If it changes ...

If it changes it can't be real.
If it doesn't change it can't be known.
Luangpow Pannavaddho

Is it possible to relate Buddhism to Western Culture?

There are at least two possibilities, and no doubt many more besides.

The first one turns around the Cartesian dictum, "Cogito ergo sum", "I think therefore I am".  René Descartes got off to a brilliant start and then promptly took a wrong turn, completely missing the point of his inadvertent discovery.

He turned right, taking the very 'doubt' that he took as evidence of his 'existence', making it the keystone of his entire intellectual edifice.  Instead, he should have turned left and investigated it.  So as to realise it's causal factors, thereby realising it's true nature, "... thus I am simply the result of that thought".

The second possibility considers the two Grail Legend questions.  "What does it mean?" and, "Whom does it serve?"  The first investigates the object of attention.  The second investigates the subject himself, using the same principles, in the same way, to find the same answer.

One could also think of a teaching given to Carlos Castaneda, Don Juan's "second attention": though others might not agree.

Begging the Question

Generosity cuts against both greed and hatred, 

and begs the question "Who is it that knows this?"

Your not supposed to know

That's the whole point.
Conditions arise unknowingly.
Everything is dependent upon just this one factor.
It's called Ignorance.

Eternity

Nothing unchanging in the present moment.
Nothing surviving to the next.
An absence of anything eternal.

Bodily sensation fading and boosted
by successive mental movements:
together, maybe, with the knowing of this.

But who, or what,  knows that?

As successive mental movements fade
bodily sensation fades.
As conscious movements fade
no bodily sensation remains.

But who, or what,  knows this?

Here is the Knowing - Now is the Knowing

Dukkha ceases to be manageable.
Techniques fail.
Clarity ceases to penetrate.

After a lifetime of practice, something knows that there has to be
something else.  In spite of the very clear perception that there is
absolutely nothing knowable whatsoever that can remedy the
situation with any hope at all, there is nonetheless a distinct
conviction that there is indeed something else.

What is it that knows this?

Shazam!

Even Eureka doesn't do it justice.
Something else in a complete league of it's own.
There isn't anything else.  But what knows this?

Just this knowing: knowing that it doesn't know.
It can't ever know.  There just isn't anything else.

Looking at things exactly as they are:
as they present themselves in the moment.
The practice of doing nothing special.
The way to go.

The One Who Knows

The One Who Knows,
A personification of the Knowing processes.
"If you see the Buddho, kill him."
Identity is Dukkha,
This one too.

Perfect Sanity

Perfect Sanity
The Don't Know Mind
The absolute absurdity of trying to know anything at all - whatsoever.

The Knowledge of Not Knowing

The outflows are due to the ignorance of them.
That ignorance is dependent on it not being known.
Thus the outflows are knowable and their originating conditions are equally knowable: in the not knowing of them.
Thus their cessation is equally knowable, the knowledge of that original not knowing.
Thus the way leading to their future non arising comes from the knowledge, of the knowledge, of that initial not knowing.

On Knowing the "Don't Know"

Kilesa, unknown activities that are identified with unknowingly: powerful for as long as they remain unknown.

Asava, essentially outflows, though occasionally useful to see as other renderings, such as biases, influxes, chancres etc.

Tanha, craving.  This kind of craving is inclusive of aversion, the two toggle together, successively conditioning one another; successive, serial alternation, eternally changing.  Collectively - attachment.

Conventionally - a quiet mind is an inactive mind immersed in white noise, inefficient activities, all cancelling each other out, with no net effect: Zero Point Energy, the ultimate inefficiency.  "E=MC²",that is to say, mentally active energy manifests as bodily sensation: a sensation experienced within the physical body, robbing the practitioner of ultimate peace.  It is fully knowable, but what is it that knows?

Reality is thus seen to be serial, successive, linear.  The "here and now", an eternal infinity or infinite eternity: nothing other than this present moment.

Space being a physical thing, bodily sensation due to mental process.  For a practitioner in the midst of practice, space is a mental construct that is readily believed but with no actual reality, robbing him of the total stillness that rewards genuine practice.

These aspects of subjective activity conspire, as it were, to rob the practitioner of his goal.  They only know conventional realities: rewards of bodily identity, pleasure.  So that total stillness threatens their continued existence, since they would have become fully knowable - objectified - as a direct result.

Thus the equation of total stillness with perfected, remainderless knowing.  Knowing being the ground level of zero mental activity.

Knowing the knowing develops into the ground state of mental activity where consciousness itself comes to rest.  Nothing can be said about this state, it is beyond conventional terminology.  All that can be said is that anyone can know this for himself.

"Don't Know", the starting point for knowing the most subtle of subjective activities.  Cultivating the "Don't Know" mind brings Knowing to perfection.

This Knowing has no substance, mental or physical: is beyond change, and thus eternal.

Processes Dependant Upon Not Being Known

Subject, object, duality.  Processes dependant upon not being known.

Craving within aversion, aversion within craving.  Processes dependant upon not being known.

At the very centre of the Heart: the object there, is nothing other than the subject looking at it, whilst not knowing this.  Processes dependant upon not being known.

Mind, the personification of unknown processes.

But what knows this?

Cracking Dukkha

When craving and aversion are seen as interdependently arising, the path becomes manifest.

Eureka!

Looses it.

Realising the way leading to it's future completion, both sustains, and latter, reasserts it.

This path has an intelligence all of it's own: the Dhamma becomes fully automatic.

Just need to perfect Samadhi to see it at it's most sublime, just as it is, beyond all words.

Physiological Sensations

I think therefore I am physiological sensations due to consciousness of currently running processes.

Serially arising objects, combinations of thought and memory or associations.

Feelings accumulating within bodily tissue as tangible sensations.  A solid basis for identification in the real world: except that it fades when conditions no longer sustain: changes when condions change.

Furthermore, it conditions change.

What is out there?

We eat and drink. 
We don't know where it comes from.

We defecate and urinate.
We don't know where it goes to.

There is something out there: a void with which we live in perfect harmony.

Knowable only by the mind.

Anicca, Dukkha, Anattaa

To show yet another way into the Dhamma:
Changing Dukkha for currently running subjects,
Changing Anattaa for imminently arising objects.
All three for the balance within current processes.

Where am I?

You won't find yourself in the present moment. 
You can't know what's coming in the next one.

First contemplation looks at currently running subjects.
Second contemplation looks at successively arising objects.

But what knows this?

Avijjaa: the basic not knowing

We cannot know what is going to happen in the next moment, yet our very existence depends on assumptions about it.  Experience is nothing but memory, but it enables the global community to develop.  However the fact remains, we do not know the imminently arising moment. 

Unknowingly, we correctly assume that we don't know, whilst incorrectly thinking that we do, and thus unknowingly make efforts to arrange our knowledge base so as to manage selected projections in line with expectation.  This very effort is a disturbance of the heart's essential pure state, is at variance with the way things are, and thus is a source of conflict.  In the normal course of practice, we may well experience an occasional, brief respite from this stress, and be suitably impressed with that result, but the root cause could easily escape our awareness for eons to come.

At this level Dukkha is a subtle boredom: a dissatisfaction resulting from assumptions that the immediate future is knowable.  This is enough to keep us separated from the transcendent quality of the present moment.

There is a need to investigate this not knowing, that we don't know about, by carefully focusing on it's resulting stress: Dukkha.  Only when it is perfectly clear that we do not and cannot know, will we skilfully find the essence of the "here and now": that limitless eternity of the present moment.

Conceit

When the Citta is completely free from greed and hatred, all that remains of the Psyche - personification of the currently running process - is identification.  Because this is free from greed and hatred, it's relative purity becomes it's next hurdle: it is utterly seduced by it's own reflections and like Narcissus, drowns in them.  For too many of us, this is as far as it goes: we become famous teachers.

However, for those that know of the way, this state of affairs degenerates into conflict with the way things actually are, in and of themselves: Dukkha - stress, the practitioner gets back to working with the knowable.

Emptiness

Complete absence of any identity: subject or object.

Total knowing. 

Subjectively arising; transition; objectively empty of anything that's me or mine: 
subjective objects become objective processes.

Identity with this knowing is an obstacle.

Ignorance

Instead of becoming Ignorant, Ignorance becomes knowable.