{"id":286,"date":"2008-10-19T17:40:50","date_gmt":"2008-10-19T17:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2008\/10\/the-subject-and-object-parts-1-and-2-by-leon-liu.html"},"modified":"2008-10-19T17:40:50","modified_gmt":"2008-10-19T17:40:50","slug":"the-subject-and-object-parts-1-and-2-by-leon-liu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/10\/the-subject-and-object-parts-1-and-2-by-leon-liu.html","title":{"rendered":"The subject and object, parts 1 and 2, by Leon Liu"},"content":{"rendered":"

by guest blogger Leon Liu aka Freestone<\/a>
\nthe following posts are related to lectures and discussion at the IDP on Monday nights and the Saturday hardcore dharma classes
\nthanks Leon!
\nTHE SUBJECT AND OBJECT, PART ONE<\/strong>
\nThe The moment you are experiencing, the subject and object are unified. The moment you start recognizing that experience, the subject and object become separate.
\nWhen the subject and object are unified, you become the candle in front of you. You become the other person besides you. You respond immediately. There is no separation. There is no subject and object.
\n
\nWhen subject and object are unified, you can listen. So when you hear, the subject and object are unified. If subject and object are separate, you cannot hear. Your ears heard of the sound. But you don\u2019t. So there is distance between the subject and object, and thus the separation between the subject and object. That separation is the self. You cannot hear because of this separation, the distance that stands between the subject and object. That separated space, the distance, is the thing people mistakenly recognize as the self. People tend to fixate it. But Buddhism teaches us this state is not fixated. Inevitably, the subject and object will unify.
\nBuddhism teaches that there are billions of moments in one snap of fingers. So there are billions of moments during which you hear. There are billions of moments during which you don\u2019t hear. (Human beings are very slow. So it is difficult for us to recognize this.) If you stay in the state of separation too long, you will get hit by a car. Good news is that we actually are in the subject and object unified state at many moments throughout of the day.
\nWhenever you spend more than necessary time dwelling your mind on something, you are in a state that subject and object are separate. They occupy your mind and leave no space for other things. If you are not in that state of separation, you always have space for other things. So when you are in a state that block everything else for even a short length of time, you need to recognize immediately that you are separated and it is broken.
\nHere let me give some examples of when subject and object are unified or not separate for a longer period of time.
\nWhen you are very busy and can only get 2 or 3 hours sleep every day, you try to save your energy by not wasting your energy in unnecessary thinking. You just do things. You are still functioning. You still know things. But you are in a state that subject and object is not separated.
\nAnother example is in sitting meditation. You breath in. Your breath out. You are always connected to the surrounding and aware of what is going on. So you are in a state that subject and object is not separated. But when your legs are painful, you worry about whether you should release your leg or not. You hesitated about it. Then the subject and object become separated.
\nAbove is just some theory for people who always want to know. For practice, it is easy: just put everything down, and do what you are doing now.<\/p>\n

Note: above is a follow-up of IDP this Monday\u2019s class. It was a free discussion. There were a lot of genuine experiences shared from members, which I was very appreciative. Jessica held things together very well. The discussion centered around who am I and people\u2019s expereience with \u201ccrush\u201d and \u201cprison\u201d.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
THE SUBJECT AND OBJECT, PART TWO<\/div>\n
\nBelow is a follow-up of IDP Saturday class this week.
\nThere are billions of moments in one snap of fingers. There are moments you hear. There are moments you don\u2019t hear. Your ears hear, but you don\u2019t hear. The moment you hear, subject and object are unified. The moment you don\u2019t hear, the subject and object are separate. When the subject and object are separated, what is created in between is the limited space that we human beings tend to identify as the (illusionary) self. Because of that (illusionary) self, at that moment, you don\u2019t hear. If you stay in that state for too long, you get hit by a car.
\nWhen you are sleeping, your ears still hear. But you don\u2019t hear because your being is sleeping. But if you don\u2019t have dreams, it is easy for your being to wake up to the sounds. So dream is the thing that stands in between your body and your being. When your being wakes up, you can hear again. So indeed, thinking is dream like. Dream is things that come up randomly. So if you are trapped in thinking, it is like day dreaming. Your thoughts are scattered.
\nBreathing is one fundamental activity we human beings do. If you are thinking, you cannot breath naturally. The activity of breathing is the same as the activity of the mind. You inhale, and you expand. You expand to the maximum, and you cannot expand anymore. Then you start contracting. You exhale, and reach the minimum. But you cannot stay there long either. You start inhaling and expanding again. In class, during the discussion of Right Effort, we talked about making efforts and relaxing and letting go. This is the same kind of activity that the mind does. We see here two activities are functioning. One is the living activity. The other is the dying activity. What is the living activity? The moment you realize that life is precious and you need to work hard to make yourself, your parents, your friends, your loved ones, and everyone else to be happy, that is the living activity. So you start expanding. You expand to the maximum until there is no need to expand anymore. Then you realize that such an active pushing forward is (very subtly) a distortion or mistaking of reality. You don\u2019t need to tell your ears to listen. Your ears already heard the sound before you have a chance to tell them to listen. To hear the sound, you have to give yourself up. Then you can hear. Otherwise, you cannot hear. So you have to do the dying activity. You realize that you need to just receive, just follow the flow. So you start contraction. Then you can rest your tiring body and become spacious. When you reach the minimum, you don\u2019t need to contract anymore. Then you realize that you have taken so much love in this world, thus you need to work hard. So you start expanding again.
\nSo mind activity is the same as the breathing activity. When there is no thinking, mind follows the activity of expanding and contracting naturally. We can see here why breathing activity is fundamentally difficult. The other fundamentally difficult activity is sex, which we also covered recently. We can see the same expansion and contraction activities between a couple.
\nIf I understand correctly, when you are just doing things and not thinking, you are in a state that subject and object are not separated. Being mindful, I guess, doesn\u2019t have to be in a state that subject and object are separate. But it seems that the way people interpret mindfulness tends to lead to a state that subject and object are separated, e.g. the person stands on the side of the subject and are mindful of the object. I am just speculating here since I don\u2019t do mindful practice particularly myself.
\nSo when we are doing sitting meditation, we inhale. We are hearing all the time. We exhale. We are hearing all the time. You are not separated. (Here we can see why sitting still and not to be bothered by the pain are important in sitting meditation.) By practicing this, after we stand up from the cushion and start engaging in daily activity, our minds inhale and exhale, but we are always connected and not separate.
\nThese are just some words to help the practice. So it is better you discard them immediately. Knowledge is only for people who acknowledge thinking unconditionally. So I fill you with more knowledge. As you get more and more knowledge, you will reach the limit of knowledge and realize that knowledge is very limited. If you can just put it down now, you will experience the limitlessness immediately.
\nHere is the link for the gmail drunk emailing prevention<\/a> (which came up during the discussion of Right Effort). What is funnier than I told in class is that gmail will ask you several math question to test if you are drunk or not. So if you cannot solve the questions, google will say: \u201cDude, you are too drunk. Stop sending email and go back to your bed.\u201d \")\" It was said that the western culture relies more on external things<\/a>. I think this is a wisdom too. For a Buddhist, it doesn\u2019t matter what social circumstance is, you should always be able to go beyond it. But for a society in general, it is better to have a better social structure so a higher percentage of the population can live in a way more akin to the natural way of human beings, e.g. the peaceful way, and thus have a chance to discover their own nature.
\nNote: the content here will always be continuously revised. So please don\u2019t take my words for it.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by guest blogger Leon Liu aka Freestone the following posts are related to lectures and discussion at the IDP on Monday nights and the Saturday hardcore dharma classes thanks Leon! THE SUBJECT AND OBJECT, PART ONE The The moment you are experiencing, the subject and object are unified. The moment you start recognizing that experience,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":192,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-media"],"yoast_head":"\nThe subject and object, parts 1 and 2, by Leon Liu - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/10\/the-subject-and-object-parts-1-and-2-by-leon-liu.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The subject and object, parts 1 and 2, by Leon Liu - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"by guest blogger Leon Liu aka Freestone the following posts are related to lectures and discussion at the IDP on Monday nights and the Saturday hardcore dharma classes thanks Leon! THE SUBJECT AND OBJECT, PART ONE The The moment you are experiencing, the subject and object are unified. The moment you start recognizing that experience,…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/10\/the-subject-and-object-parts-1-and-2-by-leon-liu.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-10-19T17:40:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/s.wordpress.com\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/icon_smile.gif\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ellen Scordato\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The subject and object, parts 1 and 2, by Leon Liu - One City","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/10\/the-subject-and-object-parts-1-and-2-by-leon-liu.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The subject and object, parts 1 and 2, by Leon Liu - One City","og_description":"by guest blogger Leon Liu aka Freestone the following posts are related to lectures and discussion at the IDP on Monday nights and the Saturday hardcore dharma classes thanks Leon! THE SUBJECT AND OBJECT, PART ONE The The moment you are experiencing, the subject and object are unified. The moment you start recognizing that experience,…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/10\/the-subject-and-object-parts-1-and-2-by-leon-liu.html","og_site_name":"One City","article_published_time":"2008-10-19T17:40:50+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/s.wordpress.com\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/icon_smile.gif"}],"author":"Ellen Scordato","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/10\/the-subject-and-object-parts-1-and-2-by-leon-liu.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/10\/the-subject-and-object-parts-1-and-2-by-leon-liu.html","name":"The subject and object, parts 1 and 2, by Leon Liu - One City","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/10\/the-subject-and-object-parts-1-and-2-by-leon-liu.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/10\/the-subject-and-object-parts-1-and-2-by-leon-liu.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/s.wordpress.com\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/icon_smile.gif","datePublished":"2008-10-19T17:40:50+00:00","dateModified":"2008-10-19T17:40:50+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/16a6c3d95425f08ee437c8d10bed860f"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/10\/the-subject-and-object-parts-1-and-2-by-leon-liu.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/10\/the-subject-and-object-parts-1-and-2-by-leon-liu.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/10\/the-subject-and-object-parts-1-and-2-by-leon-liu.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/s.wordpress.com\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/icon_smile.gif","contentUrl":"http:\/\/s.wordpress.com\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/icon_smile.gif"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/10\/the-subject-and-object-parts-1-and-2-by-leon-liu.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The subject and object, parts 1 and 2, by Leon Liu"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/","name":"One City","description":"The Interdependence Project","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/16a6c3d95425f08ee437c8d10bed860f","name":"Ellen Scordato","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/99f\/99f34b7d288924ccb04e485c4c22e69dx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/99f\/99f34b7d288924ccb04e485c4c22e69dx96.jpg","caption":"Ellen Scordato"},"description":"Ellen Scordato\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s multi functions include being 1) chairperson of the board of the Interdependence Project; 2) the co-owner of The Stonesong Press, LLC [www.stonesong.com], a book producer of high-quality nonfiction bestsellers for the popular market; 3) a part-time faculty member of the English Language Studies department at the New School; and 4) long ago, the published author of four young adult nonfiction biographies. A graduate of Wellesley College,where she studied Classics and art history, she lives in Manhattan with her husband and cats.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/escordato"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/192"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}