Sinking Your Boats

[Ulises]

Splendid text: towards a mature spirituality...

"This work and all other schools of spiritual work, all religions, all methods and philosophies about enlightenment, liberation, God, spirit, true nature, and so on should not be necessary. I do not mean they are not necessary; I mean they should not be necessary. They are attempts to describe what a human being is actually supposed to be, and how to go about being that. They all ask the same questions: What is a human being? What is a real and complete human being? What is the real human life? What is the human life that has actualized the full human potential? What is it that we are all about and how do we go about being that?

 

In actuality, the human being is much bigger than the vision of any of these teachings; no teaching can encompass the totality of what is possible for a human being. We ultimately do not need any of these teachings, which are nothing but ideas and concepts created by the mind. Although genuine teachings reflect and express reality, they are nevertheless in part cultural creations that have been developed throughout history. Many of them faithfully reflect real facets of reality and, as such, are good and helpful, but they remain excess baggage to reality.

Reality is beyond any teachings that can be formulated and promulgated. Reality simply is. Everything we say about it is extra, a creation of the human mind. We cannot adhere to teachings as if they are reality. We use teachings, benefit from them, but then we discard them, we drop them. To carry teachings with us after we learn to live in reality is to carry an extra load. We need only reality, and the teachings are simply vehicles through which to reach and live in reality. Reality is beyond tools, methods, and helpful perspectives. Reality is innocent of it all.

The point is not to be enlightened or to be God realized. Rather, we are to live the way we are supposed to live. That is all, and simply so. We are to live reality the way reality actually is. Teachings approximate, and at best express, what that means and suggest how to go about it. Ultimately, teachings have no objective validity but are conceptual tools created by well meaning individuals to help us live our life in the most natural and complete way possible. Once they have served their function, teachings are to be dropped. Otherwise, they will remain addendums to reality, a weight for us to carry.

 

I am not saying that teachings are inaccurate, or are empty fabrications. The real ones are accurate and express reality faithfully, but they are still extra to simply living reality.(...)

 

In the beginning of the work, we don't know what is real, we don’t know what is not real, and we have no idea how to find out the difference. We are scared, we are small, we feel as if we don't know. And if we did know how to go about it, we still wouldn’t actually be able to do it. So the teachings are necessary. But these teachings are boats to cross the river of ignorance; they are not the other shore. Their descriptions of some of the features of the other shore are not the same as the shore itself. In order to get to the other shore, we need to abandon our boats.

 

If we stay in them we will never get to the shore. We need, at some point, to sink our boats. This point is as subtle as it is important, as tricky as it is necessary. We need to sink our boats exactly at the right time: if we do it too soon, we will drown in the deep waters of the river, but if we do not do it at all, we will never arrive.

 

It took thirty years for the first of Buddha’s disciples to be enlightened. When the disciple finally saw and realized the truth, saw and understood true nature, he felt a little disconcerted. The disciple avoided Buddha because he was feeling ashamed and guilty. Finally, Buddha asked him what was going on with him. The disciple said it was hard to talk about but finally told the Buddha: “Now that I see the truth and I realize it, I see that all that you have been saying is bullshit. It is not necessary.” Buddha asked him not to tell anyone. He said: “I'm glad you know the truth, but people need to think that what I say is true so that they can find out what you found out.” In effect, Buddha was saying, “Don't tell anybody, they'll kill you and me and then they will have no chance of finding out what you found out.” The point is more frequently referred to in the Zen koan, “When you meet the Buddha on the road kill him.” (...)

In actuality, all beliefs are in the same bag: whether they are about God and enlightenment, or about whether you are good or bad; whether about timelessness and eternity or about your being a person who was born at a certain date, the son or daughter of such and such parents. Beliefs are all in the same category. In your mind they are the same thing; they probably come physiologically from the same part of your brain. There is no difference, ultimately, between one belief and another.

 

Of course, it is terrifying to think, let alone accept, that these beliefs exist only in our minds. They may not be true or completely true, or true the way we believe they are true. What if after all these years we find out that Buddha is wrong about emptiness? Or that Moses never spoke to God in the burning bush? We read the stories and we believe them. Maybe the stories are not true, or maybe they were true but things changed. Maybe reality does not stay static and changes even its nature and structure. How do we know that this is not the case? Who says that things don't change? Who says that what Buddha said then should be true now? Do we have any proof that it should be so? We don’t; nobody does.

The stories we have been told may be true or not. We cannot be certain until we find out the truth for ourselves and, ultimately, until the truth is relevant for us. We have to be bold in order to ask these questions and to confront ourselves in this way. If we are to reach certainty and true autonomy of realization, we need to be willing to be heretics. What’s more, we need to become universal heretics, not believing anything that we do not know from direct experience, beyond stories, beyond hearsay, and even beyond the mind.

 

To have a free mind is to be a universal heretic. You don’t believe in the ultimate reality of any concept. You can assume any belief you find useful and attractive, but you don’t need to hold on to any of it. Without being captured by your beliefs, you are strong enough and confident enough to throw away any and all beliefs and perspectives, each and every philosophy and story. You can stand totally alone, completely independent of all that comes through the mind, through time and space. This station of realization is difficult and rare. Most of us don’t have the nerve to lose our minds. Although terrifying, it is necessary for true freedom.

 

We have to risk that we may be wrong. We have to risk the aloneness and the terror of being totally on our own. We have to risk cutting all of our supports, burning all of our bridges, destroying all of our boats. They are all ultimately and fundamentally concepts that come from hearsay or, at best, from our own past experiences. Even the concepts and knowledge that have come from our own immediate experiences cannot be relied on. That knowledge is like Buddha’s words—old, unless corroborated in this moment..."

 

 

http://www.ahalmaas.com/Extracts/sinking_your_boats.html

Edited February 17, 2011 by Ulises

[XieJia]

[Aetherous]

.

Edited February 24, 2011 by center

[Ulises]

Hello Ulises;

 

 

Thank you for your post...

In my practice as a Buddhist; what you mentioned is indeed what we do.

 

In order to fill the cup; we must empty the cup.

It is not what is in the cup but it about seeing the cup.

And let nature take care of it.

 

Yet I don't think we are heretics; since Buddha didn't say we need to believe but investigate it ourself.

 

Thank again for your post.

 

XieJia

 

I'm so glad for you!

Heretics is just a word. just a reminder that the finger is not the moon: unfortunately that has not been the historic - and present reality - of ALL the traditions: all of them have a sad story of chasing (even killing) the "non-believers"...belief systems are useful (the finger) but are potentially as deadly as a knife when are not dissolved in the experience that are simple pointers of...

Edited February 17, 2011 by Ulises

[Ulises]

Some personal experiences in the last years point in the direction of believing (very cautiously) that this author is after something...

 

"In my personal search for the roots of our symbolic nature, and our cognitive heritage, I've consistently located my goals far beyond the domains of traditional and even esoteric traditions. In leaving all possible trails behind, (but using their tools liberally where I desire) and seeking with my heart, my human senses, and my emotional holism of self, I find endless possible systems that correlate well with my experience. And not a one contains a real rePresentation of that experience.

 

I avoid the traps of other people's systems. I avoid the traps of my own systems. I use any of the tools, from either, which seem useful in the moment.

 

Once I've gained the gold of understanding where systems of any possible sort arise from, then I can use any system to my utmost benefit, without being bound in it. Before I was able to notice and respond to this sense, I was, primarily, being used by systems — in a game where I'd get a weensy particle of reward for my effort, while the system grew itself explosively using my cognitive resources. This is at least an essential trap in the ways in which we are actively and socially cognitive, and may prove to be an opportunity as well — one we are continually missing in almost every possible domain.

 

In my wanderings, the tools I discovered and am interacting with are far simpler than any science or mysticism implies. My bet? They can only be missed on worlds which have developed science and mysticism. And this is a seriously important clue as to where to begin seeking for your personal keys. Keys with features that, when activated, turn humans into heroes — and those heroes save worlds."

 

 

http://www.organelle.org/organelle/cog5.html

Edited February 17, 2011 by Ulises

[Otis]

Excellent share, Ulises!

 

I have met fundamentalist Buddhists, even though that sounds like a contradiction in terms. "Emptiness", as I see it, primarily means "not knowing", so being attached to the truth of teachings subverts the very teaching that is being given.

 

Likewise for Buddha's Noble 8-fold path. I don't see it as rules, but as suggested practices. Practice speaking impeccably, practice generous relating, practice virtue at work, etc., and all these practices will help surrender my ego strength. However, if I act like the 8-fold path is a list of rules like the 10 Commandments, then I put my ego in charge, to try to do what I've been told. Top-down (rule-based) thinking always increases internal separation, because it makes one part of my brain (the part that is insisting on following the rules) above all the other parts. Unity comes from accepting all of the human-ness within me, not from trying to pick and choose which parts of me my ego wants to express.

[Aaron]

The part about giving up our beliefs being terrifying and the last paragraph strikes me as odd and a bit in line with what you hear cult leaders advocate, the idea that one has to be willing to give up everything in order to find "truth" "salvation" or whatever else is on the agenda. The reason they do this is to break down the dependence of the person on his family and beliefs and instead rely on the beliefs and teachings of the leader. Once a person has given up the former, all they have left is the latter and if they are dependent on the latter for any length of time, then trying to leave the "cult" is incredibly difficult, because the cult and its ideology is all they have left.

 

I can agree that one should not accept ultimate truths, in fact there is no ultimate truth, there is only our experience, but to say that one should give up ultimate truths while presenting one, seems kind of sinister.

 

Aaron

[Otis]

The part about giving up our beliefs being terrifying and the last paragraph strikes me as odd and a bit in line with what you hear cult leaders advocate, the idea that one has to be willing to give up everything in order to find "truth" "salvation" or whatever else is on the agenda. The reason they do this is to break down the dependence of the person on his family and beliefs and instead rely on the beliefs and teachings of the leader. Once a person has given up the former, all they have left is the latter and if they are dependent on the latter for any length of time, then trying to leave the "cult" is incredibly difficult, because the cult and its ideology is all they have left.

 

I can agree that one should not accept ultimate truths, in fact there is no ultimate truth, there is only our experience, but to say that one should give up ultimate truths while presenting one, seems kind of sinister.

 

Aaron

I don't get it, Aaron. In a cult, they advocate "believe like us", not "don't get attached to beliefs." I think the OP is clearly about the latter.

[C T]

[Spectrum]

Recipes for hive minded schizofrenics to replicate themselves. Sex has a higher retail value. Some of us already put ogether what your selling pieces of. Show us video of the writhing mass of bodies with you on the top of the pig pile.

[Aaron]

I don't get it, Aaron. In a cult, they advocate "believe like us", not "don't get attached to beliefs." I think the OP is clearly about the latter.

 

 

Hello Otis,

 

Here's the lines that make me wonder...

 

"I am not saying that teachings are inaccurate, or are empty fabrications. The real ones are accurate and express reality faithfully, but they are still extra to simply living reality.(...)"

 

"But these teachings are boats to cross the river of ignorance; they are not the other shore. Their descriptions of some of the features of the other shore are not the same as the shore itself. In order to get to the other shore, we need to abandon our boats."

 

"Of course, it is terrifying to think, let alone accept, that these beliefs exist only in our minds. They may not be true or completely true, or true the way we believe they are true."

 

" If we are to reach certainty and true autonomy of realization, we need to be willing to be heretics. What’s more, we need to become universal heretics, not believing anything that we do not know from direct experience, beyond stories, beyond hearsay, and even beyond the mind."

 

"We have to risk that we may be wrong. We have to risk the aloneness and the terror of being totally on our own. We have to risk cutting all of our supports, burning all of our bridges, destroying all of our boats. They are all ultimately and fundamentally concepts that come from hearsay or, at best, from our own past experiences. Even the concepts and knowledge that have come from our own immediate experiences cannot be relied on. That knowledge is like Buddha’s words—old, unless corroborated in this moment..."

 

The last passage is the most telling, but the prior ones say a lot. They say that everything is a lie and that this person has the truth, even if that truth is that there is no truth. It goes on to advocate that one must be willing to give up everything in order to find the truth, which is what caused me some concern about the author in the first place.

 

After reading up on the author I found out that he has several offices around the world where he and other members who have reached a certain rank counsel others. He advocates that treatment of the human condition is not a quick fix but requires a long commitment. If I am correct, I'm almost certain that this person would advocate leaving those things that conflict with the ideals he teaches, people included. I'm almost certain that the people involved pay hefty sums for this counseling and I'm almost certain that once they are in counseling for any length of time, it's probably very hard for them to leave.

 

The cult mentality isn't always based on religion, sometimes it uses science and philosophy as a tool. I wont mention the organizations that do this, because they're sue happy, but they're out there.

 

The fact is most cults have a small amount of truth that draws people in and surrounding that truth is the dogma that keeps them. I may be wrong, I'm just saying I wouldn't put all my eggs in this basket.

 

Aaron

Edited February 19, 2011 by Twinner

[The Observer]

Recipes for hive minded schizofrenics to replicate themselves. Sex has a higher retail value. Some of us already put ogether what your selling pieces of. Show us video of the writhing mass of bodies with you on the top of the pig pile.

 

Wow thanks, your post really hit home for me! Have you ever read Journeys Out of the Body by Robert Monroe? What you said really really resonated with me.

 

....And a lot of the rhetoric seems to me like the hippy mentality of the sixties where everyone was so focused on non-conceptuality/orginality that they ended up being lazy underachievers. IMHO the nonconceptuality comes as a fruit of consistent practice not just a shallow logical realization made by someone who's just scratched the surface.

Edited February 20, 2011 by The Observer

[Ulises]

Do you use a system...or are used by a system...?

Beliefs, in the best of the cases, are comforting teddy bears for the mind....in the worse, weapons or armours, as Chogyam Trungpa said...

 

 

Questions

 

Our questions about why we are here and where we're going are uncomfortable, but they are real questions for every human being. If you do not ask them, and allow them to be ongoing questions, you will never know for yourself what it's all about. You will never know who you are, why you're here, and where you are going. Your mind is full of ideas and dreams and plans about what will fulfill you, what will make you happy, what will give you freedom. But these ideas silence the question, comfort your mind, and put out the flame. (Diamond Heart Book 3, pg 4)

 

I am not trying to give you an answer; I'm just giving you a question. You need to let your being be ablaze like a flame, an aspiring flame, with no preconceived ideas about what it aspires to. To be just burning intensely, deeply wanting to know, wanting to see the truth without following any preconceptions, totally in the present with the question itself, and let it burn away all the ideas, all the beliefs, all the concepts, even the ones you learned from great teachings. If you don't allow that flame completely, will you ever rest in your life? Will you ever rest in your life as long as you're covering your question, answering it before it's really answered? Will you ever really be content with someone else's answer? (Diamond Heart Book 3, pg 6)

A. H. Almaas

Edited February 20, 2011 by Ulises

[Ulises]

You know how you might catch the eye of someone at a solemn religous service or a funeral and you both start laughing and pretty soon it becomes uncontrollable, and then others join in, and the laughter is more truthful than the solemnity...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UuaOye9VyI

?

[Spectrum]

Endless bicameral Rhetoric. skilless non unifying passages. Your qualifications must be that you lay down naked together, can all your freedom help you break free

from the psychophysicalpower sexual drive has over weak minded people is easy when you use sex as the imaginary barrier to a lost kingdom. the sick Pychic cycle is obviously turning a hamster wheel in the collective mind, repeating paths already

crossed. Here's One for Originality. You never fucked the fight out. Bare your sheild

maiden It's to bad that true love isn't practiced or believed in by the masses anymore. there might be someone 'out there' or 'in here' that has had a devoted heart and puts things together differtly than the broken fragments of soul peices that are floating around cities. People say they care, until they get horny, then they don't care, they say they do, but they don't, it's more important to feel good at the time. putting the other person asside. even when I fight for you when I die for you. My line of my songs slings lyrics for a thousand miles, people get addicted to other people to feel good, either image or real people. If you are happy alone you will be happy with others. When others attack you be happy when others love you be happy! Right now I'm happy to be heart broken.

[Spectrum]

Ps- Your mom

Edited February 20, 2011 by Spectrum

[Otis]

Do you use a system...or are used by a system...?

Beliefs, in the best of the cases, are comforting teddy bears for the mind....in the worse, weapons or armours, as Chogyam Trungpa said...

 

Questions

 

Our questions about why we are here and where we're going are uncomfortable, but they are real questions for every human being. If you do not ask them, and allow them to be ongoing questions, you will never know for yourself what it's all about. You will never know who you are, why you're here, and where you are going. Your mind is full of ideas and dreams and plans about what will fulfill you, what will make you happy, what will give you freedom. But these ideas silence the question, comfort your mind, and put out the flame. (Diamond Heart Book 3, pg 4)

 

I am not trying to give you an answer; I'm just giving you a question. You need to let your being be ablaze like a flame, an aspiring flame, with no preconceived ideas about what it aspires to. To be just burning intensely, deeply wanting to know, wanting to see the truth without following any preconceptions, totally in the present with the question itself, and let it burn away all the ideas, all the beliefs, all the concepts, even the ones you learned from great teachings. If you don't allow that flame completely, will you ever rest in your life? Will you ever rest in your life as long as you're covering your question, answering it before it's really answered? Will you ever really be content with someone else's answer? (Diamond Heart Book 3, pg 6)

A. H. Almaas

Another awesome share, Ulises! I never understand how anyone can allow others to form their beliefs for them. That seems like surrendering one of the most intimate responsibilities we have.

[Otis]

Hello Otis,

 

Here's the lines that make me wonder...

 

 

 

The last passage is the most telling, but the prior ones say a lot. They say that everything is a lie and that this person has the truth, even if that truth is that there is no truth. It goes on to advocate that one must be willing to give up everything in order to find the truth, which is what caused me some concern about the author in the first place.

 

After reading up on the author I found out that he has several offices around the world where he and other members who have reached a certain rank counsel others. He advocates that treatment of the human condition is not a quick fix but requires a long commitment. If I am correct, I'm almost certain that this person would advocate leaving those things that conflict with the ideals he teaches, people included. I'm almost certain that the people involved pay hefty sums for this counseling and I'm almost certain that once they are in counseling for any length of time, it's probably very hard for them to leave.

 

The cult mentality isn't always based on religion, sometimes it uses science and philosophy as a tool. I wont mention the organizations that do this, because they're sue happy, but they're out there.

 

The fact is most cults have a small amount of truth that draws people in and surrounding that truth is the dogma that keeps them. I may be wrong, I'm just saying I wouldn't put all my eggs in this basket.

 

Aaron

Sorry, Aaron, I don't see it.

 

No cult will ever preach "let go of all beliefs". They will only preach "let go of all beliefs but ours". The distinction is huge.

 

It is precisely because the writer is so absolute, that I hear it as truth. If I choose surrender, I don't get to hang on to some prized privileged beliefs, because I'm extra attached to them. I've got to be willing to cut it to the bone, or I will always be clinging to some particular point of view, always clinging to being right.

[Aaron]

Sorry, Aaron, I don't see it.

 

No cult will ever preach "let go of all beliefs". They will only preach "let go of all beliefs but ours". The distinction is huge.

 

It is precisely because the writer is so absolute, that I hear it as truth. If I choose surrender, I don't get to hang on to some prized privileged beliefs, because I'm extra attached to them. I've got to be willing to cut it to the bone, or I will always be clinging to some particular point of view, always clinging to being right.

 

 

Hello Otis,

 

No need to believe anything really. I'm just stating an observation.

 

Aaron

[Ulises]

Endless bicameral Rhetoric. skilless non unifying passages. Your qualifications must be that you lay down naked together, can all your freedom help you break free

from the psychophysicalpower sexual drive has over weak minded people is easy when you use sex as the imaginary barrier to a lost kingdom. the sick Pychic cycle is obviously turning a hamster wheel in the collective mind, repeating paths already

crossed. Here's One for Originality. You never fucked the fight out. Bare your sheild

maiden It's to bad that true love isn't practiced or believed in by the masses anymore. there might be someone 'out there' or 'in here' that has had a devoted heart and puts things together differtly than the broken fragments of soul peices that are floating around cities. People say they care, until they get horny, then they don't care, they say they do, but they don't, it's more important to feel good at the time. putting the other person asside. even when I fight for you when I die for you. My line of my songs slings lyrics for a thousand miles, people get addicted to other people to feel good, either image or real people. If you are happy alone you will be happy with others. When others attack you be happy when others love you be happy! Right now I'm happy to be heart broken.

 

Good, good..""There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in"

 

 

We have forgotten - in this soulless bardo called western culture - that, thousands of years ago, we were like this....

 

"Bushman knowing is inspired by feeling love rather than thinking ideas. The more they feed love – loving the loving in a recursively spun positive feedback loop - the more they amplify its presence and impact on their body. It causes them to tremble and shake, an indication to them that they are awake and in the only state worthy of trustworthy knowing. For them, thinking should serve

authentically experienced love rather than the latter being an abstraction for intellectual word play.

Bushmen seek to make their 'ropes' (a metaphor for relationship) strong. They do so by shooting 'arrows' of amplified love into one another. You might be tempted to say that they are 'cupid scholars' who hunt for 'n/om' (the soulful life force). They work to make themselves 'soft' through absurd play and open hearted expression so that the arrows and ropes that enhance relational connectivity may pierce and join. Bushman stories emphasize changes that surprise and trip you into being off guard with any convenient category of understanding. In effect, Bushman knowing is all about letting yourself out of any and all typological grids of abstraction so that the Heraclitean movement of spirited love can dance you into ever shifting relations with life.

***

A group of elder women n/om kxaosi were asked what made them so strong in

matters of n/om (Keeney 2010). They replied, 'we are this way because of the tears we have wept for the ancestors who have passed on.' The deepest longing human beings experience often comes from the loss of a loved one. Rather than trying to emotionally get over it, these Bushman elders keep the longing alive, feeding it until it breaks their hearts wide open in an awakened way, bringing them inside a more expansive and intimate relation with their ancestors. In this connection tears flow along a channel that keeps their relationships strong and permits a never-ending expression of love and soulful guidance."

Edited February 21, 2011 by Ulises

[Spectrum]

And how does this play out in western culture? Sexcults

and

free love?