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[gatito]

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Edited November 30, 2015 by gatito

[RongzomFan]

Gatito, you have to drop all your NeoAdvaitins, including John Levy, and just read the Upanishads.

[gatito]

...

Edited January 8, 2016 by gatito

[RongzomFan]

You couldn't post an academic definition of Sat Chit Ananda from a number of academic books on Vedanta?

[gatito]

...

Edited January 8, 2016 by gatito

[RongzomFan]

Completely wrong, as usual.

 

Whats wrong about it?

[gatito]

...

Edited January 8, 2016 by gatito

[RongzomFan]

Everything

 

Be specific

[gatito]

...

Edited January 8, 2016 by gatito

[outis emoi y'ovoma]

If people are waiting for nirvakalpa samadhi to be continuous in their lives, maybe they will have to wait forever. the bliss of ananda is not an experience, it is an understanding which underlies all experiences, from the most blissful to the most painful. the bliss is in knowing that both pain and pleasure are happening to something that is other than YOU.

 

we waste so much time letting our expectations of "what it will be like" interfere with our inquiry into what it is, here and now as you read these words, which is already blissful, which is already sat-chit-ananda. the person who expects their experience to change very drastically is still the same person who is in the way of your realization of your true self.

[3bob]

yet the compassion is in knowing the connection to that apparent other and reducing forms of pain/suffering.

 

our true selves is the true self for there is no other. (edit)

Edited March 24, 2014 by 3bob

[amoyaan]

James Swartz makes it's clear that it's not a grinning-like-a-cheshire-cat kind of bliss. He describes it more as a complete fullness and confidence in the knowledge that you are whole and complete...and from that there may come an experiential sense of bliss. Although it's unlikely to be sustained 100% of the time because even the enlightened have the cycling of the gunas to contend with. In someone like Ramana, who was extremely sattvic, the experience of bliss may have been more or less continuous. Although even he got bored or occasionally annoyed by all accounts

 

PS I just noticed Rongzomfan has been banned. I'm sure he will be greatly missed

[ThisLife]

*

Yes,... this idea of "Enlightenment" certainly is the pot of gold at the end of every seeker's rainbow dreams. So much has been written, spoken, talked, visualized and imagined about it. I've similarly had quite a parade of ideas about it prancing through my own head at different times in my own life as well.

 

Of course I now know nothing more about it than I ever did before, but, just coz we're sitting here in a discussion room, (and it takes two to make a discussion),... I'll throw in my current favourite description of what this much-treasured term means. It's by an American Advaita teacher, Wayne Liquorman :

 

*

*

 

{Q} : So ‘seeking,’ (from an Advaita point of view), is done in order to see through dualism; to have the Final Understanding, so that the illusion of ‘separateness’ is no longer hindering us ?

 

 

{Wayne} : Yes, generally seekers are seeking something – transcendence, total awareness, omnipotence, or whatever – the seeker is always seeking something. But what actually happens in Enlightenment is the dissolution of the paradigm of the seeker and that which is sought. The fact that there is seeking, the fact that there is non-enlightenment, are all equally part of What Is. The sage knows it isn’t a lesser part. A hierarchy that elevates Understanding above non-understanding is not there for the sage. Both are known to be part of the same functioning, part of the same Whole. The elevation of Enlightenment to a position of desirability and high status comes from the seeker.

 

{Q} : “I’m curious what it feels like to be you - living with complete awareness. Or to be more clear, how is it different from the way you experienced your life before the ultimate understanding?”

{Wayne} : The example that I often use is that my experience of the full understanding, of total awareness, is very much like your experience today of walking around without a stone in your shoe. I’m going to assume that you have walked around all day without a stone in your shoe. So there has been this condition - stone absence. What has your experience been of that absence?

I’m quite sure that when you look at it, you will realise that there was no experience of the absence of the stone. There was simply the experiences of the day that registered through the organism with your name attached to it. Nevertheless, there was an absence of the stone, as part of your day,… and yet there was no experience of that absence.

So you don't experience the absence of something. Others may call it freedom, (if, for instance, you're in a room full of people who are walking around with stones in their shoes.) Your state, relative to theirs, is one of freedom, and they might well ask you, "You're free of the stone. Tell us about your day. Tell us what it's like to be free of the stone."

And you are free of the stone, you see,… but you don't have an experience of the absence of something. You can only have an experience of the presence of something.

Now, the moment before it is removed, you have the experience of the presence of a stone. After it's removed, there is the presence of its absence. In that brief moment when the stone was there, and then was no longer there, you have the experience of the absence. But that is a short-term phenomenon.

Afterwards, you simply have the absence, and there is no experience of the absence. So you may call it freedom, you may call it liberation. But there is no experience of it because it's an absence rather than a presence.

*

 

 

Edited April 7, 2014 by ThisLife

[Anoesjka]

I'm not that well educated on Vedanta, though I do use the technique of inquiry. Just as I do to clear the mind, or by just surrendering my egoistic being. These techniques bring about a bliss that I am overwhelmed by and can only recognize as the metaconsciousness that lies truly at the base of everything. How can that be a bad thing?

 

I can't completely surrender to it yet, because I still have a fear of ceasing to exist somewhere.

[C T]

Ananda. Thats me. hehehe....