"I was also surprised! IMHO?" ...Alex123 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 27, 2022 9:52 pm I was also surprised, lets look at MN#1 again:
A commoner "perceives" while a trainee and arahant "directly knows" earth as earth and the whole totality of experience.
The Blessed One said: “There is the case, monks, where an uninstructed run-of-the-mill person—who has no regard for noble ones, is not well-versed or disciplined in their Dhamma; who has no regard for people of integrity, is not well-versed or disciplined in their Dhamma—perceives earth as earth.
...
“A monk who is a Worthy One, devoid of effluents—who has attained completion, finished the task, laid down the burden, attained the true goal, destroyed the fetters of becoming, and is released through right knowledge—directly knows earth as earth.
MN1
You are surprised because you are confused?
"perceives earth as earth" -
is like magic, the external sense field is taken to be real. You gets wow here wow there!
"directly knows earth as earth' -
is knowing and seeing that it is a trick, when you understand it's trick, ah, simple only lah.... You grow dispassion toward magic trick!
But then, how do you know the magic trick, you don't even want to see how it happened?
Take 'movement' for example. How does it works internally? Do you think that if you imaging something moving, you will have a vision of it? That is not how it works! In fact, how do you imaging "movement" as object? You cannot. You need an object that moves.
You follow your breath, materiality assimilation has a visual aspect of it, where there is mind as consciousness to this rūpanimitta.
Rūpanimitta, is materiality assimilation; the mind perceives the world through materiality assimilation! If you don't want to know how the mind works, how is it that you are going to know earth as earth, directly in internal sense field? How else would directly means, if not direct vision? If you reject vision up front, how is it that you are going to revert to mind sense field? Without that, how is it that you are going to gain knowledge, wisdom, realization?