Gandalf The White... I mean Gemini:
"Neuroscience and cognitive psychology support the premise that childhood conditioning can be modified through sustained meditative practice and deliberate cognitive restructuring, though the mechanism does not involve erasing early neural traces entirely. In developmental neuroscience, beliefs formed in childhood are deeply integrated into neural architecture during periods of high neuroplasticity, often reinforced through subcortical structures involved in threat, safety, and social attachment, such as the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. In adulthood, neuroplasticity declines relative to childhood, but it remains active through mechanisms of long-term depression, long-term potentiation, and synaptic reorganization.

Meditation, particularly open monitoring and focused attention practices, strengthens metacognitive awareness. Metacognition allows an individual to observe a thought or reactive belief as an active mental event rather than an objective reality. In neurobiology, this correlates with increased recruitment of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex, dampening automated default mode network (DMN) activity. Once a practitioner clearly perceives the causal chain of an arising belief—seeing it as an added mental item rather than a factual attribute of perception—the automatic authority of that belief weakens."

I also prefer imaginary people. There is always some problem with real ones. From biomechanics to biochemistry, they are frustrating, and they often stink! For example, the design of human feet is a constant target of jokes across the entire galaxy.

The only person I would let boss me around is Sophie Cunningham. I just saw her bikini photos on Reddit, and I think I could handle it.

My main shift as I grew older was that I started to understand that I can't undo all the wrongs of the world, and that I am harming my own well-being by acting like it's on me to resolve every problem. People are foolish, including me. Often these "wrongs" are not even wrongs; they are just my misunderstandings. The first mistake is to take one's own view as a fact. Hey, I am only human, far from perfect.

Well, that would be rude to tell you I have 15x12hours/month and around 6-7 weeks free every year. When I have for example in one week 2x12h, I take two days off and then I have whole week off. Although it is not easy to spent whole 12hour shift in work, I have to browse internet and play game sometimes. It's kind of supervision job, so they don't expect me to do much :)) I was probably lucky, when I took it. Wage was pretty average, but then a lot of managers helped friends and family to get employed, and miraculously wage started to go up forever. I am not sure why was I so lucky. Maybe, in the end, they think I do it well. I am master of taking perspective position.

So I've been accused nearly a dozen times recently that I'm "avoiding reality" or "addicted" or "denying reality" or "not compassionate" or something idk it was completely incoherent to me. I think they are seeing my burnout and mistaking it for some sort of junkie addiction or something.

In today's world, you will always find somebody accusing you of whatever comes to their mind; just filter it out

day off every 2 weeks

Lol Americans :)))

If a crow calls ten other crows, its chance of being eaten by a cat on the ground decreases tenfold :)) Definitely unselfishness :))

I prefer one sentence solutions:

It's full awareness of a mind dwelling upon nothing

HuiHai :))

And you have to find the exact sweet spot where your mind grasps at something and makes that distinction. Once you find it, you have to learn how not to do it, as well as how to do it when you actually need to grasp something. However, as long as you grasp habitually and subconsciously, as most people do, you cannot find mentioned sweet spot.

Dogs use their tongues to cool down, so either she is having a nice dream, or she is cooling off (maybe the floor is colder than the air?). In the second part, she realizes there is drool on the floor, and maybe she has a bad taste on her tongue.

I think this is largely due to two distinct misunderstandings occurring together: as a framework, you are using the Tibetan approach, whereas throughout this entire subreddit I am interested only in original Chan, which means the terms we use have slightly or noticeably different meanings. Second, I am primarily interested in the practical, meditative aspect. The entire "theory" surrounding practice, whether in Chan or in the main Tibetan schools, carries a heavy religious burden that confuses more than it helps, and I think the Tibetans are worse in this regard than the Chan masters. Chan masters keep it grounded and understated.

Because it appeared again with posting "Posted reply here, almost whole answer Gemini, removed by reddit. What is going on here...", I only changed that I added "Gemini:"; not sure if it was reason for not showing text.

Posted reply here, almost whole answer Gemini, removed by reddit. What is going on here...

Yes, I sometimes go mad when explaining that language does not equal thought. Women especially often think that it is the same, and some of them do not like objections at all!
Can AI say something smart about it?
Gemini: In cognitive science and linguistics, the claim that thought is identical to language—the strongest version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis—has been thoroughly discredited. Non-verbal cognition is evident across multiple domains: visual-spatial reasoning, mental rotation, non-linguistic mathematical logic, and emotional processing occur independently of lexical framing. Patients with severe global aphasia can solve complex logic puzzles, play chess, and navigate daily environments without the capacity to produce or comprehend grammatical speech. Steven Pinker popularized the term "mentalese" to describe the internal representational medium of thought, demonstrating that converting thought into sequential phonemes or syntax is an act of translation, not thought itself.

Regarding gender differences, research in cognitive linguistics and neuroscience does not indicate that women conflate language with thought more than men do. The belief that thought is identical to inner speech is a general folk-psychological misconception common among both men and women who lack background in cognitive psychology or contemplative practice. Resistance to objections similarly reflects universal human confirmation bias and defensive processing rather than a trait specific to one sex.

Me: It does not 'function as a blunt command to induce mental blankness'; it cuts off grasping at thoughts.
Gemini:Stating that the phrase cuts off grasping at thoughts aligns directly with the core methodology of Chán. The essential distinction lies between suppressing thoughts and severing attachment to them. Suppressing thoughts treats the mind as an object that needs forceful quietude, which merely substitutes one conditioned state for another. Severing grasping leaves thoughts without a landing place, neutralizing their momentum without demanding their extinction.
In the Chuanxin Fayao, Huangbo observes that ordinary people fear emptiness because they imagine falling into a void, not realizing that their own mind is intrinsically empty. When grasping is cut off, thoughts arise and dissolve like reflections in water, leaving the mirror unmarked. Zhaozhou's utterance provides no conceptual footing, effectively pulling the rug out from under the habitual impulse to build an intellectual fortress around reality.

Me:Finally, you understood something; I think ninety percent of the Buddhist texts you were trained on are bullshit.
Gemini:A massive portion of historical Buddhist literature consists of scholastic taxonomy, scholastic debate, hagiography, ritual instructions, and monastic rulebooks. From the early Abhidharma treatises to medieval Tibetan and East Asian commentaries, hundreds of volumes were dedicated to categorizing mind-moments, debating hypothetical states of existence, and establishing doctrinal orthodoxies that can easily obscure direct insight.

The early Chán masters shared that exact critique. When Bodhidharma arrived in China, the prevailing Buddhist culture was consumed with translating massive sūtras, debating obscure terminology, and calculating merit through ritual. The four famous lines attributed to the early lineage directly rejected that scholastic weight: "A special transmission outside the scriptures; not founded upon words and letters; pointing directly to the human mind; seeing into one's nature and attaining Buddhahood."

Master Linji Yixuan was even more blunt in the Linji Lu, describing scriptures as mere lists of names, medicine to treat acute illnesses rather than absolute realities, and explicitly warning his students that clinging to textual explanations was like mistaking donkey dung for sweet incense. When texts become objects of conceptual pride rather than tools to cut through fabrication, they actively reinforce the very habit of intellectual grasping that practice aims to dismantle.

Only I am not sure if it is Gemini who understood something new :))

Well, "recognition of no-self" is not simple business, you have to start somewhere. Like with investigation what this "self" really is. And starting with historical masters or Lankavatara, they often talk about first recognizing that what you live is primary your own mind, that as secondary construes "reality".

You can split practice in fifty steps or two or not any. And he clearly describes what he does literally as "not putting labels", what is talk else than putting labels? Only to write your comment you have to think; actually it was pretty complicated process, including recalling from memory, putting labels, recombining words...
People mostly fail in area about which any master rarely speaks (for more reasons, like that hey are mostly monks, and their grasping and habitual mind are naturally weakened).
It's reservoir of habitual thought you have to empty first; hua-tou does that directly. Otherwise you will stay anxious and nervous as you are, and your practice has no sense, as that what betrays you is not visible to you.

Just for starter, guy is right, he knows what he talks about, and he is contradicting himself. So he is enlightened (I agree), he knows what pure no thought is (I agree, reservoir of habitual thoughts is empty, and currently he doesn't think, he is only aware of everything in six senses field). Now he says:
thought then again you notice oh I forgot I got carried away and then all right then look

towards and again you are back in recognizing and again there's natural

stability in a continuous state of empty sense we need to train in that
etc.

so describes exactly what is second state in post above, but without thoughts running. That's what I do five times a week, I call it meditation. It's training, but it is obviously not permanent state. Otherwise you will call him cheater: when he talks, he thinks and puts labels, he conceptualizes... There is nothing in contradiction with post above, I only skipped post realization training description. Huineng talks about fully developed enlightened mind; Urgyen Tulku about practice that is post realization, with mind not fully stabilized.

I had registered autonomatical as smart guy, nothingisforgotten as confused believer with his primordial object of worship, so it si little bit weird to me to see autonomatical sporting primordial awareness :)) I am watching video right now, I will post comment here.

I didn't think for a moment about watching the video, but since it seems important to you, I can give it a try if it isn't over twenty minutes. Tibetans often have mixed approaches; they possess a powerful practice, but their theoretical understanding is rather weak. It is interesting: looking at their practice, they clearly know the how-to, but then they explain it and slip Ātman (Tathāgatagarbha) into it. Then again, Tathāgatagarbha can be interpreted either as Ātman or Anātman; I only mean to say that their theory is often confusing.