"There is no enlightenment outside of daily life." -- Thic Nhat Hanh
What is this enigmatic and exalted state called "enlightenment"? Why is everyone so enamored by this word? Why is everyone so eager to attain it? Does anyone really understand the essence of it? Many speak of it as if they do, and while others use it to enhance their status. I have been in the presence of such people, and I am always astounded at the level of ignorance guiding their behavior. Such people are nowhere near awakened, let alone enlightened, and this includes both teacher and student. It is like the blind leading the blind. The irony is that the effort they expend on becoming enlightened only impedes the realization that they already are. Enlightenment is not something you do; it is about being.
This beingness seems to be the hardest lesson to master, for it involves a gradual, developmental and cumulative process of growth through steps and stages. It emerges as a natural consequence of allowing, rather than by any egoic effort to attain it, because it involves surrendering and the ultimate dissolution of the ego in order to realize it. You can read the world's greatest mystical and spiritual literature, become very knowledgeable on techniques, rites and rituals, and yet remain completely unchanged. Accumulation of knowledge is not enlightenment, and neither is the prowess of mystical vocabulary the proof.
What we need is a new definition of what enlightenment means within the context of modern existence. The popular version is depicted as a sudden state of rapture and ecstasy, accompanied by luminous light and visions, an end of suffering and the dawning of bliss, thus permanently enlightening the aspirant. All this may very well be true, but does this depiction really explain what enlightenment is?
This state of beingness is easy to attain or maintain in an ashram, monastery or somewhere up in the mountains far removed from the challenges of modern life. There's nothing wrong with pursuing a monastic life or dedicating your life to simplicity and seclusion; this has its time and value on the journey. But how much of that pursuit is authentic, versus escaping the demands of the world? When you live in seclusion, you bet it's easier to maintain a consciousness of love and compassion.
So what is enlightenment? How about coming down from that mountain and putting your unity consciousness to the test amidst mortgage payments and credit card debt, divorce lawyers and aging parents, nasty bosses and health problems, wars and poverty? Such conditions, as the alchemist knows, burns away the dross to reveal who we are not. Yes, in the midst of the madness we awaken, grow comfortable with our dualistic nature and develop mystical stamina so that we can handle our sobriety. Illusions are like drugs and enlightenment is like rehab.
An enlightened person neither seeks the light, nor remains inactive in the darkness. Their goal is not enlightenment, but of conduct toward self, life and others. When you're in the presence of such a person, no verbal exchange is necessary to know who you are dealing with. Such people can serve in monasteries or stock markets, run corporations or run for office, walk the desert or walk to work. They have the ability to see things as they really are, to accept what is and remain open to all of life. This is done not out of naiveté or denial, but out of profound understanding of how life really works.
"After enlightenment, the laundry." -- a Zen proverb
Still waiting for fiscal enlightenment
Enlightenment Libraries Reach 1.0
The Gamut: History students engage in 'enlightened and spirited discourse' in ...
Spirituality: What we hold sacred elevates the ordinary
Students seek spiritual guidance from His Holiness the Dalai Lama
"Enlightenment is the demolition of everything.’Truth' is a demolition project--everything you ever believed was true isn't. The Truth of emptiness we are avoiding, of no self; we must surrender to this. "Oneness is NOT merging. Mystical experiences aren't enlightenment. It is 'this', a waking up outside of time. Memory of my past and my flow toward my future create seeming time, seeming consciousness. However, both mind and personality continue (but not the ego, I, me). Otherwise consciousness couldn't work in a body. "You will have a sense of self after enlightenment. It is not nirvikalpa samadhi, unable to get up, unable to speak (CC's contact with the 'second attention'). "There is only emptiness AND its infinite display of itself [700, indetermination, rapid life-death]. There are no enlightened individuals, only enlightenment. It is enlightenment who 'awakens', not 'I'. "Enlightenment steals everything from you; you are robbed totally blind, and it knows this, but it couldn't care less.” The mind is not handed candy, but a sword. "The mind is not made free or wiped clean of all unpleasant experiences.”Enlightenment is the complete absence of resistance to what is; no need to control others. There is no 'center', and everything is just happening. Compassion, as devotion to Truth, is present, but it acts to remove the 'center'.
It's said to be imperceptible.
Listen for it but you won't hear it;
It's said to be indistinguishable.
Reach for it but you won't be able to obtain it;
It's said to be slippery.
In these three ways it can't be investigated.
Therefore, blend with everything and allow them to act as one.
Seeing them as one shows us that:
What's superior isn't clearly obvious, and what's inferior isn't clouded in doubt.
Searching and looking everywhere!
You see that it can't be categorized.
You have to go back to depending on the fact that it has no substance.
It's correctly described as having an appearance without a shape.
Being devoid of content it appears to be like what's called formless.
Look forward to following it and you don't realize that you're already behind it.
Attempt to graciously welcome it as your mentor and you don't realize that it's always been leading you.
You're holding onto Dao(Tao) this very moment.
By taking control of this very moment you have it.
By understanding what's occurred throughout history you can begin to correctly describe the progression of Dao(Tao).
Laozi (Lao Tzu)
Since the advent of quantum mechanics (the mathematics that describes the interactions that take place at the sub-atomic level), scientists have become intrigued with the link between human awareness and the workings of the universe.
Quantum mechanics seems to suggest that the sub-atomic world and even the world beyond the atom--has no independent structure at all until defined by the human intellect. Werner Heisenberg, who transformed physics when he developed this concept in 1927, notes: "Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is a part of the interplay between nature and ourselves....
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." A new generation of physicists are now postulating that a universe cannot even come into existence unless it contains the possibility of life. They suggest that we live in a participatory universe where all reality and physical laws are dependent upon an observer to formulate them. Lao Tzu would clearly concur.
Thanks....
oh but do not twist the velvet crumples wings
or the poppycocks or poppinjays vreast do beat
for the travels fair is coming soon
a feast for the soles of all our feet
the traverse songs and brokwn things
the golden mushroom seats
for the travelers fair is coming soo
the wooden boxes lining the way to greet and meat
say what you will
say what you won't
it matters not here my friend
cause here we are all in the same boat
summers snapped and winters off kilter
five brown hens are nesting thither
the soldiers of dawn are raising their arms
and the warriors of night prepare for the final charge
the dark before dawn gathers for one last push
stars fall from the sky
moons hollow themselves into swords
gods and demons clash here just to tell the truth.
a simple simon
a simple sermon
do i deliver
as gods and man fight nigh
to delve the things from the rock of eternity
to pierce the vale you made
to find a piece of the hole
to find our one true face
to give it all away
to surrender to nothing
to give in to the end
the golden thread runs thru us all a path of glory to the mountain top glimmering in the minds eye
can you not see it just before your eyes its path no lorrie can trod
worn by countless millions on its lower reaches
ground down like sand on its lowest beaches
higher you go the tougher it gets
the higher you go the less signs are given from those who went
before you now is barely a track fit for a mountain goat
down so far down you see simple science path clicking an whirring building itself the mountain
a centipede road taking itself apart to fit the mountain slowly moving up
the last path you left long ago so far to flow so far below
do see it hand holds bare mountains fare
going quickens you have learned to dare
kung fu monk you leap from rock to rock effortlessly you glide
near the top only feet left
you look down and there in eagles eye you see someone so far below.
in descending you climb the final peak
It sounds like Lao Tzu lol
Yes !
Thus the ‘balanced’ meditator returns, or becomes the ‘snake’ that descends the Cabalistic tree from sephiroth ‘5’, but now going consciously through the racial heart-center, ‘6’, and onward through 7, 8, 9 (and 10), to then rise on the Chinese ‘waterwheel’ meditation, as given in ‘The Secret of the Golden Flower’, Wilhelm (intro by Jung).
I actually just read this and have been trying to digest it. His philosophy does make you feel good...like there is a way to live without mental strife. But I couldn't shake the feeling that it's a fundamentally selfish way of going through life...that the prescription for mental anguish is to simply not care about your past or future actions as they may affect others. At points it gave me the same "dirty" feeling I get from Rand-style individualism. Perhaps the assumption is that once you've come to know this "Isness", this "Enlightenment", the actions sort themselves out. Or maybe the key to happiness truly is to just be a jerk. I also get the impression that this brand of Enlightenment requires (leads to?) the absence of any personality. Anyone know of any places on the web where things like this are discussed?
Tolle had his enlightenment on schedule, age 28, per Great Pyramid, and his book does make you feel good; he is sincere--the hard part starts after enlightenment, which is basically, how you 'didn't think' as a toddler.. Yes, it is fundamentally a type of egoism or selfishness disguised. Enlightenment can't be taught, so books about it miss the mark. Interesting comparison to Rand, which was also a type of justification for the intellectual elite.
Yes, the end of personality is (wrongly) taught as the goal, so I 'overdid' it by stressing the need for a strong ego. If you give the ancient Buddhists credit for being smarter than they seem, all you have to do is try the methods, such as 'kill out desire', to find that they don't work. (continued)
The SECOND, ‘active’ stage is what you are doing, running your organization and paying the bills by ‘returning’ to the world from the mountaintop. This is the exercise of creative choice, the self choosing to exist by 'making' its own existence while following the seemingly 'impulsive' guidance of the inner self to 'Act without thought of fruit of action."
The first stage, of ‘release’ can be attained in moments of crisis, during starvation, or by use of alcohol or drugs; shamans (C. Castaneda) call it the ‘second attention’. Each time an alcoholic ‘returns’ from one of these attempted ‘escapes’, he brings with him the ‘weak face of the second attention’, the violence against others which wrongly seeks to liberate them from their bodies as well. (continued)
Opinions are not a problem as along as you recognize and accept them for what they are.
Any definition of enlightenment which doesn’t mention some aspect of terror is a child’s fantasy. “The terror of immediate SELF-REALIZATION is an experience of de*th-in-life which, at least in some of its manifestations, is consonant with the century’s violent history…and meanwhile man must live,” p. 18.
We have developed an intellect—it cannot not be used. My impression of ‘all is well’ religionism, is ‘Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life’.
From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I di*d they washed me out of the turret with a hose.”
p. 247, Hoffman, in reference to ‘The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,’
“There is no more pathetic image of immaturity than this of the womb, of the mother and the state; man has never escaped, but remains protected and contained, from birth to the moment of annihilation,”
This is from a chapter, “Violence, Terror’s Unique Enigma’ (thus ‘dread’). What is enigmatic about terror, and why would folks avoid it by reference to and systems for avoiding intellectualism and promoting quietism?
I'm enjoying your replies :)
The egoic mind and intellectualism seek to finite pigeonhole everything to a single definition, to assign a static value in what is dynamic; for it's own sake of self-survival and understanding. Words and their meanings (which vary from the dictionary meaning all the way to personal interpretation) aren't even static themselves. For example "Terrific" used to (basically) mean terrible, not wonderful, so even terms which are clearly defined in the dictionary, are not static.
You cannot intellectualize "Enlightenment", for the mind will struggle at such a concept; and any true understanding of it can only exist within the true self.
Enlightenment = I am.
---Seng-ts'an.
"Wisdom tells me that I am nothing; love tells me that I am everything. Between the two my life flows."
---an Indian Master.
The two have absolutely nothing to do with one another.
when peace w self allows living by the golden rule to come naturally & w/out conditions and stipulations (aka what's in it for me?)
Empathy is your eyes, ears and compass, morality is your boots, an awareness free of fear and desire is your down filled clothes. God is a crumpled postcard in your shirt pocket. What most people think of as enlightenment is just the essential sharpening of your technique.
At the peak is the one idea that explains everything. It is very cold but you would already be an expert at dealing with that if you made it this far. Close to the peak are 5 ideas that explain everything, 4 ideas, 3, 2 ideas ...
Very strange things happen close to the top. A distance of one step can take years. The goal can seem so near but after many steps is still no closer. When you do finally stand on the very top, it's not obvious, it feels like a comfortable place that you have known for a long time. Then a tornado appears and takes you ...
everywhere, all at once, your limit of conceivability jumps from 6 to 600. If an MRI machine could see you then it would record a hurricane of thoughts, emotions, and ancient lizard screams, your whole brain all lit up at once. You return to a world different from the one you left.