dharmagoat wrote:Tatpurusa may have over-generalised, but it seems that you have missed the mark altogether.
It is difficult to understand how anyone with experience of a stable and sustained state of meditative non-thought can describe it so bleakly, and as if it was some kind of dark pit that we enter and cannot escape.
Sorry, I did not intend to sound bleak at all. The meditative experience behind thought has nothing in common with bleakness, and of course nothing in common with catmoon's "lobotomy". It is not me, but catmoon who is over-generalising.
It is an experience beyond thought. It is the experience (as opposed to intellectual understanding) of non-duality of emptyness and clarity.
Clarity is not thought, neither consciousness in the everyday sense. It is an aspect of the nature of mind.
Thoughts, if one follows them, regardless wether they are right or wrong, pure or impure, are an obstacle in finding that state.
This is why even the most elaborated, intellectual, correct, wise, rational thought is a limitation. It limits our capacity to experience of mind's true nature, or buddha-nature (which is called "omniscient", though being beyond thought).
The difference between catmoon's lobotomic thoughtlessness and the state beyond thought is the same as the difference between indifferent mercilessness and compassionate equanimity.
These are just Buddhist basics. There is a reason why Buddha many times emphasized that emptiness and anatta has nothing to do with nihilism.
And yes, the non-duality of emtiness and clarity is bliss.