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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 4 months |
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Yeah, that is pretty much it OP. The Philokalia states we must give up ALL hope in things visible. Contemplate that for a little while.
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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 4 months |
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Quote: If you are referring to me, then no, I never said that. I actually said I was deeply saddened by any suffering caused by the church. But how can a religion "cause" suffering? It's people who cause suffering. A religion is just a set of beliefs and practices. It has no power to do anything except the power which you yourself give to it. You say religion causes suffering, how do you know that perhaps what if suffering is causing religion? Did you ever think of that one. If you only look at things from one angle, all you'll see is that angle, which appears to evidently be the case with you here. But what if causality is a little more complex than that, and things are all linked in a complex network of relationships which humans then label "causes" and "effects"
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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 4 months |
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Quote: Whoa whoa whoa, hold up. I did not say that beliefs didn't unfluence the way we act, I said that religion is just a set fo belief and practices. Now we all know that the Holy Bible says that we should not kill, that we should love our neighbor as ourself and that we should do unto others as we would have others do unto us. If everyone adhered to those three simple things, the world would be a completely different place. So you see, religion, like everything else, is neutral. Its like a hammer. You can use it to build a house for you and your wife and child or you can use it to bash in the head of your neighbor's child, thus murdering him. But the hammer itself isn't to blame. We don't put hammers on trial, we put the people who used them on trial.
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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 4 months |
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Quote: To you, but we are not talking about you. We are talking about animals. One thing you might not be taking into account is that finding food, finding a mate, mating, raising offspring , etc can be FUN. How do you know that animals aren't having fun when they do those things? Also I would like to ask what is peace to you? If attending to survival needs and peace cannot co-exist for you, then what kind of peace do you experience? A peace which ends the moment you must find food or find a mate, is not a very good peace imo. It seems almost as if from your point of view, one cannot simultaneously be peaceful and yet also engaged in life. Why do you feel this way? It is my experience that the more mental peace I have, the more I am able to engage in life and without the peace being disturbed because one starts to notice that life itself is valuable.
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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 4 months |
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Quote: So what is there, then? I say, consider your sleep. When in deep sleep you are not feeling emotions. And yet viritually everyone associates this state of deep sleep with peace. People say "I slept happily" not "I slept neutrally" and people covet sleep, rather than treat it as something neutral. Now I am going to remind you that this the spirituality and mycisticm forum. If you are postin' here you should be at least a little familiar with what spiritual people and mystics say. What do they say? Well, they pretty muych all say that the natural state, is peace or unconditional love, not neutrality. I should add that this is consistent with my experience. Emotions come and go but existence itself does not come and go, it remain always existing. If we isolate this sense of "I am" and allow it to be by itself, not hooked onto to circumstances constantly, what do we find? I find that it seems naturally peaceful and then it is when I become involved in identifications, that is when the peace becomes disturbed. Now, you may have a different experience. It may be that when you remain with the sense of amness, you experience blankness or ntruality. This is perfectly normal in fact, and this is also my own experience. But what I learned from my spiritual teachers was that this happens when one is a beginner and if you can make it through this stage, then what happens next is very beautiful. You see, as one inquires into hi or her true nature, the mind throws everything it can at you in order to make you stop, give up or deciee it ain't worth it. hence, the mind will attempt to convince you the natural state is just a neutrial boring state so that you dont go for it no more.
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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 4 months |
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Quote: Edited by Deviate (07/29/14 07:27 AM)
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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 4 months |
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Quote: I am not denying this, but I think it is important to understand that liberation/enlightenment is beyond circumstances. It is freedom from circumstances, but not necessarily detachment from them. A jnani may struggle to find food, they may even appear dismayed about their lack of food, but they are not experiencing the situation the same as an ego identified individual. They know that no matter what happens, even if they starve to death, things will be ok and not just that they will be ok, but that they already are ok right now. Quote: Harder for whom? That is the question I feel is it not being addressed. I certainly agree that for the average person, finding food is very important to their level of peace and obviously lack of food is going to destroy their peace and well being and could also slow down their spiritual growth even. However, for a liberated person, the amount of food they have has nothing to do with their liberation. It doesn't mean they won't try to find food if they need it or that they cannot feel feelings like hunger, but they perceive all this differently. They have a freedom from circumstances and this freedom doesn't change if they have to skip a meal or if their life situation becomes more challenging. Quote: I don't contradict myself. I say that because enlightenment often gets talked about in terms of love, bliss, happiness, etc, many people imagine that it involves attaining some state in which you feel bliss all the time but thats not what it is at all. Instead it is actually even better than that, it is freedom from all experiences, be they blissful or unhappy. This freedom is not describable but it is not a detached neutral state, it is itself blissful and loving. But these are not emotions. To put it simply, everything is energy and energy in its unmanifest form is love-bliss. Quote: As opposed to the Judeo-Christian tradition which just started yesterday? Not that Buddhism isn't trustworthy, but there are many ways to speak about enlightenment and how things are from the Buddhist perspective isn't necessarily the only way to look at them. Quote: Ok you already said this and I already responded and told you that yes I am familiar with this teaching. Simply repeating it over again isn't enough to change my mind. This may be the Buddhist way but this is not the only way to enlightenment. That is why I suggested you read Jan Essman. He says that there are two forms of Self-realization, one with love-bliss and one without. According to jan, Self-realization without love-bliss will always eventually turn into Self-Realization with love-bliss, so either form will do. However, Yan also says that because Self-realization with love-bliss is the eventual goal, there is no harm in developing love-bliss now, even before basic self-realization. The Buddhists say that bliss is a distraction, they advocate looking for the truth from a purely neutral, observational standpoint. Yan says that this method can lead to what he calls "the Zen trap". In the Zen trap, one with becomes identified as no-mind, with void or pure nothingness being. This is not Self-Realization though, Self-Realization is complete freedom from identification with mind. Basic Self-Realization, without love-bliss is what most Buddhist meditation techniques are aimed that. This is fine, but it does not mean that other types of techniques are invalid. In fact, Yan disagrees that bliss is a distraction and instead he advocates merging in love-bliss if possible, or at least, developing love-bliss even prioor to enlightenment. You can read about his meditation techniques on his website and I encourage you to do so, for they are extremely powerful. Now I am a Christian, so I am not so into Eastern Meditation but in my tradition, we also focus on developing love-bliss before enlightenment. We go through a process where something we call the "Holy Spirit" comes and gradually warms our hearts and gives us the opportunity to choose to love God and not sin. Quote: I agree that it just is but I disagree with neutrality, to me that is just another label. Neutral as opposed to what? You see, neutrality is relative. ALl the values in Samsara are relative and have opposites. Neutrality is what we measure degrees of importance relative too. The non dual Self is beyond all this labeling. Secondly, there are a couple of disctinctions here which I think are important to make. First of all, there is an impersonal and a personal aspect to reality. Buddhists tend to focus on the impersonal, whereas Christians tend to focus on the personal God aspect. The whole encompasses both of these entirely. This is why I must disagree with your notion that Buddha nature is nothingness, neutrality. Yes, it IS that but that represents an imcomplete picture of it, because it is also Love-Bliss. Think about Jesus Christ. Think about his great love for mankind. Think about how he gave his life for us, while we were still sinners. Now tell me, why would a neutral nothingness come into the world and preach about some spiritual Kingdom, heal people, open the eyes of the blind and then give his life? You see, you cannot ignore God's love. Love did that. ANd that is why as Yan explains, when one reaches full enlightenment, and sees oneself in everything, the result is Love-Bliss. Unmanifest love-bliss. And this is NOT an emotion, this is what is. Love-Bliss is what exists. Again, why would Buddha say that Nirvana is the highest happiness? How do you answer that? How do respond to teachers like TOny Parsons who say that he falls in love with bus stops, trees, etc, who says that liberation is finding the perfect lover? How does neutrality in any way resemble finding the perfect lover? Do you see now how there is something missing from your notion of enlightenment?
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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 4 months |
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Quote: No, this is simply not correct you are misunderstanding. Enlightenment, is freedom from identification with mind. In that sense, it just is. It is not happiness, or bliss or enjoyment, it is simply correctly seeing what you are. So what you say is correct, speaking relative to the ignorant Self, about what we mean by "Realization". But after you see what you really are, then comes the question what are you? What do you see that you are? You can't just say "nothing" because what sees that it is nothing and what about the world, emotions, feelings, thoughts, dream evenetc? Are you saying they don't exist? If they do exist, then do they exist apart from you? Even if they appear in void and ultimately have void as their substratem, they themselves are not void because they posses qualities. What gives rise to qualities, if nothing exists? Well, either they exist apart from you, in which case you cant be nothing or youd have no ability to see them, or they exist within you, as your own being manifest. So your experience, is the manifest expression of your own being. An elightened person recognizes the unmanifest reality which gives rise to it, the whole which contains the potential for anything. This is ultimately undescribible and I am afraid "neutrality" is a pitifully inadequate description. However, I will say that the sages claim that there is enjoyment taking place. Also, why would you want to give up everything, spend endless hours in meditation, etc, all in order to get a place where there was no enjoyment? So if enlightenment is recognizing what you are, being enlightened is love-bliss. Edited by Deviate (07/30/14 10:17 PM)
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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 4 months |
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Quote: Do you think it would be correct to say that relative to the physical world or the worlds of form, in which there appears to be a duality between those worlds and the one who perceives them, the perceiver is in fact nothing and neutral but further examination reveals that the seer and seen are actually not separate but together form one thing and the nature of this thing is love and bliss?
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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 4 months |
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Quote: Of course it's beyond words, for words are themselves of it and within it. However, the reason it can be nice to have it described as love-bliss is because if we said it was hate-pain, then who would want to approach it? I think that fear, is what holds most people back from really opening themselves up to the Lord, or the infinite. They prefer to stay closed off and contracted because even though it hurts a lot, it is familiar and gives them a sense of control and security.
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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 4 months |
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Thank you for pointing that out. It reminds me of a discussion I was having with my sister a few weeks ago, she studies anthropology and as a result she thinks that just about everyone or every culture or humans in general are always being ethnocentric or anthropocentric. I was trying to explain to her, that we have no other way to be.
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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 4 months |
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Perhaps we should leave it to those who are enlightened to define enlightenment to the masses.
To me, saying that negative feelings go away, well i don't see how that is any less false than saying it is love-bliss. Enlightenment doesn't mean the body becomes immune to pain or the mind loses the ability to experience sadness or negative emotion. THe way I understand it, is everything is seen from a different perspective. So while the average person might interpret pain in a very negative way, an enlightened person does not see pain as an obstacle. But the only way to truly understand it, is to be enlightened. Another place where I think confusion may be arising is that you seem to only be describing the manifest side of enlightenment. Quote: This is all manifest phenomena. In fact to me this doesn't even sound like a description of enlightenment, it sounds like a description of dispassion, which one develops through spiritual practice. In enlightenment, one is beyond all this. The manifest remains but one becomes aware of the unmanifest, which is more real than the manifest. The unmanifest, is described as being pure, that is to say it is an undifferentiated whole. One part of the unmanifest isn't one way and another part another way, its all just the unmanifest. And it IS like this 24/7, it does not change, only the manifest changes. The unmanifest is before space, time, change etc. Words cannot really describe it, but one thing that all the sages seem to say is that it is very very very good. It is not a painful place to be.
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newbie Registered: 04/20/03 Posts: 4,497 Last seen: 8 years, 4 months |
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Quote: Did I say anything about knowing who the enlightened ones are? Basically waht I was saying was, as long as we feel confused and unenlightened, perhaps (and I just said perhaps, not definitely or anything) we should spend less time trying to explain and define something we really don't understand clearly yet.
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It just is (in other words, neutrality), and assigning value-laden labels like Bliss or Happiness to it means you have dragged your pure No-Mind down into the intellectual mire of conceptualization.



