Karen Sanchez19 said:UNBELIEVABLE:
It’s all just pure speculation regarding that lady... and honestly, I haven't even read a single sentence she actually wrote here.🙄
Here is that one for the UNATTENTIVE, WINTER-SLEEPING Karen Sanchez19! 🙂
Which one? 🙂 While Auntie Bernadetta is busy sharing her wisdom, let's go back to basics and review lesson one:
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I’m going to translate that section where she explains how she was completely caught off guard—mostly because mainstream Christianity doesn't actually teach anything about this kind of experience. It fails to prepare both the laypeople and the clergy for what "THAT" truly entails.
I was honestly struck by how she had absolutely no background in Buddhism or any of Buddha’s teachings, yet somehow "stumbled" right into his profound lessons on the five skandhas. It felt like such a meaningful coincidence.
And then there’s the whole concept of Anatta—the idea of "no-self."
She finally realized that she was going through the exact same thing he was—that same moment of awakening.
I actually just finished reading that chapter a few hours ago, so I wanted to share a few snippets of her words—though please bear in mind this is just my own rough translation of them.
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These are some of the insights pulled from her third book—*What Is Self?*
I can't quite wrap my head around what you mean by "str 114." Are we talking about a specific page number in a book, a highway designation, or perhaps a technical code? If you could give me a little more context, I’d be happy to jump in and chat about it!
My own journey into Buddhism wasn't some grand, lightning-bolt moment of enlightenment. It was much more of a slow burn—a gradual realization that the noise of modern life was getting too loud to ignore. For a long time, I felt like I was just running on a treadmill, constantly chasing the next milestone, thinking that once I reached a certain goal, I’d finally feel "complete." But the more I achieved, the more I realized that the goalposts kept moving. That’s when I started looking into Eastern philosophy, searching for something that offered more than just a temporary high. Finding Buddhism felt less like learning something new and more like remembering something I had forgotten about how to actually live. It wasn't an overnight transformation, either. There were plenty of days where my mind felt like a chaotic browser window with fifty tabs open at once. But through practice, I began to understand that peace isn't about finding a world without noise; it's about finding a way to stay centered while the noise is happening around you. It's been a humbling, sometimes frustrating, but ultimately incredibly rewarding process of unlearning old habits and learning how to simply be present. ''.....
Who on earth actually came up with this teaching about the five skandhas? Whoever did, they clearly knew exactly what it felt like to experience that permanent loss of the skandhas...
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It’s funny how things work out. I stumbled upon Buddha’s teaching regarding the Five Skandhas—specifically that comparison where he describes the loss of self as being like the collapse of a house's ridgepole—and honestly? It felt like everything clicked. I suddenly felt like I had finally grasped exactly what I needed to know about Buddhism.
There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind: Buddhism holds a profound and incredibly heavy truth.
In my opinion, that’s easily the single most significant contribution Buddhism has made to humanity.
I don't think we truly grasp just how monumental, profound, and earth-shattering this truth actually is.
It’s funny how we tend to take so many things for granted, isn't it? We breeze through life assuming everything will just stay the way it is, without ever really pausing to realize just how much effort, struggle, and sheer luck it actually took to get where we are.
Tone and his books dive deep into the concepts of the Self and consciousness, but if you ask me, none of those authors actually grasped or truly experienced what those things are all about.
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When Buddha first proclaimed that there is no eternal self, he was speaking from a place of direct experience—specifically, what comes after reaching enlightenment. He was describing that moment when the concept of the ATMAN, or the permanent soul, finally falls away.
So, it’s a mistake to fall into the trap of believing that the "self" doesn't exist at all.
The idea of non-self or the absence of Atman feels completely hollow if it requires us to deny the reality of our own lived experience.
So, even though Buddha took that extra leap beyond the Hindu realization of Atman, you can't actually make that jump unless you’ve first realized Atman. It’s a bit of a paradox, isn't it? But it makes sense—to experience the loss of self, there has to be a "self" there to begin with. That's just how the mechanics of it work.
If the Atman eventually dissolves or fades away, then it clearly isn't the Absolute or Brahman.
What we mistakenly take to be our own sense of ownership is nothing more than that grand illusion we discussed before—a total hoax that masquerades as being "ours."
The term "illusion" doesn't necessarily mean that ownership itself is some big lie. It’s more about the idea that what we think we own is just a relative truth, rather than an absolute one.
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Consciousness isn't actually the tool we use to grasp our true selves; rather, its only real function is to reveal everything that we are *not*.
