Apathia your last post is a “state of the art” reply.
No-self (The trunk) is the state that enables any particular manifestation (some id) to fully be expressed and be developed in the presence of other ids, such that the difference between the ids does not lead to any tendency to eliminate the diversity of present ids.
That has no id is the transparent base ground, that enables the optimal terms for different ids to be developed as different ids, without suppressing each others ids, exactly because the no-self is the common base ground of any id.
Every significant item of communication always needs some qualification.
Especially when we use analogies, metaphors, and figures of speech.
"Trunk and Branches" is away of picturing the idea.
When I say "No-Self" is the Trunk, I'm not saying No-Self is some kind of stuff or thought-stuff thoughts are made of.
It's just an open space of potentiality and possibility. (and "space" is also just a metaphor.)
The same with calling "No-Self" the "ground."
It's not some solid things are standing on.
"The Trunk" is the potential for perspective or relating.
To use another analogy, it's the theater.
The two "Branches" are
The Stage and The Players who appear and dissappear from the stage.
The Theater is the potential of change and transcendence, prior to the non-locality of the stage and the changing locality of the players.
The Trunk is Groundless.
Allowing for a branch that pays attention to a non-local ground
And allowing a branch that pays attention to objects making locations.
The Theater is empty, groundless, space beyond the concept of location.
It has no place or identity. It is nothing to be separated from something else.
(Even though this analogy must make a distinction).
Then there are the Stage and the Players (Including props)
The Stage is the perspective or focusing upon a field of empty space where the players are and then aren't. If the Theater is pure Non-Locality, the stage is a kind of local non-locality for the players, since it stages their changing localities.
The Players is the focus upon the changing objects on the stage and the changing localities they occupy.
Another way of looking at this is to think of their localities as their occupations or roles. Their identities are determined local to their "place" in the play.
But non-local to that, with respect to the Theater, they aren't those roles and occupations. They just play them.
This is a mess. Thanks to the need to use similes and symbols unambiguous clarity is practically impossible (and actually welcome in poetry)
But I hope you get the drift of how I'm structuring this
The Trunk is no-thought.
The branches are perspectives of thought.
There's a finer distinction to be made regarding the players on the stage.
We can see them as objects of the play with and defined by their locations in stage or script.
Or we can focus upon them as persons who in the right of their own person-hood define their spaces.
With a shift of our attention we find them not defined by their local spaces but creating their local spaces.
This is their non-locality.
It's possible because The Trunk has no identities to fix them with.
The Trunk is simply pure possibility.
