Enlightened! Really?

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Cahoot
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by Cahoot »

Yes, such is the way of ego, before which all must bow: husbands, wives, and vows sworn before the witnesses of God and man.
Kunyab
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by Kunyab »

The answers I have gotten so far have only increased my confusion on the matter. It seems as if enlightenment is not a objective thing but a matter of opinion.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by Dennis Mahar »

It means the way out of suffering.
that clarity.

The 'thought-object' enlightenment is something you've separated out and assigned attributes to.
You've provided a list.
Dare I say you're not fond of it?
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Kunyab wrote:It seems as if enlightenment is not a objective thing but a matter of opinion.
More important is to realize first what it means for there be "objective things". Buddhism says first and foremost that suffering exists and that life is suffering. From this it should be clear: to exist means to suffer. It's about going from one brutality to another with some grace, some relief and intoxication in between but necerally limited relief without rights to any of it. Most people solve the tragedy by being as ignorant as possible. If this view is taken, where could enlightenment -- as the end of suffering at the very least -- exist?
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ardy
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by ardy »

Kunyab wrote:The answers I have gotten so far have only increased my confusion on the matter. It seems as if enlightenment is not a objective thing but a matter of opinion.

Kunyab - You are right in one respect and that is each is unique as each enlightenment involves that particular person. The one characteristic that is objective is that they can all recognise one another. Trying to get away from opinion on any blog is impossible. Why do you think that many people spend a lifetime looking for an enlightened master?
Kunyab
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by Kunyab »

ardy wrote:The one characteristic that is objective is that they can all recognise one another.
Ha Ardy! One can also say that cultists can recognize each other. Does this mean what they believe in is true.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by Dennis Mahar »

true or not-true
to be or not to be
isn't or is

dog with a bone.
ha!
a bone to pick.

contentious.
meaning dispute over contents.

The Context looks like 'war on hubby'.
codependent.
read Solway's Poison for the Heart.
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ardy
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by ardy »

Kunyab wrote:
ardy wrote:The one characteristic that is objective is that they can all recognise one another.
Ha Ardy! One can also say that cultists can recognize each other. Does this mean what they believe in is true.
Not sure cultist can recognise each other BUT it doesn't matter. There is something here in this enlightenment and I am fascinated to find out what it is, others are also of a similar mind to mine. Strange that there is something very different that only a few hundred (Guess it could be <100) people in the world have experienced.

If your husband is one of them well, I have heard this claim before, it don't mean diddly squat unless there is someone who can confirm it.
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Cahoot
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by Cahoot »

ardy wrote:
Kunyab wrote:
ardy wrote:The one characteristic that is objective is that they can all recognise one another.
Ha Ardy! One can also say that cultists can recognize each other. Does this mean what they believe in is true.
Not sure cultist can recognise each other BUT it doesn't matter. There is something here in this enlightenment and I am fascinated to find out what it is, others are also of a similar mind to mine. Strange that there is something very different that only a few hundred (Guess it could be <100) people in the world have experienced.

If your husband is one of them well, I have heard this claim before, it don't mean diddly squat unless there is someone who can confirm it.
An often ignored part of the package is the physicality, the movement of energy that accompanies the opening to newness. Insights and the logic that orders insights are rather secondary, a looking into the past and a clarifying interpretation of the most immediate past.

For example, long ago I was driving home from a retreat led by a Lama. Clear day, blue sky, puffy clouds like big cotton balls floating above. I cannot see distance without glasses, so while driving on the open highway, not many other cars around, I took them off for a change of pace. That’s when I noticed something extraordinary. Within the field of my vision there were many little areas, like clear bubbles but without a discernible edge, and when I focused attention on these bubbles my vision was perfect, while the surrounding areas remained blurred. When I gazed through one of the bubbles I could read road signs and the license plates of passing cars very clearly, almost like looking through low powered bincoculars. This lasted throughout the day and was gone the next day. Throughout the following week I had hyper-detailed dreams in which the Lama continued his teachings, dreams that I still remember.

Insight: definitely a message transmitted via an individual, the Lama. Transmitters are often unaware of the specific reception of the transmission. The interpretation of a message belongs to the one who has the experience. Third-hand judgments of an experience vary. For those habituated to ego-driven negativity, such as alcoholics often are, dulled or prejudicial comprehension that shapes judgments closes awareness to subtle aspects of reality, masking all but the grossest (definition 3 a)aspects of the known.
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ardy
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by ardy »

Cahoot wrote:
ardy wrote:
Kunyab wrote:
ardy wrote:The one characteristic that is objective is that they can all recognise one another.
Ha Ardy! One can also say that cultists can recognize each other. Does this mean what they believe in is true.
Not sure cultist can recognise each other BUT it doesn't matter. There is something here in this enlightenment and I am fascinated to find out what it is, others are also of a similar mind to mine. Strange that there is something very different that only a few hundred (Guess it could be <100) people in the world have experienced.

If your husband is one of them well, I have heard this claim before, it don't mean diddly squat unless there is someone who can confirm it.
An often ignored part of the package is the physicality, the movement of energy that accompanies the opening to newness. Insights and the logic that orders insights are rather secondary, a looking into the past and a clarifying interpretation of the most immediate past.

For example, long ago I was driving home from a retreat led by a Lama. Clear day, blue sky, puffy clouds like big cotton balls floating above. I cannot see distance without glasses, so while driving on the open highway, not many other cars around, I took them off for a change of pace. That’s when I noticed something extraordinary. Within the field of my vision there were many little areas, like clear bubbles but without a discernible edge, and when I focused attention on these bubbles my vision was perfect, while the surrounding areas remained blurred. When I gazed through one of the bubbles I could read road signs and the license plates of passing cars very clearly, almost like looking through low powered bincoculars. This lasted throughout the day and was gone the next day. Throughout the following week I had hyper-detailed dreams in which the Lama continued his teachings, dreams that I still remember.

Insight: definitely a message transmitted via an individual, the Lama. Transmitters are often unaware of the specific reception of the transmission. The interpretation of a message belongs to the one who has the experience. Third-hand judgments of an experience vary. For those habituated to ego-driven negativity, such as alcoholics often are, dulled or prejudicial comprehension that shapes judgments closes awareness to subtle aspects of reality, masking all but the grossest (definition 3 a)aspects of the known.
Yes Cahoot: I have had some strange experiences myself but nothing like this physical one you experienced. It is all very strange, it makes me wonder what could be done with the mind if we understood this function, such as you experienced, better. Had you gone to an optometrist for a check up that day, now that would have been very interesting.

My view about alcoholics is that they are looking for God through the end of a bottle, and all they are finding is the ego driving them to have more even if it kills them.

The dulling of the faculties was always a claim by those trying to warn us off drugs and booze. People warning about loss of functions did not know that the faculties they were walking around with were a pretty dull set up to start off with.

The future state of us humans dictates that there is only so far we can go before enlightenment becomes the birthright of every child.
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Cahoot
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by Cahoot »

ardy wrote:
Cahoot wrote: Kunyab, your concern is that your “husband” may leave. Because your husband has awakened, he has realized that there is no place to go. Because he is free, he is like an untethered balloon that is only set into motion by the winds of karma. He is living out all that was set into motion. Family was set into motion. We have always known those we meet, and always will. You have always known each other, and always will. Since he realizes this truly now, leaving is not a possibility. He could probably explain this better to you.
Cahoot - you normally write sensible grounded stuff with excellent insights but this one is not one of them. " Family was set into motion. We have always known those we meet, and always will. You have always known each other, and always will. Since he realizes this truly now, leaving is not a possibility." This may give her some comfort but there is no basis in truth in any of this. Life plays out beyond our understanding and always will, regardless of whether we are ignorant or enlightened. Kunyab is in charge of her own life, her husband is in charge of his.
I’m sure you’ve taken notice …

... that when you’re in a crowd there are people you recognize, whom you have no memory of ever meeting.

Since contradictions don’t actually exist, if recognition contradicts memory, somewhere there’s a flawed premise in reasoning … unless recognition and memory are uncontradictedly accurate and you do recognize them, but you have no memory of them.

An explanation that fits all the known facts and disallows for coincidence is that you have always known this person.

The question is, since people are compendiums, what is it that is recognized?
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ardy
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by ardy »

Cahoot wrote: I’m sure you’ve taken notice …

... that when you’re in a crowd there are people you recognize, whom you have no memory of ever meeting.

Since contradictions don’t actually exist, if recognition contradicts memory, somewhere there’s a flawed premise in reasoning … unless recognition and memory are uncontradictedly accurate and you do recognize them, but you have no memory of them.

An explanation that fits all the known facts and disallows for coincidence is that you have always known this person.

The question is, since people are compendiums, what is it that is recognized?
I know this feeling and it is always following some eye contact. Is it as you say, or is it just an open confident person who will engage you in eye contact, or do they just look like someone you know vaguely? I honestly don't know, but you could be right.

People are compendiums, but there is not a lot of differences in our works. Maybe we recognise ourselves in them? More wild speculation. I think I should leave it there - I am out of my depth.
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Cahoot
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by Cahoot »

Picking up on an aspect of the recently locked thread, from a more philosophical standpoint, rationality is the most effective tool for navigating materialism. The practical aspects of materialism are the dualistic relationships between you and anything or anyone else. Rationality is also effective for protecting the mind from random invasion. Once someone is in your mind (i.e. via your attachment) they know it and it’s a rare person who does not take advantage, so with effective barriers of rationality that do not filter out the qualities of compassion, kindness, patience, etc., but rather serve to amplify these qualities for real benefit by harmonious relationship with the material, attention need not be distracted by the careless. And the careless appreciate it, since in private moments of honesty they don’t particularly care for the responsibility of being in someone’s mind.
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ardy
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by ardy »

Cahoot wrote:Picking up on an aspect of the recently locked thread, from a more philosophical standpoint, rationality is the most effective tool for navigating materialism. The practical aspects of materialism are the dualistic relationships between you and anything or anyone else. Rationality is also effective for protecting the mind from random invasion. Once someone is in your mind (i.e. via your attachment) they know it and it’s a rare person who does not take advantage, so with effective barriers of rationality that do not filter out the qualities of compassion, kindness, patience, etc., but rather serve to amplify these qualities for real benefit by harmonious relationship with the material, attention need not be distracted by the careless. And the careless appreciate it, since in private moments of honesty they don’t particularly care for the responsibility of being in someone’s mind.
Very well put Cahoot: This invasion can be a person or a thing and it can take over. The most obvious is a song on the radio that you find yourself humming every spare moment of the day regardless of whether you like it or hate it.

I was talking to my pseudo daughter a couple of days ago and this subject came up. She dated an old boyfriend who had stayed in touch. She let him get the upper hand and of course he dumped her, same as he did originally. Some people just love to act with violence when there are no police to arrest them! They generally have poor development and lack any introspection, there just trying to support their weak ideas of themselves.

I am not sure that the careless care one way or the other, it is just an opportunity and they can't resist the feeling of (false) power it gives their pathetic ego's.
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Cahoot
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by Cahoot »

Pseudo?

Castaneda called it “the foreign installation.” Interesting concept.

I think that death’s immanence delivers introspective powers to each at the end. It’s why people listen carefully to the dying. Lucky the man who knows he is, in the sense that the known, ends. The integration is to retain control when Armageddon rumbles.
Kunyab
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by Kunyab »

I have spend many months now discussing Vedanta with him and now find that for him enlightenment is not some great mystical state, but just an alternative way of understanding the world.

Here is the difference:

The common view assumes that space and time are the fundamental reality of the world, consciousness is an artifact of the brain and millions of years of evolution.

Vedantic view is that consciousness is the fundamental reality, time and space and human body are just experiences running on top of it.

This is what he says it's all there to enlightenment, to continually apply this understanding till it becomes obvious.
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Russell Parr
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by Russell Parr »

Kunyab wrote:I have spend many months now discussing Vedanta with him and now find that for him enlightenment is not some great mystical state, but just an alternative way of understanding the world.

Here is the difference:

The common view assumes that space and time are the fundamental reality of the world, consciousness is an artifact of the brain and millions of years of evolution.

Vedantic view is that consciousness is the fundamental reality, time and space and human body are just experiences running on top of it.

This is what he says it's all there to enlightenment, to continually apply this understanding till it becomes obvious.
It's a step in the right direction, but it misses the mark ultimately. While consciousness is the foundation for experiencing of reality, it isn't itself the foundation. A couple of reasons for this is the fact that consciousness has to come from somewhere (the brain, sensory input), and that it needs something to act upon (external reality).

Reality has no foundation because it is infinite.
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ardy
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by ardy »

Kunyab wrote:I have spend many months now discussing Vedanta with him and now find that for him enlightenment is not some great mystical state, but just an alternative way of understanding the world.

Here is the difference:

The common view assumes that space and time are the fundamental reality of the world, consciousness is an artifact of the brain and millions of years of evolution.

Vedantic view is that consciousness is the fundamental reality, time and space and human body are just experiences running on top of it.

This is what he says it's all there to enlightenment, to continually apply this understanding till it becomes obvious.
Hi Kunjab - Interesting but it seems that this is the elephant riding the mahout. Russel quite rightly points out that the foundation is unknown and unknowable, it is as Russel says infinite - a concept humans nod their heads at but can never fully understand.

The reality is that it does not matter what your husband follows, his destination is the same as everyone else. The only question is will he get there.
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Cahoot
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by Cahoot »

ardy wrote:
Kunyab wrote:I have spend many months now discussing Vedanta with him and now find that for him enlightenment is not some great mystical state, but just an alternative way of understanding the world.

Here is the difference:

The common view assumes that space and time are the fundamental reality of the world, consciousness is an artifact of the brain and millions of years of evolution.

Vedantic view is that consciousness is the fundamental reality, time and space and human body are just experiences running on top of it.

This is what he says it's all there to enlightenment, to continually apply this understanding till it becomes obvious.
Hi Kunjab - Interesting but it seems that this is the elephant riding the mahout. Russel quite rightly points out that the foundation is unknown and unknowable, it is as Russel says infinite - a concept humans nod their heads at but can never fully understand.

The reality is that it does not matter what your husband follows, his destination is the same as everyone else. The only question is will he get there.
Any breath could be your last. This means that with each inhalation, you have gotten there. Paradoxically, for it calls attention to something as minute as the moment of a breath, this is the Big View, minus imagining, conceptual adroitness, or prescribed behavior.
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by Kunyab »

Russel quite rightly points out that the foundation is unknown and unknowable, it is as Russel says infinite - a concept humans nod their heads at but can never fully understand
Hi Ardy, Russell

Here is where you differ with Vedanta. Because according to Vedanta this infinite is nothing other than I.

I am that!

Although it is also correct to say that the I is unknowable since it is never an object only the subject.

The knowing goes only so far as to recognize that this subjective I is the Brahm, the infinite as you say.
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divine focus
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by divine focus »

Russell wrote:
Kunyab wrote:The common view assumes that space and time are the fundamental reality of the world, consciousness is an artifact of the brain and millions of years of evolution.

Vedantic view is that consciousness is the fundamental reality, time and space and human body are just experiences running on top of it.

This is what he says it's all there to enlightenment, to continually apply this understanding till it becomes obvious.
It's a step in the right direction, but it misses the mark ultimately. While consciousness is the foundation for experiencing of reality, it isn't itself the foundation. A couple of reasons for this is the fact that consciousness has to come from somewhere (the brain, sensory input), and that it needs something to act upon (external reality).

Reality has no foundation because it is infinite.
Consciousness exists independently of the brain or any bodily senses. It doesn't act upon anything, since everything is it.

If it were dependent on the brain or senses, how would there be out-of-body experiences or the experience relived in past-life regressions when people see what it was like after death?
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

divine focus wrote:Consciousness exists independently of the brain or any bodily senses. It doesn't act upon anything, since everything is it.
It cannot be said to be independent in some objective sense. It cannot even be said to "exist" in the way brains and bodies are spoken of.

So I suggest not to speak of consciousness that way. It's just introducing more things, more divisions and more false impressions to get caught in.
If it were dependent on the brain or senses, how would there be out-of-body experiences or the experience relived in past-life regressions when people see what it was like after death?
The brain also provides dreams, a rich imagination, inventions and many more experiences and perspectives. That is its "thing". Once that is understood fully, experiences like "out-of-body" or claimed memories of past lives are just more of the usual. It doesn't need any "brain outside of a brain" to explain. And I'm not even touching the question if these experiences and regressions are more than powerful dreams or clever inventions. Because first one needs to accept the power of the mind, the brain, the senses and the power of any conclusion being derived from those. That is the starting point: seeing that one is riding a wild elephant, one so little understood. You're hanging by its tail and yet proclaim this and that about what it can or cannot do, which truth it can generate and which not. Best thing would be a tad of modesty here on our own role, our own conceptions of brain as perhaps another invention of brain. That's a paradox ....
Atri
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by Atri »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:It cannot be said to be independent in some objective sense. It cannot even be said to "exist" in the way brains and bodies are spoken of.
Its because brain and bodies are objects while consciousness is always the subject. The subject is ever present while objects come and go. The fundamental error is to assume that space is real and then asking questions like what happens when a forest falls in the tree and no one is there to hear it. It assumes that there is space where there is consciousness and space where there is no consciousness. While its the other way round. i.e. all space is in consciousness.
BardoXV
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by BardoXV »

Kunyab wrote:The answers I have gotten so far have only increased my confusion on the matter. It seems as if enlightenment is not a objective thing but a matter of opinion.
Enlightenment is a state of being, not an objective thing or an opinion.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Enlightened! Really?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

BardoXV wrote:Enlightenment is a state of being, not an objective thing or an opinion.
"States" and "beings" are just more things you're bringing to the table, objective or subjective, it doesn't matter. You seem here like someone who kicks "things" out the front door and invites them all back through the back door. Next thing will be that you're refusing to describe enlightenment after just describing it using your own private set of meanings. For example, what is a "state of being"? States and beings both refer to things usually.
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