Is enlightenment or nibbana worth it?

[Spotless]

17 hours ago, yuuichi said:

How can anyone enjoy pleasure in the absence of desire? Isn’t equanimity the most you can enjoy in an enlightened state of mind?

If we are sitting at a table enjoying a beer and a gathering and suddenly someone presents in front of you your favorite desert done to perfection - must you wait until you desire it in order to immediately take it in - the beauty, the smell, the wonderful immediacy of it being suddenly presented?

 

Nothing in Awakening and an ever Enlightening Presence disallows for experiencing - in fact - the experiences are far deeper and more subtle. And with far less critique. Genuine experience unfettered by fear and obstruction and willfulness.

 

Do not put the cart before the horse with concepts far from the mark - concepts are always in past and time.

 

What you can know is that meditation will help every aspect of your life. And as you move from trying to meditate to meditation - it is a synchronicity with Divine Essence.

 

Sex is fine before and after Awakening- and there is nothing wrong with it - but if by chance it falls away from your mind and craving it will not be a feeling of loss - you will have simply moved on. 

 

Trying to comprehend the incredible saturation of gratitude and extraordinary aliveness and unimaginable grace and vast energies from concept is to diminish the cosmos to a brittle grain of sand.

 

In essence the Buddhist and the Daoist and all truth does not disagree - it points the way in many shimmering patina’s that catch the eye of each beholder uniquely.

 

The idea of imparting with words the  higher nature of the Awakened presence is always a futile but courageous endeavor.

 

When you open the door to a striking sunrise - do you need to have desired it to be in the present with it?

 

If your wife gives you a quick hug and spontaneously it finds you in bed - was it not possible that this was simply a beautiful coupling and nothing contorted or subjugated?

 

A monks way and a householders way have often very different dogmas - but the pointings in essence are the same - even if they appear polar opposites. Often polar opposites are simply the same thing from a different side.

 

Some of your concepts have come from those that have newly awoken.

Words that have been put to paper long before abiding has taken place and even in some cases descriptions from “experiences” but not actual abiding Awakening Presence.

 

Their is a reason ever enlightening Enlightened Masters do not go about Awakening students and followers - for nearly all are still too entranced to walk the thin bridge to abiding if suddenly awoken.

 

Even those that reached abidance from such premature action would often lose themselves to residual habituation but now have far more access to harm themselves and others.

 

You ask: “Isn’t equanimity the most you can enjoy in an Enlightened state of mind?”

Possibly - but the Awakened and unfolding Enlightenment of a so called Enlightened Master is not a state of mind - it is abidance in Presence - Divine Essence.

 

Equanimity is IN the cessation of inertia’s - it is the stillness of the ungrasp beingness - unbound Presence.

 

Equanimity is not a final throttling of all feeling - it is not a leadened caging of desire - it is not the destruction of spontaneous creation.

 

Abidance in the ever unfolding Presence of Awakening Enlightenment is not achieving some flatline brainwave - the brain is not the seat of Being - though the physical brain of one unfolding in Presence is a well lit and colorful organ to behold.

Edited October 10, 2018 by Spotless

[3bob]

"Behold I make all things new"  Revelation 21.5

[Marblehead]

16 minutes ago, 3bob said:

"Behold I make all things new"  Revelation 21.5

But first you must destroy everything.  Are you ready for that?

 

[3bob]

13 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

But first you must destroy everything.  Are you ready for that?

 

 

the sequences of such may be in question but..."Is it Better to Have Loved and Lost Than Never to Have Loved at All ..."

 

[Marblehead]

1 minute ago, 3bob said:

 

the sequences of such may be in question but..."Is it Better to Have Loved and Lost Than Never to Have Loved at All ..."

 

Depends on how many times your heart has been broken.

 

[Spotless]

30 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

But first you must destroy everything.  Are you ready for that?

 

There is no “thing” to destroy - like ten thousand Chinese finger prisons - drop the willfulness/tension and the prison disappears.

[Marblehead]

6 minutes ago, Spotless said:

There is no “thing” to destroy - like ten thousand Chinese finger prisons - drop the willfulness/tension and the prison disappears.

But few are willing to give up on their tension and willfulness.  They will end up ripping their own fingers out.

 

[Patrick Brown]

31 minutes ago, Spotless said:

There is no “thing” to destroy - like ten thousand Chinese finger prisons - drop the willfulness/tension and the prison disappears.

 

22 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

But few are willing to give up on their tension and willfulness.  They will end up ripping their own fingers out.

 

 

Yes and this is what it's all about! When people shout 'why me', 'why me' they need to understand that they're choosing their suffering.

 

Although not 100% relevant this information may help a few. In many studies from around the world that have been done examining wealth and happiness one thing always stands out. There is a plateau that is reached when people have the basics, clean water, food, clothing and a home and at this point people are their happiest yet many/most still strive for more which ends up making them unhappy!   

 

And:

Quote

Forty-six

 

When the Tao is present in the universe, 
The horses haul manure. 
When the Tao is absent from the universe, 
War horses are bred outside the city.

There is no greater sin than desire, 
No greater curse than discontent, 
No greater misfortune than wanting something for oneself. 
Therefore he who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.
 

 

[Marblehead]

To know when we have enough.  Pretty much the key to living, isn't it?

 

[Fa Xin]

18 hours ago, yuuichi said:

 

 enlightenment seems to turn the person into a unfeeling robot or something.

 

Doesn't sound very enlightened to me. That might be a stage/phase, but it's not the end goal.

 

 

Edited October 10, 2018 by Fa Xin

[Patrick Brown]

4 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

To know when we have enough.  Pretty much the key to living, isn't it?

 

 

I think you might be right! 

 

3 minutes ago, Fa Xin said:

 

Doesn't sound very enlightened to me. That might be a stage/phase, but it's not the end goal.

 

 

 

Chilled out but not unemotional. The idea of people screaming with happiness is worrying and suggests mental illness. As Marbles said. "To know when we have enough" and Fa Xin, "might be a stage/phase" as the ego is cunning and loves deceiving the self. 

 

This is funny in a not funny kind of way:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45812210

[Marblehead]

3 minutes ago, Patrick Brown said:

This is funny in a not funny kind of way:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45812210

No, that's not funny.  Guilty until you prove yourself innocent.

 

Exactly what we just went through here in the USA.

 

 

[Patrick Brown]

1 minute ago, Marblehead said:

No, that's not funny.  Guilty until you prove yourself innocent.

 

Exactly what we just went through here in the USA.

 

 

We've actually had those kind of laws here for a while yet people with stupid amounts of money seemed to be ignored so this case is interesting. I have my suspicions that money laundering is rampant in most modern societies yet nothing is done about it. Funny that!!!    

 

Not sure what goes on in the States but I have a rough idea. We have Brexit to deal with over here which is basically money trying to override the will of the people. 

[Patrick Brown]

Anyway about this overly emotional state which we can fall into:

 

  

 

[Marblehead]

2 minutes ago, Patrick Brown said:

 

We've actually had those kind of laws here for a while yet people with stupid amounts of money seemed to be ignored so this case is interesting. I have my suspicions that money laundering is rampant in most modern societies yet nothing is done about it. Funny that!!!

I'm not suggesting that they might not be guilty.  A financial audit of their wealth and income would determine if the money is legally earned or if it is laundried money.  Then, with evidence, charges of tax evasion could be submitted and the truth would eventually appear. 

 

2 minutes ago, Patrick Brown said:

 

Not sure what goes on in the States but I have a rough idea. We have Brexit to deal with over here which is basically money trying to override the will of the people. 

Yes, but as far as I know here in the States it has to be proven that the money is dirty before it can be taken by the court.  There is some misuse of this and associated laws such that the law enforcement agencies end up being crooks as well.

 

And yes, the New World order.  Wealth in the hands of only those approved by the NWO.

 

[Marblehead]

2 minutes ago, Patrick Brown said:

Anyway about this overly emotional state which we can fall into:

The girls are just getting their rocks off.

 

I don't know what it does for the guys in the fight.

 

 

[Apech]

3 hours ago, Bindi said:

 

I basically don't agree with his solution to the problem of unhappiness overall, it was a solution that might have worked for him and might resonate with others, but it requires discarding too much that is valuable and basically human in this life, and I don't think it is the 'ultimate' solution. To believe in so much not existing as he did is just a philosophy after all, I don't think it is a fundamental truth.

 

Personally I prefer the idea of actualising the human potential within the body, which as I see it is developing the subtle body according to natural laws, and using what is human within us to do it, valuing what seems meaningful to us instead of dismissing it. I don't think the two approaches are compatible. 

 

 

It's a shame that dualistic Buddhism is so promulgated in the West.  I don't think that these kinds of ideas accord with what he actually taught.  But anyway - each to his own of course.

[Patrick Brown]

2 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

And yes, the New World order.  Wealth in the hands of only those approved by the NWO.

 

 

Well, maybe. Ignorance and a lack of Enlightenment is definitely a problem.  Just trying to get back on track with this thread! 

[Marblehead]

We're talking about Buddhism?

 

[Marblehead]

Just now, Patrick Brown said:

Just trying to get back on track with this thread! 

Well, don't mind me.  I'm just talking with people.

 

[Patrick Brown]

1 minute ago, Marblehead said:

We're talking about Buddhism?

 

Sorry forgot, the pathless land! 

[Marblehead]

Okay.  I'll shut up for a little and see if the discussion can return to the thread topic, whatever that was.

 

[Patrick Brown]

 

[Apech]

20 hours ago, yuuichi said:

A long time ago, I got up to the 2nd jhana while meditating, and I was quite sure I found a good way to meditate to reach nibbana (some may call this enlightenment? I don’t know). But I stopped meditating. Because I heard that when one attains nibbana or enlightenment, one no longer enjoys things or experiences pleasure. Since I am so young, it seems like nonsense to do this. Why not enjoy life’s pleasures, like watching a good movie, having a girlfriend, eating good food, etc. I still have attachment to these things, and this is what is preventing me from continuing my meditation.

 

If enlightenment frees one from greed, lust, desire, etc. How does one feel pleasure? Surely a life without pleasure (enlightenment) is not a good thing?

 

Edit: of course someone could say the usual answer of saying if there is pleasure, then there is suffering, but suffering isn’t that bad. Enlightenment seems to be defined as perfect equanimity, that is neither joy nor suffering. But doesn’t a life without joy nor suffering sound a bit boring?

 

Please serious answers only.

 

OK serious answer.

 

Nibanna (Nirvana) does specifically refer to the burning out or exhaustion of the three poisons of desire, hatred and ignorance.  Actually the idea is that the cycle of these three prevent you from enjoying life.  It's not so much the experiences of a good movie, girlfriend and so on that are the problem but the way you screw up the experience with your mind.  The Buddha taught awakening to how things really are - but there is a tendency especially in the West to favour a kind of abstract Nirvana which is somehow distant from both you and life.  And so people get the idea they are fleeing from life to some austere detachment.  I can readily understand how this happens because much of Hinayana (and Theraveda ) (and also some Mahayana) teaching seems to suggest this.  However in my opinion this is a product of a style of Buddhism prevalent in the first century BC when the Pali Canon etc. were first written down and that is scholarly monasticism.  Many people call this early Buddhism but I don't think so.

 

But I guess the important thing to say that there are other teachings/systems non-Buddhist which are more overtly life affirming and may suit you more than Buddhist practice (I am assuming given you are here on DBs you have some interest).  I don't think people should follow any system with which they feel no connection as it would be forced an unnatural.

 

 

[steve]

7 hours ago, Bindi said:

 

I basically don't agree with his solution to the problem of unhappiness overall, it was a solution that might have worked for him and might resonate with others, but it requires discarding too much that is valuable and basically human in this life, and I don't think it is the 'ultimate' solution. To believe in so much not existing as he did is just a philosophy after all, I don't think it is a fundamental truth.

In Buddhism and Bön, there is no instruction to believe that something does not exist.

That is an error in understanding, the error of nihilism.

In the tradition I follow, there is no discarding either.

Discarding is an error.

There is awareness, open experiencing, and allowing without fixating.

 

 

7 hours ago, Bindi said:

 

Personally I prefer the idea of actualising the human potential within the body, which as I see it is developing the subtle body according to natural laws, and using what is human within us to do it, valuing what seems meaningful to us instead of dismissing it. I don't think the two approaches are compatible. 

 

For me, this second paragraph is far closer to my practice than your first.

Working with the body, using the subtle body, becoming more fully in touch with what it means to be human.

Opening to all experience without limiting or fixating.