An explanation of why one must keep one's own mystical state and intoxication hidden from the ignorant

[goldisheavy]

Besides the anti-reason slant which I didn't like, there is still a matter of whether or not we should share the spiritual experiences with others.

 

So the argument made in the poem is that other people will make fun of you if you share, so don't share, because you need to retain your dignity and ego. I am not convinced.

 

I think the best approach is a middle way. On one hand, I would advise against advertising your experiences and against aggressively pushing them on others. At the same time, to keep them altogether secret from strangers is also wrong.

 

So, if we share too much too fast in too many circumstances, people can feel scared and weirded out, especially if they themselves haven't had similar experiences. I'm not saying we must avoid scaring people at all costs. People need to be frightened and pushed outside their comfort zone from time to time, or they won't grow. But it should be a relatively rare event. It shouldn't be something commonly done or aggressively done. People need time to digest things. So in other words, we should have some appreciation for the fragility of people's psyches and not make people uncomfortable unjudiciously.

 

At the same time, if we cut ourselves off from society, and if we only share our experiences in our own cliquish and closed-off circles, we are doing both ourselves and others a disservice by creating a taboo wall in our psyches. This wall, if created, will have place both in our individual minds, and in society. This will lead to more fear and less understand, and needless to say, it will lead to more and more segmentation/segregation of society. If we take this too far, we may become foreign and unfamiliar, and thus scary and threatening. And you don't want that. Second reason we don't want that is because the more people are exposed to these experiences, the more people will feel free to join in both experiencing such things themselves and discussing these experiences more openly. This will create a warmer, safer and more normal atmosphere for the mystics and will destroy the last remnants of the need for them to exist in secret. I think today most people can share relatively without fear.

 

So I am for judicious sharing. When appropriate circumstances arise, even with a stranger, share.

 

We have to welcome people into our light. If we make our light narrow, we will have a small light.

 

And if anyone worries about being made fun of, I have to ask whether such person has too much self-importance.

Edited May 28, 2010 by goldisheavy

[vsaluki]

there is still a matter of whether or not we should share the spiritual experiences with others.

 

I'm sorry, but you can't share your spiritual experiences with others any more than you can explain "red" to a person who has been blind all their lives.

 

I think there is a valid question in asking, would an awakened individual actually want to explain their experience to others. Such a person would know that the information is not transferable through language. So would a person in sync with Tao want to point at the moon when he knew full well ahead of time that people will only see his pointing finger. Perhaps, such an individual might do no more than invite you for an evening walk to let you decide on your own to look at the moon - or not to look at it.

 

I even have some doubts that a person in sync with Tao would entertain the idea that the rest of humanity should be awakened; or the idea that humanity or life needs to be saved or improved. There is nothing to be accomplished. The journey is the point. There is no goal to the journey.

 

I think the man of Tao will leave improving the world to the Confusians. He will consider that the best way to improve the world is to leave it alone. The bird in flight that leaves no path behind.

[C T]

The bird in flight that leaves no path behind.

...and yet it never loses the way.

[goldisheavy]

I'm sorry, but you can't share your spiritual experiences with others any more than you can explain "red" to a person who has been blind all their lives.

 

I disagree. What you are and what another is, is ultimately mysterious. We rely on delineations to tell us apart, but because delineations are flexible/mind-made, strange things are possible. For example, it's possible for two people to merge into one person, and back to two. This is one way of sharing an experience that doesn't rely on verbal communication.

 

And then there is verbal communication. While you cannot explain what red is like, you can still say you see red, and we do this all the time. Should the descriptions of unique and strange spiritual experiences interpenetrate with the descriptions of the conventional ones? As I said before, I think yes. At the same time, some of the conventional experiences can be "uplifted" into the spiritual realm (well, they are already spiritual, so it's more of a change in how we see things than any actual uplifting).

 

I think there is a valid question in asking, would an awakened individual actually want to explain their experience to others. Such a person would know that the information is not transferable through language.

 

On the contrary. An enlightened person would understand that language is more than just words. It is gestures. It is intimations. It is hints. It is subtleties. It is context. It is everything. A cloud in the sky is a word. Your hand is a symbol. That's how deep the understanding of the language is for the enlightened person.

 

Because of this, while it may be impossible to give an exact copy of an experience to someone, one can evoke a great many experience in others with language. Should one discount a tool only because it cannot generate exact replicas? That seems wasteful and stupid. A good likeness is enough. If you are happy with a good-enough likeness, and if you allow for other people's individuality, that's modesty. If you insist on transporting an exact replica of your experience, you are spiritually ostentatious and selfish (because you don't allow another's individuality to creatively corrupt your vision).

 

So would a person in sync with Tao

 

Tao is not a frequency, and thus, nothing can be in sync or out of sync with it. All transformations embody Tao, including the permutations of ignorance and the flows of reason.

 

want to point at the moon when he knew full well ahead of time that people will only see his pointing finger. Perhaps, such an individual might do no more than invite you for an evening walk to let you decide on your own to look at the moon - or not to look at it.

 

I can do better than that. Just because some Zen masters are impotent, don't put all of us into that box.

 

I even have some doubts that a person in sync with Tao would entertain the idea that the rest of humanity should be awakened; or the idea that humanity or life needs to be saved or improved. There is nothing to be accomplished. The journey is the point. There is no goal to the journey.

 

I think the man of Tao will leave improving the world to the Confusians. He will consider that the best way to improve the world is to leave it alone. The bird in flight that leaves no path behind.

 

There is nothing to do, and nothing to avoid doing. That's the complete coin. If you just say "there is nothing to do" you get one side of the coin.

Edited May 28, 2010 by goldisheavy

[sifusufi]

The bird in flight that leaves no path behind.

...and yet it never loses the way.

 

 

Serious soul food!

 

 

 

 

Peace,

Roberto

Edited May 28, 2010 by sifusufi

[vsaluki]

I disagree.

 

This is propably a perfect example of why Lao Tze and Chung Tzu distrust reason. How does a person misunderstand a simple statement like, "you can't explain 'red' to a person who has been blind all of their lives". Well, you have to go very far out of your way to misunderstand it. You have to use reason to misunderstand it. You don't want to understand it. Rather you want to argue and you want to win an argument. So you apply reason to the simple statement so that you can turn it into a strawman for something else that you can argue with. You have made reason the handmaiden of the ego. And in doing so you have moved further away from experiencing the world as unity. Instead you have taken a position of me versus other that distinguishes the ego as the unique entity that must be nurtured. This is how most of mankind lives their lives and this is how they use reason almost every minute of every day. Of course Lao Tzu and Chung Tzu have no objection to using reason for something like fixing that plugged up pipe in your basement. Rather their attitude comes from using reason in ways that make our lives stressed, combative, and delusional. Of course most of us will say that we have no intention of using reason to make our lives stressed, combative, and delusional. Certainly the ego isn't so flagrant that it declares itself the motive for every action. Even when it is. That is why self observation (mindfulness) is so important and so powerful.

[vsaluki]

There is nothing to do, and nothing to avoid doing. That's the complete coin. If you just say "there is nothing to do" you get one side of the coin.

 

This is another perfect example of the type I described above. You used reason to turn my statement, "There is nothing to be accomplished", into your strawman statement, "there is nothing to do". Then you could explain, "look at this fool, he doesn't understand the whole picture, but I do, so aren't I clever". Now the other side of the coin, "there is nothing to do" may well be, "there is nothing to avoid doing". But that is not the other side of my statement - which is why you had to use reason to change it before you had the tools to show us your cleverness. My statement is about not being attached to the outcome of your actions. It is about not living life as though it has a final purpose and destination. You knew that. So the other side of the coin would be, what, "there is no accomplishment to be avoided". That would still be saying that there are accomplishments to be had even if you were not trying to achieve them - and that would be wrong.

 

Now if you look at this thing honestly, you can see that we are playing the reason game and we are achieving absolutely nothing. No one is learning anything of value. No one is any more awake. No one is experiencing life as a unity because of this discussion. Egos are chaffing and flaring. But nothing is being accomplished.

[goldisheavy]

Now if you look at this thing honestly, you can see that we are playing the reason game and we are achieving absolutely nothing.

 

There is not much room for disagreement here, is there? So if I disagree, I am dishonest. If I am honest, I have no choice but to agree.

 

Needless to say, not only do I disagree with you, but I hold what you are saying in high contempt.

 

Instead of engaging in a discussion in a reasonable manner, you just poo-poo-ed everything I said as "bah, he's using reason, he can't be trusted."

Edited May 29, 2010 by goldisheavy

[C T]

I'm sorry, but you can't share your spiritual experiences with others any more than you can explain "red" to a person who has been blind all their lives.

 

I think there is a valid question in asking, would an awakened individual actually want to explain their experience to others. Such a person would know that the information is not transferable through language. So would a person in sync with Tao want to point at the moon when he knew full well ahead of time that people will only see his pointing finger. Perhaps, such an individual might do no more than invite you for an evening walk to let you decide on your own to look at the moon - or not to look at it.

 

I even have some doubts that a person in sync with Tao would entertain the idea that the rest of humanity should be awakened; or the idea that humanity or life needs to be saved or improved. There is nothing to be accomplished. The journey is the point. There is no goal to the journey.

 

I think the man of Tao will leave improving the world to the Confusians. He will consider that the best way to improve the world is to leave it alone. The bird in flight that leaves no path behind.

There is perhaps another way to look at sharing experiences.

 

It may be an option to view cognition as the capacity to take on perspectives. Role-taking, or taking the view of another person, is something we can only do mentally or cognitively. While we can only 'feel' our own feelings, nothing is there to prevent us from cognitively taking the role of others, or mentally putting ourselves in their shoes. This allows the opportunity to feel what the other person is feeling, and empathize with their point of view. To develop cognitively could mean to develop the capacity to increase the number of others one can identify with, thereby increasing the number of perspectives one can take on board. In certain schools of Buddhism, contemplatives take on Boddhisattvic vows, which in modern terms, one of the ways of looking at it simply means enlarging one's world-view, enabling one to be more empathic and hence becoming more sensitive to others, which hopefully leads to generosity and altruism.

 

The more narrow the development, the less one feels for others, leaving no room for much positive interactions. I think the outcome of this can be quite a disaster.

Edited May 29, 2010 by CowTao

[goldisheavy]

Well said CowTao.

 

I think that everything has its place. The dirt is only dirty relatively speaking, but ultimately, it is necessary and pure. Out of the dirt grows everything we need to live well. On a personal level, we might think of excrement as something we need to get rid of, but on a global scale, excrement is natural earth fertilizer that should ideally be recycled back into nature.

 

Consider that it is our faculty of discrimination that gives rise to perceived differences and sameness. So when we see one symbol as distinct from another, that's the discriminatory faculty. And when we think the mundane experience has ended and a mystical began, that is it again -- the discriminatory faculty. We are only able to cognize the mysterious in contradistinction to the reasonable, and vice versa. So both qualities have a place.

 

In a big roomy mind there is room for everything. There is room for reason. There is room for mystery. There is no need for mystery to destroy reason and no reason for reason to destroy mystery anymore than the short should be destroying the tall, and the light should be destroying the shadow. Red is only beautiful on a painting when next to blue and green. If everything was painted in a single shade of red, the painting would be unrecognizable, featureless, boring and ugly. This is why I can't get behind any kind of extremism with regard to the mystery.

 

Reason is what we need to acknowledge the true character of the conditioning. Mystery is what we need to acknowledge the limitation and the impermanence of the conditioning. We shouldn't lean too much toward reason or mystery. If you lean too much toward mystery, you fail to respect the conditioning. And if you lean too much toward reason, you overestimate the gravity of the conditioning and limit your options and imagination.

 

A healthy balance is a good idea. If inside your mind mystery is fighting with reason, how can there be peace in the world at large? First make peace in your own mind. Make peace between reason and mystery and respect them both. Then there will eventually be peace in the world, and you'll have a roomier and less claustrophobic mind. There is plenty of space for mystery. There is plenty of space for reason. It is beautiful. There is no need to denigrate one to extol another.

[C T]

Well said CowTao.

 

I think that everything has its place. The dirt is only dirty relatively speaking, but ultimately, it is necessary and pure. Out of the dirt grows everything we need to live well. On a personal level, we might think of excrement as something we need to get rid of, but on a global scale, excrement is natural earth fertilizer that should ideally be recycled back into nature.

 

Consider that it is our faculty of discrimination that gives rise to perceived differences and sameness. So when we see one symbol as distinct from another, that's the discriminatory faculty. And when we think the mundane experience has ended and a mystical began, that is it again -- the discriminatory faculty. We are only able to cognize the mysterious in contradistinction to the reasonable, and vice versa. So both qualities have a place.

 

In a big roomy mind there is room for everything. There is room for reason. There is room for mystery. There is no need for mystery to destroy reason and no reason for reason to destroy mystery anymore than the short should be destroying the tall, and the light should be destroying the shadow. Red is only beautiful on a painting when next to blue and green. If everything was painted in a single shade of red, the painting would be unrecognizable, featureless, boring and ugly. This is why I can't get behind any kind of extremism with regard to the mystery.

 

Reason is what we need to acknowledge the true character of the conditioning. Mystery is what we need to acknowledge the limitation and the impermanence of the conditioning. We shouldn't lean too much toward reason or mystery. If you lean too much toward mystery, you fail to respect the conditioning. And if you lean too much toward reason, you overestimate the gravity of the conditioning and limit your options and imagination.

 

A healthy balance is a good idea. If inside your mind mystery is fighting with reason, how can there be peace in the world at large? First make peace in your own mind. Make peace between reason and mystery and respect them both. Then there will eventually be peace in the world, and you'll have a roomier and less claustrophobic mind. There is plenty of space for mystery. There is plenty of space for reason. It is beautiful. There is no need to denigrate one to extol another.

You said it much better here, sir.

 

"First make peace in your own mind..." - that's not at all a tall order is it? When inside there is contentment, how can there be anything different on the outside? When this is, that is, said the Buddha... spot on.

 

Good to see you back, GiH.

[contrivedname!]

 

Knowledge that's not from him wears down your head!

 

It has no meaning- shell without a core,

 

It doesn't last, like make-up on a whore!

 

But when you bear the burden well, it will

 

Be taken off and you'll feel such a thrill,

 

So don't bear knowledge for your own sake. friend,

 

And you'll find inner knowledge in the end-

 

Then you may ride on knowledge's fast steed

 

And watch the load fall off and your soul freed.

 

This statement appears to betray his contempt for prostitutes. Those adultorous sinners; lets forget about the female trafficking and the exploitation that many of these individuals go through; for many whoring isnt a choice, it is done under duress and coercion.

 

Knowledge of discriminations is boundless

Proscribed constantly by those with rigid agendas

What knowledge is required to posit unknowledge?

 

Divinity denied, malice subliminated, is this compassion?

The soul is constantly freed, by means of the steed

After all, with what has intuition to breed?

 

A slew of views

Ends up being "knowledge" through and through

[al.]

This statement appears to betray his contempt for prostitutes. Those adultorous sinners; lets forget about the female trafficking and the exploitation that many of these individuals go through; for many whoring isnt a choice, it is done under duress and coercion.

 

Knowledge of discriminations is boundless

Proscribed constantly by those with rigid agendas

What knowledge is required to posit unknowledge?

 

Divinity denied, malice subliminated, is this compassion?

The soul is constantly freed, by means of the steed

After all, with what has intuition to breed?

 

A slew of views

Ends up being "knowledge" through and through

 

Yes, I know what you mean, it could seem that way; but I wouldn't put Rumi as being a contemptuous person, so perhaps it's more along the lines of us being the whore, whilst the make-up is the worldly knowledge...

I'll post the other half of the verse as it might help to elucidate things, and funnily echoes some of what has been said!

A quote I am reminded of-

'The real secrets are secrets because no-one understands them. One cannot even talk about them, and of such a kind are experiences of Kundalini Yoga. That tendency to keep things secret is merely a natural consequence when the experience is of such a peculiar kind that you had better not talk about it, for you would expose yourself to the greatest misunderstanding and misinterpretation.' Carl Jung

a

[al.]

...

'If you don't chant 'He' how can you then flee

 

Your own desire? Transcend the mere name 'He'!

 

A thought's produced by attribute and name,

 

This thought's a guide with union as its aim;

 

A guide without an aim does not exist,

 

If there were no path, ghouls would not persist:

 

Do names not tell of a reality?

 

Can roses grow from R, O, S, and E?

 

You've said the name, to find the named now try-

 

The moon's not on the lake but in the sky!

 

Mere names and words if you wish to transcend

 

Then purify yourself of self, my friend!

 

Like iron give up your original colour,

 

Through discipline become the clearest mirror!

 

Thus purge yourself of attributes to view

 

Your own pure essence lying inside you!

 

Within your heart you'll find the Prophet's knowledge

 

Without a book or teacher's from the college:

 

The Prophet said, 'There are some in my nation

 

Who share my essence and aspiration;

 

The same as me; they see me by that light

 

With which I see them day and night,

 

Without hadiths and their transmitters too

 

Water of Life they drink to know it's true.'

 

So understand 'Last night i was a Kurd,

 

Now I'm an Arab though'- it's not absurd!

 

A parable which shows the mysteries

 

Is this about the Greeks and the Chinese...

[contrivedname!]

...

'If you don't chant 'He' how can you then flee

 

Your own desire? Transcend the mere name 'He'!

 

A thought's produced by attribute and name,

 

This thought's a guide with union as its aim;

 

A guide without an aim does not exist,

 

If there were no path, ghouls would not persist:

 

Do names not tell of a reality?

 

Can roses grow from R, O, S, and E?

 

You've said the name, to find the named now try-

 

The moon's not on the lake but in the sky!

 

Mere names and words if you wish to transcend

 

Then purify yourself of self, my friend!

 

Like iron give up your original colour,

 

Through discipline become the clearest mirror!

 

Thus purge yourself of attributes to view

 

Your own pure essence lying inside you!

 

Within your heart you'll find the Prophet's knowledge

 

Without a book or teacher's from the college:

 

The Prophet said, 'There are some in my nation

 

Who share my essence and aspiration;

 

The same as me; they see me by that light

 

With which I see them day and night,

 

Without hadiths and their transmitters too

 

Water of Life they drink to know it's true.'

 

So understand 'Last night i was a Kurd,

 

Now I'm an Arab though'- it's not absurd!

 

A parable which shows the mysteries

 

Is this about the Greeks and the Chinese...

 

Interesting. However, why is whore used as a negative example? because one is aware of the general malign in which prostitutes are held, so painting the view in opposition to yours as whore's makeup is holding in contempt the other style of view, by using negative examples about a group of people whom have been victimized, to a large degree.

 

Fleeing desire? This smacks of another desire. Rather i feel it is important to "move towards" your desire if you truly wish to see its transience. to me, fleeing desire implies fleeing your essential nature. desire is born of your mind, where can you take refuge from your own thoughts?