Forget about Enlightenment

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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average
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Forget about Enlightenment

Post by average »

I think seekers face a different set of problems than non-seekers do, so here you go you bastards. This should be relevant to your interests:
Some black dude named Mooji talks about Enlightenment


"Although there is something for you to do to see it, there is nothing for you to do to be it."
TheSourceCode

Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by TheSourceCode »

Does that mean you gave up?

So what if we (that's assuming you're real) don't fully understand? That doesn't mean we won't. In order to make sense, one has to understand an argument and counter it with something sufficient, I greatly lack in that department.
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Blair
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by Blair »

average wrote:I think seekers face a different set of problems than non-seekers do, so here you go you bastards. This should be relevant to your interests:
Some black dude named Mooji talks about Enlightenment


"Although there is something for you to do to see it, there is nothing for you to do to be it."
Average, you have already made one thread about this, which got a lot of attention. Why another?

Why are you so interested in who thinks they are enlightened? If you don't think it's an obtainable thing, then why are you here? Why are you posting these threads here? Ask yourself this, don't answer me.
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by average »

Instead of questioning my motivations, or trying to unravel my understanding, it would be best to watch the video and ponder these things carefully before you post.


I made another thread because that one was losing direction, and this line of thought is very important.
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by mikiel »

average: "I made another thread because that one was losing direction, and this line of thought is very important."

Yes it is. And total denial of the reality of enlightenment perpetuates complacent egocentricity, the illusory identity in ego's dream.
Enlightenment is often called Awakening for good reason.

When one can speak honestly of such awakening from direct, immediate, firsthand experience, s/he becomes a "teacher", and all who finally "get it" receive the most valuable of all gifts... awakening from the dream which is egocentric living... somnambulism actually, relative to the waking state.
No one can deny the difference between dreaming and being awake. Well... maybe philosophical sophomores enamored with the solopsism of "Idealism." But in "real life" when we wake up from a dream we know "we were only dreaming."
The metaphore for enlightenment as awakening is a perfect fit. But as long as you are asleep in ego's dream as a "separate self", you must and will deny that there is another dimension of consciousness, "awakened" from that dream.
This is what I see you struggling with, average. If you will not listen, you can not hear. The Truth just spoken will be, as in the past, wasted on you.
But who knows who might be listening in!?
This will be for them.
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by average »

Denying it isn't what I'm pointing to...or what the video is getting at...

~~
But the significance between seeing, and being, 'it'.
And how one requires action, while the other doesn't.
Which David made me realize, is quite important.
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by Blair »

And you are getting from this what, exactly?
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by average »

prince wrote:And you are getting from this what, exactly?
A clarity of understanding regarding the dynamics of the absolute and the relative.

~
Action and non-action, seeing and being, their necessity if one is to live in accordance with truth.

The action of seeing, which is transient and guided by thought.
The non-action of being, which is timeless, the present destination.
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Dan Rowden
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by Dan Rowden »

CeaselessRefinement wrote:average,
so here you go you bastards.
Oh, so you're really after clarity of thought and truth?

Shows.
I took that as an affectionate joke. But anyway, I prefer the point, which is more direct and less ad hoc and meandering, that he eventually gets to make in this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgi6fehgh5o
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by Dan Rowden »

I can feel some posts about Adyashanti coming on. I don't know why, I just do.
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by average »

Dan Rowden wrote:I can feel some posts about Adyashanti coming on. I don't know why, I just do.

Nah, I doubt it.
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by Shahrazad »

It would be so cool if Average turned out to be Samadhim.

Nah. He hasn't even once said "trust your experience".

.
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daybrown
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by daybrown »

Talking about enlightenment is like trying to explain sex to virgins.
Goddess made sex for company.
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Dan Rowden
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by Dan Rowden »

average wrote:
Dan Rowden wrote:I can feel some posts about Adyashanti coming on. I don't know why, I just do.

Nah, I doubt it.
I was just doffing my hat to the newest registrar; it's an inside joke, ignore it.
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by average »

Oh...


I fail.
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by jlj000jlj »

Forget about forgetting.
And forget about forgetting to forget.

The MO in this group is to beat the dead horse until
the futility is realized. Enough dead horses, and only
realization remains.

It is an appropriate path for western minds.

And fun, too.
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David Quinn
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by David Quinn »

Chuang Tzu on the art of forgetting:
Yen Hui said, "I'm improving!"

Confucius said, "What do you mean by that?"

"I've forgotten benevolence and righteousness!"

"That's good. But you still haven't got it."

Another day, the two met again and Yen Hui said, "I'm improving!"

"What do you mean by that?"

"I've forgotten rites and music!"

"That's good. But you still haven't got it."

Another day, the two met again and Yen Hui said, "I'm improving! "

"What do you mean by that?"

"I can sit down and forget everything!"

Confucius looked very startled and said, "What do you mean, sit down and forget everything.'-"

Yen Hui said, "I smash up my limbs and body, drive out perception and intellect, cast off form, do away with understanding, and make myself identical with the Great Thoroughfare. This is what I mean by sitting down and forgetting everything."
Who can join with others without joining with others? Who can do with others without doing with others? Who can climb up to heaven and wander in the mists, roam the infinite, and forget life forever and forever?
People who have heads and feet but no minds and no ears ? there are mobs of them. A man's movements, his birth and death, his ups and downs ? none of these can he do anything about. Yet he thinks that he is the master of them! Forget things, forget Heaven, and be called a forgetter of self. The man who has forgotten self may be said to have entered Heaven.
The sage is still not because he takes stillness to be good and therefore is still. The ten thousand things are insufficient to distract his mind ? that is the reason he is still.
Why is abandoning the affairs of the world and forgetting life worthwhile? If you abandon the affairs of the world, your body will be without toil. If you forget life, your vitality will be unimpaired. With your body complete and your vitality made whole again, you may become one with Heaven.
When a man becomes a good swimmer, he forgets the water. He may never have seen a boat before and yet he will know how to handle it. That's because he sees the water as so much dry land and regards the capsizing of a boat as he would the overturning of a cart.

Even if the ten thousand things were to capsize all around the sage, it wouldn't affect him. So where can he go and not be at ease?
I look for the roots of the past, but they extend back and back without end. I search for the termination of the future, but it never stops unfolding. The Way cannot be thought of as being, nor can it be thought of as nonbeing. In calling it "the Way" we are only adopting a temporary expedient.

If you talk in a worthy manner, you can talk all day long and all of it will pertain to the Way. But if you talk in an unworthy manner, you can talk all day long and all of it will pertain to mere things. The perfection of the Way ? neither words nor silence are worthy of expressing it. Not to talk, not to be silent ? this is the highest form of debate.
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by Sapius »

Chuang Tzu sounds quite profound, but I still have some queries…

David wrote:
Yen Hui said, "I smash up my limbs and body, drive out perception and intellect, cast off form, do away with understanding, and make myself identical with the Great Thoroughfare. This is what I mean by sitting down and forgetting everything."
Does Yen Hui mean it in a literal sense, or metaphorical?
Who can join with others without joining with others? Who can do with others without doing with others? Who can climb up to heaven and wander in the mists, roam the infinite, and forget life forever and forever?
I agree. I don’t think anyone can do that, unless consciousness isn’t.
People who have heads and feet but no minds and no ears ? there are mobs of them. A man's movements, his birth and death, his ups and downs ? none of these can he do anything about. Yet he thinks that he is the master of them!
No, he can; one can come to a conclusion that they all are illusory, hence has gained some sort of mastery over them all. If he thinks he still remains a slave to causality (Heaven, Reality) however, or all is Reality itself, then “he” has actually “realized” nothing, which translates into something other than “him” that is thinking/realizing. Reality perhaps?
Forget things, forget Heaven, and be called a forgetter of self. The man who has forgotten self may be said to have entered Heaven.
And yet, there seems to necessarily remain a conscious self. So entering Heaven may just be a psychological shift of personal perspective. None other could actually see or say that someone else has entered Heaven. Can they?
The sage is still not because he takes stillness to be good and therefore is still. The ten thousand things are insufficient to distract his mind ? that is the reason he is still.
The ten thousand things may well itself be the mind (consciousness), hence nothing really distracting The “mind”, unless one thinks that it the one thing that is not a part of the ten thousand things, but above or beyond it.
Why is abandoning the affairs of the world and forgetting life worthwhile? If you abandon the affairs of the world, your body will be without toil. If you forget life, your vitality will be unimpaired. With your body complete and your vitality made whole again, you may become one with Heaven.
Until then, I guess one is not with Heaven? What exactly is “Heaven”?
When a man becomes a good swimmer, he forgets the water. He may never have seen a boat before and yet he will know how to handle it. That's because he sees the water as so much dry land and regards the capsizing of a boat as he would the overturning of a cart.
Hummm… I don’t know… Yes, a really good swimmer would have no fear of deep waters, (that is what I guess this is pointing to), but if he starts off from Australia for Japan, then he is more of an idiot than fearless. A boat cannot be recovered as easily as an overturned cart, unless the boat is in shallow waters, in which case I can fearlessly go swimming too. Unless one cannot see the logical difference here, one can claim to be as fearless as he wants, but experience should tell him otherwise.
Even if the ten thousand things were to capsize all around the sage, it wouldn't affect him. So where can he go and not be at ease?
But of course; so has that not affected ten thousand martyrs, who are equally at ease; it’s only a matter of how strongly one believes in his principles. Strong emotions can achieve wonders.
I look for the roots of the past, but they extend back and back without end. I search for the termination of the future, but it never stops unfolding. The Way cannot be thought of as being, nor can it be thought of as nonbeing. In calling it "the Way" we are only adopting a temporary expedient.

If you talk in a worthy manner, you can talk all day long and all of it will pertain to the Way. But if you talk in an unworthy manner, you can talk all day long and all of it will pertain to mere things. The perfection of the Way ? neither words nor silence are worthy of expressing it. Not to talk, not to be silent ? this is the highest form of debate.
This seems to be too profound for me to grasp, unless of course, it points to meaninglessness, yet means something meaningful, however.

BTW, “Forget about Enlightenment”, may hold a much deeper meaning if one could see beyond the finger, and that is what I think your post in general also is.

I think, end of the day, it’s only a matter of which finger is one attached to, or it could be the other way around too.
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by samadhi »

Dan Rowden wrote:I can feel some posts about Adyashanti coming on. I don't know why, I just do.
lol, good instincts, Dan! I saw this thread and thought I'd register and provide a link. Then, I thought, hey, it's his thread, I should read his link. And as it happens, average seems aware of Adya already. My work is done ... lol

... listened to the link, good stuff. He hits all his marks.
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Jamesh
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by Jamesh »

Adya looks like one of those typical moneymaking, drugged up scumbags.

Ego is written everywhere in his facial features.

To me a face tells a persons mindset, in about 8 out of 10 cases.

I'm not surprised that Adya's business marketing arm, Samadhim, soon turned up to offer support. Wonder why?
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by Shahrazad »

Sam!

What a perfectly timed cameo appearance. Great to see you, mate. Hope all is well with you.
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by ataxas »

daybrown wrote:Talking about enlightenment is like trying to explain sex to virgins.
I could unleash a graphic and very useful description here, to enlighten you how it is that one could explain exactly what is involved in the act of sexual intercourse to virgins, but it suffices for me to remind you that talking about sex to those unfamiliar with the practical aspects of it has all sorts of advantages, not the least being the prevention of unwanted pregnancies and the transmission of STDs.

I would also like to add, that this comparison seems like it was intended to be thought-provoking, when it simply comes across as ignorant and ill-formed. I presume you meant something like, "the experience of sex is so alien to those who are virginal, explaining it is useless"? This is complete nonsense, for one could spend an evening picking apart what does and does not feel like sex.
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by Carl G »

Save your breath. Daybrown doesn't care.
Good Citizen Carl
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by samadhi »

Jamesh wrote:Adya looks like one of those typical moneymaking, drugged up scumbags.
Lol … let me know if you want to discuss, I can start a thread. Otherwise I will assume you are ranting and ignore.
Shahrazad wrote:Sam!

What a perfectly timed cameo appearance. Great to see you, mate. Hope all is well with you.
Sher, long time no see! I am happy to see you too. Find anything enlightening over here? lol
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David Quinn
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Re: Forget about Enlightenment

Post by David Quinn »

Jamesh wrote: Adya .... Ego is written everywhere in his facial features.
Agreed. It only takes one glance at his face to see that there is no purity in him, no connection to the light of truth. Darkness floods out of his soul and shapes his features, almost as though he were perfectly content to remain in the criminal classes from which he emerged.

There are many gurus like this, not just Adya. The guru of the Hare Krishnas similarly embodied darkness and criminality, as do many evangelical ministers of the Christian religion. It would be interesting to analyze how it is that such people are attracted to the guru profession and how they are able to garner a significant number of followers.

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