Thanks, Dan, I got it.


On Sunday, September 14, 2014 7:32 AM, danfriedman2002 
<no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
 


  




---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <sharelong60@...> wrote :


But Dan, it is a really good story. Now, does my saying this mean I won't get 
any more presents from you? (-:


Dearest Share,
I put more in to delivery. Check your box.

d


On Sunday, September 14, 2014 6:11 AM, danfriedman2002 
<no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:



 




---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote :


Seems like everybody's reading this book, except the people here on FFL who 
assume they already know everything and don't need to, that is.  :-)  This is a 
great quote that I'll pass along because 1) my friend already did all the 
typing so I don't have to, and 2) I love the simple and perfect way that 
Dzogchen deals with the kinds of faux enlightenment we see often on Fairfield 
Life. 

Hold it Barry!!!! I gave my reason for not reading Harris' book. It is not that 
I assume that I know everything. I do not. That is evidenced by the voracious 
appetite fro books. I consume books by the hundreds. And ask questions of the 
authors. And often for lasting relations with them. The reason I gave for not 
reading this particular book is that you had spoiled it for me, even before I 
have seen a copy. So it's your stink posts.

Now you continue to annoy by not posting about a book you are reading, or have 
read, but rather a
cut-and-paste from your friend. This is again annoying. It even makes me 
question whether there is any 'friend' involved. Change if you can; this is my 
best advice.

When I first met him, he had not yet been discovered by the
throngs of Western devotees who would soon turn his tiny  
house in Lucknow into a spiritual circus. Like his teacher
Ramana, Poonja-ji claimed to be perfectly free from the illusion
of the self—and by all appearances, he was. And like
Ramana—
and every other Indian guru—Poonja-ji would occasionally say
something deeply unscientific. On the whole, however, his
teaching was remarkably free of Hindu religiosity or
unwarranted assertions about the nature of the cosmos. He
appeared to simply speak from experience about the nature of
experience itself.

Poonja-ji’s influence on me was profound,
especially because
it came as a corrective to all the strenuous and unsatisfying
efforts I had been making in meditation up to that point. But
the dangers inherent in his approach soon became obvious.
The all-or-nothing quality of Poonja-ji’s teaching obliged him
to acknowledge the full enlightenment of any person who was
grandiose or manic enough to claim it. Thus, I repeatedly
witnessed fellow students declare their complete and undying
freedom, all the while appearing quite ordinary—or
worse. In
certain cases, these people had clearly had some sort of
breakthrough, but Poonja-ji’s insistence upon the finality of
every legitimate insight led many of them to delude themselves
about their spiritual attainments. Some left India and became
gurus. From what I could tell, Poonja-ji gave everyone his
blessing to spread his teachings in this way. He once suggested
that I do it, and yet it was clear to me that I was not qualified to
be anyone’s guru. Nearly twenty years have passed,
and I’m
still not. Of course, from Poonja-ji’s point of view, this is an
illusion. And yet there simply is a difference between a person
like myself, who is generally distracted by thought, and one
who isn’t and cannot be. I don’t know where to place Poonja-ji
on this continuum of
wisdom, but he appeared to be a lot
farther along than his students. Whether Poonja-ji was capable
of seeing the difference between himself and other people, I do
not know. But his insistence that no difference existed began to
seem either dogmatic or delusional.

On one occasion, events conspired to perfectly illuminate
the flaw in Poonja-ji’s teaching. A small group of experienced
practitioners (among us several teachers of meditation) had
organized a trip to India and Nepal to spend ten days with
Poonja-ji in Lucknow, followed by ten days in Kathmandu, to
receive teachings on the
Tibetan Buddhist practice of
Dzogchen. As it happened, during our time in Lucknow, a
woman from Switzerland became “enlightened” in Poonja-ji’s
presence. For the better part of a week, she was celebrated as
something akin to the next Buddha. Poonja-ji repeatedly put
her forward as evidence of how fully the truth could be realized
without making any effort at all in meditation, and we had the
pleasure of seeing this woman sit beside Poonja-ji on a raised
platform expounding upon how blissful it
now was in her
corner of the universe. She was, in fact, radiantly happy, and it
was by no means clear that Poonja-ji had made a mistake in
recognizing her. She would say things like “There is nothing
but
consciousness, and there is no difference between it and
reality itself.” Coming from such a nice, guileless person, there
was little reason to doubt the profundity of her experience.


When it came time for our group to leave India for Nepal,
this woman asked if she could join us. Because she
was such
good company, we encouraged her to come along. A few of us
were also curious to see how her realization would appear in
another context. And so it came to pass that
a woman whose
enlightenment had just been confirmed by one of the greatest
living exponents of Advaita Vedanta was in the room when we
received our first teachings from Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, who
was generally thought to be one of the greatest living Dzogchen
masters.


Of all the Buddhist teachings, those of Dzogchen most
closely resemble the teachings of Advaita. The two traditions
seek to provoke the same insight into the nonduality of
consciousness, but, generally speaking, only Dzogchen makes it
absolutely clear that one must practice this insight to the point
of stability and that one can do so without succumbing to the
dualistic striving that haunts most other paths.


At a certain point in our discussions with Tulku Urgyen, our
Swiss prodigy declared her boundless freedom in terms similar
to those she had used to such great effect with Poonja-ji. After a
few highly amusing exchanges, during which we watched Tulku
Urgyen struggle to understand what our translator was telling
him, he gave a short laugh and looked the woman over with
renewed interest.


“How long has it been since you were last lost in
thought?” he asked.


“I haven’t had any thoughts for over a week,” the
woman replied.


Tulku Urgyen smiled.
“A week?”


“Yes.”


“No thoughts?”


“No, my mind is completely still. It’s just pure
consciousness.”


“That’s very interesting. Okay, so this is what is going
to happen now: We are all going to wait for you to have
your next thought. There’s no hurry. We are all very
patient people. We are just going to sit here and wait.
Please tell
us when you notice a thought arise in your
mind.”


It is difficult to convey what a brilliant and subtle
intervention this was. It may have been the most inspired
moment of teaching I have ever witnessed.


After a few moments, a look of doubt appeared on our
friend’s face.


“Okay. . . Wait a minute . . . Oh . . . That could have been
a thought there . . . Okay. . .”


Over the next thirty seconds, we watched this woman’s
enlightenment completely unravel. It became clear that she
had been merely thinking about how expansive her
experience
of consciousness had become—how it was perfectly free of
thought, immaculate, just like space—without noticing that she
was thinking incessantly. She had been telling herself the story
of her enlightenment—and she had been getting away with it
because she happened to be an extraordinarily happy person
for whom everything was going very well for the time being.
This was the danger of nondual teachings of the sort that
Poonja-ji was
handing out to all comers. It was easy to delude
oneself into thinking that one had achieved a permanent
breakthrough, especially because he insisted that all
breakthroughs must be permanent. What the Dzogchen
teachings make clear,
however, is that thinking about what is
beyond thought is still thinking, and a glimpse of selflessness is
generally only the beginning of a process that must reach
fruition. Being able to stand perfectly free of the feeling of self
is the start of one’s spiritual journey, not its end.




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