"Enlightenment" is simply defined as life, accompanied by eternal and deep
silence, Being, during any state of consciousness. End of story. There are no
automatic attributes beyond that, as the universe takes care of the rest.
Anyone can gain enlightenment, and with that, their individuality will always
express enlightenment. To try for some sort of personal algorithm beyond that,
is a fool's errand; better to focus on your own path, than try to come up with
any comprehensive list of personal attributes. Silence in activity, always.
Period.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote :
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote :
Defining Enlightenment,
Anartaxius wrote :
I think this brings up an interesting point. How does one define
'enlightenment'. The most overreaching attempts include the entire universe as
a connected unity, and that would imply simply that all that exists is what
enlightenment is about.
Hows about this as an alternative for the sake of discussion:
“GURU DEV, The Unified Field, bliss of the Absolute, transcendental joy, the
Self-Sufficient, the embodiment of pure knowledge which is beyond and above the
universe like the sky, the aim of "Thou art That" and other such expressions
which unfold eternal truth, the One, the Eternal, the Pure, the Immoveable, the
Witness of all intellects, whose status transcends thought, the Transcendent
along with the three gunas, the true preceptor, to the UNIFIED FIELD SHRI GURU
DEV, I bow down.”
Sounds like a good trip but doesn't really explain anything except it terms
that are also unexplained like "eternal truth" and "the immovable". And "pure
knowledge" that's the oddest concept of the lot as it implies there is no added
waffle but is in itself a bit vague. More work required.
The three Gunas I do understand though, that was Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers
and Spike Milligan wasn't it?
-Buck
There is a phrase in Zen 'walk off with the farmer's ox, steal the blind man's
food', which is an expression of unboundedness. This is kind of how the TMO
behaves. -Xenophaneros Anartaxius 404951
Oblivious or Willful morally unbound? Bringing in and using the TMO as an
example may not be illustrative of the nature or nurture of spiritual
enlightenment lived in life. Go too far with the TMO example polluted with the
story of many people then the conversation goes over to entertaining negativity
and would start in to denouncing people in culture. That goes beyond
spirituality and enlightenment the way Fleet is clearly talking by example.
-Buck
anartaxius@...> wrote :
I think this brings up an interesting point. How does one define
'enlightenment'. The most overreaching attempts include the entire universe as
a connected unity, and that would imply simply that all that exists is what
enlightenment is about. If you include everything you cannot define
enlightenment as A, B, C minus some bad parts you do not like. So if,
simplistically the universe is A, B, C, X, Y, and Z, you have to include them
all. There is a phrase in Zen 'walk off with the farmer's ox, steal the blind
man's food', which is an expression of unboundedness. This is kind of how the
TMO behaves. From my perspective, enlightenment does not have any injunctions
on behaviour in spite of advertisements to the contrary, all enlightenment does
is reveal the connectedness of the universe, and if you want to be a 'good
person', first you have to define what a good person is, and then you have to
act that way, and that is a local phenomenon, an aspect of the universe far
reduced from the whole. You could be enlightened and a criminal. If you listen
to Charles Manson (I saw that picture online too), while he seems sort of
crazy, he also often expresses unboundedness in his understanding of the world.
Religions, which presumably have some connexion with the idea of enlightenment
have all these rules for governing behaviour, and the question one could ask
is, if religion is so great and will straighten people out, why are these rules
necessary? (and one could also ask why are the rules inconsistent between
religions regarding behaviour). If you say god created the universe and the way
it runs, then the universe is a serial killer. Like father, like son and
daughter. Looking at religious figures, gurus, etc., one cannot conclude that
these rules and enlightenment techniques substantially affect behaviour that we
would call 'bad'. This issue of behaviour is one which we in civilised society
do not seem to have much of a clue on how to solve, and all the methods we have
invented to fix it have failed.
How do you traverse society without leaving mangled bodies, psychologically
damaged bodies, emotionally damaged bodies, in your wake? There does not seem
to be a direct connexion with seeing the world as unbounded, and acting in it
in a bound way unless there is an internal switch that pains you if you cause
harm. Some people do not seem to have that switch (sociopaths and psychopaths),
or a 'damaged' switch and have reduced empathy. Some people are crushed by
having too much empathy. If you eliminate pain and suffering from your own
life, will you care about others if life no longer pains you? There seems to be
a variable in all this that is not accounted for and which does not seem to be
affected much by the things people do in the hope of gaining enlightenment.
An example of unboundedness and unity from the Bible. Isaiah, in a literal
translation (bolded are words in original Hebrew).
Except for me, there is no Elohim; I am forearming you, yet you do not know
me, That they may know, From the rising of the sun and from the west, that
there is no one apart from me; I am Yahweh, and there is no other. Former of
light and creator of darkness, maker of good and creator of evil, I, Yahweh,
make all these.
Here you have all the darkness you would want emanating from the supposed
source of creation (a great way to express narcissism too). There are similar
passage in the Bhagavad-Gita. If everything, good and bad are integral in
existence and are sourced from the same origin or have the same being, and we
come to direct knowledge of that, what is to prevent us from being all those
qualities that (some) people abhor?
Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.
—Ursula K. Le Guin
From: "TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... [FairfieldLife]"
<FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
To: "FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2014 12:05 PM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Most Absurd Rumor
From: "anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
The Zen trained Adyashanti had this to say about 'enlightenment success':
'When I looked around at the Buddhist tradition, I realized that the success
rate was terrible. People were in it for enlightenment, but very few were
actually getting enlightened. If this were a business, I thought, we'd be
bankrupt.'
'I think it's unfortunate that a person can spend hour after hour, day after
day, year after year, dedicating his life to enlightenment, and yet the very
notion that anybody attains enlightenment is a taboo. We're all going after
this; but God forbid somebody says they've realized it. We don't believe them,
we're cynical, we have doubt; we go immediately into a semi- (or overt) attack
mode. To me, it highlights the fact that people are chasing an awakening they
don't believe could happen to them.
I've heard this rap from him before, and I think he's being simplistic. For
example, his model doesn't work for me -- I've had enlightenment experiences,
and the way I figure it, if I could have them, *anybody* could. So the belief
that "it can't happen" is not in play.
Instead, when I object to someone's claim of being enlightened, in almost
every case it's because THEY ARE NOT WALKING THEIR *OWN* TALK. That is, they
are acting contrary to their *own* definitions and descriptions of what
enlightenment is.
That was the problem with Maharishi, it was the problem with Rama-Fred Lenz,
and it is *certainly* the problem with low-level poseurs like Jim Flanegin or
Robin Carlsen. All four of these people IMO suffered from long-term
narcissistic personality disorder all their lives, and so when they had some
*minor* experience of boundlessness or witnessing, their own self-centeredness
and narcissism made them assume that they were "enlightened" and they began to
claim it to other people. The "tell" that none of them were, in fact,
enlightened is that when all of them are called upon to define what
enlightenment is or what it means, *their own thoughts, words, and actions*
don't fit their own definitions.
