stirling

Nice of you to think of me so kindly, but I have seen and met a number of entities of various kinds without fear or harm. Which ones are you are concerned about? Most of what I see/meet doesn't introduce itself.

The ones in my town are all either friends or acquaintances. The ones I have met previously, were my teachers or their peers. I won't way that they are Buddhas necessarily, but arhats certainly. I think any exact criteria is somewhat muddled beyond that point. Awakening is much more common. What would your criteria for enlightened be?

This is absolutely my experience, except the part about "harmful entities". In my opinion, though they might appear fearsome, they aren't harmful... quite the opposite, IMO. They are kind, showing us our fear, attachment, and aversion. Follow on question related to your previous post: If the very fabric of everything is itself enlightened, what makes you think that entities that represent that understanding in human form are so rare?

I live in a Pure Land, of course! It is a small town in the Pacific Northwest that just happens to have a lot of retired former Shuryu Suzuki and Rinzai Zen teachers, as well as a well-know Zen translator and author or two. Let's do definitions: By enlightened, I mean an Arhat. Specifically, complete realization of no-self in the Buddhist parlance. Most of the Buddhist meditation centers I have been affiliated with had at least one, some had more. Locations include San Francisco Zen Center, Hokoji Zen Center, Jikoji Zen Center, Land of Medicine Buddha, Pema Osel Ling, and Tashi Choling. I find YOUR assertions unbelievable... how about that!

Hi Luke! I honestly think of this more like surrender. You have to be open to admitting that you are lost and that you need help. Works best if you are truly out of ideas and give up. Sincerity and genuine heartfelt attitude matters greatly. Asking for something specific like a particular amount of money, or particular life experience to turn out in a way you think is favorable is unlikely to work out, IMHO. The more your request is of benefit to all sentient beings the better, such as heartfelt entreaties to remove delusions, etc. I wouldn't use it so much as a regular thing, but more like an occasional direct help-line sort of scenario... OR a place to begin when you have been "lost". I have read before that the Buddha Amitahba is known to always be listening for this sort of entreaty... one could repeat his name a few times before asking for help, for example. I have personally had some correlation with asking for help and major insight breakthroughs, and know others who have had help in various ways. My suggest is that anyone intending to do this have a meditation practice (open awareness/dzogchen/zazen) where the mind becomes still for at least a few seconds at a time. Asking in stillness would be ideal.

It really helps to the pursuit of enlightenment have some exposure to teachings of someone realized in a non-dual tradition, written or spoken, and the stated intention to become enlightened. Stating your intention can be as simple and taking a deep breath and allowing the mind to go quiet and asking earnestly for help (depending on your motivation) in the pursuit of understanding the reality of how things are, or in helping with the relief of your suffering in the world, or some other reason. Even better to muster some compassion to help other sentient beings, but this is hard for most people. As for finding a teacher, enlightened beings are available almost everywhere. I am aware of 3 in my little town of 10k people. Any decent sized meditation center will probably have at least one, with some exceptions. Get out and meet some teachers and TELL them what you want to do. The more open and genuine you are when meeting them, the better. Most teachers will MAKE space for a student who is truly motivated. My current tradition is Zen. There are stories about people hearing a pebble hit a clay pot and becoming enlightened. There are NO cheat codes, and nobody really enlightens themselves - enlightenment happens by accident, but practice CAN make you accident prone. In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition we assume that all beings are ALREADY enlightened, and might simply need a nudge to realize it. The interconnected fabric of the "world" we live in is CONSTANTLY supplying us with situations that offer the opportunity for dropping obscurations and becoming enlightened. Help is actually always available if you ask for it, and avail yourself of what is given. The more you use, the more you get. Meditation practice naturally stirs up and brings the material you need forward. It still requires your hard work to see where you are stuck. A good teacher will show a student how to work with their life situations and transform them into experiences of dharma, rather than just becoming more mired in the delusions of the mind we typically tell ourselves about them.

I know just what you mean. I think about this too. IMHO it really can't be overstated that any model we might develop for enlightened mind simply fails to properly capture it or make sense, INCLUDING all of the well-known traditions. This is why we don't need the "raft" of the Buddha dharma once we have crossed the river (Alagaddupama (Water Snake Simile) Sutta). The destination doesn't properly correlate to all of the teachings we needed to get there. This is why, IMHO we have SO many different perspectives on what this "enlightenment" is. All that we can do is look for where those pointers converge ,of course. There is a point (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_awakening#Arahant) where it is permanently understood that "self" is just another object in consciousness, not any kind of personal identity. Somewhere around this point, from my perspective, is where the delusion/duality of self drops away entirely and mind settles into more or less permanent non-meditation (the formlessness of 5th or 6th jhana). At this point the "self" no longer accumulates karma, since it isn't an identity and has no "self-view". After this point, the deepening I am speaking of is mostly due to the dissolving of dualities, which seems like it could be endless. Most of the time at this point, for the most part, I couldn't even tell you WHAT is deepening or what new insight it manifests, though there is still a general perception of things slowly and gently increasing in clarity along a number of fronts. I agree with you that "emptiness" is already enlightened, and of course so are all appearances in consciousness including other "sentient beings"... including "us". Therefore, what we have left is Nirvana with "residue": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_(Buddhism)#Nirvana_with_and_without_remainder_of_fuel

Just a note to say that "hara" practice is definitely not a feature of all Zen practice, and absolutely not any kind of important feature of Soto Zen. My brown robe Zen teachers were never taught it. My two friends who are senior Rinzai teachers do not do "hara" practice, though one of them (Harada's student) was told in very lose terms about how one could breathe down into the "hara", but it was informal and lacked much detail.

As Bob says, it isn't something easy to talk about, so the best you can hope for really is to "fail well", as neo-Advaita teacher Adyashanti suggests. This is my understanding and experience. Others may describe it differently, but you'll find remarkable agreement on these things once terminology is settled. I'm going to generally leave out historical references and jargon from particular traditions for clarity and simplicity. There is, first, a shift in experience where your perceptual experience of being the center of "your" experience stops, and rather than all sensate phenomena seeming to come through the senses and being relative to your body experience becomes "centerless". There is no longer a single point that apperceives experience, there is no longer a subject (you) in a world of objects (things in the universe). None of them are separate anymore... what you are is the objective universe, entirely devoid of space in between those objects. Along with this the standard perception of time as being comprised of future, present, and past collapses. The past and the future are realized to be thoughts that always occur NOW, and are therefore phantom presences constructed in thought. Time is this moment of unfolding only and always has been. This non-duality is seen to be the predominate and pervasive quality of all seemingly separate things. After this, the non-dual (or enlightened) perspective is available at any time, albeit in a weaker depth than the initial insight when the mind is inclined toward it. One can relax the mind and the non-duality or "emptiness" of phenomena wells up into perception. Shortly after the initial insight it begins to deepen, in terms of both its appearance and the understanding of it. There are many "maps" for this, but I think how this happens is somewhat unique for each experiencer for the most part. There are hallmarks of the deepening, and the frequency of how often the non-duality spontaneously occurs increases with many interesting shifts along the way. Eventually over something like the course of 10 years (which is why many monks in some traditions disappear into a cave for years at a time) there is a moment when experiencing from the perspective of being a person or "self" drops away permanently, and the journey to "no-self" OR "Self", or "Unity" (being the entirety of the sensate field) becomes complete. While "self" has gone, there is no limit to how deep non-dual perception or understanding become, it just keeps deepening.

No. Nondual realization is a permanent shift in perspective and understanding about the nature of things that is an "always-available" perspective. It happens outside of time/space/self and it happens no-time/everywhere (or nowhere)/to everything (or no-thing). Kundalini is physical phenomenon that happens in a body to a person. It may CORRELATE (or not) with non-dual realization, but isn't realization itself. Speaking for myself I have had both, though the kundalini was fairly mild, by most accounts I've read. Some interesting crackling/electric feelings in the back of the head or spine corresponding to flashes of white in the vision. The non-dual realization is something else... entirely.

Yes. Nirodha, or "cessation" isn't a state of mind, it is how mind actually is. From the Four Noble Truths entry on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Noble_Truths Cessation is what there is when all other trappings of "self", models, thoughts, etc. is dropped - what naturally arises. It is what is left when everything else contrived or constructed is missing. It naturally arises of its own accord, and is ALWAYS available, all one must do is pull the plug on all of systems, models, thoughts, and doing. This is accomplished by just taking the energy out of the doing. I'm not disagreeing with the Buddha, but emphasizing that what we are talking about isn't special, difficult to accomplish, or complicated in any way... it is inherently simple... too simple to believe it could be what it truly is.

I'm sorry if I upset you. I was intending some amusement, yes, though I would have happily responded directly to you if I wanted to make a point with you. Nothing snide in it. My post was in reply to Mark, and was specific to it. To say that there is a "lobby group" for non-duality on a forum about Daoism (and to a lesser degree), Buddhism and Hinduism as the main topics doesn't make sense to me. The pith wisdom in them IS (in todays parlance) non-dual (a term apparently coined in the late 1700's), and always has been, though it gets presented from different perspectives. It isn't any kind of conspiracy or misguided redirection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism#Appearance_in_various_religious_traditions

Let's go back to the beginning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Noble_Truths What we have here is the simplest expression of the Buddhist (or even (apparently unpopular) "non-dual") path. What is nirodha (cessation) the end of suffering? It isn't something difficult, impossible to understand, or unobtainable... it is fact familiar to everyone. What is it? It is emptiness, which is not some unobtainable, multi-lifetime goal, but instead something we all experience many times a day, though not in full realization. It isn't "dwelling", "contemplating", "desiring", or "abandoning". It doesn't require any tricks, difficult or ornate technical feats, or years long practices, it can be seen and pointed out by any suitable teacher. Any time you have been staring at a beautiful vista and your mind went quiet you have experienced it. How do you know if you are, or have experienced it? Ask yourself if there was suffering, or "self" in the moment of your perception, or was there just a simple joy and great stillness. How do you stop smoking? You stop putting cigarettes in your mouth. How do you stop dukka (suffering)? Let go of your craving, desire and attachment - learn to cultivate and rest in cessation.

Ooof. Nothing ruins practice like administration. My teacher has told me that she will request my robes back if I fall to demon of administration, and that any time something requires THAT much work it is time to drop some org. Agreed. It isn't ANY of those things. Like everything else it depends on EVERYTHING for its existence. The Pleaides, rubber bands, Keith Moon, and spider eggs are as much your body as anything else. It is impossible to draw a box around anything and label it separate from my perspective. What keeps it all going? It's luminous all pervasive emptiness, of course! Perfection.

My experience is that anything that can be accomplished by somebody who identifies with a self can be done by someone who has seen through self. I have had a few teachers that are householders that are/were enlightened. There is no disconnect in them from enlightened mind, as it isn't a state, and no karma is generated for them. They still do taxes and make dinner. Enlightenment doesn't just exist when one is sitting on the cushion in a quiet room... what use would it be if that were the case? Enlightenment can build an outhouse, fix your car, or do brain surgery with aplomb.

Yes, thank you for your clarification. The only thing I would comment on is that enlightenment is a "state". IMHO, states come and go. Enlightenment does eventually become the default way of perceiving, and "emptiness" is the primary quality that all appearances in consciousness posses. I think "unity" is sort of an entry-level enlightenment color. Eventually even unity becomes diffuse and empty. This is actually addressed in the "Heart Sutra": While "emptiness" (unity, of sorts) can be seen moment by moment, "form" (the phenomenal world of apparent objects) doesn't go anywhere. It is precisely IN these illusory objects that emptiness is seen. Both always exist together. Absolutely.

It happens ALL THE TIME. Seriously. I have met teachers, people on bulletin boards, the homeless, and many more that had a moment where they suddenly understood the reality of things. It is how you already ARE, if you could but see it. It has nothing to do with Daoism, Buddhism, Sufism, Jainism, ism-ism, it is outside of all practices and perspectives. A little message from a friend:

I guess that isn't my experience, at least with North Americans or practitioners in the UK. Possibly in disagreement if I understand you correctly (and thus not popular?), but I will say that the single most important thing one could be doing IMHO is recognizing thoughts as thoughts, feelings as feelings, and all simply parts of the story of "self"/I as a mental construction. These are the most obvious things MOST in the way of enlightenment. In realization, the body can be seen at its base level to be a delusion... eventually seen to be the fluxing field of unlabeled sensations it has always been. The way forward in this case is in the simple practice of seeking and resting in stillness.

Faith in Buddhist practice isn't blind, it is intended to be generated by seeing that practice changes you and your life. Most people who begin practicing the Noble Eightfold Path, and commit to meditating for 20 minutes a day for a month will find themselves less reactive, but more thoughtful about their actions, and more kind.

To whit: https://tricycle.org/article/six-questions-b-alan-wallace/

That's fun! Looks sort of like a version of himself too though.

My experience is that wu wei and alignment go hand in hand with no-self. Even Advaita has the no-doer insight, which is also familiar. Anyone who has meditated until their technique drops away and the mind is quiet can see what no-self is. Free will requires someone to own it. No-self, no free will. Just my opinion.

The "fruit" of Togal. It sounds crazy, but of course, this is precisely how it is in this moment.

I am almost certain that what is meant by "lucid" in the "middle" here is not our standard lucid dreaming concept, where someone realizes that they are dreaming and finds that they are therefore in control. A realized "being" knows that free will is a delusion. In my experience, being "lucid" in the dream in this case means that your "supreme accomplishment" is also true in sleep. What you are awake to is the same as what you are awake to in your daily life. So, all appearances in a dream are understood to be "empty" in the same way that they are during waking, therefore the dream is not taken seriously, and the flavor of the dream is almost always of a positive nature because karma and delusion no longer taint the quality of what arises.

In SOME chaos magic/Crowley circles it is said that ones "Holy Guardian Angel" is in fact the perfected "self" gently guiding the current "self" to enlightenment. Like ALL appearances in consciousness (including your own) it is good to allow them some provisional reality in the mind, but to hold our conceptual concretions around the story or meaning behind such things VERY lightly. My opinion. In my experience "meaning" really only extends to what is present in the moment that you are experiencing a phenomena, and all real internal consistency arises WITH the appearance in that moment. The past/future story is just that... a story.