Well said, Edg. I liked your expansion on what your practice involves a lot, and I have no further questions about it or further comments to make. I'll deal with a few direct things you seemed to say to me below, just for the fun of it.
--- In [email protected], Duveyoung <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > There is no causality. There is no causality. There is no > causality. God determines everything. Whatever he paints, > I'm for it. You too, right? No, actually, not me too. Just not a God kinda guy. > So, no, I don't feel like I've injured my spiritual chances > by indulging in intellectualizations-about-Advaita... One can always change one's response to karma; that is what free will is all about. The only problem I see is that for some people, habits developed over decades can be tough to break free of. <snip to> > "TurquoiseB" says, "In my experience, that process of Doing > Something Different contains a certain kind of magic, and > often results in long-time seekers having a strong realization > experience. The Something Different *per se* does not IMO > "cause" the realization so much as it "allows" it. Choosing to > Do Something Different involves a kind of "letting go," and > *that* seems to trigger the realization." > > I say, "I'd love for you to expand on this. I've just seen it work so many times, that's all. Someone gets stuck in a rut -- a *different* rut for each of us -- and finally tries Something Different, just to see what would happen. And the result is a strong Self Realization experience. Just as all the ruts are different, all of the Something Differents are different, too. For my monk friend, it was getting over his thing about celibacy. For a woman I knew, it was getting over decades of feeling shy and housebound and going out to a bar, swearing that she wouldn't come back to her house until she'd met thirty new friends. One fellow, who had spent years as a real wuss around tobacco smoke, went out and bought a few cigars and smoked them. Another person stopped doing his yoga and meditation the same old way every morning and evening started running instead at those times, meditating only when he felt like it. The end results of all these weird experiments in Doing Something Different were strong, clear Self Realization experiences. Some of those experiences faded over time, others did not. This may be hard to grok if you're really into the "God does it all" thang, and it sounds as if you are. The thing I'm talking about definitely involves both intention and a strong belief in free will. The "secret," if there is one, to all these Doing Something Different exercises is that for each person who tried them, the thing that they did was something that they could never, in a million years, imagine their self doing. > Advaita says that no one becomes enlightened, that merely > all the ways to not be enlightened are discontinued. Doesn't that discontinuation imply some "doing?" I'm not trying to argue, just to understand how doing the self inquiry and shifting one's sense of identification fits into the "God does it" thang. > So, I think this agrees with your words above. > Changing one's program, doing something different, may be > just the "last straw" required... For some people, it seems to be. In my experience, those who resist the idea most are the ones who would benefit from it the most. > ...but I don't see that changing for changing's > sake is necessarily always a good tool -- not that you > said quite this concept." No, I don't think that change for change's sake is that valuable. I met a few people who worked with Carlos Castaneda who had made breaking habits a habit. They had become *afraid* to drive the same way to work twice. For them, taking the same route to work every day for a month would probably have been Doing Something Different. > "TurquoiseB" says, "One dude I know -- a Buddhist monk > I met in Holland who had been celibate for over a > decade without ever having had a realization experience > -- just got up from his evening meditation one night and > said "Fuck it!" out loud and went out on a crawl of > Amsterdam's most lovely brothels. He boinked until he could > boink no more, and then, walking back to the rooms that he > shared with his fellow monks near the university, he watched > the sun rise over the canals and had a Self Realization > experience that has not left him since. Go figure. It doesn't > make a bit of sense. But it worked." > > I say, "Probably you're not suggesting we all do this. Oh, but I am. I'm not really a writer living in France. In reality I work as an Associate Pimp for one of Amsterdam's largest and most famous brothels, and I have been tasked with cruising spiritual forums on the Internet to drum up more business. :-) Not really. For the monk, doing what he did broke some boundaries that had been preventing his realization of what had always already been present for him. So it was a useful exercise. After the realization experience, he went back to being a monk, and then later left his order and got married. He still lives in Amsterdam, and the realization has never left him. Would doing the same thing -- going out to a brothel -- work as well for anyone else? Probably not, although it would certainly increase my monthly commission check. :-) Doing what he did was something he could simply not imagine his self doing. So he did it, and the self went away. > But I think I get your point. To finally dump one's dogma > for the crutch that it is, to finally stop leaning on the > intellect, a paradigm shift can happen -- sometimes giving > up identification with something that really really has its > hooks in ya is like having the rope one is playing tug-of- > war with suddenly snap. But, I'm not counting on that > being a "law of God." For obvious reasons, neither do I. :-) > I have re-written in my own words several classic tales of > spirituality. One of them has come to mind that "goes with" > your above story. Here is my version of this well known tale. > > Ancient tale retold: (just lovely, but snipt for brevity) > . . . > "So, for this I give thanks -- that one of you spent the entire > evening with me." > > With that, he stood, and the evening was over." > > > I love that story! Me, too. If you haven't seen it, I think you'd really enjoy renting a movie called "The Cup." It's by a Tibetan lama (who is actually the recognized tulku or rein- carnation of a famous 19th-century saint) named Khentze Norbu. It concerns daily life in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Bhutan. The tagline of the film says it all: "Buddhism is their philosophy. Soccer is their religion." It's about these young monks -- who, after all, are really just young kids -- scheming and planning and doing all this wonder- ful stuff to raise enough money so that they can rent a satellite dish and a TV and watch the World Cup. Thanks for all your contributions to the board in the last few days. If you feel like posting more stories -- either about your path or your retelling of the stories of other people's paths -- I'd sure love to hear them.
