Nox wrote:
DQ: I'm sure they are. But have you really gone all the way with your investigation? Have you truly removed all of your delusions and mental blocks? Have you really pulled the entire ego out by the roots?
N: Yes. I am sure. No doubt remains.
DQ: You are deceiving yourself.
N: Right, right, of course I am.
How exactly am I deceiving myself and who is it that is being deceived?
Your brain has mistaken a limited spiritual attainment for true enlightenment.
DQ: The fact that you are still suffering demonstrates that you are still attached to things and thus still dwelling in egotism.
N: ALL humans suffer. The Buddha suffered from crippling migraines and look at how Unenlightened the Son of God acted when he was hanging on the cross.
There is no sufferer, just the act of suffering. Enlightenment does not cure anguish and stress.
For your point to be taken seriously, you need to explain how a person who is free of attachments can experience loss (and therefore suffering). Simple chest-beating on your part isn't going to convince anyone. Exercise some logic, for a change.
Even if a sage were to experience physical pain, he still wouldn't suffer. For he no longer craves any particular kind of state, and thus, no longer feels any (emotional) need to escape whatever situation he is in.
DQ: Your attachments are very real, and the suffering they are creating is also very real.
N: How can the real come from the illsorary?
Your question doesn't seem relevant. Both the attachments and the suffering are real, as is the delusion of self-existence which underlies the mentality of having attachments. It's all real.
And if they are real, as you are implying, then they have independently arises thru their own accord, and this being the case, they can not be annihilated. This only strengthens my declaration that Enlightenment can NOT cure these human ailments.
They are real in the sense that they are experiential phenomena, even though they lack inherent existence.
DQ: The mode of complete non-attachment is a permanent, static state which is perfectly consistent with the flowing, everchanging nature of the Universe. The unattached person is fully immersed in the flow of Nature, yet always remains unattached.
N: Non-attachment is dependent on attachment, it is dependently caused, it is therefore impermanent and unsatisfactory, which results in the perpetuation of human suffering. That which is dependent and intrinsically empty is not permanent.
This sounds scripted to me. The non-attachment of enlightenment simply depends upon a wise brain that comprehends the nature of Reality and the elimination of attachments.
DQ: The empirical evidence of your own failure doesn't constitute proof. You need to come up with something a bit more objective.
N: Again I did not fail, that is your ignorance, not mine.
DQ: For example, you would have to demonstrate that nobody in the entire history of the Universe has ever reached enlightenment and transcended suffering. Simply extrapolating from your own case isn't good enough.
N: I have to do NO such thing. Those are your requirements, not mine, they are entirely irrelevant to me. All that matters is what I can prove too myself, that’s it.
We have a stand-off, then. I have proven to myself that enlightenment is real and that it has the capacity to eliminate all suffering.
One of us must be wrong.
DQ: I am serious. This is a very important point. You're like a person who has studied musical theory and mastered the terminology, yet can still only play chopsticks on the piano. Your knowledge is still largely in the theoretical stage; it hasn't yet bedded down and transformed you inside and out.
N: Ass-backwards bullshit.
I did graduate from the theoretical and applied Enlightenment to a real world situation and it failed, fucking miserably.
No,
you failed. Let's get it straight here.
DQ: One gets the impression that you have a lot of unresolved issues inside you which stem from a past hurt - possibly a childhood trauma.
N: Well according to Eastern thought the causes of our unresolved issues are as infinite as the Universe itself. But no, my childhood, was pretty uneventful. Nothing out of the ordinary, at all.
DQ: One also gets the impression that you have been trying to seek enlightenment as a means of escaping the effects of this trauma, as a substitute for facing this hurt more directly via psychotherapy.
N: I have delved into the depths of my psyche I am not running from any of my demons. I attack them head-on.
I like how you recommend psychotherapy though.
You are only strengthening the fact that Enlightenment does not cure the mental anguish that the sages claim it does.
See?
You know as well as I do that the claims of Enlightenment are utter bullshit!
The path to enlightenment can really only be travelled by healthy, stable individals who are looking to rid themselves of the suffering of spiritual ignorance. It isn't really for deeply hurt individuals who are thrashing around in a sea of past traumas.
In effect, it is a cure for the well, not the sick. The sick first have to become well, before they can make a bid for enlightenment. Psychotherapy thus has its place.
If a person is starving, he needs food before he can strive for enlightenment. Otherwise, he won't have the capacity or strength to go very far.
DQ: So while their consciousness might be aware of the Truth to some degree, the deeper part of their psyche still knows nothing about it.
N: So the deep part of the psyche are separate from consciousness?
When the mind is still dwelling in ignorance, it tends to divide itself up into separate compartments as a way to minimize suffering. A crude example would be the person who suppresses past traumas in order to block out the pain. Another example is men blocking out their emotions so that they can function objectively and efficiently under pressure. Everyone from pilots, to surgeons, to scientists, makes use of this function.
So it can happen that a person can become aware of the Truth via his more intellectual, cerebral parts of his brain, and not immediately transfer this information to the rest of his being. It takes time for him to dissolve these compartments and have the knowledge of enlightenment infiltrate all the hidden nooks and crannies.
DQ: Think of the ego as a false network of neuronal pathways in the brain which causes a person to behave deludedly, and you will see that it is indeed tangible and real.
N: Bullshit! The ego is real and tangible, riiiight. And you can also shake hands with your shadow...
It's as real as a faulty bug in a computer system.
DQ: Eliminating the "idea" of the ego is not enough. You are like a cancer sufferer who has tried to cure his cancer by seeing that it lacks inherent existence. What did you expect? That the cancer would magically disappear?
N: The ego is nothing like a mass of flesh, or rouge cancer cells, nothing.
The ego is a mental phenomenon, a though induced construct.
You can not hold a thought in your hands.
You can hold a tumor, though.
Again, the false pathways in the brain which generate deluded behaviour are physical, tangible and real. I find it interesting that you constantly block this reality out. Of course, you are perfectly free to block it out, if that's what you want to do, but it will only result in your continued spiritual failure to transcend all suffering.
And as far a comparable success rates go, Enlightenment is a fucking joke compared to real world techniques, like chemotherapy and neurosurgery. Once again nothing but hollow metaphors that don’t do shit for actual problems in real life.
At least if I had cancer I could do something that might actually give some realistic results. And not this Enlightenment bullshit.
Your current conception of enlightement is certainly a joke, I agree.
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