridden society. The strange thing about the latter is that there is something ever so right about mundane human striving even in the face of its ensuing sufferings; that this rightness is the product of its own realising tendancies but through various infantile spasms - not infantile in the pejorative sense, but an infancy that is embodied by innocence and love. This is too subtle for me to embrace just now but I see it teetering on the very edges of my awareness prancing alongside some odd luminosity and unmitigated terror. In the above context what is the meaning of striving to awaken? Does the initial intention behind striving suggest a network of flimsy ideas indoctrinated by ones chosen context as a form of pacifying the mind from worldly distractions and that these spirituality fabricated artefacts must be later seen to be a hindrance? Currently, my intention seems to be informed by the way my mind has been previously exposed to the practice which is to say: raw personal experience, but I question the flickering baubles we call spirituality, Buddhism, Theravada, Zen, Mahayana. Is this suitable? NOTE: I understand it might sound like I'm all over the place but please be assured that this is not the case. I would rather not have a flurry of misdirected aims in this manner. The theme here is striving and intention and how they might be perceived - in the fullest range of perception - by different people and their traditions. Thanks.

I'm following the four foundations of mindfulness. This has given me round-the-clock body awareness. It can often be painful; but it can often be pleasant. The pleasantness is marred by its opposite. I notice from time to time the density of my body disappears along with all ideas of pleasant and unpleasant and their respective sensations. ## Questions ## Is the body a perception like all other perceptions? How does the subtle perceptions described in MN 121 translate into the body? - I'm asking this as there appears to be greater mental/emotional turmoil like an archaic or ancient frustration/restlessness.

What would be the proper terminology to define the different geospatial perspectives of myself? If I envision myself inside my body viewing an experience in front of me, such as when I watch a movie, is there better terminology to use other than "first person perspective"? What about if I envision myself still from a first person perspective, however with the added perspective of 3 dimensional awareness. Is there different terminology for this? What about if I envision myself outside of my body looking at myself from a third person perspective? Is there more descriptive terminology I can use to define these experience perspectives?

What is the difference between **view** (as in "right view" in the Noble Eightfold Path) and **perception** (as in the 3rd of the five Skandha's)? Grateful for help! Peace, Tord

This question is related to this one (and its comments) I made before: https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/30156/in-the-dependent-origination-formula-shouldnt-perception-precede-craving-inste According to the Khajjaniya Sutta, sañña is perception "because it perceives yellow... blue... red... white". So, it seems that it allows the mind to give a concept or label to whatever it's contacting and feeling. (https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.079.than.html) To label and to recognize "such as such", one has to process enough contextual information to know that any object is that object and not other object. In the gestalt psychological theory of processing of stimuli, one identifies phenomena not because the perception of a single trait but rather the perception of a set of characteristics in a context. In between those perceived features, one may find even subjective labels, such as "good", "bad", "better", "worst", "beautiful", "ugly", etc. The nature of such concepts is that their criterion for definition is not at face value, but defined by every individual person. Those labels are ambiguous until specified by the speaker. But despite their subjective nature, they're may be included in a person's definitions of an object and its features. As an example, one might think that in the definition of an X race is the concept of inferiority in Y activity of life, such as intelectual learning. Understood under this perspective, subjective qualities may fall under the definition of perception (at least as understood in modern psychology). Is this also valid for Buddhism? Or do they have their own specific category? What is the perspective on this point in the myriad of traditions and sects? What do the suttas say? What is your personal opinion? Thank you in beforehand for your time and patience!

In the paticcasamuppada's formulation of the twelve nidanas, vedana precedes tanha. As far as I currently understand, vedana is just the physiological and psychological -and involuntary- response (felt as a pleasent, unpleasent or neutral sensation) to an specific stimulus. Vedana by itself shouldn't be an enough condition to give rise to tanha, because there's no necessarily an evaluation (sañña) of that feeling that could lead to the rise of a preference (like, dislike or neither-like-nor-dislike), and consequently, to the rise of tanha. If read in this fashion, shouldn't be sañña placed between vedana and tanha? Thanks in beforehand.

Like subtle "conceit"? I can't think of any others. I think there is a Sutta that is something like, "10 misperceptions of a somewhat achieved insight meditator". Bhante Yuttadhammo explained it somewhere. I thought I already asked this but I couldn't find it, maybe it was another forum.

To further refine the question: the falling away of saññā (perception), for instance, may leave behind a sense of wholeness, awe and wonder as there is no longer the conditioned interpretation of the world; there is no longer a tree, a cloud or a person in the sense of their words. All divisions thus cease to be and the tree, cloud and person (everything) are seen in their glorious enigmatic depth and wonder. Forms cannot merely be confined to single words - so I've learned! In another instance, the absence of rūpa (forms) could produce a sense of emptiness or spaciousness where one is intensely conscious of the space around forms but also sees that this same space pervades the very nature of forms themselves. Note: I'm not referring to 'emptiness' in the fullest sense of the Buddhist interpretation but more just generally. I believe the trick is to see through all aggregates to make the ultimate realisation.

Now separating self from perceptions for me is understandable. That Ego is just an illusion there is no self. But a question arises... Who is the watcher? Can't I say that I am the watcher or is awareness the watcher and what I perceive as self is just awareness ? Or I can just recognize "there is a watcher".