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You're enlightened – now what?

whatiscalledthinking.substack.com

111–120 of 239 posts

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#111
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first quote reminded me of this from Bruce Lee: > Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.

Thanks for the quote, Bruce is a really admirable guy. May have been paying homage to another old Zen saying: “Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.” ― Dōgen

That is beautiful, thank you for sharing.

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#112
I think the author fails to understand the meaning of enlightenment. When you are enlightened in Dharmic eastern religions like Buddhism and hinduism, there is no what, you are in eternal ever lasting bliss and happiness, there is no chasing material desires as you don't care for them. But because we are in a capitalist mindset and we can't get out of it, we expect everything to have something more to gain from it with "now what", which is the greed and ego that enlightenment itself removes.

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#113
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…

Your first quote reminded me of this from Bruce Lee: > Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.

Bruce Lee was being cute.

After learning the art, you have studied anatomy and you know how to punch with intent, you know how to slip punches and you know how to time them.

Liver Punch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa7S-BRNlsw

After Mike Tyson learned how to slip punches, most of his sparring partners "were too busy to spar anymore."

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#114
post #73

Here is my two cents, maybe not entirely on topic. It seems to me, that an being at peace with it self has no need to change or make progress in any direction. Human actions, and progress seem to originate from various needs we have, and not from a peace of mind.

Agree. Enlightenment is having the light within, without darkness. Meditation helps understanding of the problem of inner darkness that we're all born with, but doesn't directly translate into becoming the light. All forms of unconscious reaction are a sure sign that one has darkness within. Unfortunately, our brains are seemingly hotwired into putting all pieces of information it receives into little pigeon holes of…

>>Enlightenment is having the light within, without darkness.

In my experience, this is impossible. Light is defined by darkness. Enlightenment must contain both. Trying to extinguish darkness is doomed to fail

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#115
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…

Krishnamurti was thrust into it and still managed to escape!

Jiddu or UG Krishnamurti?

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#116
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…

It seems to easy to reach enlightenment when you are living in a monastery with a bunch of dudes and no responsibilities but to "chop wood, carry water." But an enlightenment philosophy that can help a father of 3 with a hard marriage and a fulltime job or two...? Hmm, maybe the enlightment philosophy project will take a few thousand more years...

You should listen to the lecture “Stop trying to improve yourself.” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fqqE1BLvISI#

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#117

I think the author fails to understand the meaning of enlightenment. When you are enlightened in Dharmic eastern religions like Buddhism and hinduism, there is no what, you are in eternal ever lasting bliss and happiness, there is no chasing material desires as you don't care for them. But because we are in a capitalist mindset and we can't get out of it, we expect everything to have something more to gain from it wi…

i guess we should all follow anarchoprimitivism in that case. we need to find "eternal ever lasting bliss and happiness".

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#118
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…

Sounds exactly like my lsd experience. At the lsd height, i was everyone and the world only progressed through me. I also knew that i wanted to keep this enlightend state and thought about mechanism to bring me back into my 'normal' form. I thought up religion to only discover that it did not work, i came to the idea of creating an idol something like lsd. Something which will give me access back to this state and wi…

> At the lsd height, i was everyone and the world only progressed through me.

Have you heard of Open Individualism, or read the short story 'The Egg'?

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#119
Here's a story.

Imagine a jigsaw puzzle. But not any jigsaw puzzle. An unbelievably huge jigsaw puzzle that's been mixed up with other jigsaw puzzles. Some of them are really old and faded. Some of them are brand new. Some are larger and some are smaller. The edges change from jagged to smooth. Like everyone else at the table, you've been trying to put this one puzzle together for years, trying out numberless pieces until one day you realize that you don't even have the box for it. Like everyone else, you were told what it looked like when you were first sat down in this room and left to it. But you're not making any progress and the solution, the memory faded by time and others, doesn't feel right and you abandon it.

Now, you ask everyone around you about what the puzzle looks like. And they are all certain about what it looks like when it's finished, despite the fact that you know they haven't spent nearly enough time looking in the box, or the pieces, and you're pretty damn sure it's not a picture of your loved ones burning, a giant man creating smaller men, or nothingness.

And you start to talk with other people who don't believe in these solutions. They have their own ideas about the puzzle. The vast majority of them think the idea of a pre-solution is the problem. If only those who have been working on their own sections piece by piece were allowed to work together with their work corroborated by other piece-by-piece sectioners, without pre-solutionists telling them what it looks like, it'd be put together by now. You think this is the right course of action going forward. So you dabble in doing your own piece-by-piece work, keeping up with the latest pictures of the latest additions to different sections, published and funded by the people who originally sat you down at the table.

And everything is fine. For a while. Then you begin to see that the sectioners' works are being used to justify new pre-solutions by onlookers that aren't compatible with each other. Some sectioners are just producing pictures of themselves and their funders. And you realize that this just doesn't make any sense. None of it makes any sense. Not the pre-solutionists, not the sectioners. It's all a giant question with no authority and no one seems to realize how insane and un-ending the whole process is. Then you pick up a piece that changes everything. In it you merely see the Self and your own reflection in it. But it changes everything.

You look up from the table and see through eons. You see everyone who has ever been sat down at this puzzle table. You see the same people wearing different costumes as the endless passage of time flows. You see the same puzzle processes and sections arising, maturing, then being scattered. You notice this and infinite other things, lost to the ephemera of cognition and memory. Then the pieces fall into place in your brain. And you see that it isn't a puzzle. It was never a puzzle. You realize in your vision that there were countless people throughout time who stood up from the table. And they saw a door and went through it. And came back. And they said in exaltation in the plurality of dialects and tongues that this is not a puzzle. It is a map. A map to exit the room. These chosen few make a new map of the room, offering it triumphantly to the rest. Some see it and in turn stand up and leave the room to go outside. Others follow. But the stream of people slows and stops. The map is left, abandoned by those who followed it to those that didn't or couldn't. And those remaining beings slowly rip it apart, piece by piece, to fit in their view of the puzzle until it too resembles... a puzzle.

You proceed to come down from grasping this piece, realizing the truth of what you have seen; That this in fact a massive collection of old, incomplete maps, made puzzles by mankind, all showing the way to a door that leads to outside the realm of the puzzle. So you stand up from the table, go to the exit, and open the door. And there it is. Outside. The Sun. Indescribable to anyone who has been left inside the cave their entire lives. This is so apparent to you that it is the very definition of self-evidence, bound with knowledge ascertained by pure observation. And you realize that nothing, absolutely nothing can erase the certainty that outside and the Sun exists, having been there. You now have a decision to make. In an act of compassion, you return to the room and proceed to draw yet another map for those left behind...

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#120
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just for starters, logic is a branch of philosophy.[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic#Computational_logic

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