Are there reconized phasesone moves trough on the path to the LIGHT

[Surya]

For instance, if you are on the path to initiation, is there a 1st, 2st, 3st etc. stage to this, that can be mapped? And can this map help shed light on where you are, what to do and what comes next?
 

[Apech]

1 hour ago, Surya said:

For instance, if you are on the path to initiation, is there a 1st, 2st, 3st etc. stage to this, that can be mapped? And can this map help shed light on where you are, what to do and what comes next?
 

I think the Secret of the Golden Flower gives stages.   And just as a point of interest the Ancient Egyptians liked to map out the process (though many would dispute that this is what they were doing).

 

I would question the idea that the goal is the Light in the first place …. I would review how you think about the goal a little I think.

[stirling]

5 hours ago, Surya said:

For instance, if you are on the path to initiation, is there a 1st, 2st, 3st etc. stage to this, that can be mapped? And can this map help shed light on where you are, what to do and what comes next?

 

What system is this in reference to?

[old3bob]

6 hours ago, Surya said:

For instance, if you are on the path to initiation, is there a 1st, 2st, 3st etc. stage to this, that can be mapped? And can this map help shed light on where you are, what to do and what comes next?
 

 

students of various yogas go through stages which are recognized.  

[Nungali]

12 hours ago, Surya said:

For instance, if you are on the path to initiation, is there a 1st, 2st, 3st etc. stage to this, that can be mapped? And can this map help shed light on where you are, what to do and what comes next?
 

 

Of course . This is , in the west, the 'degree system'  . Most are based , at first, on the 'primal three' representing birth life and death .  Its similar in indigenous cultures too ( that I have encountered ) . usually 'out of '  (as a 'pendant to ' ) the 2nd degree - life  are   a few  other degrees related to it  involving 'magick' ,  some attribute those to the 'post 3rd degree '  . 

 

It can be easily mapped .   Not only can it shed light,  where you are and what is next   -   that should be its purpose .

[Nungali]

10 hours ago, Apech said:

I think the Secret of the Golden Flower gives stages.   And just as a point of interest the Ancient Egyptians liked to map out the process (though many would dispute that this is what they were doing).

 

I would question the idea that the goal is the Light in the first place …. I would review how you think about the goal a little I think.

 

It can be a metaphorical goal .... or  an overall term that 'suffices for this stage ' .  For example we had a   'Tracing board '  for use in instruction / as a 'mandala'  / 'reminder'  . 

 

( Tracing boards are a teaching device and attempt to show the lesson of the degree'  or the related 'knowledge lecture' in artistic symbolism   eg .  Frieda Harris' versions from the first three degrees of Co-Masonry 

 

                     )

 

 It had a large circle  with  divisions for  'the six paths of magic and yoga ' , each colored accordingly  , the color as it sent to the center of the diagram labeled 'enlightenment '  was  white , as it went further out from the center to the circumference  it darkened until it was black - labelled  ignorance .

 

For example the 'Love' sector for   'Invocational Magick / Bhakti Yoga  was white in the center , toning into the blue of 'love ' and getting darker  until it came to 'obsession '  . 

 

So in this simple schemata , 'the light' , at that stage , was what one was 'aiming for ' .  

[Tommy]

In Zen, there are the ten ox herding pictures. Which might represent the stages towards enlightenment. Personally, I have found that wondering about where you are along the path is only going to reenforce the ideas that you are making any progress. It is self delusion. While I have seen changes in my sitting practice, I do not think of it as progress. Cause I am still where I started. One can not polish a roof tile into a mirror. One can not change into something one is not.

 

Don't get me wrong. I have myself wondered if I  made any progress and at what stage I am at. But, have learned that what is important is where you are now. If ever I can release this thinking mind then I hope to experience my true nature. Where would this nature be? I really do not know. The truth eludes me.

 

I do wish you well and hope you find whatever it is you really want.

Edited 11 hours ago by Tommy

[Mark Foote]

3 hours ago, Tommy said:

In Zen, there are the ten ox herding pictures. Which might represent the stages towards enlightenment. Personally, I have found that wondering about where you are along the path is only going to reenforce the ideas that you are making any progress. It is self delusion. While I have seen changes in my sitting practice, I do not think of it as progress. Cause I am still where I started. One can not polish a roof tile into a mirror. One can not change into something one is not.

 

Don't get me wrong. I have myself wondered if I  made any progress and at what stage I am at. But, have learned that what is important is where you are now. If ever I can release this thinking mind then I hope to experience my true nature. Where would this nature be? I really do not know. The truth eludes me.
 

 

 

I believe the ox-herding pictures were originally eight, in China. The last two, the blank slate and the marketplace scene, would therefore be later additions. Speaking of uncertainty as to what constitutes the light...

 

Tommy, I'll bet you could relate to my latest post--here's the first part  of it, and a link:

 

“The Place Where You Stop and Rest”

In one of his letters, twelfth-century Ch’an teacher Yuanwu wrote:

 

Actually practice at this level for twenty or thirty years and cut off all the verbal demonstrations and creeping vines and useless devices and states, until you are free from conditioned mind. Then this will be the place of peace and bliss where you stop and rest.

 

Thus it is said: “If you are stopping now, then stop. If you seek a time when you finish, there will never be a time when you finish.”

 

(“Zen Letters:  Teachings of Yuanwu”, tr. Cleary & Cleary, Shambala p 99)

 

 

In my teenage years, I became keenly aware of the “creeping vines” of my mind. I read a lot of Alan Watts books on Zen, thinking that might help, but I soon found out that what he had to say did nothing to cut off the “creeping vines”.

 

I was looking for something Shunryu Suzuki described in one of his lectures, though I didn’t know it at the time:

 

So, when you practice zazen, your mind should be concentrated in your breathing and this kind of activity is the fundamental activity of the universal being. If so, how you should use your mind is quite clear. Without this experience, or this practice, it is impossible to attain the absolute freedom.

 

(Thursday Morning Lectures, Shunryu Suzuki; November 4th 1965, Los Altos; emphasis added)

 

 

I began to try to sit zazen, based on the illustrations in the back of “Three Pillars of Zen”, by Philip Kapleau.

 

Zazen is almost always taught to beginners as sitting with a straight back and paying close attention to inhalation and exhalation. With regard to the straight back, Moshe Feldenkrais wrote:

 

“Sit straight!” “Stand straight!” This is often said by mothers, teachers, and others who give this directive in good faith and with the fullest confidence in what they are saying. If you were to ask them just how one does sit straight or stand straight, they would answer, “What do you mean? Don’t you know what straight means? Straight is straight!”

 

Some people do indeed stand and walk straight, with their backs erect and their heads held high. And of course there is an element of “standing straight in their posture.

 

If you watch a child or an adult who has been told to sit or stand straight, it is evident that he agrees that there is something wrong with the way he is managing his body, and he will quickly try to straighten his back or raise his head. He will do this thinking that he has thereby achieved the proper posture; but he cannot maintain this “correct” position without continuous effort. As soon as his attention shifts to some activity that is either necessary, urgent, or interesting, he will slump back to his original position.

 

(“Awareness Through Movement”, Moshe Feldenkrais, p 66)

 

 

For many years, whenever I sat at a zendo with a teacher who walked the room during a sitting, the teacher would invariably stop behind me and correct my posture. I generally couldn’t maintain their correction to the end of the sitting.

 

With regard to close attention to inhalation and exhalation, Shunryu Suzuki described such attention as only a “preparatory practice”:

 

… usually in counting breathing or following breathing, you feel as if you are doing something, you know– you are following breathing, and you are counting breathing. This is, you know, why counting breathing or following breathing practice is, you know, for us it is some preparation– preparatory practice for shikantaza because for most people it is rather difficult to sit, you know, just to sit.

 

(The Background of Shikantaza, Shunryu Suzuki; San Francisco, February 22, 1970)

 

Shikantaza, or “just sitting”, is emphasized in the Soto school of Zen Buddhism, the school to which Shunryu Suzuki belonged.

 

(“The Place Where You Stop and Rest”)

 

 

 

Edited 8 hours ago by Mark Foote

[Cobie]

1 hour ago, Mark Foote said:

I believe the ox-herding pictures were originally eight …

imo there should only be six. As that’s the way Laozi is depicted when leaving on the water buffalo. 
 

 

 

Edited 7 hours ago by Cobie

[Cobie]

 

1 hour ago, Mark Foote said:

Speaking of uncertainty as to what constitutes the light...

imo they add stuff when they don’t understand the original and start philosophising about it.

 

 

Edited 6 hours ago by Cobie

[Cobie]

 

 

1 hour ago, Mark Foote said:

… correction …

imo enlightenment is the moment you stop listening to others and start listening to yourself.

 

 

 

Edited 6 hours ago by Cobie

[Cobie]

 

1 hour ago, Mark Foote said:

… slump back …

 

it’s called wuwei 

 

 

Edited 7 hours ago by Cobie

[Tommy]

3 hours ago, Mark Foote said:

Tommy, I'll bet you could relate to my latest post--here's the first part  of it, and a link:

 

“The Place Where You Stop and Rest”

Thank you for the reply. I understand creeping vines as the continual narration of self even as the silence has begun. It never lets go. And trying to move it only brings it further to the forefront. Only allowing it to stop on its own does the attention focus. The physical effort to maintain a straight back aids in the efforts to keep attention on the quiet. When it slacks, the mind begins to take over. Sometimes sleep to come. This can not be forced. Practice it over and over again then it may take root. Follow the quiet and silence. Creeping vines and my mind holds onto a song I heard earlier. I can't stop it. Only thing to do is to let it go. Let it play until it loses it control. Return to the silence, .. to the stillness. Much like letting go of a ball on a hill. It goes because that is what it does. So, yes, I can relate but I still do not know this place to stop and rest.

[stirling]

50 minutes ago, Tommy said:

Thank you for the reply. I understand creeping vines as the continual narration of self even as the silence has begun. It never lets go. And trying to move it only brings it further to the forefront. Only allowing it to stop on its own does the attention focus. The physical effort to maintain a straight back aids in the efforts to keep attention on the quiet. When it slacks, the mind begins to take over. Sometimes sleep to come. This can not be forced. Practice it over and over again then it may take root. Follow the quiet and silence. Creeping vines and my mind holds onto a song I heard earlier. I can't stop it. Only thing to do is to let it go. Let it play until it loses it control. Return to the silence, .. to the stillness. Much like letting go of a ball on a hill. It goes because that is what it does. So, yes, I can relate but I still do not know this place to stop and rest.

 

This is the essence Tommy, yes. "We" cannot manhandle the mind, we must just drop our control of it. It is like a bar of wet soap - you can hold it and let it rest in your open hand and it will stay there... still, BUT if you grasp at it it will shoot out of your hand. The more you allow for stillness to well up of its own accord the more frequently it will.

[Lairg]

28 minutes ago, stirling said:

We" cannot manhandle the mind, we must just drop our control of it. 

 

So the human is expected to control its physical and emotional impulses but not its mental energies?   Are philosophers included?

 

What about heart energies?  Are they to be controlled?  Or is the heart to be still?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[stirling]

2 hours ago, Lairg said:

So the human is expected to control its physical and emotional impulses but not its mental energies?   Are philosophers included?

 

What about heart energies?  Are they to be controlled?  Or is the heart to be still?

 

Have you ever truly been in control of physical impulses? Emotional impulses?

 

Emotions and thoughts arise in the same way anything else does. Trees, the wind, calculators and persian carpets appear and disappear, arising and passing moment to moment in consciousness. No "self" controls these things. They are impermanent. Almost everything is.

 

One thing isn't.

 

"Heart energies"? They are construction of the mind, like all cosmologies, systems, levels, phases, paths, etc. 

 

Enlightenment is a moment when the unity/emptiness/dao is realized. It changes the understanding of everything you could imagine. It undoes the idea that you are a separate person that acts in space and in time. It is the realization that there is nothing else to do or realize. It is an understanding that dissolves all old assumptions and ideas about reality. 

 

Interestingly this space of unity/emptiness is available, though attenuated, to ANY meditator who has become skilled in allowing the mind to become still. It is worth finding a teacher who understands it if you are curious to understand it. 

[Lairg]

If you say so

 

 

Edited 10 minutes ago by Lairg

[Lairg]

15 minutes ago, stirling said:

Have you ever truly been in control of physical impulses? Emotional impulses?

 

No wonder the courts are full of petty criminals