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Were Humans Meant to Become Enlightened?
Dakini
Veteran
Is Enlightenment "natural", or is it an artificial discipline that goes against the natural human grain? Were we "meant" to discover our spiritual potential and Enlightenment, or was humanity programmed for blind mundane drudgery and egotism? Or both?
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Do you know what enlightenment is? Enlightenment is maturity...Ultimate maturity.
You do not play with your toy soldiers or barbies anymore because you became mature enough.
All people eventually get tired of worldly pleasures, including sex, thru birth and death over and over. When a person has enough about pleasures, he will give up from all these attachments. Thats when a person becomes enlightened because there is nothing left for him.
Do you think we cannot get mature enough? I think it is just evolution. I think we meant to be enlightened...
Generally our evolutionary "purpose" is to survive and propagate. Biologically we are fit and capable to become enlightened. I don't think our evolution was directed or caused by enlightenment. To me our capacity for reason and our biological root of compassion came about due to other reasons and the capacity for enlightenment is a handy byproduct.
My view is that we have countless rebirths across multiple planets and galaxies. An individual mind stream that has the karma for a human rebirth has multiple options for a place to be reborn. In my view evolution is random so life on this planet wasn't destined to have human life on it, it just happened that it does so it allows mind streams with karma for a human rebirth to be born here.
Just a lot of speculation on my part.
The existing system, where we're kept suffering and yet hooked on the idea of making marginal improvements -- is adaptive. It keeps us in the game. Whether you call that system Samsara or the Empire or nature doesn't much matter. But clearly breaking out of that system is not a move that the system built in.
As I said on the post that inspired this thread, enlightenment's a hack.
--That's why it's so hard. Everything is working against it.
Conrad.
The idea is that we were built intentionally to have that capacity? By who?
Personally, I believe in God. I think he gave us souls, which are tiny pieces of himself, and in this sense "made us in his image." I think he made our souls from scratch -- not our bodies. In other words, I think we're adopted. He's been trying to civilize us, and we've been fighting him tooth and claw.
In contrast, I think the capacity for enlightenment was *discovered*. It's just that the human system is complicated enough, and flexible enough, that you can do all kinds of weird crap with it that it wasn't really built for.
My belief is, God approves of enlightenment greatly -- but did not originate it.
Conrad.
there is 'nobody'...
One teacher was asked what caused the universe. He replied karma. Then asked what created karma. He said ignorance.
Personally I believe purpose is a projection. Consciousness is not permanent.
@weighted "something intrinsic to all human experience" I like that.
Maybe I'll rephrase the OP to say, "Is Enlightenment Intrinsic to the Human Experience, or Extrinsic?" Thanks, weighted. You have a way with words.
its thought in a thought in a thought in a thought...
you smell, you see, you dream, you love, you get enlightened, you move, you breathe
thought thought thought thought thought thought thought
as long as you look for a begining you will only create more thoughts and you cannot find anything. There is nothing there to find...
And these all varities we live in, it is only one gigantic thought
There are inifinite of them...and each has their own confusion...
this is more weird than anyone can ever imagine...
I don't meditate too much these days and doing other things to distract my mind (i.e. watching movie). So not much really....
So I also don't think we really are ALL going to be there. There seems to be a need for a lot of humans to do the other stuff of life, make lots of babies, get into fights, make inventions of useful and non useful stuff, etc. Or maybe I just accept there is that in the world and it seems to keep going no matter how many enlightenment focused people there are.
Fuzzy thinking tonight
in a similar vein to -
"Human beings are the only animals that pray.
or need to."
Our heightened intellect and thirst for knowledge, coupled with our extraordinary ability to use and write speech in many languages, have combined to elevate us to a position of ultimate curiosity; a curiosity we feel must be satisfied at all costs.
for those who strive for it, Enlightenment, is the greatest satisfaction to curiosity.
Please..... :rolleyes:
Let's not go off-topic, okay?
Only you can answer that for yourself - the answer will not mean anything to anyone else.
the mandala of samsara exists as a lesson.
the mandala of nirvana is the lesson learnt.
enlightenment is both a vertical and horizontal evolution.
http://uk.ask.com/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
secondly the 'god' thing bothers me.
but that's just me.
something cannot have consciousness. something is never apart from consciousness.
so the plant by its nature is dependent on eye sense and thus the arising of eye consciousness upon contact.
a plant is never separate from consciousness.
this applies to the observer as well. there cannot be an observer because consciousness is a conditional arising.
unless your definition of consciousness is different. plants for all we know might have the potentiality for thinking consciousness. it is impossible to know for sure.
Conclusive evidence? :buck:
EinsteinFreudEmo PhillipsWe think we're uniquely conscious because we have language, right? Language is a unique form of communication.
Prayer is communication.
Consciousness is not observable, but communication is.
If plants communicate, then somehow they have a way of processing that communication. If we consider our own thoughts to be private language -- communication within ourselves -- and our consciousness to be the capacity for such inward communication, which is a common understanding of "consciousness" -- then it seems that plants, having some way to process plant communication, would have plant-thoughts and plant-consciousness.
If prayer is communicating with a language partner who is not there in the usual sense... since plants probably communicate even when other plants aren't around... it seems to me you'd have to be God to say that plants don't have plant-thoughts in their plant-minds and appeal to God in plant-prayer.
Your question was about animals. However, if we can agree that plants having a relationship with God is not more problematic than humans having one, then perhaps we can more easily come to a consensus about animals.
Heck, maybe He made plants in His image too. Shadow puppets.
Conrad.
Spiny
Spiny
Spiny
Do you imagine God would be offended if, with a clean heart, you worshipped a gooseberry bush?
Conrad.
Here's a good one though - ancient people say that old forests have a voice and a spirit - science (as I studed it! and things may have moved on since!) still doesnt know how a phloem works (despite it being the most common structure in the world) - a phloem transports chemicals around a plant system - your brain is made up of nerves that carry chemical signals from one end to the other - lots and lots of nerves - somehow combined this creates the experience of consciousness entirely subjective to each individual.... ancient forests however are made up of one tree linked to a massive system of roots and phloems all transporting chemicals around - how many neurons / phloems does it take for there to be some form of conscious experience of the world? There is a striking similarity...
If we look at mammals and conclude that they do not see the world as us, they dont feel love, they dont have dreams and aspirations, they dont have choice, they cant understand - what chance have the trees when we're not listening - or perhaps we are and it just suits us to pretend it isnt happening.
I share your sentiment on the simplification of the concept of God...
Was a gooseberry bush meant to become enlightened?
Conrad.
SPEECH is a unique form of communication.
All creatures have a language of sorts. so Language is common to many different life-forms.
Speech is uniquely human.
Unless we have some dicentra spectabilis on this forum, right now, contributing to this thread.
Which i somehow, doubt.
so call me cynical.... Not so.
Communication is a two-way dialogue.
Prayer imparts information, praise and requests. Consciousness is amply observable. Again, you are bandying the words 'language' and 'communication' around, somewhat carelessly....
It seems all species communicate with members of their own species.
It would seem obvious that some species can cross barriers and communicate with others.
but only through very basic levels and means.
We have learnt, over time, to appreciate what some other species are communicating when certain sounds and physical signals are made. But it doesn't work the other way round, as a matter of course.... Objection. Hypothetical and speculative. ditto. OBJECTION!! Oh.... never mind...... Sadly, we can't.....
Religion can do that to you......
Conrad.
That's interesting.
'He'.
Conditioning.
Why play this game of what is in communication with God or isn't. There are just too many assumptions at play. For one we are defining God as a being who has created the plant for a certain function.
Dependent Origination pretty much throws that idea out of the loop.
On the topic. Everything is dependently originated, thus empty of inherent existence. On that basis all things are Buddha Nature. By being Buddha Nature, not a metaphysical entity but by union of luminosity and emptiness, all things are already enlightened.
No one attains enlightenment. The position of duality and inherent existence is an assumption, thus ultimately not inherent, objective and real.
The assumption is that there is something to attain enlightenment, thus a progression. There is a progression, but it is cutting away at ignorance, which brings about the clear seeing of reality.
Humans are enlightened already. The six sense spheres are already enlightened.
Sure this is a hard sell to a suffering being, but thats just how it is.
Even the samsaric mandala is a function of enlightened activity. to be born is to be ignorant and eventually wisdom is seen. reality has potentiality for infinite ignorance and wisdom.
Conrad.
You could say we're unique because we have fire. But that's not the question. Not so. Language entails grammar. Whether any non-human animals have language is maybe debatable, but certainly they do not have language or grammar worth ... writing home about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_language
I don't see that the difference between language and speech is worth pursuing, in this context, do you?
We can distinguish between language, language fluency, the capacity to learn language, the formal logic of a language, various dialects, among them being the written and the spoken word, a particular sentence, and an utterance -- if you like. That last one is especially fun: a particular sentence is the same every time it's written down, but when it's spoken as an utterance, it always has a dynamic context which makes it different each time! -- except when it's not.
I suspect we have a few liberals. Here you're equivocating between self-consciousness, which it is claimed makes humanity a unique species, and being awake rather than asleep. That's a little dishonest! I'm shocked and dismayed! And maybe even turned on -- want to get a drink after?
In any case, I'm afraid you've still gotten it wrong. Behavior from which we infer consciousness is often observable.
But there are two problems with this:
One is that we can falsely conclude that a person is not conscious when they are. For example, when someone is in a certain kind of coma.
The other is that we can falsely conclude that there is a conscious person present when they are not. For example, when we try to talk to an answering machine recording as if they were able to hear us.
--This is not relevant to the matter before us, which is how humans are a uniquely conscious species, unless you want to say you can directly observe people thinking and you know by the same means that dogs and spiders do not.
That is a very radical claim. Actually, inter-species communication certainly happens. For example, in threat displays. A growling dog with hackles raised clearly communicates a threat. A child, a cat, a bird will all understand this. It's evolved into us.
Prey animals will communicate with predators to signal that they are fit and able to escape. For example, in stotting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting
This isn't something that humans have learned through our intelligence. It's something we have by virtue of being animals that evolved in a shared biome. It's a matter of defining the nature of prayer. It seems you want to not make any decision at all about what prayer is?
Did you want to have a discussion about whether any animals might pray without considering what prayer is? But you say that you don't believe in God, because religion has done your belief in. So then you must not believe that humans can have a relationship with him either. In what way then are they different from plants, which you also do not believe can have relationships with God?
:whatever:
Is Enlightenment intrinsic to humans, or extrinsic? Is it something that can arise naturally, or is it something we need to develop a method to study, practice, and apply in order to get Enlightenment to happen?
Related to the achieving Enlightenment question: Can Enlightenment be achieved apart from the Kundalini energy? Is that a required component of reaching Enlightenment?