Who is enlightened?

[Smile]

I've learned over the years not to listen to what people say- only what they do. Most of the Buddhas spent many years in deep serious meditation and other cultivation practices. People like U.G. Krishnamurti, Sailor Bob, or Adyashanti talk well but they are feeding your mind with garbage of another extreme. The only purpose of these talks is to inspire if you have wisdom, or sidetrack you if you don't.

 

The problem that we all have now is this- we know a lot about how it is all supposed to be and we appropriated the results achieved through the practices of the people before us. We inverted cause and effect, basis and result. And so we can talk and understand deepest truths of known and unknown but only because of the scriptures or Buddhas that explained them to us. It's not a waist but without the direct experience attained through hard spiritual work, this is all a fantasy. You should laugh in the face of anyone who says you don't have to go through hard years of training, and by that I mean discipline, dedication and one-pointedness in you beliefs and vows. If you don't think I'm right, show me how many Buddhas are around these days to show you the way.

 

My point exactly...

[Smile]

To add, I didn't mean put down anything what the teaches mentioned are saying. My point was to present what they are NOT saying.

[Cameron]

Thanks for making that distinction.

 

By the way, Ime not sure you are aware of Adyas teaching. He says very clearly most people should meditate every day. He is also one of the best teachers of meditation I have met.

[Smile]

Oh, ok then. I didn't get this idea from his talks though. His idea I believe is: We are perfect, but all we need is to realize it. You don't need to do anything, just let it all go and be in the moment.

 

I guess it's either he is evolving himself or is changing his teachings. Great for everyone.

[cloud recluse]

I've learned over the years not to listen to what people say- only what they do. Most of the Buddhas spent many years in deep serious meditation and other cultivation practices. People like U.G. Krishnamurti, Sailor Bob, or Adyashanti talk well but they are feeding your mind with garbage of another extreme...

 

Clarity & directness are great,but I think your being a bit simplistic about the potential function of words here.

 

Certainly,there is useless talk that does indeed fill your mind with garbage,& yes it usually amounts to some kind of avoidance of actual practice,I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU ON THAT ONE !!

 

But a skilled teacher can use words,can use dialogue,to UNDO the presuppositions that interfere with practice.Now I dont know enough about Sailor Bob or Krishnamurti to comment,but this certainly seems to be what Adyashanti is doing.

 

ANY student will probably come to a teacher ALLREADY weighed down with words,but Adyas dialogues seem to accelerate the process of "relaxing" ( I cant think of a better word here,sorry) into a process of a radical UNknowing,a dropping of your compusive word-web.If hes 'filling' the mind with anything,its a garbage-extraction program,a process of unravelling.

 

ANY teacher will speak,will spout forth words,will have an impact on the word-web the student has enmeshed themseves in.But there are different kinds of impact.

 

And now Ive become too wordy,but its a point you should seriously consider.His words ARE an enhancer of real practice,I dont really know about Bob & Krish though.But Adya is all for meditation.

 

Regards,Cloud.

[Cameron]

Oh, ok then. I didn't get this idea from his talks though. His idea I believe is: We are perfect, but all we need is to realize it. You don't need to do anything, just let it all go and be in the moment.

 

I guess it's either he is evolving himself or is changing his teachings. Great for everyone.

 

 

The way he does his retreats and intensives is to have a meditation period, then talk, meditate, then talk, meditate etc.

 

Really, not much different than traditional Zendos I have been to where the Roshi will do a long Dharma talk after meditation. The primary difference with Adya is he opens the room up which rarely happens in Zen. What he does is basically like doing dokusan or teacher to student teaching in front of hundreds of people instead of teacher to student only in a private room.

 

It's a pretty amazing thing to watch someone reveal themselves like that and openly trust in his presence with hundreds of people listenting in the same room in silence.

 

Cam

[sean]

In Buddhist terms, I think Adyashanti is using words as skillful means (upaya). It's just a teaching strategy. It's that simple. Despite coming from a Zen background, his terminology has become enriched with the branch of Hindu philosophy called Advaita Vedanta. If you are ever bored look up Adi Shankara. There is a pretty deep history of Buddhists and Vedantists debating. Some historians credit Shankara for driving Buddhism out of India by continuously demolishing Buddhists in debates. (I am not saying this to argue, I honestly don't care one way or the other).

 

Personally I find Adyashanti's teachings to be the most profound pointers to a direct experience of what lies beyond the mind that I've encountered. I don't know how else to put it. Ultimately I really have no idea if he is enlightened, if I am awakening or if my experiences are anything more than pleasant endorphins being released in my brain from listening to him. Neither does anyone else. And that is part of his point. There is this huge void beneath all of our thoughts and beliefs and feelings and perceptions that we have about how things are. It's very strange if you stop for a minute and wonder if maybe you really have no clue how this all works. When you are stuck in the mind, it's so incredibly easy to just poo poo this as a beginner step or to think that this is really basic and you already understand that. "Oh yeah, that, I've read that a million times." I've poo'd poo'd it for years. But when it opens up, and the mind stops, there is just no more question. There is just no question at all. How could I ever explain no-thought with thought? But it all becomes so incredibly clear. Except it doesn't feel like it became clear. It feels like What Always Already Is and Always Was clear. You see because if you take the Buddha's words at face value, if you take them literally, the self is just an illusion. So if the self is an illusion, it was never in the way of anything. This is what is seen. And then when this Always Already Is is not grasped for, which is an interesting struggle to watch play out because there is so much pleasure accompanying this opening, so it's turned into another "high" to try to get and sustain, which is just another way to imagine an illusion is in the the way of anything ... but to let go of grasping even this, then there is a soaking of your entire experience in That.

 

There is something happening here, perhaps from exposure to Adyshanti, perhaps I am being exposed to Adyashanti because there is something happening here. I cannot really explain. It's almost like nothing is happening. But it's an incredible nothing. An opening, a silence between thoughts. There is so much space it's overwhelming. It's ironic to me, all this talk of hard work and discipline I am hearing. Maybe this hard work is around the corner. I am not afraid. I am committed to Reality. And hard work is easy. I am probably a workaholic in fact. But around this awakening, which is really not a separate thing actually, my experience is different. I am meditating 3-5 hours a day now, and I shit you not, there is only a tiny trace of effort. In fact, I think it would be physically difficult for me to resist and if I didn't have to go to work 8 hours a day, I think I would be meditating 5-8 hours a day. I am just naturally pulled into sitting in stillness, in silence. And yet there is little force, less struggle for an idea of what I imagine (but have never seen or experienced) enlightenment to be. How is that different from a holding onto a lie?

 

A part of me sometimes wants to say "Yeah, just listen to Adyashanti, and you will see". But I really have no clue at all if that is true so I really don't recommend anyone except for what you are truly drawn to. I am more eclectic and tolerant and feel that I have many different teachers, probably some of which that would not even get along. There are different kinds of minds, different kinds of personalities. I have preferences. And judgments. I think there are better or worse pointers to Truth. But we are all drawn to teachings because they resonate with us on some deeper level. Not because we've sat there and weighed out every single logical fact to make a decision.

 

Anyway, I am probably rambling.

 

Good night,

Sean

[Ian]

In Buddhist terms, I think Adyashanti is using words as skillful means (upaya). It's just a teaching strategy. It's that simple. Despite coming from a Zen background, his terminology has become enriched with the branch of Hindu philosophy called Advaita Vedanta. If you are ever bored look up Adi Shankara. There is a pretty deep history of Buddhists and Vedantists debating. Some historians credit Shankara for driving Buddhism out of India by continuously demolishing Buddhists in debates. (I am not saying this to argue, I honestly don't care one way or the other).

 

Personally I find Adyashanti's teachings to be the most profound pointers to a direct experience of what lies beyond the mind that I've encountered. I don't know how else to put it. Ultimately I really have no idea if he is enlightened, if I am awakening or if my experiences are anything more than pleasant endorphins being released in my brain from listening to him. Neither does anyone else. And that is part of his point. There is this huge void beneath all of our thoughts and beliefs and feelings and perceptions that we have about how things are. It's very strange if you stop for a minute and wonder if maybe you really have no clue how this all works. When you are stuck in the mind, it's so incredibly easy to just poo poo this as a beginner step or to think that this is really basic and you already understand that. "Oh yeah, that, I've read that a million times." I've poo'd poo'd it for years. But when it opens up, and the mind stops, there is just no more question. There is just no question at all. How could I ever explain no-thought with thought? But it all becomes so incredibly clear. Except it doesn't feel like it became clear. It feels like What Always Already Is and Always Was clear. You see because if you take the Buddha's words at face value, if you take them literally, the self is just an illusion. So if the self is an illusion, it was never in the way of anything. This is what is seen. And then when this Always Already Is is not grasped for, which is an interesting struggle to watch play out because there is so much pleasure accompanying this opening, so it's turned into another "high" to try to get and sustain, which is just another way to imagine an illusion is in the the way of anything ... but to let go of grasping even this, then there is a soaking of your entire experience in That.

 

There is something happening here, perhaps from exposure to Adyshanti, perhaps I am being exposed to Adyashanti because there is something happening here. I cannot really explain. It's almost like nothing is happening. But it's an incredible nothing. An opening, a silence between thoughts. There is so much space it's overwhelming. It's ironic to me, all this talk of hard work and discipline I am hearing. Maybe this hard work is around the corner. I am not afraid. I am committed to Reality. And hard work is easy. I am probably a workaholic in fact. But around this awakening, which is really not a separate thing actually, my experience is different. I am meditating 3-5 hours a day now, and I shit you not, there is only a tiny trace of effort. In fact, I think it would be physically difficult for me to resist and if I didn't have to go to work 8 hours a day, I think I would be meditating 5-8 hours a day. I am just naturally pulled into sitting in stillness, in silence. And yet there is little force, less struggle for an idea of what I imagine (but have never seen or experienced) enlightenment to be. How is that different from a holding onto a lie?

 

A part of me sometimes wants to say "Yeah, just listen to Adyashanti, and you will see". But I really have no clue at all if that is true so I really don't recommend anyone except for what you are truly drawn to. I am more eclectic and tolerant and feel that I have many different teachers, probably some of which that would not even get along. There are different kinds of minds, different kinds of personalities. I have preferences. And judgments. I think there are better or worse pointers to Truth. But we are all drawn to teachings because they resonate with us on some deeper level. Not because we've sat there and weighed out every single logical fact to make a decision.

 

Anyway, I am probably rambling.

 

Good night,

Sean

 

That's really nice.

 

It's so hard to accept, or has been for me, that it's so simple. If you don't resist stillness, if you don't require stimulus, if you can just shut the fuck up!

 

But once it is so simple, it's so simple! By no means easy, but simple. One of Barry Long's favourite phrases is just that:

 

"I said it was simple, I didn't say it was easy."

 

I'm nowhere near a stage of being drawn happily into stillness.

 

Much closer than I was, but I still do lots and lots of directed faffing about in order to interrupt the various things I do instead of being still.

 

Which is uneccessary, except that it isn't, yet.

 

There's a great little book called something like "The Zen Teaching of Ha Hui." It compares, at one point, enlightenment to being like the boiling of water. Nobody quite knows how the water boils, but it seems to happen a lot more to water that has been waiting patiently at 99 degrees.

 

This doesn't necessarily mean, I think, that the practices necessarily "cause" the "consequences." They may just be what you want to do as you start to ripen.

 

I'm definitely rambling.

 

In your eclecticism, you might well appreciate a Barry Long tape called "Now - the secret of infinity." It's the most direct thing I've ever heard.

 

Thank you for your post(s). Helpful and inspiring.

I

Edited December 8, 2006 by Ian

[hagar]

That's really nice.

 

It's so hard to accept, or has been for me, that it's so simple. If you don't resist stillness, if you don't require stimulus, if you can just shut the fuck up!

 

But once it is so simple, it's so simple! By no means easy, but simple. One of Barry Long's favourite phrases is just that:

 

"I said it was simple, I didn't say it was easy."

 

I'm nowhere near a stage of being drawn happily into stillness.

 

Much closer than I was, but I still do lots and lots of directed faffing about in order to interrupt the various things I do instead of being still.

 

Which is uneccessary, except that it isn't, yet.

 

There's a great little book called something like "The Zen Teaching of Ha Hui." It compares, at one point, enlightenment to being like the boiling of water. Nobody quite knows how the water boils, but it seems to happen a lot more to water that has been waiting patiently at 99 degrees.

 

This doesn't necessarily mean, I think, that the practices necessarily "cause" the "consequences." They may just be what you want to do as you start to ripen.

 

I'm definitely rambling.

 

In your eclecticism, you might well appreciate a Barry Long tape called "Now - the secret of infinity." It's the most direct thing I've ever heard.

 

Thank you for your post(s). Helpful and inspiring.

I

 

Couldn't agree more.

 

Nice post Sean.

 

This is only my opinion, but enlightenment is a concept. Period. There is nothing objective in it. And if you by any chance get "enlightened" in this lifetime, remember this story ( I can't remember where i got it from)

 

Two monks were walking on a pasture and while they were talking the older monk sighed as he passed a cow that stood there grasing. "Why did you sigh so sadly" asked the younger monk? The older monk turned and said, "Right before we passed that cow, it slipped into dhyana, pure emptiness. I think it was at that moment it stopped chewing. Then the moment passed, because it could not recognize the moment. How sad, yet how fortunate."

 

Talking about englightenment is actually very sad. Its like talking about skiing powder. What's the use, if you're not skiing powder. And only the one's skiing powder can actually appreciate it, and know what the heck skiing powder is like. Words does not come close. And on a personal note, if I DO happen to be skiing powder, I care very little about enlightenment.

 

h

[Wayfarer64]

What a breath of fresh air this thread is. It centers me back to where the being and doing become one with intent... and quiet contemplation leads to a sense of being a single, breathing part of the One & All.

 

On a lighter note -some slippery slopes are a very good thing indeed.- Enjoy the winter!

[thelerner]

Two monks were on a boat. Both were old and accomplished. One was taoist , the other buddhist. They talked about there monasteries and practices. "Watch This" said the taoist. He waved his hands and a rainbow appeared.

 

"Watch this" and the Buddist unzipped his pants and let go a yellow stream.

 

I forget the moral

 

Michael

[sean]

But once it is so simple, it's so simple! By no means easy, but simple. One of Barry Long's favourite phrases is just that:

 

"I said it was simple, I didn't say it was easy."

Ahhh, that is so brilliant! I never heard this before, it really resonates. It's sooo simple - and yet within that there is difficult and easy. This brings more clarity to what I was trying to articulate about being drawn without effort into stillness -- I doubt our experience is much different -- I can still look at my meditation area with loathing. And there is often really incredibly pain and suffering that comes up. I am not just sitting around all blissed out. Life/practice can be very difficult. But in some strange way it's unspeakably simple.

 

"Now - the secret of infinity" -- thanks for the recommend. I've wondered where to start with Barry. I like what little I've heard. Maybe I will buy this for myself for Christmas. BTW, off topic I guess, but I dusted off CFQ again last month and have been exploring this a little further. Really beautiful practice.

 

This is only my opinion, but enlightenment is a concept. Period.

It has to be some kind of cosmic joke. "Waking up from the story" is also a story. There is much humility found through this insight IMO. The ego is swallowed.

 

Great story too with the cow. I often watch my cats in wonder, seeing glimpses of what I imagine is some sort of dawning recognition. Hehheh. I joke with Lezlie that sometimes I think they are moments away from becoming self-conscious.

 

Namaste,

Sean