Lets Bat It Around Again-what Is Enlightenment

[Wayfarer64]

I for one am just happy to hear the concept of "Groovy" being accepted again!

I was feelin a bit fuddy-duddied and yearning for a glass of wine & Beethoven's 6th to lighten my mood.

 

Now I'm thinkin' herb and ragas!

 

Getting our groove back seems to be a damn good idea on every level I can think of- from healthy sex to clean government to environmental sciences and the wee wobble in our Earth's orbit that scientists keep reminding us of...

I seek to be de-wobbled and re-grooved and if that sets me either hell or heaven-bound at least I'm enjoying the ride.

 

-A quick aside - Yesterday, I spent some time with a dog I am rather fond of . The people she owns just adopted a son and they moved to a new home. The dog was home alone with the teen-aged son and was sure glad to see me.

I knew she was unsettled and feeling displaced from her groove, so I spent some time talking soothingly to her and scratching her behind the ears as she has directed me to do in the past... And I know I made it a bit better for her, she knew at least that I could still find them and that there was something of her old life that was catching up to her new life.

 

She looked at me with love and I know she is senscient. Does that make us both enlightened? I hope so. I really hope that it is the shared life we give each other that makes us one and part of the all that passes for enlightenment. That would keep me groovy for some time to come.-

Namaste

[fatherpaul]

Yes they do.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satori

 

 

i have much respect fot D.T. Suzuki's translations,

but for one, there is no enlightenment to fall in and out of.

for two, having fallen into the void, you dont fall back.

[fatherpaul]

(saying what I said before, in a different way)

 

ime, there is an Underlying Ground of Light, and there are definately meditative practices that unify the individual with the Big Light. I've sat with teachers where the room was definately full of light. So, ime, could be that "enlightenment" actually has something to do with light.

 

 

you assume there is such a thing as an "individual" ?

[freeform]

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Edited December 18, 2019 by freeform

[Ian]

Enlightenment is a word.

 

Lots of different experiences are going to be linked to that word, because by their very nature, such experiences are not well described.

 

So it's very hard to tell if one person's "experience described as enlightenment" is the same as another's.

 

Every path that describes an ongoing process seems to describe various "achievements", many of which are mistaken for the "final" one.

 

F**k, I'm even boring myself with this.

 

Bottom line: we cannot describe enlightenment because it requires/involves the absence of the describer.

 

We can come up with lots of cute and maybe even helpful approximations.

 

Barry Long has said "I am the same as you, except I have nothing arising. No blazing lights, just nothing arising." I'll see if I can dig up a quote from Sifu Yap.

 

Blah blah. If any of us gets enlightened, we'll be able to tell, because people will want to sit with us and do nothing.

 

One of my practices involves choosing an aspect of my ego, then embodying it, then thinking about it, then thinking about me thinking about it, then thinking about me thinking about me thinking about it etc... so I'm going Meta, then moving up the ladder of Meta states... at some point everything stops all mental chatter, thoughts, emotions, etc stop, I've reached the end of the ladder and the best way to describe it is 'emptiness'...

 

Sounds very similar to a practice called "who's there" from a (quite good) book called "Chaos Ritual" by Steve Wilson.

 

You just go in yr head and ask "who's there?". Then "who's asking?", then "who's asking?" etc etc and you're left with less and less. Only tried it a few times, when I was even more lazy and feckless than currently, so not much to report.

 

What brings an end to the emptiness you describe?

[Dog]

Ther is an unchanging truth that heals all things. You can see this truth when you see a mother smiling and hugging there child. Through this, balance and harmony is achieved. Then there is enlightenment. This is lead into gold. Light and acceptance. This is ev-olution, at levels of atom. As for the word enlightenment. Symbols and codes are very important to the elite. From the Ancient world of Egypt, Babylion, China, and India to the greek mystery schools. Also fear not, ounce you have truly balnced and harmonized something it does not revert. THat said you will find more sickness, stuck chi, lead what ever you want to call it since you have more light. IT is like the differnce between the 50s 60s, 70s, ounce there was more light in the 60s and 70s people said "look at all this mess, the 50s where not like this." Well shure the 50s where bad just that there was little light to show it.

 

Peace be with you all.

[thaddeus]

The eckart tolle stuff i'm listening to has an interesting perspective on the idea of being 'reborn'. If you look at present moment awareness..then getting 'lost' in thought..that is being 'reborn into thought'...the buddhists want to stop the cycle of rebirth..so it's not necessarily a physical birth that you want to end the cycle of..it's the stopping of the mental rebirths..anyway, it was a cool concept..

T

[Trunk]

If any of us gets enlightened, we'll be able to tell, because people will want to sit with us and do nothing.

Good one!

[freeform]

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Edited December 18, 2019 by freeform

[Rin]

[forestofsouls]

Nicely put, Rin.

[Trunk]

"You need to learn to adhere to the discipline of your spiritual practice in order to continue pushing yourself to ever-higher levels of consciousness. Once you get Shaktipat, it's best just to ramp up the level of spiritual energy inside your system and deal with the challenges this brings on. There will be times when you run up against changes in your life that will be very difficult. This is why discipline in spiritual practice is so important.

 

When you're inspired and everything seems to be moving along effortlessly, it's easy. But inspiration comes and goes, it's not a constant. There will be times when you hit a difficult phase of your practice and you just have to grind it out for a while. Hold to your discipline, because even if it doesn't seem like it, you're making spiritual progress. Truth be told, most spiritual students are not very good judges of their own spiritual progress; what they think is progress and what they think is not progress is almost always wrong."

 

-- Mark Griffin

(quote of the week from HardLight.org)

[sean]

Bumped into this today, thought it was relevant.

 

Via Apophatic Mysticism

 

Ming: Enlightenment

 

When your discernment (Ming) penetrates the four quarters

Are you capable of not knowing anything?

Lao Zi, Chapter Twenty CLZ

 

Gazing at the muddy water's surface,

I was deceived and missed the deeper clarity.

Zhuang Zi, Chapter Twenty

 

Taoist enlightenment is a "return to the original light (ming)."(LZ52) This light is subtle (xuan): without an analytic understanding of how one is proceeding, one is yet able to engage the people and things of the world with an intimacy that is accurate and effective. Embracing all things, good and bad, "is called following the light (ming)". (LZ27)

 

The Taoist seeks not a salvation of the soul from a mundane realm, but a redemption of her perception, a recall of the miraculous quality of world, a reawakening to the astonishment of simply being here.

 

The carved and the uncarved, the prejudiced and the impartial.

 

The tao is a difficult problem for the small mind of the human being, it does not seem to fit into our categories of thought: The tao, the uncarved block (pu), also includes within itself, the carved and the carving. We humans are to "embody the tao" (ti tao), we are to duplicate within our minds this coexistence of both the carved and the uncarved.

 

The tao is the zi ran, self-so, self-ordering. The modern "systems (or complexity) theory" aptly describes the behavior of the tao. "The tao resides within all things" (Zhuang Zi). All dynamic systems under heaven are self-ordered (zi ding). Everything is part of a local system and also part of the One system.

 

The self-organizing force of the tao is primal, impartial, (bu si) disinterested (wu jin), and undivided. The manifest mind of man is subsequent, partial, biased, and divisive. The original mind of man is a replica of the primal tao. But as Zhuang Zi indicates, in order to thrive, the original and the manifest mind must work together. (liang xing)

 

I cannot get through a doorway unless my mind is able to "discriminate out" the outlines of a door from my general visual field. But I will not thrive if I only react partially to my world, if I simply respond to each in the series of individual things I am able to notice in my perceptual field, if I only notice doorways, and if I try to get through every doorway that I notice. My perceptual field must be seen in its parts and also seen as the whole that it is.

 

"The great man joins together the partial to become impartial (da ren he bing er gong). This is why for influences from outside he has an appropriator which makes them his own, and he does not cling to one or another; and for outgoings from within he has a regulator which sets them in the true direction, so that others do not resist them." Zhuang Zi (A. C. Graham)

[Trunk]

Taoist enlightenment is a "return to the original light (ming)."(LZ52) This light is subtle (xuan): without an analytic understanding of how one is proceeding, one is yet able to engage the people and things of the world with an intimacy that is accurate and effective. Embracing all things, good and bad, "is called following the light (ming)". (LZ27)

 

"According to sutra the root of cyclic existence is our misconception that things have true existence. According to tantra this conception and the energy wind on which it rides are responsible. Since mind and energy are always together, tantric practice concentrates on halting the activity of the energy winds which serve as mounts for such [mis]conceptions. By gathering these coarser energies into the central channel of the subtle body and by causing them to remain and dissolve there, their activity ceases as does that of the coarser mental states allied to them. This allows subtle awareness to become active. One of the main purposes of tantric practice is to make manifest the actual CLEAR LIGHT, namely subtle awareness in a blissful state experiencing reality."

 

- The Three Principal Aspects of the Path, pg 42

[footpad]

Hey lerner;

 

I found this on the net sometime back and, while I don't understand

all of it, it appears to date back to the supposed begining of interest

in the tao. I like it as a simple statement of enlightenment.

It is listed as "Untitled document" on the web.

 

"When your discernment (Ming) penetrates the four quarters

Are you capable of not knowing anything?

Lao Zi, Chapter Twenty CLZ"

 

"Gazing at the muddy water's surface,

I was deceived and missed the deeper clarity.

Zhuang Zi, Chapter Twenty"

 

"Taoist enlightenment is a "return to the original light (ming)" (LZ52) "This light is subtle (xuan)": "without an analytic understanding of how one is proceeding, one is yet able to engage the people and things of the world with an intimacy that is accurate and effective. Embracing all things, good and bad, "is called following the light (ming)". (LZ27)"

 

"The Taoist seeks not a salvation of the soul from a mundane realm, but a redemption of her perception, a recall of the miraculous quality of world, a reawakening to the astonishment of simply being here."

 

Regards

 

Footpad

[Wayfarer64]

"If any of us gets enlightened, we'll be able to tell, because people will want to sit with us and do nothing."

 

Nah-Unless enlightened and lit-up are the same thing... How could ya tell if we hadn't just smoked something herbatious?

Yens for junk food?

[fatherpaul]

its really very simple

you cannot experience enlightenment

because it is not an experience

[Yoda]

Yogani defines it as an abiding happiness that is not dependent upon circumstances.

[Trunk]

you assume there is such a thing as an "individual" ?

While the conventional ideas and sensations of self are gone, something still remains: there is a physical body, and there is a "vajra" body - the layered subtle bodies of an individual functioning in union with the Universal. This last part is tricky, because someone might experience the Unviversal without correspondent subtle body integration. That, if carried on for too long, leads to disfunctionality. The human wiring contains within it the capacity for Universality in a way that both transcends and sustains, strengthens, the individual subtle layers - though operating in supramundane reverse of their conventional course.

 

[fatherpaul]

While the conventional ideas and sensations of self are gone, something still remains: there is a physical body, and there is a "vajra" body - the layered subtle bodies of an individual functioning in union with the Universal. This last part is tricky, because someone might experience the Unviversal without correspondent subtle body integration. That, if carried on for too long, leads to disfunctionality. The human wiring contains within it the capacity for Universality in a way that both transcends and sustains, strengthens, the individual subtle layers - though operating in supramundane reverse of their conventional course.

 

 

this means nothing to me,

each physical body is a unique genetic

print, no two the same.

individuality is an idea.

"experiencing the universal" is also

just an idea.

[freeform]

.

Edited December 18, 2019 by freeform

[fatherpaul]

All of the above ^ (and below) is also an 'idea'.

 

a word is a sound that alludes to a narrow band of subjective experience... words are never the same as what they describe - 'the map is not the territory'. 'idea' is a word... in the way that you're using it, it's very ambiguous... let's just define it as an internal sensory representation.

 

So we know that a word narrows the universe down and cages it in... you keep making this point in your own way... I think most of us realise this... so how do you communicate on an online forum without words? You've done the 'not this, not this' thing... and it's always good to be reminded not to take words too seriously... but at some point it becomes point-less. And so does talking about elightenment... unless, ofcourse, it's entertaining!

 

Most of the conversations on these subject-specific-type forums boil down to this: "are you here?" - "yeah I'm here" - "are you experiencing this?" - "no, I'm experiencing something else"...

 

In fact most communication between humans is pretty much the above... we feel secure when someone else is 'here' and having a similar experience... we often get excited when someone 'here' is having a different experience...

 

Imagine if we didn't need to feel secure... if that was a given... and we used communication for entertainment instead...

 

but anyway - I'm getting off the topic of enlightenment here (or am I?)

 

I'm here! (or am I?)

f

 

agreed

this is the dilema

to discuss something

that cannot be communicated

[Wayfarer64]

The Oneness meeting in NYC yesterday to build a "community of consciousness" was very similar to these threads on Tao Bums.

Depac Chopra and Andrew Cohen spoke and articulated almost as well as many on the TB site!

 

There was a gathering of seekers and a communication of ideas face to face and in a very loving atmosphere. Group meditations and music and poetry and a few surprises for me as well. I even met some people who I have been linked to from my web-site's links page for years! Much kissing and hugging between strangers and friends!

 

I told many people there about the Tao Bums site & hope a few will join us here. Many of our discussions revolved around the uniting influence of the WWW...

I didn't meet anyone from da Bums -but there were several hundred folks there...

 

So it was a big successs for me to have that experience of real-life sharing -It felt a bit like the best of the '60's in a way. (& I sold a few copies of the Wayfarer Sonnets and swapped one for a book by another writer..."The Rosetta" A handbook for Transcendent Experience by integrating the metaphors of God...

 

The event was sposored by the Open Center- where I had played a few gigs many years ago... So it was also something of a home-coming for me...A gathering of the tribes as it were.

 

But back to this thread-

 

It is too bad that words can get in the way of communication, just as religions can get in the way of sharing faith and spirit. These parodoxes can be transcended with good humor- (I scream U scream)... and open-minded listening.

 

Until we can communicate in non-verbal ways -as animals seem to manage, we will remain hard-pressed to share the deepest most etherial aspects of our beings, and our experience of this seeking we share in life....

 

This batting it around is a great game in which we are taking swings at explaining the field we are playing on.

The real game remains within each of us to manifest the best in ourselves. Our efforts to share what we have found in searching is a precious gift offered here. Challanges are good, and we will eventually find our way to hitting that grand-slam, bringing us all home.

 

I realize what Father Paul is saying is a profound truth concerning the nature of this existance and what reality consists of.

There is a quote a came across yeterday that may tie this together-

"The human soul is located nowhere and everywhere, its secrets told by music, myth, and metaphor, the language of god...

Namaste

[etyrnal]

forgive me but,

one doesn't fall in and out of a state of enlightenment

 

well that's pretty consistent...

 

that would make it easier for you to support statements similar to 'i maintain there is no such thing as...'

 

it helps one not to fall into, or out of a state that does not exist! phew!

 

existing one moment, and the next not?

 

i wonder if its raining

 

this means nothing to me,

each physical body is a unique genetic

print, no two the same.

individuality is an idea.

"experiencing the universal" is also

just an idea.

 

is this -- idea?

[fatherpaul]

hello again

 

let me just say that the idea of enlightenment is not elightenment

neither is the description or the word, this is very simple to understand.

it seems that it can be communicated in a negative way by saying

there is only the end of ignorance, again this is not enlightenment.

when the number 1 is proposed, the 2 and 3 and the rest are implied.

being one with everything is really a very absurd idea, but then

i like the absurd.

 

peace

 

paul