There is no one to be enlightened

[fear]

Enlightenment is already here. You can say I'm but you can never say I am not. That sense of being present all the time is and always will be.

Everyone is awake whether you belive it or not. You may be stuck in the past or thinking about the future but you are doing all that from this moment. You are here in this moment but you are trying to see the future or remember the past. We do all this from this moment so we occupy ourselves instead of just being.

So enlightenment is not something you can ever get or try to achieve, it's already here. It's just a matter of lifting the veil that's clouding your vision. Incindently this veil is thought. Once the body is free from the stanglehold of thought, the pure awareness that is already there will function as pure awareness.

[karen]

Is it really that lofty a goal?

[fear]

Alpha, I like this sort of discussion because as much as I tried to write this post in a way that there's nothing to get, you managed to find "something to get" in it. By me saying that all that needs to be done is lift the veil, indicates that there is something to do, lift the veil.

It's no wonder Ramana was silent 99.9% of the time because words cannot describe the unspoken because it cannot be captured. Words are used as a tool, just as a surgeon uses a scalpel.

Uttering the magic sentence as you put it is possible. Ramana did speak to U.G krishnamurti once, he replied when asked if he could give enlightenment, "I can give it, but can you take it". This question troubled u.g for years and years and eventually led to his "being thrown off the merrygoround" or "calamity" as he describes it.
Jesus told the rich man to give away his riches and he would enter the kingdom of heaven.

I think these awakened beings can see weakness in someone's ego and precisely strike at that point. But for them to send a message to the masses is a waste of their energy because it will only be interpreted and turned into some sort of religion.

How to live? is a great question to ask onself but when you've figured that out why not just live. All we ever do is ask how?, how to get this, how to do this, how to escape our suffering, how? how? how? How keep us in the future, drop the how and you've just brought yourself back into the moment.

[divinity]

Yes Fear... look what they did with poor Jesus, or whatever his real name may have been... if he ever really lived at all... the legends became the religion "about" Jesus rather than what might have been much better, namely the religion "of" Jesus.
I think truely enlightened beings would not be on a message board where people could track them down!

[giannis]

Yes, it's already here.
How would you achieve something that is already reality? Reality would already be. Child like honesty would be enough to see.

A big problem is that we have made it something incredible to be, a big psychological release and a subsequent freedom and everything.
It's already here, nothing will change.

You will just admit something... and then you'll have a little smile.
And then, as you forget yourself while living, doubt will probably come again. Experiences will come again... irrelevant!

Freaking out, searching vigorously etc, is a part of the big theatre play we are partaking in.

That's what a little bird told me...

[question]

This tiny veil is "just" the thinking mind, huh? Well if it's "just" that then how come it's so difficult to wake up? Oh I forgot, it's because the Truth is so simple and obvious. To me this doesn't make any sense. I'm not even trying to resist it (how could I even?) but still... nothing.

Oct 16, 2009 19:57:45 GMT -5 fear said:

Uttering the magic sentence as you put it is possible. Ramana did speak to U.G krishnamurti once, he replied when asked if he could give enlightenment, "I can give it, but can you take it".

lol that's so stupid... iirc UG first thought "What is he talking about? If there's anyone who can take it, it's me!". But Ramana can't give it. What is he supposed to give? And who is there to take it?

[Portto]

Oct 16, 2009 13:55:14 GMT -5 fear said:

You can say I'm but you can never say I am not. That sense of being present all the time is and always will be.

In my case, the sense of being present comes and goes.

The most common example is deep dreamless sleep: there's no "I am" in that state!

[Portto]

Oct 16, 2009 13:55:14 GMT -5 fear said:

Everyone is awake whether you belive it or not.
....
So enlightenment is not something you can ever get or try to achieve, it's already here.

I agree.

How can we say that a certain master is enlightened, when enlightenment is the realization that there's no separate individual, and there never was.

Saying that someone is enlightened is just a way for my mind to create more division, and maybe a goal.

[dramos]

Enlightenment is the realization of a Truth, dropping the ego, allowing and accepting that which IS and understanding that which IS NOT.

Becoming awake is "seeing" ,for the first time, the purity of being and of what life IS.

Awareness is the knowing of no division, we are all ONE.

[zendancer]

While reading this thread, the following few quotes (from hundreds of similar ones) came to mind:

(1) "All at once the teacher, the room, every single thing disappeared in a dazzling stream of illumination and I felt myself bathed in a delicious, unspeakable delight...For a fleeting eternity I was alone--I alone was...Then the teacher swam into view. Our eyes met and flowed into each other, and we burst out laughing. 'I have it! I know! There is nothing, absolutely nothing. I am everything and everything is nothing!' I exclaimed more to myself than to the teacher....."

(2) "One day I wiped out all the notions from my mind. I gave up all desire. I discarded all the words with which I thought and stayed in quietude. I felt a little queer--as if I were being carried into something, or as if I were touching some power unknown to me...and Ztt! I entered. I lost the boundary of my physical body. I had my skin, of course, but I felt I was standing in the center of the cosmos. I spoke, but my words had lost their meaning. I saw people coming towards me, but all were the same man. All were myself! I had never known this world. I had believed that I was created, but now I must change my opinion. I was never created; I was the cosmos; no individual Mr. Sasaki existed."

(3) "At midnight I abruptly awakened. At first my mind was foggy, then suddenly that quotation (from a book he had been reading) flashed into my consciousness: 'I came to realize clearly that Mind is no other than mountains, rivers, and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars.' And I repeated it. Then all at once I was struck as though by lightning, and the next instant heaven and earth crumbled and disappeared. Instantaneously, like surging waves, a tremendous delight welled up in me, a veritable hurricane of delight, as I laughed loudly and wildly: 'Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! There's no reasoning here, no reasoning at all! Ha, ha, ha!' The empty sky split in two, then opened its enormous mouth and began to laugh uproariously: "Ha, ha, ha!' Later, one of the members of my family told me that my laughter had sounded inhuman.
I was now lying on my back. Suddenly I sat up and struck the bed with all my might and beat the floor with my feet, as if trying to smash it, all the while laughing riotously. My wife and youngest son, sleeping near me, were now awake and frightened. Covering my mouth with her hand, my wife exclaimed: 'What's the matter with you? What's the matter with you?' But I wasn't aware of this until told about it afterwards. My son told me later that he thought I had gone mad.
'I've come to enlightenment! The Buddha and the patriarchs haven't deceived me! They haven't deceived me!"

(4) "Suddenly, my mind split open and my body disintegrated. At least I was no longer inhabiting a body in any usual sense.......there was no inside or outside.

(5) "All at once everything became sheer brilliance, and I saw and knew that I am the only One in the whole universe! Yes, I am that only One!"

(6) "All at once, without warning of any kind, he found himself wrapped as it were by a flame-colored cloud. For an instant he thought of fire, some sudden conflagration in the great city; the next, he knew that the light was within himself. Directly afterwards came upon him a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe...Among other things, he did not come to believe, he saw and knew that the Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence..."

(7) "This life is now lived in a constant, ever-present awareness of the infinite vastness that I am. In this state, there is absolutely no reference point, yet an entire range of emotions, thoughts, actions, and responses are simultaneously present. The infinite--which is at once the substance of everything and the ocean within which everything arises and passes away--is aware of itself constantly, whether the mind and body are sleeping, dreaming, or waking."

The people quoted above would undoubtedly agree with the statement, "There is no one to be enlightened," but they would probably get a chuckle from much of what follows. Ramana, of course, would remain silent.

During the last two weeks it has been colder at the top of Black Mountain than at lower elevations, and the leaves there have already turned to a brilliant red. After yesterday's rain (the seventh in a row), the mosses on the rocks near the summit were a bright green, almost irridescent. We climbed the three-mile trail to the summit picking up aluminum cans and trash left behind by others, wondering what they were thinking as they hiked through such a fantasia. At the sandstone overlook into Grassy Cove a fine mist swirled in eddies, obscuring the view, and the only sound was water steadily dripping off the surrounding trees from the earlier rain. After looking and listening for a while, we turned around and hiked back down the mountain. One lone four-wheeler roared past, breaking the silence and spewing blue-green fumes, the smell of which lingered in the air long after the sound of the motor had faded away. Dusk was closing in around us as we opened the door to the car to deposit the bags of trash. In the darkness a single bird called out from deep in the woods. Haunting......

[eputkonen]

Oct 16, 2009 13:55:14 GMT -5 fear said:

Enlightenment is already here. You can say I'm but you can never say I am not. That sense of being present all the time is and always will be.

Yes, seeking Enlightenment is like looking for the necklace you are already wearing (a classic analogy). As long as you are looking around for it, you will never notice you are already wearing it.

The veil is simply the idea that it is missing and not realizing you are wearing it. So when it is "found", you realize nothing was gained...you always had it.

No wonder that what a Zen Master said he experience upon Enlightenment was feeling embarrassed. A typical reaction upon finding the necklace you are are already wearing.

[fear]

Oct 16, 2009 21:02:52 GMT -5 question said:

This tiny veil is "just" the thinking mind, huh? Well if it's "just" that then how come it's so difficult to wake up? Oh I forgot, it's because the Truth is so simple and obvious. To me this doesn't make any sense. I'm not even trying to resist it (how could I even?) but still... nothing.

Oct 16, 2009 19:57:45 GMT -5 fear said:

Uttering the magic sentence as you put it is possible. Ramana did speak to U.G krishnamurti once, he replied when asked if he could give enlightenment, "I can give it, but can you take it".

lol that's so stupid... iirc UG first thought "What is he talking about? If there's anyone who can take it, it's me!". But Ramana can't give it. What is he supposed to give? And who is there to take it?

That frustration I sense in your writing is you waking up. You're getting tired and when you have had enough, Wham!

If I meditate, a deep sense of something not being right arises in me. My knowledge tells me that's it's the belief of being separate from everything. The separation gives makes me feel alone, isolated from all the pure energy around me. I wonder why I always seek friendships and relationships to fill the lonely void. Facing reality takes a lot of courage. Most of us don't even have the courage to disappoint our parents and those that look upon us highly. Wouldn't it be devasting to be a nobody. We all want to fit in. These big attachments must go first. Like Richard Rose says, "keep your nose clean and you may just land on your feet". He also spoke of people ending thought when they weren't ready and ended up in the mental hospital. So for awakening to occur spontaneously, one has to be somewhat ready because it is death of the ego and the ego is you.

I think if U.G was ready Ramana would have taken him all the way. Richard Rose spoke of having connected psychicly with a woman on his retreat and he tried to take her all the way he said but she couldn't do it. She burst into tears of joy and followed him around for days but it didn't last, eventually she went back to her regular life.

[souley]

Yes, and now forget all the words in this thread and you might be closer to seeing it

"There is no one" is just an idea until you experience it. Work on your resistances and focus upon real life instead !

[lightmystic]

Definitely true.

There is some level of openness that can be pointed to. Really it's the thinking we know anything that is in the way. And that includes everything, so if we think we know that we don't know anything, then that can also get in the way.

It's like an open fist. Solid, open, strong, easy, immovable, gentle, flowing, serenity.

Oct 18, 2009 10:03:22 GMT -5 souley said:

Yes, and now forget all the words in this thread and you might be closer to seeing it

"There is no one" is just an idea until you experience it. Work on your resistances and focus upon real life instead !

[souley]

For me it seems like intellectual reasoning can show me that all my ideas are pretty much false and is just conditioning. But then even that has to be left behind so that no ideas remain. Or rather so that no ideas are believed to be anything other then ideas Reality is hilariously simple, and anything that is a combination of words, or a word, is just laid on top of it. And these words I just wrote are just meaningful to me and people who has had the same experiences. If you can't see the same simplicity, it just me desperately trying to point to it, and you forming another idea about what it could be like.

"There is no one". Ok but there is someone typing all these posts? We are all individuals posting our views. Yet there is also no one, in another sense. There is someone, and there is no one. These are all just ideas, and we are trying to use even more ideas to point to a place where all ideas are seen through. Maybe one idea will cancel the other out?