Adyashanti - Steven Gray

[3bob]

wow,  your summations are refuted over and over again but don't take it personally.  (for such refutations are heard in the teachings of all sorts of "Self"-realized beings and not just scholars - btw it sounds like you happen to lean towards Buddhism while at the same time pooping on it ?)

 

Also you are not the first Tom, Dick, Harry, Mary or Sue to harp about the transcendent and shoot your self in the foot while doing so - being that many of us here have also done so  -

Edited May 25, 2015 by 3bob

[Nikolai1]

Explain to me why I am pooping on Buddhism?

[3bob]

"Most likely you are under the impression that the teachings are of some worth as statements of truth.  They are not!"  by Mr. N.

 

apparently you believe your statement above is true being that it is given as a truism... but I hear it as a histrionic blanket type of statement that is counter to the Buddhist teaching of the Noble Eight Fold Path which would be included under such a blanket (among many others) ,  but I'll defer to the Buddhists here to go into further detail for you if it needed?

[Nikolai1]

The Noble Eighfold path is merely a description of the life that the awakened ones lead. It won't lead the unawakened anywhere, even if they were able to follow it - which they are not.

[Seeker of Wisdom]

Either there is a self of some kind or there isn't - one of these must be true, one must be false. At some point grasping to the concept must be dropped for the full realisation, but this doesn't mean both teachings are equally true. One accurately points to the realisation (but is not itself it), the other doesn't (and is not itself it).

 

The only way to get around this dichotomy is to reinterpret what the word 'self' means to the point where it bears no relation to what anyone else means by it. As language is meant as a way to communicate, IMO this isn't worth doing.

 

The Noble Eighfold path is merely a description of the life that the awakened ones lead. It won't lead the unawakened anywhere, even if they were able to follow it - which they are not.

Strange that the Buddha explicitly taught it as the way to get awakened, then... how do you think people become awakened? If it's completely random, why bother with any of this anyway? I find it much more useful, empowering and pragmatic to take the common-sense perspective that cultivation actually has results, up to and including awakening, and put effort in. Skilful fabrication shortcuts itself.

[3bob]

then again S.W. I think part of what you are saying is problematic in the sense of or if someone said in a similar way, "either samsara is illusion or it is not", yet there is also the saying along the lines of, "samsara properly understood is nirvana"...

 

Btw, I agree with your idea that dropping the raft half way across the river is counter-productive

 

Another point we might ponder or that I will bring up is that there is no disconnect between pre and first jhana and then further between 2nd, 3rd, etc.. going all the way to nirvana (if using such an analogy - which happens to be used in Buddhist sutra)  thus one might ask where is the absolute or definitive demarcation between truth and non-truth if there is no true disconnect to be found in the whole ball of wax?

Edited May 25, 2015 by 3bob

[Nikolai1]

Seeker,

 

Either there is a self of some kind or there isn't - one of these must be true, one must be false. 

Did not Buddha tell us not to take one-sided views?  Do not think that some words capture the truth and some don't.  Find the truth that needs no explanation. This is the truth that liberates.

 

At some point grasping to the concept must be dropped for the full realisation,

Not 'at some point in the future'...stop delaying, man.  The concept must be dropped NOW!  If you think that there is any use whatsoever in the concept then you will attach to that concept and give it value.  Grasping the truth is the same as any other grasping.  You must cease NOW! 

 

but this doesn't mean both teachings are equally true.

It means that they are equally true and equally false.  Learning to see how your 'truths' might be falsehoods is an incredibly powerful practice.  For example, Buddha's teaching an anatman - no-self - is so powerful because it exposes the ego as a falsehood and this is liberating.  But if you attach to the no-self teaching as 'the new truth' you have swapped one poison for another and are no further forward.

 

Abandon both!  And adopt the teaching that can't be taught! This is the only substitute for conceptual truth, the only solution for the taking of opinions that conflict with other people's and at times your own.

 

One accurately points to the realisation (but is not itself it), the other doesn't (and is not itself it).

This is a contentious attitude and highly unskillful.  You imagine that those who follow Buddhism are using more accurate pointers than those, like Christians, who use inaccurate pointers like the individual soul.

 

It is sure fire recipe for strife and discord.  Pure truth knows nothing of this. Find the truth which embraces all the different opinions and does not need any single one of them..This is the Bodhi-mind that you seek.

 

The only way to get around this dichotomy is to reinterpret what the word 'self' means to the point where it bears no relation to what anyone else means by it. As language is meant as a way to communicate, IMO this isn't worth doing.

What IS worth doing, is getting people to realise that there is no truth that even needs to be communicated.  By communication, cultivate confusion.  It is the most benevolent thing you can do for another person.  Use your higher intelligence to reveal the tawdry threadbare relationship of words to the truth.  If you aim for one thing, it is to stop needing to communicate.

 

Strange that the Buddha explicitly taught it [the eightfold path] as the way to get awakened, then... how do you think people become awakened? 

Now try to see the eightfold path as something that is already happening, regardless of what any imaginary ego is doing about it.  You are looking at it as if it is something that the ego can DO.  Now look at it as if there is no ego and no doing.  This is the Path seen as description not prescription.  Have the flexibility to see both ways.

 

I find it much more useful, empowering and pragmatic to take the common-sense perspective that cultivation actually has results, up to and including awakening, and put effort in.

Yes fair enough.  All I'm suggesting is that you learn to see also that practice is not necessary.

 

BUT DO NOT TAKE EITHER AS TRUTH!

 

Simply be the....what are you?...be the being who is both empowered ego taking decisive action and disempowered emptiness who is doing nothing at all.

[3bob]

Mr. N. said, "practice is not necessary" yet how much did you practice to reach that half baked, whatever in the hell conclusion?

[Nikolai1]

Mr. N. said, "practice is not necessary" yet how much did you practice to reach that half baked, whatever in the hell conclusion?

yes I said that 'you learn to see also that practice is not necessary'

 

Then I said, in big writing:

 

BUT DO NOT TAKE EITHER AS TRUTH!

[Seeker of Wisdom]

Skilful views shortcut themselves.

 

You're trapped in a mind game you're playing with yourself,N. Do you not see how you yourself are setting up a dichotomy in which you are right and I am wrong? You're grasping onto the concept that all concepts are equally valid and to be dropped. This is what I mean by the 'drop the raft prematurely' approach not actually being able to shortcut itself. The underlying views are not truly released. You're throwing out the baby with the bathwater, before it's even got wet.

 

If you want to truly drop all the views and graspings, you need to stay on the raft until it reaches the other side. This means taking skilful view/practice (the suttas refer to 'right view' and 'one fortunate attachment' for a reason) to the point where it undermines the unskilful, and then shortcuts itself.

 

This shortcutting of views happens automatically once you've stayed on the raft until the end, not by a choice you've made - a choice based, ironically, on concepts you hold.

 

Would you say that you are both a human and a chipmunk, and that both perspectives are valid from different angles?

 

If not, why is an approach to views that is insane in every area except cultivation appropriate in cultivation? And if you would say with a straight face 'I am a chipmunk', this level of cognitive dissonance is extremely unhealthy and I hope you manage to break out of this trap you've locked yourself in.

[Nikolai1]

This means taking skilful view/practice (the suttas refer to 'right view' and 'one fortunate attachment' for a reason) to the point where it undermines the unskilful, and then shortcuts itself. 

This happens in an instant! I can do it any moment I please.  

 

Would you say that you are both a human and a chipmunk, and that both perspectives are valid from different angles? 

Yes I would say that.  Or even better.  When the chipmunk is here, the human is not.  When the human is here, the chipmunk is not.

 

And if you would say with a straight face 'I am a chipmunk',

I have had that feeling of being a chipmunk, but it almost immediately passes.

 

What I am against is this notion that we must adopt a view and subscribe to it and see how far it takes us.  There comes a point when you simply have to stop riding the raft.  You must see that it is taking you nowhere and never has.  In my life this was a moment of despair, as I have written about.

[Jetsun]

The use of concepts in cultivation and the use of concepts to understand and navigate day to day life are fundamentally different. In cultivation the main productive use of concepts is to use them to destroy other concepts, like they say you can use a thorn to remove a thorn. You can't use concepts to understand the ultimate reality of things, if you could then koan practice would be worthless.

 

Yet it isn't like you have to reach a certain stage or level before you can jump into the non-conceptual, anyone can do it at any time, the whole idea of the raft reaching the other shore creates a barrier to realisation if it creates the idea that it is only possible in some time in the future when certain conditions are met.

[Nikolai1]

 the whole idea of the raft reaching the other shore creates a barrier to realisation if it creates the idea that it is only possible in some time in the future when certain conditions are met. 

A thousand times yes!

[Seeker of Wisdom]

I never said that any concept itself is the truth. What I'm saying is that practice results in the nonconceptual realisation that the concept was pointing towards (which other concepts may not point towards), which undermines both other concepts and that concept.

 

I agree that realisation is always available, all it takes is a real honest look at experience. But a person cannot just skip the practice and realisation, going straight to the undermining. There is a big difference between using a koan to actually get satori, and telling yourself that all concepts are to be abandoned (which is itself another concept, thus a catch-22). N, the 'moment of despair' which got you to 'stop riding the raft' happened as a result of practice!

 

Anyway, I'm just repeating myself now, so adios for now.

Edited May 25, 2015 by Seeker of Wisdom

[Nikolai1]

N, the 'moment of despair' which got you to 'stop riding the raft' happened as a result of practice! 

 

Well I can't deny that I practised.

[3bob]

going from a chipmunk to a bull moose would take some evolutionary practice and lots of pine nuts for anyone to pull off - sorry I could have resisted but didn't.

 

destroying concepts sounds so heavy handed, rather just set them down.  Btw the historic Buddha did not destroy his physical body although he almost did as an ascetic before he realized that such was counter-productive.

Edited May 25, 2015 by 3bob

[3bob]

Jetsun, I can dig your drift although I would say that certain conditions do have to met which granted may not yet could have time related factors,  for instance the historic Buddha mentions his countless incarnations  (with related time factors) yet he also talks about a timeless realization to end all sorrow... yet did he rail against his incarnations and put down his journey to detachment?

Me thinks not. 

[Jetsun]

Jetsun, I can dig your drift although I would say that certain conditions do have to met which granted may not yet could have time related factors,  for instance the historic Buddha mentions his countless incarnations  (with related time factors) yet he also talks about a timeless realization to end all sorrow... yet did he rail against his incarnations and put down his journey to detachment?

Me thinks not. 

 

Yeah from my perspective I would say that there is an incarnational journey we all go through, but I think if you are even slightly interested in this stuff then I expect you are probably coming close to the end of it. In one of the paths I am working with they say that we go through a period of lives where we accumulate karma and then we go through a period of lives working it off, so someone who is on the upward trajectory is unlikely to be interested in awakening or even want to let any of their issues go.

 

But in terms of when one can come out of the karmic journey and awaken I don't like to put too many conditions on it as anything is really possible. I was watching a Batgap interview with Bonnie Greenwell recently who says she had spent most of her life studying a lot of the Yogic literature and working with Kundalini and energy practices and she said that the traditional literature told her that certain conditions have to be met to wake up, so certain energetic centres and pathways need to be open otherwise it can't happen. But then she met Adyashanti and saw first hand how many people were awakening without having all that development and it was actually happening to them after awakening as a result of it rather than being the cause.

[DreamBliss]

I appreciate this teacher as well. But I reached a point where his teachings were doing more harm than good for me personally. This is hard to explian. There is nothing inherintly harmful or wrong in them. Just not for me at this time in my life and spiritual development.

 

Thank you for sharing.

Edited June 13, 2015 by DreamBliss