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Post by onehandclapping on Sept 6, 2011 1:11:17 GMT -5
Tath, I would say you have taken up the position of having knowledge that others do not have. You seem to claim by your words that you sit further back in the movie theatre of life than all others.
Anyone else agree with that or am I way off here?
My seem originates from the same place everything originates or doesn't originate from. Once again, you attempt to attack my words which you supposedly know are ultimately flawed when conversating about IT to somehow prop yourself up as "on a higher level" or somehow different. Zendancer is looking like he might have hit the nail on the head when he parralled the crytsal teacher and this new member.
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Post by tathagata on Sept 6, 2011 4:08:54 GMT -5
Tath, I would say you have taken up the position of having knowledge that others do not have. You seem to claim by your words that you sit further back in the movie theatre of life than all others. Anyone else agree with that or am I way off here? My seem originates from the same place everything originates or doesn't originate from. Once again, you attempt to attack my words which you supposedly know are ultimately flawed when conversating about IT to somehow prop yourself up as "on a higher level" or somehow different. Zendancer is looking like he might have hit the nail on the head when he parralled the crytsal teacher and this new member. Where have i said that i sit further back in the movie theater of life than someone who has had a realization of self...and also..I asked where the seem comes from to get you to turn inward and look for motivations in you that drove you to interact with me this way... Anyone who has been in samadhi has had enlightenment...anyone who has stepped back into IT in your words has seen and intimately experienced enlightenment.... But here is the kerfuffle LOL If someone who has experienced their true nature for a time and then has had their ego reamerge is enlightened...then what do you call someone whose ego does not and will not reamerge becuase they willingly surrendered it to death?...someone who is in direct experience of their true nature all the time but whose ego died instead of just took a break?...what do you call this person who takes no action Becuase they are free of worries free of cares, free of attachment judgement and desires?...a person who Becuase they have no ego and no attachment even to their own awareness spontaniously moves or not moves in each moment with no knowledge or plan for what will happen in the next moment...what do you call a person who doesn't even know what the next word is going be while they are typing and being in the stillness...what is the word for this person if the definition for enlightenment has now become that you have seen your true nature but your ego still atttaches and judges and does everything it did before you saw your true nature? You have dipped into your true nature and had the experience..the realization..the awakening....how often do you return...how often do you undo your ego in meditation...how much and how many times will it take before your ego is dead...before you surrender it utterly?...before you surrender yourself utterly?...what will you be defined as when you have? If in your utter eternal still self there is a movement wherein you sit down someplace and answer questions someone comes along and says how dare you answer questions how will you respond if there is nothing but stillness responding...will you plan your response in a way that doesn't disturb anyone, or will it rise one word at a time out of stillness and then fall back into stillness...what will you do when you have become the stillness and in the stillness you move to sit down and answer questions and someone comes along and says how dare you sit down to asnwer questions, who do you think you are?...how will you respond when you dont think at all? mu |
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Post by tathagata on Sept 6, 2011 4:37:08 GMT -5
Tath, I would say you have taken up the position of having knowledge that others do not have. You seem to claim by your words that you sit further back in the movie theatre of life than all others. Anyone else agree with that or am I way off here? My seem originates from the same place everything originates or doesn't originate from. Once again, you attempt to attack my words which you supposedly know are ultimately flawed when conversating about IT to somehow prop yourself up as "on a higher level" or somehow different. Zendancer is looking like he might have hit the nail on the head when he parralled the crytsal teacher and this new member. You are a wonder and a joy to have a conversation with...but is this conversation building your ego layers or removing your ego layers...is your ego making you happy right now?...are you feeling more connected and fullfilled or less while typing your responses and thinking about me?...if the answers are not that your ego/attachments are disappearing and you are feeling more connected...or at least spending more time in your still nature....then why are you choosing these types of interactions? Are you choosing them from a still center of aware conciousness...or are they just the automotron ego robot plodding forward? |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2011 7:45:42 GMT -5
For those who remember the cigarette-man koan (about the man who is strongly attached to his idea of emptiness), here is a true "cigarette-man" story. Several years ago a man found himself in a living hell. His existence was so nightmarish and horrific that it destroyed his previous identity and left him struggling to stay alive and stay sane. In the midst of this nightmare the man picked up a spiritual book, read a single sentence, and had a major awakening experience. Instantly he found peace and equanimity and lost all concern with his body's life or death. In the midst of a nightmare the man found himself free and unaffected by his surroundings. Several months later the nightmare ended and the man was free to do whatever he wished. He then wrote a book about his life, experiences, and understanding. After his book was published, he began to give satsang and conduct meditation retreats, and soon acquired a large following. As more and more people came to him for his teachings, he acquired and dispersed many new ideas. He began to see people in terms of their level of spiritual attainment, and he began ranking them accordingly. One person might be a 530 and another person might be a 480. He considered Jesus, The Buddha, and himself to be at 1000 and everyone else was somewhere between 0 and that level. As he became more attached this idea and a few other similar ideas, his followers began to dwindle. People who heard his teachings began to think that something wasn't quite right and that he didn't pass the guru smell-test. After his following collapsed, which he attributed to people's "unwillingness to hear the truth" or "unreadiness to embrace the truth," he moved to a new location only a few hundred miles from my home. Carol and I had always been curious about this man, but we knew nothing about him other than what he had written in his book. We did not know what he was currently teaching. Carol and our daughter decided to go visit the man's new retreat facility, which was a kind of spa with gourmet food. After they returned three days later, I asked them what had happened. Carol told me that the man had ridden up to the retreat facility on a motorcycle, introduced himself, dangled a crystal in front of them, and told her that she was at a spiritual level of 480 and our daughter was a level of 440. I asked, "Are you serious?" She laughed and assured me that she was and that she and our daughter were somewhat stunned. I told her that she should have grabbed the crystal, thrown it into the field, and asked, "What level is that?" She laughed and said that she had been too surprised to think of that. A year later I went to the man's retreat center along with two chiropractors and their wives. The man did not bring out any crystals or talk much during the first day. He had a beautiful facility with great food and an idyllic medtitation site. I sat with him for three days and had a great time. I found him likable, kind, generous, and interesting, but not nearly as deep or as clear as many other teachers I had met. Some of his ideas were a bit wacky and he was very attached to his high level of attainment and his ability to accurately guage other people's level of attainment. He had a wonderful dog that I think was more enlightened than he was. After I returned home, I sent him a thank you note for the retreat, and included a copy of my spiritual autobiography. A week later he called to tell me that although he had long quit reading spiritual books, he read mine and found it to be hysterically funny. He said, "I laughed more than I've laughed in many years." He then told me that my level of attainment was very high, much higher than various teachers I mentioned in the book. He implied that I was very close to Buddhahood, and that with the right teacher (guess who?) I could probably get there. I replied that I was amazed at his ability to rank people's attainment that he had never met (some of whom were dead). He did not detect my sarcasm and explained that is was due to his deep intuitive connection with Source. He did not remember that some of the levels he quoted varied significantly from what he had previously told me or other people. He even told me that my wife's attainment was now much greater than Gangaji's, a statement that later elicited enormous laughter from Carol. The bottom line? He was a cigarette-man strongly attached to a new set of ideas that had replaced an earlier set of ideas. Here was a man who had had a huge awakening experience and experienced total freedom only to have his attainment eventually coopted by the mind. Probably the best definition of enlightenment is "non-abidance in the mind." Enlightement is the realization that there is nothing to attain and no one separate who could attain it. About the only thing that one "gets" from enlightenment is the cessation of seeking. The enlightened life is very ordinary. It is not special. It is sitting at McDonalds sipping a coffee, typing on a laptop, watching cars go by, listening to an angry father yelling at his young son, and thinking, "Lighten up Dad; the kid is only four years old." No past, no future, and no present. No one separate from the action. The truth is "just like this." It is very simple. How do we teach the cigarette-man? He is very strong. No matter what we say he will hit us. He is right and everyone else is wrong. Only he knows the truth. Other teachers have lower levels of attainment than he does, so he will not listen to anything anyone else says. It's a pretty good koan, isn't it? ZD, how does this square with the "Trust yourself 100%" advice. The cigarette man / crystal teacher seem to trust themselves 100%, eh? They could use a bit more doubt right? |
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Post by chinabelle on Sept 6, 2011 8:30:52 GMT -5
Before enlightenment chopping wood ,lighting fire.
After enlightenment chopping wood,lighting fire.
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Post by tathagata on Sept 6, 2011 9:22:26 GMT -5
Before enlightenment chopping wood ,lighting fire. After enlightenment chopping wood,lighting fire. I don't know why the wind blows, but the flower still moves in the breeze. |
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Post by tathagata on Sept 6, 2011 9:52:05 GMT -5
A guide to self inquiry:
There are many many techniques...this varience of techniques only exists so that the each personalty type can have a starting point that works for them within their lifestyle and thought paradigm.
But ultimately all techniques lead back to the one technique...observe the observer...or observe your awareness...see who is seeing...
Your sitting in a room looking forward, become aware of your seeing (you could also choose to become aware of your smelling, touching, feeling of emotion, hearing, or thinking)...become aware of the seeing, then become aware of of your awareness of seeing....now close your eyes so there is no seeing and only the awareness that was aware of the seeing...now observe that awareness...wash rinse repeat as much and as often as possible and either imedietly or with time you will see and enter your full nature....see and enter your full nature enough and in some amount of time between now and the next 90 years you will see the futility of all ego/attachment and you will surrender it away and just be in the stillness of your nature....other techniques exist only to give you a starting point to get to this technique...so there are many many paths that are there just for you to have a place to step off of the outward moving path and unto the inward moving path at the spot you in this moment, but all paths lead back to this one path, and that path leads to your eternal nature.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2011 10:18:36 GMT -5
why do anything else then?
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Post by enigma on Sept 6, 2011 10:20:05 GMT -5
Before enlightenment chopping wood ,lighting fire. After enlightenment chopping wood,lighting fire. Do you hire the Mexicans to carry the water?? |
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Post by enigma on Sept 6, 2011 10:26:09 GMT -5
Before enlightenment chopping wood ,lighting fire. After enlightenment chopping wood,lighting fire. I don't know why the wind blows, but the flower still moves in the breeze. Welp, it has to do with the movement of air masses as the sun heats the Earth. I'm sure you can Google it.  |
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Post by onehandclapping on Sept 6, 2011 10:28:50 GMT -5
Hahahahahaha. Once again you make me laugh Tath in your response. We bow down before you oh great one.
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Post by enigma on Sept 6, 2011 11:11:09 GMT -5
ZD, how does this square with the "Trust yourself 100%" advice. The cigarette man / crystal teacher seem to trust themselves 100%, eh? They could use a bit more doubt right? Just posted this elsewhere. Maybe it applies: Mind is sorta like a house of mirrors. When you enter, everything becomes oddly distorted, and this may also be interesting, but they're just reflections and they don't actually distort you. You don't put a bag over your head or go home and start a diet because of what you saw in the mirrors. You also don't imagine that the reflections you see somehow trap you inside the house of mirrors. You don't confuse the distorted reflection in the mirrors for the exit door. Why not? Because you know the difference between the reflections and what's being reflected; between the house of mirrors, and what the mirrors are telling you ABOUT the house. Don't trust what you think about your refection, trust what you already know yourself to be before you looked in the mirrors. |
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Post by tathagata on Sept 6, 2011 11:32:29 GMT -5
why do anything else then? really only as a starting point from moving attention outward to moving attention inward... or stated another way...it is very hard sometimes for many people to do this one simple thing...some people have been riding the train of there focus on things outside of themselves in certain directions for so long that its hard to get off that train and get on the one heading back to a focus of attention on things happening inside themselves...the other techniques help a person turn around and look inward...they help to stop the forward inertia of the outward movement the place that person is in at that moment. the reason there are so many other techniques, is that there are so many places from which people can turn inward from outward. said another way Max...not everyone is as ready as you are for some real self observation lol...some people are so attached to things outside of themselves that its very very hard to pull away and look inward...people get fixated on things... for example the no judgement technique I suggested to ivory...at the time he was so fixated on his value judgment of things I said and things that he believed were good or bad that if I said just be aware of yourself being aware there was little chance he was going to listen and turn away from assesments and judgments and into himself...but if he removes judgment...the thing that was moving him outward in a selection of right or wrong process...then the hold of the attachment to the thing he was judging would break and he could turn inward. the other techniques really just offer a jumping off point...they can however take you all the way to the still full nature of yourself becuase they can undo you...but without awareness of the awareness of the doer happening in a way that ultimately breaks the cycle of ego building and ego surrendering...there will always be a movement outward re-establishing, and the resultant happiness and suffering and absorbtion in the illusion of the small seperate self. |
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Post by zendancer on Sept 6, 2011 11:37:50 GMT -5
Max: You wrote, "ZD, how does this square with the "Trust yourself 100%" advice. The cigarette man / crystal teacher seem to trust themselves 100%, eh? They could use a bit more doubt right?"
Trusting yourself 100% does not mean that you close yourself off from the world and refuse to learn. The truth is vast and deep, and anyone who thinks they know everything there is to know is seriously deluded. There is no end to what can be learned, even after penetrating the illusion of selfhood. One reason that I enjoy this website so much is that I constantly learn new things here. People often raise issues and ask questions that trigger new insights and understanding. Trusting yourself 100% means that you have to be the final arbiter of whatever advice or information you receive. Cults spring up when people refuse to question charismatic teachers and follow them blindly. Blindly following someone else is a recipe for disaster. Use the smell test with every teacher you encounter, and trust your intuition.
Enlightenment poses a particular set of unique problems, and the spiritual literature is full of fascinating accounts of how different people interacted in the student/teacher relationship. Zen, particularly, has many such accounts.
When someone has a big cosmic consciousness experience, or a deep realization, it usually revolutionizes his/her understanding. Subsequently, such a person may exhibit what Zen calls "the stink of enlightenment." The individual is so euphoric, and so confident, and so certain that he/she has penetrated the secrets of the universe that superciliousness and patronization can become the order of the day. I know this because I've experienced it. I look back on the two or three months in 1999 following the realization that ended my spiritual search, and I shudder at some of the things this body/mind said and did. How embarrassing! The universe knew that there was no Bob Harwood, but the universe was too full of itself for anyone's good. Ha ha. I felt as if the World Teacher had arrived. My attitude was, "Ask me anything, and I'll explain it to you." LOL
This is a very common enlightenment sickness, and here are few classic stories from Zen about it.
1. Two Zen monks came to a river. One of them pulled up his robes and waded across. The other monk walked across on the surface of the water. When they got to the other side, the monk who had waded through the river said, "If I had known that you were that kind of monk, I would have broken your legs before we got to the river."
2. A man who would later become a famous Zen Master reached a point in his training where he thought he understood enough to start traveling and teaching. He told his master that he was leaving the monastery. I can't remember the interesting dialogue that they had without looking it up, but the master asked him a question, the monk answered, and the master made one last comment. That one comment caused the monk to unpack his bags and spend several more years with his master before his master finally told him that he was ready to teach. The monk had already had several deep enlightenment experiences and was very advanced in his understanding, but he realized from what his master said, that he was not as advanced as he thought he was.
3. A monk became enlightened, and birds subsequently landed on his shoulders and wild animals gathered around him wherever his went. At some point he met a master who made him realize that he hadn't yet fully plumbed the depths. After a lot more meditation, he went deeper than before, and the birds and other animals never came around him again.
There is a realm on the Zen circle that is known as the realm of magic and miracles. It is the area from 270 degrees to 359 degrees. In this area anything is possible, but Zen eschews this area as nothing more than an advanced form of makyo and lack of clarity. At 360 degrees the sage reaches the stage depicted in the tenth ox-herding picture. She is an ordinary person who wanders around offering help wherever it is needed and lives an ordinary life. She has gone beyond. She does not think of herself as a teacher (or anything else), but her life is, itself, a teaching.
There is no final stopping point on the path of non-duality. There is only presence. THIS!
I suspect that this is what Jesus was referring to when he said, "The foxes have holes and the birds have nests, but the son of man hath nowhere to lay his head."
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Post by tathagata on Sept 6, 2011 13:18:06 GMT -5
I know this because I've experienced it. I look back on the two or three months in 1999 following the realization that ended my spiritual search, and I shudder at some of the things this body/mind said and did. How embarrassing! The universe knew that there was no Bob Harwood, but the universe was too full of itself for anyone's good. Ha ha. I felt as if the World Teacher had arrived. My attitude was, "Ask me anything, and I'll explain it to you." LOL 13 years ago steven cundiff had a similar experience...in meditation he dropped into that still nature of undifferientiated self and saw is full nature...having seen it, having experienced it, he felt as though he had to share it, to teach people how to get there, to experience it for themselves, he believed it was a game changer for the world and the world just needed to see for themselves, he felt like it was his duty to help lift the veil that people put over their true nature...he dressed the part and went about it...but eventually got frustrated that people were not flocking to him to learn this great truth, he was stunned that people would turn away from such a great intrinsic truth...eventually he gave up in frustration and realized how his ego had crept back in and taken over... for the next 13 years he moved through countless births and rebirth, i.e. periods where he was the stillness and there was no steven cundiff, to periods where there was a steven cundiff but happening while in direct experience of the stillness, and periods where there was a steven cundiff that was completely absorbed in the outward and had no awareness of the stillness...over and over countless times there was this type of birth and rebirth... one day he was sitting on his balcony looking back at the birth and rebirths and and it was finally enough...he had no more reason for it to continue, it had become pointless, the benefit if there ever was one was no more...it became a comical absurdity for him...he went into samadhi for the last time...he surrendered the awareness of the doer that had lived countless lifetimes, and that had took on and dropped away countless identities...there is no shaping of opinion or learning or not learning...there is only a doing that happens in some moments and that doesnt happen in other moments...just pure doing from pure stillness...no birth or rebirth or manifestaion of the ego striving for a goal or outcome...there is only stillness. This is far from being recommended here, if every being did this creation would cease to exist...but there are a few that are not wanting the birth and rebirth of the ego, they do not want the cycles of bondage and liberation...of creation and nonbeing being...for those this is a way...for others happiness is sought, for others oneness is sought, each person has their own lifepath, there is no right lifepath...there is the comic absurdity of creation for the sake of creation and for no other reason... I have sat and answered questions...where did it come from inside you that this was a good or a bad thing and that I had said there was one way or another way that was right for everyone, where did these assumptions and judgments come from. Where did this fear of a cult forming and you needing to make sure it doesnt happen come from for several of you? as to needing to accept and learn and not be stuck in ones own opinions closed off from learning...this is a very usefull statement, and will help the world be more compassionate if adopted by everybody...but the continual unfoldment of learning that you speak of doesnt continue forever, it continues for as long as you want to be a growing evolving you, and a being closed off to further learning while holding on to your own ideas is only something that can continue while there is a you to hold on to them. In me the awareness of the doer, and the stillness that observes without observing have lost their focus on the parts, there is no seperation, there are no hands and feet, there is only the body...both are still now...there is no awareness of the doer and the stillness of conciousness...there is only the stillness of conciousness. And this stillness of conciousness doesnt decide to do or not do, the mind does that, where there is no mind there is no doing or not doing...there is only a mirror answering questions that you already know the answers to, and there is only the mirror reflecting back the self that you are manifesting for yourself....if you werent asking me questions that you already know the answers to, and if you werent reflecting back to yourself the image that you are creating...then I wouldnt even exist. |
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