stirling

You are the nail in this scenario? I don’t think of you that way. I think you are more of a “get off my lawn “ type with a heart of gold. ❤️

Certainly Britney Spears, Ronald Reagan, the Teletubbies, Jesus, every tree, rock, gust of wind, and rash are all Brahman. No-one/thing gets a pass - they are all Brahman/Dharmakaya and aren't separate from what you are. This is one-hundred percent correct, though I wouldn't use the term integration, myself. There is nothing separate to integrate, really. I think of it more as sloughing off your belief systems and patterns of behavior - the "I" that you so carefully build and buttress moment to moment. Yes, the fabric of the dharmakaya/Brahman loves you, and shows you where you are stuck constantly as a kindness. Learning to release attachment and aversion to these appearances and events in consciousness is the work. Hahahaha! We call that a "dharma dream". That's good! The Advaita Vedantans wisely suggest that the dreamworld is actually MORE real that this world, because it already lacks some of the illusions of division. Time is strange in dreams, space is strange in dreams, and, as you have seen, "self" is strange in dreams. They are fluid, and don't follow our waking ideas about their behavior. The reality is that THIS world is the same. Time, space and "self" are wiggly and interesting when allowed to be as they are. It can be seen when you stop explaining away the weird experiences you have, like forgetting the connecting moments between two points when walking, or driving, or seeing something weird out of the corner of your eye, but explaining it as some anomaly in consciousness, rather than the glitch it obviously was. Learning to accept reality as strange and not needing your explanation begets MORE of these experiences being noticed. BTW the mystery "Robert" here is none-other than our friendly board-mate oldbob.

I feel like we are back to square one. I'm not doing or saying anything that William James, Aldous Huxley, and Joseph Campbell (for a start) haven't, so I'm not sure why you have always singled ME out. This IS a thread about enlightenment, yes? With that in mind 'll share a quote I made previously: As I have previously explained, there are the monastics (dualistic) and the gnostics/heretics (non-dualistic). Everything in a monastics belief system is great until the day that there is insight. From that moment on, that "person's" life will never be the same. The world has a new heretic. Enlightenment is not a belief, and burns all beliefs to ashes. People can believe what they like. Experience is ultimately what transforms all views. Sure there are branches of Hinduism that believe that BELIEVE that those teachings are dual or non-dual. My feeling is that some of those traditions have simply chosen an awkward way to express the same understanding. The Hindu texts are chock full of amazing non-dual statements and insight. Would it make you feel more respected if I said that interpretations of the non-dual Hindu texts differ, but the non-dual schools are most certainly talking about enlightenment being the same attainment as other non-dual schools?

Patronizing from me? Oh... gosh no! I'm a FAN. I am deeply against exceptionalism of all kinds. I guess I thought my position was clear - these traditions all point to the same non-dual understanding. There is a long history of people like William James, Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell and other well known intellectual minds connecting the dots here... there is nothing radical or odd about pointing it out. It is certainly beyond obvious to me.

I think you would be hard pressed, myself. Absolutely. If you read Meister Eckhardt, St. John of the Cross, or Bernadette Roberts, there plenty of obvious non-dual statements. I have heard pointing out in Sufism too. Same deal. Agreed.

True, but I think Suzuki's quote gets the point of practice across. The more obscurations and "self" we chip away, and the more loving kindness we show in the world the more likely the "accident" is to take place. Relaxed, unhurried, realized dharma teachers ARE in "meditation" all the time. You could call a lot of them lazy too, I suppose.

Soto Zen. My lineage is through the late Shunryu Suzuki, who said: Confusing the practice, or the teachings with the realization is a common mistake. Both point to the destination, but the idea that we are "going" anywhere is incorrect. The destination is right here, always. As I said previously, the map is not the territory. It is all (including the chap called Robert) ALWAYS Brahman, and always has been.

Experiences are ALWAYS different - the concomitant understanding is not. It is also not transcendental. There is nothing to transcend.

Prajna is most important siddhi by far, and the father of all other true siddhis, from my perspective.

When we meditate and the mind has moments of stillness what we experience IS enlightened mind, only not seen at its full depth. Where the mind has the spaciousness and lack of conceptual overlay, things are unencumbered by our thinking minds story of reality. "Will" is tricky to discuss, but I'll give you my take: When the mind is still, the world can be seen to be a play of light and color. For a moment our thoughts about how reality is drop away. We can see that moment to moment reality is bubbling up from "emptiness". A bird flickers by outside. The sun makes it slow progress along the floor. There is a tickle in your leg. There is a sudden wave of bliss. All of these things happen, but the objects - the bird, the sun the leg, the bliss - arise in consciousness and pass from experience without our thinking mind analyzing, or engaging with them. We can see this in meditation, but fail to recognize that things are actually ALWAYS like this, even when our mind is busy. We also fail to see that one of the things that flickers into existence in the mind then disappears are our thoughts. Sometimes something happens in the world and a thought arises in response. That response is, itself, the product of how our mind is conditioned, but isn't "I". It is just like everything else, it comes, it goes, it doesn't belong to you. "Will" is just this, your response in this moment, colored and conditioned by the circumstances you are experiencing, and not yours. Will is impersonal. This is how things are in my experience. Another good piece of advice was to learn to temporarily adopt beliefs then drop them. Since beliefs are always fictions, learning to see that they are fluid and ultimately do not represent reality is a useful skill.

Bob, I'm not talking about the lineages, schools, or doctrines, I am talking about the actual EXPERIENCE and understanding of enlightenment. All of those things are about the STORY of enlightenment and will obviously disagree in some way or another... enlightenment itself can't be described and has nothing to do with all of that man-made nonsense. There often two traditions in many religions - the monastics and the gnostics. A gnostic is someone who has had sudden and permanent insight in the the nature of reality. The "gnow" what enlightenment is and it is their moment to moment experience. In time they tell others, and people get excited and write it all down, including the gnostics story about how he got there. However, those who write it down fail to realize that the path they have captured isn't going to work for everyone, at least in the same way. The gnostics KNOW this. Time passes... some students follow the instructions and some percentage of those students experience gnosis, but their path differs in some, or many, details from the original gnostic because the path doesn't go the same for everyone one. They tell their story. The monastics label this new gnostic a heretic, but the gnostic/heretic NOW has the insight to realize what all gnostic/heretics realize - the map is NOT the territory. This is why there are so many "Buddhisms", for example. Each one had it's own heretic that began it.

Lacking the usual vitriol, which is nice. Can you show me where? From where I am sitting it's "turtles all the way down", and I don't think I'm alone on the board here in seeing that. The statements I quoted are amongst probably hundreds one could pull (yes, in context) that support my point.

Something my own teacher said once, and I hear repeated over and over again is that those on the path who compulsively act for the good of all sentient beings end up being "taken care of", most recently Khandro Kunzang Dechen in a recent podcast I heard. Her version of it has the "dharma protectors" doing it. While I have empowerments, I think it is true for anyone on this path, protectors or not. The work of truly cutting through the delusion of separateness and acting with the intention of kindness, and as little clinging and aversion as one can muster is rewarded with a more loving, beautiful, dream-like reality. It manifests something like a siddhi - regular little miracles of generosity of (relative) wealth, health, fulfillment of aims related to the spread of wisdom. It's just crazy. If it was really safe I'd go into a list I would but, suffice to say, things are provided and there is great gratitude.

Seems like he has it to me: Why does that sound familiar... oh yes: Or: "self" is just a little bit of Self, but they aren't separate... that is an illusion. It's ALL Self, Bob, including every little bit of it that you imagine is separate somehow. Nothing gets a pass.

I had quick, and immense success with summoning my Holy Guardian Angel, believe it or not. Part of it is that my existing visionary experience events are already photorealistic and 3 dimensional, so summoning this particular "being" seemed completely possible. As you say, how possible it seems (and how able you are to adopt or have absolutely NO belief system) DOES seem to make a big impact. Haven't really tried anything else honestly... most of the rest (manipulating for money/love/etc.) isn't of interest to me.

I read that a few months ago. Some of it is, while more complicated, quite similar to the Buddhist models. I think of his description of Kia as (an inexpensive car... kidding!) a nice metaphor to explain how our intention can manifest in the world when we are more and more "empty" of "self". My experience is that this is certainly the case.

Not literally seeing - I mean realizing, or apprehending. It IS true that the emptiness of all appearances is obvious once seen, and pervades all imagined qualities of them, but is the realization that matters. Zazen is always walking around - also: sitting, baking cookies, washing the car and doing taxes. It is noticing its emptiness that allows you to see it. You don't have to be enlightened see it, but it does help to get some pointing it out sometimes. I agree. I think it appealed to him because he didn't have to BE Leonard Cohen when he as at Mt. Baldy. He could drop all of that and just BE. That is the refuge of practice, as the video visually presents, and why I keep coming back to it.

So many people try to use the intellect to understand realization, picking apart and recombining, interpreting based on dualistic ideas. It is still a path, but a long one where it takes the realization that it is headed nowhere to pick up the pieces and begin from square one, in this moment. The path becomes clear with practice and experience only. The realization of how things are is ONLY experiential. It is actually quite simple conceptually, but no amount of intellectual energy will tease it apart or reveal it.

_/\_ I have sat with Joe many times at Jikoji... nice to see his name here. The illusion of "witness consciousness" drops out as an inevitable part of the path from insight to completion. Eventually, just as the individual senses are seen experientially to be constructs of "mind", the "self" as a witness drops away somewhere near the final dropping away of "self" and Arhatship, corresponding (I am fairly sure) with the last fetter, "Ignorance". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_awakening#The_four_stages_of_attainment You'll find it isn't hard to see if your mind is ever quiet for a few seconds while sitting. When you have dropped all techniques and objects and the mind is just resting in its own awareness, ask yourself if you can see how it might be true. I'll bet you can see what I mean. As I have said previously, you are quoting instructions on the jhanas. The second 4 are formless and are precisely what I am talking about EVEN THOUGH they are not insight. From the same sutta as your top one: You stopped reading too early. That IS precisely "seeing all appearances as empty". Was the Buddha the ONLY enlightened being that has ever existed? The Buddha got angry. He became sick and died. He lived in a human body. This is true of all Arhats. The appearance of the body and the phenomenal world as we see it is the "residue". Insight is insight. There is only ONE real insight, though it can be more or less clearly understood up to a point. Shikantaza leapfrogs the jhanas and goes directly to resting in emptiness, the difference is that it is undifferentiated. Looks overcomplicated and easily misunderstood from here, but to each his own. The jhanas really require some instruction in my opinion, and aren't directly applicable to the end result of "no-self", as they are analogs NOT the insight itself. I'd quote Rumi or Adyashanti if I thought it might enlighten someone. Why join the Buddhists? The refuge of the dharma, sangha, and MY teachers. This nice video represents the feeling of gratefulness I have for them: Enlightenment always happens here, now.

Either way, the Bodhidharma stuff is some very PITH instruction. Ever read Bodhidharma's version of the precepts? Just... wow. https://jakkoan.net/Jukai/Precepts.htm Just to refine that, it has to do with no "doer'. A backwards step! See above. Insight wipes out the illusion of a doer. No-one inhales or exhales (OR the entire field of experience inhales and exhales). Like all other phenomena (a bird flying by, or a leaf falling from a tree, for example) breathing appears and disappears in the field of experience. All appearances are enlightened. ..."Transcended material shapes", means sees all appearances as "empty", which I was pointing to in my previous comment above. An easier to parse version of this (in my opinion) is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_(Buddhism)#Nirvana_with_and_without_remainder_of_fuel or: https://suttacentral.net/iti44/en/ireland?lang=en&reference=none&highlight=false Ah... but it is! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ranks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Bulls The Buddha wasn't a Buddhist, he was one of long line of those who just "got" it and pointed to what they understood. That's me too. If framing it in Buddhism works for someone, that's great... I can frame it that way... and often do. Where to begin? Let go of all ideas about how or what you are doing and just rest the mind in its own nature... stillness. You are there!

To summon "my" HGA I actually just did this: This has resulted in a series of vividly life-like ongoing visions. Worked within a week. No props needed.

A "belief system" is a set of ideas constructed in the thinking mind. Initial insight into emptiness isn't a "belief system" is the ability to see something about reality that you couldn't before. It is verifiable by sensory input moment to moment that is persistent and self-verifiable. It can't be changed, because it isn't a thought or idea. None of that is necessary for insight. People with no belief system whatsoever have insight all of the time. It is a recognized thing in Buddhism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratyekabuddhayāna I appreciate that this is your belief, but it isn't "Buddhism" To preach this as a personal philosophy is fine. To present it as the reality of how Buddhism is would be mistaken.

It is. Once it is part of your experience NOTHING is the same.

The raft metaphor is originally the Buddha's so I would say it is for him to "say or do". He doesn't say to DESTROY teachings. Why would you do that? He says that , once there is realization, you set the teachings DOWN. You no longer cling to them. Anyway, there have been any number of buddhas that have their own teachings that perfectly accord with the buddha's teachings. Read some Padmasambhava, for example... or some Dogen, or Bodhidharma amongst many. They don't sound the same, or even walk under the buddhist banner, but all of the content is there if you read it. Masters don't destroy anything... maybe delusions? "Masters" operate in the world to liberate other beings. To do that it usually most effective to be where they are. I think the work never finishes. Buddhas are appearing in the world all the time out of the ashes of sentient beings. The next named incarnation of the Buddha is supposedly Maitreya... should be stopping by some time soon? I wouldn't wait. There are perfectly good buddhas all over the place. Once you know what a buddha sounds like you'll find yourself tripping over them everywhere.

Yeah... I don't think so. IF they return, they come back enlightened from the start, and perfectly placed to be of service where they are needed. If they don't come back, they still influence the causes and conditions of things in this moment. Think of it more as an ideal. It is the intent to understand and try to inhabit the viewpoint, at least before enlightenment. After, it is the embodiment of the ideal as frictionless action in the world. A bodhisattva is transparent, IS the dao, acting in complete alignment. The argument about defending your children or family is really just a thought experiment. A bodhisattva would act to limit suffering. The Dalai Lama has said, for example, that it would be OK to wound an attacker with a gun in order to stop them from harming. What matters is the INTENTION. The intention should be to limit the suffering in this case. This would be an extreme case. How often do people find themselves in such a position anyway? Deeply realized bodhisattvas don't tend to encounter such things. Have you read Bodhidharma's version of the precepts? They are how these things look from "emptiness" and they are mindblowing. I'll try to check it out. Oh gosh... no offense... I just think this warrior Buddhist concept is ill conceived and misunderstands much of what is important to Mahayana Buddhism and what we are trying to achieve. Reinforcing the idea of intentionally taking on struggle of any kind is a path to endarkenment, not enlightenment. If I see the movie I'll ping you.