I'll take 2 from Point #1 and 1 from Point #2 (old reference to Chinese restaurant menus, back-in-the days, and nights, weekends included.
Dearest s3raphita (I just love how that sounds, running of my lips like wine, and women, and... Can you please explain how I can insert text as comments to your textual comments? Looks like fun! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <s3raphita@...> wrote : Re "You are not going to get any more enlightenment than you are going to get." That's necessarily true by definition but isn't it a little vacuous? Re "When you realize this, you will be free and there won't be any more stress.": Hmm. But isn't there a difference between 1) saying to yourself that nothing I do is going to make a blind bit of difference and carrying on as everyone else does (wine, women and song, or whatever else floats your boat), and 2) following a spiritual path - meditation, say - which only makes sense if you think the practice chosen will make *some* difference, however little, to your life? And re Dan's (following MMY): "Material possessions are not a means of bondage. ": SO, HAVING A PRISON CELL, WITH FEW POSSESSIONS may be the way to go? Watch 'Orange is the New Black' and get back to me. (i made this orange, but you made your orange, probably expecting me to write something about orange, right?) They sure are! What we think we own actually owns us. All the (pitifully few) possessions I have surrounding me right now are also what help define me as a person (my learned role play in this life). We all need certain basic essentials - and yes, what we regard as basic has expanded over the centuries - but beyond that point accumulating possessions is like decorating your prison cell. It makes you feel more at home (and so apathetic) but the point is to break down the prison walls and escape! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <punditster@...> wrote : On 8/26/2014 9:38 AM, Share Long sharelong60@... mailto:sharelong60@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: Thanks, Richard, cool info. I once heard from a friend that we can fulfill those less than wonderful desires in dream state. And that counts too but doesn't, I guess, accrue any negative karma. > It is obviously counter-productive to desire to be enlightened more than one is going to be enlightened. Desiring more than one is going to get leads to frustration, lamentation, and grief. It is impossible to to stop desiring, and at a more subtle level, it is fruitless to want to stop desiring more than one is going to stop desiring, relative to wanting to stop wanting. According to Professor A.J. Bahm, these practical difficulties do not invalidate the principle of wanting to attain a state of desirelessness, they merely indicate desire's universality, the subtlety with which it operates, the reason why it is commonly misunderstood, and the need for a special meditation to bring it into manageable operation. Base desire also works subtly, not merely because desires are emotively imprecise, but especially because the desire to prevent desiring more than will be attained is itself unconsciously desired too much. For whenever one desires to stop 'desiring more than will be attained', this additional, deeper desire also becomes a desire for more stopping than will be attained. Thus this additional, deeper desire requires its own additional, still deeper desire to stop desiring more stopping than will be attained. You are not going to get any more enlightenment than you are going to get. When you realize this, you will be free and there won't be any more stress. Any time there is stress there is wanting - even if it is wanting less stress. The answer to this riddle is actually very simple when you think about it. According to Bahm, "He who finally gives up trying to solve the problem of frustration, thereby becoming willing to accept his desires and frustrations for what they are, finds the problem solved." > On Monday, August 25, 2014 9:16 PM, "'Richard J. Williams' punditster@... mailto:punditster@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: On 8/25/2014 8:59 PM, s3raphita@... mailto:s3raphita@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: Re "I have never met a single TM'er who could honestly say they had fulfilled all desires": And yet, . . ., and yet . . . Isn't it the case that *when you are meditating* you often enter a state in which your quotidian desires no longer impinge on your consciousness and you are happy to remain just where you are. True, one could say the same thing about being asleep, but Indian philosophers have often taken the deep sleep state as a paradigm for enlightenment. No desires = fulfillment of desires. > In Tibetan Dream Yoga, maintaining full consciousness while in the dream state is part of Dzogchen training. This training is described by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche as 'Rigpa Awareness'. Lucid dreaming is secondary to the experience of 'Diamond Light'. Rigpa Awareness is very similar to 'witnessing sleep' in TM, which helps the individual understand the unreality of waking consciousness as phenomena. Apparently the EEG patterns are the same in Rigpa Awareness as in TM. Read more: 'Tibetan Yoga Of Dream And Sleep' by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche Snow Lion, 1998 >
