Why does humanity live in seperation?

[Cameron]

[thelerner]

Well, separation is better then divorce.

 

I didn't listen to the whole youtube, but not enough separation and people don't grow. Everyone is a yes man. Everyone is too nice and nothing gets done. We need a tinge of selfishness and separateness to become fully ourselves and explore our potential.

 

Michael

[thaddeus]

check this one out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9qZaydoAsI

[sean]

Nice clips.

 

That second one looked like a great heart to heart.

 

Well, separation is better then divorce.

 

I didn't listen to the whole youtube, but not enough separation and people don't grow. Everyone is a yes man. Everyone is too nice and nothing gets done. We need a tinge of selfishness and separateness to become fully ourselves and explore our potential.

 

Michael

Yes, right, and it's also good to know, to really know, that separation, for all it's imagined bad and all it's imagined good, is itself only imagined.

 

OOOooh, check out this

I just found.

 

Sean

[Yoda]

Ok, I'm with QiDr now about Neelam. I just maxxed out on youtube satsangs too. They are lovely people and I don't question their impressive attainments or the utility of getting a darshan fix, but they should just keep their traps shut like the nice gents in the second video.

 

Gurus should have a method, teach the method, and stop nattering on about the view from the top. The students invariably start to parrot the language and mannerisms and hear "you just don't get it" guru speeches for the rest of their lives and are made to feel like idiots in the long run.

 

Jmhmfo,

Yoda

[Cameron]

Hehe..I wouldn't say I agree Yoda but understand where your coming from.

 

I think watching satsangs like this on Utube are a small glimpse of the teachings that can occur when in the presence of an awakened person. For example, in the Adyashanti intensives I went to I felt that he helped people to a deeper place of trust and opening up to there true nature then might have been available from just listening to CD's about his method or whatever.

 

But it's all much ado about nothing and definetly not something to argue over. You either will or will not get drawn to it just like anything. Ime not sure why all the judging and opinions and "my understanding" and "my opinion of that" is so necissary here. But that's "all good" to.

 

If that is how it is then that is how it is.

 

Edit-Ok Ime feeling drawn to write a little bit more about this.

 

By no seperation I don't think anyone is saying to have billions of 'yes men' or human versions of the Star Trek Borg that have one collective mind. Obviously the way it is designed is for each person to develop there own unique personality traits, likes and dislikes, preferences. And that would include having opinions. "My" way of thinking, "My" way of doing things..centered around an ego identitiy.

 

I think that's all fine and well and basically how most people percieve that the world functions. But, I am also prone to think that that is all basically an illusion. It's a very strong illusion that people spend there entire life convincing themselves and others is real. But if there is really no inherent identity. No real person that can be found when you question or take a look, then it isn't anything real.

 

I agree to a point with what thelearner said. Basically life would be boring if we didn't have that sense of an ego and it was all one without any seperation. But I also feel it is all one without any seperation.

 

Adyashanti uses the example that we are all actors in a play or a movie. The difference between enlightened and unenlightened people is enlightened people know they are playing a part, a temporary role in a temporary play. The unelightened people play thier part so well they forget who they are and are convinced they are the role they are playing.

 

Would be like an actor who put so much time, energy and emotion into a part and seemingly becoming that character. To an enlightened person this would be seen as crazy. Your not a small, conditioned state you are something way beyond that which can't really be described.

 

So seperation and playing the role of your life is cool IMO. And awakening from that is also cool.

 

It's all ultimately cool in any case.

 

okayness

 

And also not okayness

[Yoda]

Adyashanti uses the example that we are all actors in a play or a movie. The difference between enlightened and unenlightened people is enlightened people know they are playing a part, a temporary role in a temporary play. The unelightened people play thier part so well they forget who they are and are convinced they are the role they are playing.

 

cool angle.

[Cameron]

Another example is I will be busy playing PS3 for the next couple weeks. I know that I am not the characters in the games but have fun with them. See..playing PS3 is good for enlightenment.

 

*tries to convince self playing PS3 all day is good for enlightenment*

[Leidee]

Well, separation is better then divorce.

 

I didn't listen to the whole youtube, but not enough separation and people don't grow. Everyone is a yes man. Everyone is too nice and nothing gets done. We need a tinge of selfishness and separateness to become fully ourselves and explore our potential.

 

Michael

 

 

I am going off the beaten track here...cos I haven't watch the yuotube stuff ...but something Michael said struck a chord...thought I would share...

 

There is a tarot card in the Osho Zen tarot called "Friendliness". It is two trees growing next to each other and their branches and leaves merge and grow into each other. It is a lovely card - which talks about the concept of friendliness...being your own strongly rooted, healthy tree. Still being close to the tree next to you...but not growing over it, or growing under it...still separate but together. No reliance on the other tree but, conversely, no emotional distance either.

 

I have always liked that card. And something about the meaning attached to the card really gets me deep inside...still to work out how to have such friendships in real life but working away at it...

[TwoTrees]

Leidee,

 

Could you please post a scan of the card up here for us to see ?

 

Interestingly enough I've yet to see it. I've had some recurrent dreams for quite a large part of my life in regards to something like it. Also hence the screen name I use, and the name of my upcoming business.

I've toyed with the idea of recreating this tree display in the front foyer of the building I acquire.

 

-Michelle

[Yoda]

On the same note, biologists have discovered in some trees that they share nutrients with each other. If one has a root that's sucking up some goodies on one side, they'll kick out the goodies on the other side so the other trees can chow down and pass it on to. So a whole stand of trees can be working together like that. That sort of sharing would provide to trees of competing species, too. This was just discovered in one species a couple of years ago (birch?) so I doubt there has been time to see if this sort of thing is the norm or not. Not something that competition theorizing scientists would even look for in the first place, so there may be many more examples of this sort of thing going on all the time.

 

ps if you google friendliness tarot and click on images, you'll see an example.

[QiDr]

It's all ultimately cool in any case.

 

okayness

 

And also not okayness

 

I don't want to beat the horse to death but, the point I was trying to make before is that; if one is going to use language as a vehicle, language matters. If an idea has been well thought out it should be deliverable in few, simple words (see Lao Tzu).

One of my teachers said that if you could not explain what you were doing, so that a seven year old could understand it, you had no business doing it.

[Taomeow]

 

Adyashanti uses the example that we are all actors in a play or a movie. The difference between enlightened and unenlightened people is enlightened people know they are playing a part, a temporary role in a temporary play. The unelightened people play thier part so well they forget who they are and are convinced they are the role they are playing.

 

A very prevalent category of people I've encountered is the third kind. People who believe they are enlightened until they stub their toe, whereupon they immediately flush their enlightenment down the toilet and revert to taking life seriously.

 

And then there's the fourth category, people who only believe in enlightenment in the classical taoist sense (later borrowed by a popular Buddhist preacher who used this concept as a building block in the foundation of Zen) -- a leap across the abyss where you either land on the other side or not, either get enlightened or get screwed, and if you get enlightened it is instantaneous and permanent and you don't use the internet anymore. Life, in the meantime, as unenlightened as it may seem to anyone who can't see the light for whatever reasons, or to anyone who can for that matter, is only worth living when taken seriously. If it is not taken seriously, if it's a play, a game, a make-believe, you are no longer human, you may be pure oneness but pure oneness pays no bills and makes no babies and wipes not their tears when they cry, and is therefore not worth considering as a factor that can make or break the wholeness of a human life. Oh, and that stubbed toe -- it is either whole or broken, and it matters much more than whether the universe is whole -- yes, it is, universally speaking, but we are concerned with local developments for a damn good reason.

 

Things that are whole are available for perception only to themselves. No fragment of a broken cup can be used as a cup, nor claim it IS the cup. It is what it is: a fragment of something broken. Knowing it is not enlightenment, but a good start, far as I'm concerned.

Edited December 21, 2006 by Taomeow

[Cameron]

I don't want to beat the horse to death but, the point I was trying to make before is that; if one is going to use language as a vehicle, language matters. If an idea has been well thought out it should be deliverable in few, simple words (see Lao Tzu).

One of my teachers said that if you could not explain what you were doing, so that a seven year old could understand it, you had no business doing it.

 

 

No. You were critisizing the language a particular teacher uses. I don't have any problem with that. You get attracted to whatever language appeals to you. But to think one teachers way of expressing is better than another in an objective sense can lead to some serious confusion IMO.

 

In other words, if you care to avoid the sort of disrespectful tone that was in your post, you could say..I am not particularly fond of her expression. I think Lao Tzu's expression is better.

 

The point being I am sure she has taught many people and hepled people who were drawn to her expression who may not have been drawn to Lao Tzu.

 

I love Lao Tzu, and wouldn't dream of even comparing anything from Tao Te Ching to anything else. But this is a living teacher(Lao Tzu isn't around you know) who is expressing from her experience studying with the Indian sage Papaji and talking to westerners.

 

There is nothing and no one to defend. It's just basic stuff any of us who have been communicating here for a period of time are sensitive to. If you prefer to give your opinions in a more blunt style that's ok with me to.

[Leidee]

Leidee,

 

Could you please post a scan of the card up here for us to see ?

 

Interestingly enough I've yet to see it. I've had some recurrent dreams for quite a large part of my life in regards to something like it. Also hence the screen name I use, and the name of my upcoming business.

I've toyed with the idea of recreating this tree display in the front foyer of the building I acquire.

 

-Michelle

 

Hi Michelle

 

http://www.ini.cz/ranka/zen/zen050_e.htm <-- try going here and you will see the card I am speaking of

[Wayfarer64]

I don't want to beat the horse to death but, the point I was trying to make before is that; if one is going to use language as a vehicle, language matters. If an idea has been well thought out it should be deliverable in few, simple words (see Lao Tzu).

One of my teachers said that if you could not explain what you were doing, so that a seven year old could understand it, you had no business doing it.

 

At first I liked the idea of this very much... Then I began realizing there were many things I could not explain to a child, because they had no frame of reference for them to grok the matter at hand...At least not on any level that my explaination would actually explain the thing itself, in a meaningful and contextual way.

 

If I were having a sexual experience with a lover -(it would be NOBODY's biz anyway) but how would that be explainable, or logical/mathamatical, or maybe some complex geo-political and even spiritual matters... Dumbing them down does not explain them, it only reduces them to a childish level...

 

But the idea still has appeal... Keeeping it simple and clear sure helps!

 

(By the way for clarity's sake- GROK is a word from the book- Stranger in a Strange Land - it means to comprehend fully...

[Leidee]

....

 

But the idea still has appeal... Keeeping it simple and clear sure helps!

 

....

 

Maybe the skill to explaining things is that you make the "hook" simple and then you let the person's mind go with it from there? Take a complex idea, find an introductory angle/entry point...explain that little part of it directly and let it unfold for that person from there...

[Wayfarer64]

Maybe the skill to explaining things is that you make the "hook" simple and then you let the person's mind go with it from there? Take a complex idea, find an introductory angle/entry point...explain that little part of it directly and let it unfold for that person from there...

 

This is fine in theory, but this is also how most misunderstandings transpire... Getting what may or may not be the idea and "running with it" through one's own mind is why the game of post-office is funny - the end result is seldom what the intended message was meant to be.

 

I agree that clarity and good language skills make a big difference in how our ideas are apt to be received. But some issues do need complex explainations to actually make sense.

 

Take for instance the question of why was the American Civil War fought? The common answer is -"To end slavery in the USA." - But that is an overly simplistic and actually false answer. That was a major result of the war but not the cause. We often explain activities from the out-come backward because hind-sight is easy and forsight is very difficult.

 

Many explanations need to address the future, which is largely unknown. We explain why we do or did things because we often have/had expectations of results not because we see what is best for the present...To me this is the very heart of Taosit thinking - to absorb the now and what our place in it means...

 

The more we open ourselves to the world as it is around us, as we live our lives, the more likely we may behave in a way that is not harmful...

 

Our seperatness is an illusion...But it is also the very essence of our lives as we know them. The seperatness gives us life. Our personality is that which dies...So we share them with each-other in many ways - some of which drive us apart, some bring us together...

 

Namaste- Pat

[Leidee]

Wayfarer - perhaps you miss the point in a sense

 

Your "explanation" may not be someone else's acceptable/clear "explanation". So maybe what you are referring to is a desire to provide someone with the "right answer" instead?

 

As to separateness - I feel in agreement with what you are saying.

 

Leidee

 

PS - everything can be fine in theory

[Wayfarer64]

Dear Leidee et al...

 

I see what you are saying but it is just what I was trying to get at - we are not talking about the same things. We are, to some extent assuming we know what each-other is trying to address as a subject and even that is not clear!

 

I was just addressing the subject as how we speak to children, not make points with each-other as adults... These are very different modes of communication. Adults do not always speak to children as we speak to each-other. Children need to be taught. Maturity and wisdom are not just given to us like a pill.

 

Some politicians speak to "the masses" as adults speak to children.What I mean is that in politics and in many other cases much gets obfuscated on purpose. This is similar to how some parents hide some truths about the world from their children to protect their sensibilities. And of course there are the liars, who need to be heard to be disbelieved!

 

I just do not believe that communicating as one would to a child is anything but condiscending in some instances!

 

There are of course, also differing viewpoints on most topics as well. But facts are also slippery things and they can block the light of larger truths.

 

The "hook" you speak of is maybe meant to get the mind pulled in some direction... I was trying to get at explaning just some basic sorts of activity that would be difficult to explain to children in a way that made any sense to them in the context of their limited world view..

 

So this is turning out to be a very good example of the problems of communication!!!