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Post by Reefs on Jul 9, 2021 13:16:07 GMT -5
Well in that case, it must be silence that's the best game in town. Sounds good to me! I wrote an article in the past about this titled "Silence Ends the Search" and I think it's included in one of the TAT books. In my yoga book it says: "calmness is godliness."
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Post by zendancer on Jul 9, 2021 15:47:31 GMT -5
Checking a dictionary and wikipedia it appears that satori is equivalent to a deep kensho. Wiki goes on to say that after kensho/satori, attaining Buddhahood, or full enlightenment, depends upon repeated deep experiences of one's true nature and a spiritual maturation gained through meditation and further realizations. Oddly enough, I could not find anything that discusses what we call "SR." If you remember, Figs could not believe that I had had a huge CC and yet still imagined that I was a separate entity who had had that experience as well as various major realizations that resulted from it. I told her that that's just what happened here, and it is actually far more common than what happened with the Buddha because the Buddha apparently had a single kensho/satori that not only allowed him to see into his true nature but also freed him from the illusion of being a SVP. I remember Figs asking, in essence, "How, if you saw that reality is a unified infinite whole and all separation is an illusion, could you have failed to see that you were NOT a SVP?" All that I could do was reply, "That's just what happened." From reading the biographies of dozens of ZM's, it appears that my experience is typical of most Zen people who have CC's. We talk a lot about SR on the forum, but I suspect that most people who are serious seekers have numerous realizations during their search, some big and some small. In my case, I once wrote down the sequence of realizations that occurred after I started meditating, and there were about 5 or 6 big ones and dozens of small ones over a period of 15 years. Each big realization was life-changing in some way. In a sense, any time a koan is resolved, a realization is involved because the resolution always involves a sudden seeing and a realization that one had followed the words of a koan rather than seeing the simple truth underlying them. I'd take Wikipedia entries with a grain of salt. The meaning of kensho is pretty straightforward, from the meaning of the Chinese characters alone (literally 'seeing into your own nature'). So that's basically self-explanatory. The meaning of the satori character is a bit more abstract (comprehension or sudden understanding). So there's room for interpretation. From my perspective, and based on my story, kensho and satori are two aspects of one realization (oneness realization). So I'm basically with the Buddha on this one, simply because that's how it happened here. And if I wouldn't have learned about your story and and how it happened there, I'd probably still insist that there is only one realization, or at least one that really counts in case someone insists on other live-changing insights. I think what Figgles never understood was that people use the term CC and can mean very different things because it is such a vague and also popular term in spiritual circles. When people on spiritual forums refer to CC they usually refer to a woo-woo experience, i.e. experience minus realization. And that seems rather common. Figgles may have had some of those. But what we are referring to with the term CC is an experience plus a realization, or more precisely, a realization that is accompanied by an experience. And that is much less common. And Figgles made it abundantly clear in our conversations that that she had no reference for that kind of realization. So all she could do was projecting the experience onto the realization. And that's where it gets nonsensical, of course. What I think added to the confusion is that CC experiences can - and usually do - reoccur. The realization, of course, doesn't. It's a one time event. Once you've passed thru the gateless gate, you're on the other side and the gate becomes meaningless. You've seen into your own nature, you can't unsee that, come hell or high water. And how you get to that ultimate realization that we call SR shouldn't actually matter. As Ramakrishna once said, once you've reached the roof, you're on the roof and don't care anymore if you've got there by climbing up a ladder or several flights of stairs. But in any case of SR, I think there's a natural tendency to take our own story as the standard template for how this is thought to generally unfold. Only when we hear enough other stories that differ significantly from our story, we realize that this may be much less predictable or standardizable than it initially seemed. I had a lot of discussions with Laughter about this. Because he didn't seem to find his story reflected in my story and also not in your story. And so there you have it, God's ways are mysterious! Better leave it there. Yes, indeed! Ironically, even though the disappearance of "the little guy in the head" and the accompanying realizations that (1) the SVP is an illusion, and (2) what we are is THIS, ended the spiritual search, the initial kensho in 1984 was the most monumental event of this life because so much was seen, and there was no doubt about what was seen. What I argued with Enigma and Figs about, primarily, was that a CC/Kensho can be called "an experience" only in retrospect. It is not really an experience because there is no SVP present, and there is no time involved. That's why I often now refer to deep CC's as "events" rather than "experiences" simply because that kind of seeing is instantaneous and can result in so many realizations. Seeing the infinite and incomprehensible nature of what we actually are is no small matter.
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Post by zazeniac on Jul 10, 2021 8:26:04 GMT -5
My favorite quote in this regard about freedom is from Hedderman: "It's not freedom 'of' self, but freedom 'from' self." And having the thought engine shut off is what that means to this body/mind.
But recently, I've been reading about Dzogchen and some of those masters talk about the grind wheel being disengaged. In other words, it still spins, but nothing is ground. Interesting. I haven't experienced this. Can someone talk about what that's like. Are the thoughts heard and understood? Do they register? Or are they just background noise? How does that work? The mind plays songs in my head that I won't often realize are playing to get or keep the body moving during rigorous activity or to lighten a mood. Is that it?
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Jul 10, 2021 9:14:18 GMT -5
My favorite quote in this regard about freedom is from Hedderman: "It's not freedom 'of' self, but freedom 'from' self." And having the thought engine shut off is what that means to this body/mind. But recently, I've been reading about Dzogchen and some of those masters talk about the grind wheel being disengaged. In other words, it still spins, but nothing is ground. Interesting. I haven't experienced this. Can someone talk about what that's like. Are the thoughts heard and understood? Do they register? Or are they just background noise? How does that work? The mind plays songs in my head that I won't often realize are playing to get or keep the body moving during rigorous activity or to lighten a mood. Is that it? Yea, Dzogchen is the real deal. For me, the grind wheel is life. *You*, the self, is always engaged with life, it's pretty-much the definition of self. There's life, we react. Some things are 'hair' triggers, when they occur self always reacts. When the grind wheel is disengaged, circumstances which once made us react, now don't. There's just calm and peace and silence. That's just about the most awesome ~place~ there is. Dzogchen says that ~place~ is always there, always available. If memory serves me it's called rigpa.
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Post by Reefs on Jul 10, 2021 9:18:57 GMT -5
Yes, indeed! Ironically, even though the disappearance of "the little guy in the head" and the accompanying realizations that (1) the SVP is an illusion, and (2) what we are is THIS, ended the spiritual search, the initial kensho in 1984 was the most monumental event of this life because so much was seen, and there was no doubt about what was seen. What I argued with Enigma and Figs about, primarily, was that a CC/Kensho can be called "an experience" only in retrospect. It is not really an experience because there is no SVP present, and there is no time involved. That's why I often now refer to deep CC's as "events" rather than "experiences" simply because that kind of seeing is instantaneous and can result in so many realizations. Seeing the infinite and incomprehensible nature of what we actually are is no small matter. I think what we all can agree upon is that there is no freedom without having seen thru the SVP. And in Advaita, it usually stops right there. Mystery solved. Mission accomplished (or so it seems). I don't know what you took away from these discussions with Enigma and Figgles, but they taught me mainly this: 1) people can teach oneness and still (unconsciously/unknowingly) argue for separation; because 2) just seeing thru the SVP without having seen directly into one's true nature can result in a rather shallow or merely theoretical understanding of oneness; and so 3) seeing thru the SVP but not seeing directly into one's true nature may result in erroneous conclusions about what the true nature of THIS actually is; therefore 4) just seeing thru the SVP doesn't give the full picture in terms of the true nature of reality. Said that, it's just not possible to have realized oneness and then still argue in all earnestness that we can never know for sure if there are other perceivers. So I'd say, just having seen thru the SVP may only give an idea or hint of what oneness is and what it implies. In order to fully comprehend oneness and what it implies, it has to be seen directly, i.e. seen with the eyes of the Infinite, which happens non-locally.
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Post by zendancer on Jul 10, 2021 11:38:28 GMT -5
Yes, indeed! Ironically, even though the disappearance of "the little guy in the head" and the accompanying realizations that (1) the SVP is an illusion, and (2) what we are is THIS, ended the spiritual search, the initial kensho in 1984 was the most monumental event of this life because so much was seen, and there was no doubt about what was seen. What I argued with Enigma and Figs about, primarily, was that a CC/Kensho can be called "an experience" only in retrospect. It is not really an experience because there is no SVP present, and there is no time involved. That's why I often now refer to deep CC's as "events" rather than "experiences" simply because that kind of seeing is instantaneous and can result in so many realizations. Seeing the infinite and incomprehensible nature of what we actually are is no small matter. I think what we all can agree upon is that there is no freedom without having seen thru the SVP. And in Advaita, it usually stops right there. Mystery solved. Mission accomplished (or so it seems). I don't know what you took away from these discussions with Enigma and Figgles, but they taught me mainly this: 1) people can teach oneness and still (unconsciously/unknowingly) argue for separation; because 2) just seeing thru the SVP without having seen directly into one's true nature can result in a rather shallow or merely theoretical understanding of oneness; and so 3) seeing thru the SVP but not seeing directly into one's true nature may result in erroneous conclusions about what the true nature of THIS actually is; therefore 4) just seeing thru the SVP doesn't give the full picture in terms of the true nature of reality. Said that, it's just not possible to have realized oneness and then still argue in all earnestness that we can never know for sure if there are other perceivers. So I'd say, just having seen thru the SVP may only give an idea or hint of what oneness is and what it implies. In order to fully comprehend oneness and what it implies, it has to be seen directly, i.e. seen with the eyes of the Infinite, which happens non-locally. Yes. I totally agree. After "the little guy in the head" suddenly vanished, and it was realized that the whole SVP thing had been an incredible illusion, there was still the world/reality/the actual being seen, and before the question, "What is seeing if there is no SVP?" could fully arise, it was suddenly realized that what had been seen 15 years earlier during a CC was the whole shebang, and that THAT had been both the see-er and the seen. If there hadn't been a CC that revealed the Infinite 15 years earlier, I have no idea what might have been erroneously concluded. The other thing I remember mentioning during the discussions with E was the psychological effect of directly apprehending the Infinite. It left me in a state of awe and reverence (or adoration) for the vastness of what had been seen, and that seems to be missing in people who have only penetrated the illusion of the SVP. Unless the Infinite has been seen with the eyes of the Infinite, a sense of the spiritual or a sense of holiness seems to be absent. Seeing into one's true nature makes one feel like bowing down in worship of THAT.
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Post by zazeniac on Jul 10, 2021 16:12:05 GMT -5
Thought this was funny and pertinent.
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Post by Reefs on Jul 11, 2021 5:56:46 GMT -5
I think what we all can agree upon is that there is no freedom without having seen thru the SVP. And in Advaita, it usually stops right there. Mystery solved. Mission accomplished (or so it seems). I don't know what you took away from these discussions with Enigma and Figgles, but they taught me mainly this: 1) people can teach oneness and still (unconsciously/unknowingly) argue for separation; because 2) just seeing thru the SVP without having seen directly into one's true nature can result in a rather shallow or merely theoretical understanding of oneness; and so 3) seeing thru the SVP but not seeing directly into one's true nature may result in erroneous conclusions about what the true nature of THIS actually is; therefore 4) just seeing thru the SVP doesn't give the full picture in terms of the true nature of reality. Said that, it's just not possible to have realized oneness and then still argue in all earnestness that we can never know for sure if there are other perceivers. So I'd say, just having seen thru the SVP may only give an idea or hint of what oneness is and what it implies. In order to fully comprehend oneness and what it implies, it has to be seen directly, i.e. seen with the eyes of the Infinite, which happens non-locally. Yes. I totally agree. After "the little guy in the head" suddenly vanished, and it was realized that the whole SVP thing had been an incredible illusion, there was still the world/reality/the actual being seen, and before the question, "What is seeing if there is no SVP?" could fully arise, it was suddenly realized that what had been seen 15 years earlier during a CC was the whole shebang, and that THAT had been both the see-er and the seen. If there hadn't been a CC that revealed the Infinite 15 years earlier, I have no idea what might have been erroneously concluded.
The other thing I remember mentioning during the discussions with E was the psychological effect of directly apprehending the Infinite. It left me in a state of awe and reverence (or adoration) for the vastness of what had been seen, and that seems to be missing in people who have only penetrated the illusion of the SVP. Unless the Infinite has been seen with the eyes of the Infinite, a sense of the spiritual or a sense of holiness seems to be absent. Seeing into one's true nature makes one feel like bowing down in worship of THAT. Better not entertain such hypotheticals. I'll go thru Segal's book again and post some of her descriptions of CC/kensho in a separate thread later, because her case is really interesting. And she does point out some things that clearly distinguish CC's from both ordinary experiences and woo-woo experiences. One key point is non-locality of perception, which people who haven't had that reference seem unable to comprehend and make sense of. But this is one main point why it is not, ultimately, 'just another experience'.
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Post by Reefs on Jul 11, 2021 6:03:44 GMT -5
Thought this was funny and pertinent. Yes, mental diarrhea is a big problem these days. I think it has something to do with overexposure to electronic devices which seem to keep us in high-beta brainwave states all the time. In yoga they teach: The senses are controlled by the mind. And the mind is controlled by the breath. So the easy way out of mental diarrhea should be obvious: breath control. It doesn't even have to be meditation.
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Post by zendancer on Jul 11, 2021 8:55:59 GMT -5
Yes. I totally agree. After "the little guy in the head" suddenly vanished, and it was realized that the whole SVP thing had been an incredible illusion, there was still the world/reality/the actual being seen, and before the question, "What is seeing if there is no SVP?" could fully arise, it was suddenly realized that what had been seen 15 years earlier during a CC was the whole shebang, and that THAT had been both the see-er and the seen. If there hadn't been a CC that revealed the Infinite 15 years earlier, I have no idea what might have been erroneously concluded.
The other thing I remember mentioning during the discussions with E was the psychological effect of directly apprehending the Infinite. It left me in a state of awe and reverence (or adoration) for the vastness of what had been seen, and that seems to be missing in people who have only penetrated the illusion of the SVP. Unless the Infinite has been seen with the eyes of the Infinite, a sense of the spiritual or a sense of holiness seems to be absent. Seeing into one's true nature makes one feel like bowing down in worship of THAT. Better not entertain such hypotheticals. I'll go thru Segal's book again and post some of her descriptions of CC/kensho in a separate thread later, because her case is really interesting. And she does point out some things that clearly distinguish CC's from both ordinary experiences and woo-woo experiences. One key point is non-locality of perception, which people who haven't had that reference seem unable to comprehend and make sense of. But this is one main point why it is not, ultimately, 'just another experience'. Haha! Yes, I'm always telling people to forget the word "if." Things unfolded exactly how they unfolded, but it was the CC that changed everything for this character. Afterwards, I felt just like Kabir who said, "I saw the infinite for 15 seconds and became a servant for life." Yes, the non-locality of perception can't be understood without the reference for it. In my case the thought appeared, "Who is perceiving this?" and I discovered that I could not remember my own name. I had no idea who or what was perceiving because there was only a state of oneness rather than the usual divided-mind state of the observer and the observed. I have friends in TAT who discount Segal as someone who suffered from a pathological personality disassociation syndrome, but her book rings true to me, and I feel confident that she accurately described what happened to her. Her book made a profound impression upon me, and she hammered home the fact that there is no SVP so strongly that it took away "my" future. After reading her book 7 times, it suddenly dawned on me that whatever I was looking for could not be located in the future of a personal "me" because the personal "me" was an illusion. Whatever it was had to be here and now. That realization was profound, but it remained intellectual until a year or so later when "the little guy in the head" suddenly vanished, and it was finally understood what she was pointing to. Her story is definitely one of the most interesting accounts in ND literature.
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Post by laughter on Jul 11, 2021 23:37:43 GMT -5
Savigalpa samadhi in RM's version is mind resting in the heart with effort. This is the refocusing of attention away from mind chatter driven by desire. For the purists it is only Self-Inquiry. For others, it can be many different types of practice. How it works is attending to the immediate instead of thought affords an escape from the mental world's reactivity. This is peace. In RM's view, this is as valuable as sahaja because that is its inevitable destination. God d@mn that doughnut!
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Post by laughter on Jul 12, 2021 0:19:41 GMT -5
Joko Beck said sesshins longer than 10 days are not significantly more useful than a 10 retreat. She also said as part of the reason, the longer retreats are not as intensive, have much shorter periods of meditation each day, a total of no more than few hours per day. Yes, in my experience 3 day weekend retreats were sufficiently intense. 108 full prostration bows began the day at 4:30 AM followed by chanting for 40 minutes, then a 30 minute break for clean up, an hour of meditation, an hour for breakfast and cleanup, then 2 hours for meditation, 1 hour for a work period, 1 hour for lunch, then 3 hours of meditation in the afternoon, an hour for dinner, followed by 2+ hours of meditation, with the day ending with chanting the heart sutra from 9:15 tip 9:30. The next day? Rinse and repeat. Meditation periods were usually 45 minutes long with 10 minute walking meditation periods to give one's legs a break from the lotus position. By the end of the second day this routine led to what most of us considered significant intensity.
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Post by laughter on Jul 12, 2021 0:37:57 GMT -5
Checking a dictionary and wikipedia it appears that satori is equivalent to a deep kensho. Wiki goes on to say that after kensho/satori, attaining Buddhahood, or full enlightenment, depends upon repeated deep experiences of one's true nature and a spiritual maturation gained through meditation and further realizations. Oddly enough, I could not find anything that discusses what we call "SR." If you remember, Figs could not believe that I had had a huge CC and yet still imagined that I was a separate entity who had had that experience as well as various major realizations that resulted from it. I told her that that's just what happened here, and it is actually far more common than what happened with the Buddha because the Buddha apparently had a single kensho/satori that not only allowed him to see into his true nature but also freed him from the illusion of being a SVP. I remember Figs asking, in essence, "How, if you saw that reality is a unified infinite whole and all separation is an illusion, could you have failed to see that you were NOT a SVP?" All that I could do was reply, "That's just what happened." From reading the biographies of dozens of ZM's, it appears that my experience is typical of most Zen people who have CC's. We talk a lot about SR on the forum, but I suspect that most people who are serious seekers have numerous realizations during their search, some big and some small. In my case, I once wrote down the sequence of realizations that occurred after I started meditating, and there were about 5 or 6 big ones and dozens of small ones over a period of 15 years. Each big realization was life-changing in some way. In a sense, any time a koan is resolved, a realization is involved because the resolution always involves a sudden seeing and a realization that one had followed the words of a koan rather than seeing the simple truth underlying them. I'd take Wikipedia entries with a grain of salt. The meaning of kensho is pretty straightforward, from the meaning of the Chinese characters alone (literally 'seeing into your own nature'). So that's basically self-explanatory. The meaning of the satori character is a bit more abstract (comprehension or sudden understanding). So there's room for interpretation. From my perspective, and based on my story, kensho and satori are two aspects of one realization (oneness realization). So I'm basically with the Buddha on this one, simply because that's how it happened here. And if I wouldn't have learned about your story and and how it happened there, I'd probably still insist that there is only one realization, or at least one that really counts in case someone insists on other live-changing insights. I think what Figgles never understood was that people use the term CC and can mean very different things because it is such a vague and also popular term in spiritual circles. When people on spiritual forums refer to CC they usually refer to a woo-woo experience, i.e. experience minus realization. And that seems rather common. Figgles may have had some of those. But what we are referring to with the term CC is an experience plus a realization, or more precisely, a realization that is accompanied by an experience. And that is much less common. And Figgles made it abundantly clear in our conversations that that she had no reference for that kind of realization. So all she could do was projecting the experience onto the realization. And that's where it gets nonsensical, of course. What I think added to the confusion is that CC experiences can - and usually do - reoccur. The realization, of course, doesn't. It's a one time event. Once you've passed thru the gateless gate, you're on the other side and the gate becomes meaningless. You've seen into your own nature, you can't unsee that, come hell or high water. And how you get to that ultimate realization that we call SR shouldn't actually matter. As Ramakrishna once said, once you've reached the roof, you're on the roof and don't care anymore if you've got there by climbing up a ladder or several flights of stairs. But in any case of SR, I think there's a natural tendency to take our own story as the standard template for how this is thought to generally unfold. Only when we hear enough other stories that differ significantly from our story, we realize that this may be much less predictable or standardizable than it initially seemed. I had a lot of discussions with Laughter about this. Because he didn't seem to find his story reflected in my story and also not in your story. And so there you have it, God's ways are mysterious! Better leave it there. It's more that I can see as many differences as similarities in terms of narrative. It's fascinating to listen to the stories, it really is, and it's a treat to have live versions of them. Who knows, perhaps what I can't recognize directly is an opportunity? But, you see, I have no objections, nor any impetus to "challenge", only respect and appreciation, truly.
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Post by Reefs on Jul 12, 2021 0:40:48 GMT -5
Better not entertain such hypotheticals. I'll go thru Segal's book again and post some of her descriptions of CC/kensho in a separate thread later, because her case is really interesting. And she does point out some things that clearly distinguish CC's from both ordinary experiences and woo-woo experiences. One key point is non-locality of perception, which people who haven't had that reference seem unable to comprehend and make sense of. But this is one main point why it is not, ultimately, 'just another experience'. Haha! Yes, I'm always telling people to forget the word "if." Things unfolded exactly how they unfolded, but it was the CC that changed everything for this character. Afterwards, I felt just like Kabir who said, "I saw the infinite for 15 seconds and became a servant for life." Yes, the non-locality of perception can't be understood without the reference for it. In my case the thought appeared, "Who is perceiving this?" and I discovered that I could not remember my own name. I had no idea who or what was perceiving because there was only a state of oneness rather than the usual divided-mind state of the observer and the observed. I have friends in TAT who discount Segal as someone who suffered from a pathological personality disassociation syndrome, but her book rings true to me, and I feel confident that she accurately described what happened to her. Her book made a profound impression upon me, and she hammered home the fact that there is no SVP so strongly that it took away "my" future. After reading her book 7 times, it suddenly dawned on me that whatever I was looking for could not be located in the future of a personal "me" because the personal "me" was an illusion. Whatever it was had to be here and now. That realization was profound, but it remained intellectual until a year or so later when "the little guy in the head" suddenly vanished, and it was finally understood what she was pointing to. Her story is definitely one of the most interesting accounts in ND literature. I’m about 2/3 done with the book and it seems I remembered some passages of the book incorrectly. Yes, her descriptions are spot on, very detailed and to the point. However, what doesn’t ring true at all is the constant fear, or even “terror” she experienced all day every day for more than a decade. And I think this is because she may have lost her identification with the SVP, but she still seemed to be totally identified with the mind, just minus the SVP. She definitely suffered from overthinking. And it wore her down. So what she describes in the first part of the book, even though technically correct, that’s not enlightenment. It may, however, be called awakening or mind-enlightenment, i.e. the witnessing is happening from the perspective of mind, not prior to mind. So there is clearly something amiss there. Because basically, the way she describes her experience, it does seem like some kind of zombie state or twilight zone between the personal and the impersonal. Clearly she is not centered in the personal perspective (aka SVP) anymore, but there isn't anything what she describes in the first part of the book that has the ring of impersonal perspective (aka prior to mind) either. Think about it, when you had your realization(s), did you shake and sweat in terror for days, weeks or even years because of your new perspective? And was one of the first thoughts that came to mind that you might have gone insane? But that’s what happened to her, so she went from psychologists to psychiatrists to – eventually - non-duality teachers. And I am not surprised that the psychologists and psychiatrists she had been seen over the years had no idea what happened to her or what to do with her, other than prescribing some drugs to ease the fear by making her numb, an offer which she always declined. What I found surprising though was that the non-duality teachers she was contacting in the beginning, while congratulating her on her experience of no-self, had no clue either and were obviously just speaking from book knowledge (check out chapter 7 if you have the book). For her, however, talking to these ND and Zen people was a major turning point because she realized that she hasn’t gone insane and that there may be a deeper meaning to all of this and that there are likely more realizations to come that would end this state of confusion and terror. But until she had that deep CC, it seems all mostly intellectual, I’m afraid. And these non-duality and Zen teachers not noticing the hyper-intellectual nature of her perspective doesn’t speak well for them or their own state of realization, IMO. I’ll go into more details in a separate thread. It’s worth going thru this book chapter by chapter because, IMO, it does show clearly the difference between actual enlightenment (down to the visceral level) and what we sometimes call mind-enlightenment (limited to the intellectual level). She’s an excellent case study for what we have been saying, that you have to feel it in your bones or else it’s worthless and that there's more to realize than that the SVP is an illusion. Also, let’s not forget that Suzanne was a master meditator and had been part of a hardcore meditation group (TM) for many years. So this may have contributed to her rather weird path to enlightenment and mental state.
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Post by laughter on Jul 12, 2021 0:44:50 GMT -5
I'd take Wikipedia entries with a grain of salt. The meaning of kensho is pretty straightforward, from the meaning of the Chinese characters alone (literally 'seeing into your own nature'). So that's basically self-explanatory. The meaning of the satori character is a bit more abstract (comprehension or sudden understanding). So there's room for interpretation. From my perspective, and based on my story, kensho and satori are two aspects of one realization (oneness realization). So I'm basically with the Buddha on this one, simply because that's how it happened here. And if I wouldn't have learned about your story and and how it happened there, I'd probably still insist that there is only one realization, or at least one that really counts in case someone insists on other live-changing insights. I think what Figgles never understood was that people use the term CC and can mean very different things because it is such a vague and also popular term in spiritual circles. When people on spiritual forums refer to CC they usually refer to a woo-woo experience, i.e. experience minus realization. And that seems rather common. Figgles may have had some of those. But what we are referring to with the term CC is an experience plus a realization, or more precisely, a realization that is accompanied by an experience. And that is much less common. And Figgles made it abundantly clear in our conversations that that she had no reference for that kind of realization. So all she could do was projecting the experience onto the realization. And that's where it gets nonsensical, of course. What I think added to the confusion is that CC experiences can - and usually do - reoccur. The realization, of course, doesn't. It's a one time event. Once you've passed thru the gateless gate, you're on the other side and the gate becomes meaningless. You've seen into your own nature, you can't unsee that, come hell or high water. And how you get to that ultimate realization that we call SR shouldn't actually matter. As Ramakrishna once said, once you've reached the roof, you're on the roof and don't care anymore if you've got there by climbing up a ladder or several flights of stairs. But in any case of SR, I think there's a natural tendency to take our own story as the standard template for how this is thought to generally unfold. Only when we hear enough other stories that differ significantly from our story, we realize that this may be much less predictable or standardizable than it initially seemed. I had a lot of discussions with Laughter about this. Because he didn't seem to find his story reflected in my story and also not in your story. And so there you have it, God's ways are mysterious! Better leave it there. Yes, indeed! Ironically, even though the disappearance of "the little guy in the head" and the accompanying realizations that (1) the SVP is an illusion, and (2) what we are is THIS, ended the spiritual search, the initial kensho in 1984 was the most monumental event of this life because so much was seen, and there was no doubt about what was seen. What I argued with Enigma and Figs about, primarily, was that a CC/Kensho can be called "an experience" only in retrospect. It is not really an experience because there is no SVP present, and there is no time involved. That's why I often now refer to deep CC's as "events" rather than "experiences" simply because that kind of seeing is instantaneous and can result in so many realizations. Seeing the infinite and incomprehensible nature of what we actually are is no small matter. "... one ringy-dingy ..." ...
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