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You're enlightened – now what?

whatiscalledthinking.substack.com

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Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#61

Post by leashless »

tgb wrote: post #6
leashless wrote: post #2

Most enlightened people don't even know they're enlightened. The ones who arrived there without conscious effort, through some intense concentration on some other aspect of life, simply lose their angst. Asked to explain, they usually have some kind of muddled folk mysticism about how it happened. Very few of them teach. I know of well attested enlightenment from an olympic-grade swimmer, and a guy who really liked f…

That doesn't really jive with what I've read about "enlightenment", particularly from the study summarized here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/21/the-pnse-paper/ In that, it describes people as outwardly exactly the same as before, but their internal experience changed dramatically. This sounds to be the opposite of what you're describing.

Western studies of these phenomena are in their infancy.

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#62

Post by leashless »

nafey wrote: post #54
leashless wrote: post #2

Most enlightened people don't even know they're enlightened. The ones who arrived there without conscious effort, through some intense concentration on some other aspect of life, simply lose their angst. Asked to explain, they usually have some kind of muddled folk mysticism about how it happened. Very few of them teach. I know of well attested enlightenment from an olympic-grade swimmer, and a guy who really liked f…

Hold on. Is enlightenment a widely accepted phenomenon with an agreed definition?

Sure. It's an ancient study of academic interest in Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism etc. They all have sophisticated methodologies for evaluating enlightenment in individuals or even texts.

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#63

Post by poormystic »

_y5hn wrote: post #28

You're Enlightened implies an "I am Enlightened". Now, you're somebody special. This very realization takes you out of Enlightenment. Impossible to define Enlightenment, we can only point to what it is not.

Maybe not... I believe that my love relationship with Love makes me very special, and so do most people I meet. May I not be happy with my lot? Is my Happiness in my beautiful Friend so fragile? Everything on Earth is illusory, and the only lasting truth is that there is only ONE. Shall such understanding be its own undoing? I find my Friend in your eyes; in helping you I help Her - I do her work. Spiritual life is not really founded on brain-twisting mysteries at all. It unfolds bit by bit OK? Hre is encouraging news: Happiness is the reward of those who do the work of Love, and those who partake of the Happiness of Love also partake of Love's Beauty.

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#64

Post by mping »

leashless wrote: post #62
nafey wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on. Is enlightenment a widely accepted phenomenon with an agreed definition?

Sure. It's an ancient study of academic interest in Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism etc. They all have sophisticated methodologies for evaluating enlightenment in individuals or even texts.

It's not, by a mile.

Feel free to correct me and kindly point out the agreed definition between the practices you mention.

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#65

Post by adenozine »

_def wrote: post #52
adenozine wrote: post #27

This article is what yall want on the front page? The author submitted and probably vote-manipulated to get it there. It's a content-less article, it has nothing to do with hacker values or software or entrepreneurship. Please vote responsibly, everyone!

Philosophy is closely entangled with information technology.

Would you care to elaborate? I don't mean to be pigheaded, I'm not understanding the connection between philosophy and the science of information.

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#66

Post by dang »

mellowdream wrote: post #9

'If anyone should think he has solved the problem of life & feels like telling himself everything is quite easy now, he need only tell himself, in order to see that he is wrong, that there was a time when this "solution" had not been discovered; but it must have been possible to live then too & the solution which has now been discovered appears in relation to how things were then like an accident. And it is the same…

That's fascinating but I don't understand his argument. Wouldn't it mean that no problem can be solved? There was a time before Wiles proved Fermat, for example.

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#68

Post by _y5hn »

poormystic wrote: post #63
_y5hn wrote: post #28

You're Enlightened implies an "I am Enlightened". Now, you're somebody special. This very realization takes you out of Enlightenment. Impossible to define Enlightenment, we can only point to what it is not.

Maybe not... I believe that my love relationship with Love makes me very special, and so do most people I meet. May I not be happy with my lot? Is my Happiness in my beautiful Friend so fragile? Everything on Earth is illusory, and the only lasting truth is that there is only ONE. Shall such understanding be its own undoing? I find my Friend in your eyes; in helping you I help Her - I do her work. Spiritual life is n…

There is no undoing; nothing lost, or gained. What is true for one must not be true for another.

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#69

Post by cvaidya1986 »

dwaltrip wrote: post #56

Enlightenment is an aspirational goal that can never be achieved. No human can fully understand any given situation. To do so, you must first fully understand the entire universe, as everything is connected. And that is of course utterly impossible. I say this as someone who has found great value in Buddhist philosophy and a personal meditation practice.

Are you sure?

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#70

Post by jchook »

Liquix wrote: post #11

Zen saying: "Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water" . Some more from Ram Dass: “Just because you are seeing divine light, experiencing waves of bliss, or conversing with Gods and Goddesses is no reason to not know your zip code.” "If you see yourself as God and then you come back from this state and somebody says, "Hey, Sam, empty the garbage!" it catches you back int…

"When you meet the Buddha, kill him!"
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