Nikolai1
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Everything posted by Nikolai1
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Great stuff Roger. The mind can't get its head round our uncreated self but we can rest in it in our hearts and always stay there. This is the ending of all our questions. Such beautiful peace!
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He was but I think the Old Man Tcheng stuff was Buddhist. Klein used all religions in his teaching: Christian, Islam, Hindu
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To be honest, I think the spiritual life is a lonely road for us all. Even when we find really like-minded people...it's a lonely road because we have to find our truths for ourselves, by ourselves. You greatest teachings will be the stuff you worked out by yourself. Please don't fear for your daughter because she has you; and when the time comes when you find your own happiness she will have you as an inspiration. I'm not at all gifted like you are. My aim is to live and love and find beauty and share beauty in this life - so yes, awakening to something more than this. Actually, I think my loneliest days are behind me. I'm living more and more this beauty - i can really start to say that about myself.
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From your experiences it is clear that you are a rather special individual with capabilities that aren't mainstream. I think it's crucial that you find people who you can learn from and also, of course, find the people who need YOU in order to learn. This cannot happen unless you are willing to share a great deal. Sharing is only a problem if we are insecure and feel bad when we get no affirmation in return. Or, if we have a problem with superiority and ego. These are both attitudes to sharing. The sharing itself is neutral and can be done with impunity.
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Yes, one of the most common everyday spiritual experiences is the strange synchronicity but these moments ony ever convince ourselves. Others find it quite easy to just call what you told them coincidence and never think anything more of it. And the opposite happens: Things that are really world-changingly dramatic other people just think are delusions, dreams or mental illness. They can't share it with you so you can't share it with them.
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So you explain it by saying consciousness creates matter? Works for me! All I know is that I love my St Christopher pendant now! It's my own miracle!
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Yes good point...I was being a bit shallow in my interpretation of sage I think.
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Do you try to explain things like this?
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Its an impermanence thing I guess, like SoW said. I think he was a Buddhist.
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The Old Man Tcheng stuff
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This is a very weird story but I promise you, entirely true. For years I carried a St Christopher pendant in the coin section of my wallet. One day I lost the wallet entirely, never to be seen again. I bought a new similar wallet and had to repalce all cards, driving license etc. Not long after, the St Christopher pendant was there, in the coin section of the new wallet. It is still there now. I don't now how this can possibly be explained but it is true.
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The basic support for the sage comes from donations, alms, charity, whatever you want to call it. For the sage to support themselves through paid employment is inefficient use of their time, it goes against the Tao and therefore is not seen in the highest examplars. To some this may sound vulgar, but spiritual wisdom IS a commodity. Donors give because they are getting something valuable for their soul in return. When the sage has developed enough wisdom, they won't find they bodily needs hard to meet.
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"Nitwits, original spirit does not appear when sleep leaves you and does not disappear when sleep comes to you. Original spirit is nothing and is totally independent of that which chnages and dies. If original spirit were truly your sole occupation you would see all that alters and dies in the same way that you perceive the movements that dancers give to their streamers, and would resolve to seek that which in you neither varies nor dies and, once you find it, then not one of the thousand worlds could divert you in your thoughts for the instant of a flash or in the slightest degree make you stray from it in your actions. You believe you aspire to original spirit but yoy only actually seek the satisfaction of a condition, or learning, and of merit. Because of this, nincompoops, you are entirely under the fascination of all that in you and outside you is not steadfast and just dies."
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Hi Bodhicitta I recognise these groups but would describe them according to spiritual aspiration rather than outer behaviours like being in a monastery or not. So it follows that a person could be a monk, and yet be in group 1 if they are only there because it is what their parents wanted for them, or because the monastery offers a very comfortable standard of living. So group 1 is by far the largest group and contains most everyday people. They abide by the laws of the land, and even try not to lie and steal when there is no danger of getting caught. Group 1 forms because of the basic moral instincts of most people, and their natural desire for social harmony. Group 2 contains fewer people and these are more noticeably religious. They go above and beyond the basic precepts and go to great lengths to do good things in the world for people in the world. A major part of their motivation comes from the benefits that will accrue to them: an auspicious next birth, or salvation and a place in heaven. They act IN the world for the sake of the afterlife - a mixture of the worldly and the religious mindset. Group 3 are aiming for awakening in the here and now. They do good works, not because they wish for anything in return, but because good works issue naturally from them as they align more and more with wisdom. These people are naturally aware of the suffering that comes when we attach to viewpoints and so living the Middle Way is both a need and an aim. As I said, outwardly you could have monks in Group 1 and householders in Group 3. What is important is inner aspiration.
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Opening of the third eye and other byproducts along the way
Nikolai1 replied to Spotless's topic in General Discussion
Could I ask your opinion on something Spotless? Is seeing with the third eye anything at all to do with what we can see when we look at a bright light and then can see the same light even with our eyes shut. I know modern science explains this phenomenon in terms of firing light cells on the retina, but can we explain it better with recourse to the idea of the third eye? Thanks! -
This is a very insightful comment in my opinion. When enlightenment becomes our top priority, our lifestyles can become tantamount to monasticm, even if we don't formally take vows or enter an institution. We don't need to be told to renouce worldly ambitions because they are already renounced. For such a person the effort must be made in the oppsoite direction. The effort is to stay engaged in the world, because there is hardly any opportunity to leave it. The effort of combining practice with the role of an economically active 'householder' taxes us just as much as any monastic Rule does. It is an unspoken imperative for each individual: the need to earn, to buy food, to pay rent..in industry that we have little interest or ambition. It is truly mortifying. The monk has none of these worries. They won't end up on the street. But they do have the worry of subjecting the will in order to pray every hour and so on. There is a nice Middle Wayness even to this argument. For the true seeker the monastery is just like the world, and the world is a kind of monastery.
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Where does it say it's designed for monks? It doesn't say that at all, anywhere!
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Where does it say that the Middle Way is not for worldly folk?
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Have you got a reference thanks?
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Perhaps the middle way in its highest formulation is just the transcending of opposites, whether in thought or action. Whenever we follow a 'this' and avoid a 'that' we are straying from the narrow path.
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Yes, for me mortifying the intellect means seeing that its deductions are not universally valid but only momentarily or provisionally valid. Perhaps the mortified intellect needs a new name: intellect becomes Wisdom. It is with our wisdom that we can refer to the unconscious and be guided and supported in that moment. Or maybe it's clearer if we just make wisdom and the unconscious the same thing!
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Yes, I understand what you are saying and the peace that you talk about is the peace that comes when we are able to rest in our hearts - a coming home and a never again leaving of home. The peace in our hearts is always at hand. I am wondering whether this can be understood also as a gradual path, which is how the ancient Greek philosophers seemed to talk about it. The peace grows inside of us as we learn to detach ourselves from more and more of the disturbances that assail our life. We may not be awakened to any Divine Self, and yet the practice of sceptically analysing our opinions will bring a forefeeling of that peace that comes upon awakening. It's a kind of a defence of the intellectual way, which perhaps too often gets a bad reputation. The intellect, well applied, will gain us much valuable peace but if we wish to awaken we must turn against it and mortify it. Too often I think people take only this second message and forget the good old-fashioned virtue of philosophy.
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It takes a lot of courage and a lot of conviction to follow our truth, does it not? We all yearn for the security that we used to have in our youth - when our truth was the same as everyone else's. One way out of this is to seek power - to set the truths for yourself and then get everyone else to agree with you. But yes, the highest most stable way is to know your own truth, and that is enough for you, because it is yours, and because what is yours is also Divine and therefore doesn't need others to endorse it.
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It's like an art - the highest art! It's knowing when to speak truth; it's knowing when yesterday's truth is today's falsehood, and that today's falsehood may well be tomorrow's truth. This Middle way, this attitude, seems to just cut through every intellectual debate that has ever existed. I love Buddhism sometimes!
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There is something very beautiful about this combination of conviction and flexibility. To see clearly the truth that we need to speak and to speak it with passion...and then to forget it!