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Post by enigma on Jan 8, 2014 4:28:12 GMT -5
Well, seems like he does talk about the disappearance of the personal self. "the wave only appears to exist, only seems to exist – in reality, there is no separate wave. The wave literally ex-sists (“stands out”) of the ocean – but in reality, there is no separate wave standing out." Yeah, that's what the non-duality for dummies textbook says. But then he goes on and talks about embracing and including that which is already the case and treats the impersonal as the opposite of the personal again. Quite a mess that article.  It would be more honest to just say, 'I fell into this trap, so be careful you don't too.' Instead he acts like the teachers are to blame. |
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Post by andrew on Jan 8, 2014 6:01:38 GMT -5
Hmmmm........I'd say his 'escape plan' worked perfectly, too good perhaps, but he then came to see that that which he had deemed necessary to escape from, was actually part and parcel of the wonder of life. ....That in holding fast to the idea that there was no person, no volition, no path, he was denying a valuable and integral aspect of experience. His escape plan obviously didn't work or he wouldn't be going on and on about how it didn't.  Yes, grasping ideas instead of realizing what the ideas point to was a fatal error. The ideas, themselves, are not the cause of the failure. What the ideas point to is still true. Speaking from within the context you are offering, what the ideas point to is still False. Ideas cannot point TO Truth, because Truth by definition is the unknown, and the unknown cannot be pointed to. |
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Post by Reefs on Jan 8, 2014 6:03:00 GMT -5
Yeah, that's what the non-duality for dummies textbook says. But then he goes on and talks about embracing and including that which is already the case and treats the impersonal as the opposite of the personal again. Quite a mess that article. It would be more honest to just say, 'I fell into this trap, so be careful you don't too.' Instead he acts like the teachers are to blame. Judging from what JLY quoted, it seems Jeff went from the advaita trap straight into the anti-advaita trap. Those essays are from 2011 though, so I dunno if what's been said there is already ancient history to him or still reflects his current understanding. |
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Post by andrew on Jan 8, 2014 6:08:27 GMT -5
I find it interesting E, that every once in a while you talk about coming 'full circle' as you do above.....and with it, refer to 'mountain, no mountain, mountain' as though full circle/mountain, is where you now see & experience from. If that is so, why are the majority of your arguments made form the 'no mountain' position? Most of the peeps I'm talking to are climbing the no-mountain mountain. Where else would you have me talk to them from? In order to talk from second mountain you would have had to have seen through the seeing that doership/causality/free will/paths is false. |
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Post by andrew on Jan 8, 2014 6:11:35 GMT -5
I just don't read any thing in this that shows he knows what he's talking about. If the disappearance of the personal self has never been seen, all the meditating, conceptualization's , minding isn't going to help. Maybe the best that can happen to the personal self is that it form's a ' belief' that there suffering is happening to no-one. Yeah, he obviously doesn't or else he wouldn't be mixing contexts all the time. When the personal is already an expression/extension of the impersonal, what is there to embrace and include? Hello?!  The best that can happen to the personal self is to forget about this spirituality stuff altogether and enjoy life. Enigma is all about the 'embracing'...he speaks of transcending (which is a path), which is 'include and go beyond'. |
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Post by andrew on Jan 8, 2014 6:13:04 GMT -5
Yeah, that's what the non-duality for dummies textbook says. But then he goes on and talks about embracing and including that which is already the case and treats the impersonal as the opposite of the personal again. Quite a mess that article. It would be more honest to just say, 'I fell into this trap, so be careful you don't too.' Instead he acts like the teachers are to blame. No, I think he is talking about the limitations of the advaita teaching itself. If the limitations haven't been seen, then an advaita trap is pretty much inevitable. You do see the limitations don't you? |
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Post by tzujanli on Jan 8, 2014 6:33:01 GMT -5
Greetings.. Well, seems like he does talk about the disappearance of the personal self. "the wave only appears to exist, only seems to exist – in reality, there is no separate wave. The wave literally ex-sists (“stands out”) of the ocean – but in reality, there is no separate wave standing out." (quote) I think what tends to happen is this , the wave sees that it is the ocean, the wave uses this insight to deny there was a wave in the first place ' ( quote ) The wave can't see that its the ocean, that's one of the statements made that shows his confusion.... By limiting one's model to the wave/ocean analogy, actuality is excluded.. for the raindrop, cloud, and snowflake, they can see 'both' the wave AND the ocean from an actual perspective outside the model that supports the limitations needed to give the illusion that a set of beliefs are true.. be the snowflake, the raindrop, the cloud, the pond, the stream, the pud muddle, it's all the same 'stuff' but it's liberated from the limitations of the model/analogy.. Be well.. |
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Post by justlikeyou on Jan 8, 2014 7:50:07 GMT -5
Part 4 of the essay by Jeff Foster:
THE END OF FUNDAMENTALISM
And so the way I talk about nonduality has really changed over the years – it has evolved to incorporate this fundamental insight of non-separation between what we call ‘personal’ and what we call ‘impersonal’. I used to speak much more from the absolute, ‘oceanic’ perspective – no me, no you, no world – and I still do sometimes, but only at certain times, and in certain contexts, when it seems appropriate. From the perspective of the ocean, there is no time and space, nothing to do and nowhere to go, because the ocean is beyond all of those divisions. At the same time, however, this ultimate truth expresses itself as time and space, as the appearance of the waves, as the appearance of someone in a world. There is no me and no you, but there is the appearance of me and you – and this is where we live and meet, in the appearance. You don’t exist, and yet you do, and that is why I can love you. I am not here as a separate entity, and yet I am here, undeniably so, and so are you. What I am (as the ocean) is beyond the story, and yet, undeniably, the story appears (the wave) – and as the wave, I have no need to deny the story, or pretend it doesn’t exist – how can a story deny a story? So I dance and play as the wave, knowing myself at all times as the ocean, without contradiction. This only appears to be a paradox to the seeking mind…
And so what is seen these days is this: nonduality is not a rejection of duality, but a celebration of it – such a total celebration, that one cannot even use the words ‘nonduality’ and ‘duality’ as separate from each other. No-one and someone are actually one – they were never two. If ‘there is no-one’ is the crucifixion, then ‘there appears to be someone’ is the resurrection. The crucifixion needs the resurrection to complete itself. And so radical Advaita is only partially true – until it completes itself with its reflection. Then it’s all over.
When I drive my car too fast on the motorway, and a policeman pulls me over and asks me my name, I say “Jeff Foster”. I don’t say “I am no-one” or “Jeff Foster does not exist”. And although in an ultimate sense all of this may be true, still, when I say it, it’s not true – it’s simply another concept. Nobody lives in ‘ultimately true’. We cannot live in ultimates. We live here, in this world of time and space and apparent things, and so I meet the policeman and say “Jeff Foster” – and that is love. (Yes, love, even with a police officer!) Even the most fundamentalist nonduality teacher answers to their name when pulled over by a policeman. Who can deny name and form? Who can deny the story? Who is going to deny the personal? Who would even want to?
to be continued....
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Post by quinn on Jan 8, 2014 8:25:01 GMT -5
Haha, that's FigAndrew 101, 'embracing the personal'. And now he even adds a ...  Isn't it the same Slippery Slope to say - If practices are done (A), they will only feed into personal gain (self-improvement) and hinder Realization (Z)? |
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Post by quinn on Jan 8, 2014 8:27:46 GMT -5
I just don't read any thing in this that shows he knows what he's talking about. If the disappearance of the personal self has never been seen, all the meditating, conceptualization's , minding isn't going to help. Maybe the best that can happen to the personal self is that it form's a ' belief' that there suffering is happening to no-one. Yeah, he obviously doesn't or else he wouldn't be mixing contexts all the time. When the personal is already an expression/extension of the impersonal, what is there to embrace and include? Hello?! The best that can happen to the personal self is to forget about this spirituality stuff altogether and enjoy life. Slippery Slope #2: Getting involved with spirituality stuff (A) will lead to confusion and all sorts of problems, therefore it's best to forget it (Z). You could end up thinking you're a Bonobo monkey. Or a car. Hehe. |
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Post by laughter on Jan 8, 2014 10:44:14 GMT -5
Part 3 of an essay by Jeff Foster Haha, that's FigAndrew 101, 'embracing the personal'. And now he even adds a ... Here's a giveaway: "the world is a perfect mirror of itself". The context in which this is true includes a deep and abiding mystery, because there's no way for the mind to ever wrap itself around the scope of what's mirrored. Using the idea of "perfection" to conclude that "only a teacher at war with their own ignorance would label another teacher ignorant" embodies the self-contradiction of the fact that it's written in this mea-culpa essay where Jeff admits his own past mistake. Jeff is infamous for having published something at one point that declared the perfection of the world including images of nuclear mushroom clouds and concentration camp victims. Part of the perfection of the world includes naming certain things as negative: Jim Jones was a spiritual teacher, and yeah, he was ignorant, as was the leader of the Heavens Gate ... it's a pretty long list, actually. If Jeff declared himself a teacher prematurely, why should we follow him now? To see how tricky the idea of karma is consider the metaphor of action in terms of the archer. What the archer does is let fly an arrow, and his target is really himself. The arrow is shot by a person, but the target is the entire Universe. While there's no way not to hit the mark, thinking that we can ever score the shot is an arrogance. Jeff suggests that every arrow acts as a perfect boomerang, but the fact is that yeah, sometimes we're called on to be our brother's keeper, and the only question is, do we keep gently and wisely or carelessly and in a self-serving fashion? These essays are a TMT-fest. |
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Post by laughter on Jan 8, 2014 10:51:03 GMT -5
Yeah, that's what the non-duality for dummies textbook says. But then he goes on and talks about embracing and including that which is already the case and treats the impersonal as the opposite of the personal again. Quite a mess that article. It would be more honest to just say, 'I fell into this trap, so be careful you don't too.' Instead he acts like the teachers are to blame.  he doesn't even see the obvious infinite loop, the contradictory self-reference, because, in the middle of upbraiding the teachers and the teaching he writes: |
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Post by laughter on Jan 8, 2014 10:54:35 GMT -5
Haha, that's FigAndrew 101, 'embracing the personal'. And now he even adds a ... Isn't it the same Slippery Slope to say - If practices are done (A), they will only feed into personal gain (self-improvement) and hinder Realization (Z)? Has anyone actually ever written that here on the forum ... or was the word "might" used instead? |
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Post by laughter on Jan 8, 2014 11:11:27 GMT -5
Well, seems like he does talk about the disappearance of the personal self. "the wave only appears to exist, only seems to exist – in reality, there is no separate wave. The wave literally ex-sists (“stands out”) of the ocean – but in reality, there is no separate wave standing out." (quote) I think what tends to happen is this , the wave sees that it is the ocean, the wave uses this insight to deny there was a wave in the first place ' ( quote ) The wave can't see that its the ocean, that's one of the statements made that shows his confusion.... I agree that it demonstrates his confusion but I disagree with why it does. Is it the wave or the ocean that realizes the relationship between the two? ( _______________________________________________________________) |
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Post by laughter on Jan 8, 2014 11:15:39 GMT -5
Despite some of the callow content of these essays, there's no denying the sublime genius of the kid. Ya' just gotta love 'em.  |
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he doesn't even see the obvious infinite loop, the contradictory self-reference, because, in the middle of upbraiding the teachers and the teaching he writes: