Think of cessation, also scripturally described as the “non-occurrence of consciousness,” like voluntarily inducing the effects of general anesthesia. Consciousness switches off without a trace, while the basic homeostatic operations of the body — temperature, heartbeat, breathing — remain online. - Isn't this like the nirvana of nirvanas ? I had heard about some of the monks in the Himalayas able to attain these sta…
The mind is composed of several faculties, that spring from themselves, and lead to certain states of being that ultimately lead to suffering. The key ones for this discussion are the thinking mind (or in Thailand the monkey mind), which is what we typically dwell in. It’s the mind that tells stories about the past and the future, where we talk with people in conversations we won’t have or wish we had had, where we identify ourselves as being something specific. We also have a feeling mind, or emotive mind. It doesn’t form structured thoughts like the thinking mind, but it creates impetus and acts in a feedback loop with the thinking mind. A lot of our misery comes from this feedback loop. We also have a sensate mind, which is where we feel our body, all sensations but we tend to focus our thinking and emotive mind on pleasurable and unpleasant sensations.
In Theravada Buddhism these faculties are emergent but are not true experience of our true selves. They are tools of our true mind, but have become dominant and exclusionary, hiding our true self. Our true self is our awareness, which exists without thought or feelings, but is the source of all thoughts and feelings. It constantly changes, it has no identity per se, but it is not unconscious. It is where we actually are, all thoughts exist in context of it, but it’s thinking isn’t visible or directly experienced in the way thoughts or feelings are.
People often find this confusing and find the admonition to not think in vipassana meditation to mean erase all mental existence and be a body without any being. That’s actually not at all the goal. The goal is to silence the mind that chatters for a bit, the emotions that pull us and manipulate our thoughts to sooth, so we can be aware of our awareness. You are still fully awake - intensely so in fact. You still “feel,” but the feelings are compassion and loving kindness, and they’re not feelings that control you or make your sensate body feel some experience (such as a tight chest or thrill) or capture your chattering thoughts.
Eventually thoughts and feelings will intrude and the goal then is to see them for what they are, facilities of your mind, and to let them be there but don’t let them capture your awareness
By practicing this in meditation you can bridge this state into daily life. As you spend more time aware but not chattering away, you are more in the present and in the immediate now. You find you only feel compassion and loving kindness for all like, and anger, hate, and fear are artifacts of those faculties. They can be helpful in some situations, but they are fairly rare situations. It feels strange at first to not be totally enmeshed in your thoughts. At first I was afraid I would disappear if I did this, sort of like the quote you have. But I didn’t. Who I wasn’t disappeared, and I became myself for the first time since I was a little child.