181–190 of 239 posts
If you're enlightened you're probably not asking yourself any of these questions nor reading this article.
If you're not asking yourself some version of any of these questions, it doesn't sound like you've very enlightened at all. Going with the light terminology, you are perhaps blinded and/or overexposed.
Today, for truly enlighten person it would be very easy to send message, all you need is Youtube account and a smartphone (adds free). Would people understand message, that is whole another story.
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> 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." Do you find it easy to confine yourself to a monastery with a bunch of dudes and no responsibilities but to "chop wood, carry water"? If so, why don't you take this "easy" path?
Because the challenges of marriage and kids and work present challenges for self improvement that are real opportunities for the growth of my soul. I can be happy to have a trainer that gives me such heavy weights to train with
This article appears to be deeply confusing two drastically different meanings of "enlightened". There's the spiritual sense, which might be described as fully understanding and accepting the impermanence of the world and the "artificiality" of meaning. Separately, there's "getting" something in a knowledge area. E.g. you finally understood how pointers work in C. The author seems to start with the first... but then…
To me, enlightenment in Europe picked up pace in the 1700s. It most certainly involved religious reform and the generation of new cults.
I think you are confusing the buddhist definition of enlightenment with other possible definitions. Perhaps you even believe that the buddhist definition is somehow final and absolute.
The buddhist definition of enlightenment lies far from mine, and both lie far from what a devout Christian might consider enlightenment.
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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
A hobby of mine is taking sayings like that and saying, "Well, if it weren't mumbo-jumbo, then what might it mean?" In this case, it would seem to be: At the start, you have a bunch of knowledge, concepts built on other concepts; studying Zen involves breaking all of that down and reforming it from scratch; at the end of the process, you have a new bunch of knowledge and concepts built on concepts, and you have simil…
If you are in flat land (a beginner), you see mountains as mountains. Well defined features on the horizon.
Once you start climbing, you concentrate on the details of the concrete mountain in front of you (rocks, moss, shrubs, ice, snow, caves) and your inner concept of a mountain changes into a collection of such details.
But once you summit, mountains around look like well defined features on the horizon again. Just like from the flat land of the beginners, only the perspective has changed.
"Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."— Zen Kōan
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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'?
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Because the challenges of marriage and kids and work present challenges for self improvement that are real opportunities for the growth of my soul. I can be happy to have a trainer that gives me such heavy weights to train with
This just sounds like rationalization of your own choices. It is easy to be judgemental about monks when you already think that your choices offer real opportunities for growth.
My combo is bringing together stoic philosophy, perennial enlightenment philosophy (it's all one, man) with a design thinking and new thought mentality (manifesting reality). That's what works for me.
Abraham Maslow is mostly remembered for coining the term 'self-actualized', but not necessarily the detailed description of such a person. It includes working on something typically small, but very important. (Think, teacher of young children). And being so intensely involved in such a thing that they can't describe who they are without reference to this vocation. This speaks to a certain quality of enlightenment to me.
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.