--- In [email protected], "Rick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Here is something from Shvetashvatara Upanishad IV.6: > > "Two birds of beautiful plumage, comrades Inseparable, live on the > self same tree. One bird eats the fruit of pleasure and pain; The > other looks on without eating." > > It seems that awareness is necessary for thoughts to happen but > thoughts are not necessary for awareness to happen. Awareness > without thinking is still awareness of something, only there > are no thoughts. Can't really think about it but I'm sure we > have all experienced it.
I almost never get involved in theoretical discussions of enlightenment, and won't this time either, except to note that it would seem that the description of "full enlightenment" would have more to do with the two "birds" becoming one and dropping the petty distinctions between actor and witness than it would with one of them being an actor and one being a witness. Life in full enlightenment would seem to me to be about fully enjoying both the fruit of pleasure and the pain, in the knowledge that neither is separate from Self, and that both are *just* as much Self as is the silent "witness." Any state in which there is still a "witness" separate from one's thoughts and actions would seem to me to be merely a step along the way, not the end point of the "journey." In other words, still ignorance, just of a different sort. Unc To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
