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Should realizations/visions be kept to oneself?
nlighten
Explorer
I've read you shouldn't discuss your visions/realizations with others. Maybe because of the tendency for it to feed the ego, or the possibility it may attract bad spirits, or maybe just because it might make you sound crazy??? Do any of you share your visions/realizations and do you ever find it being beneficial? or has someone ever shared one with you that helped you out?
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And those who can help you move forward.
Being able to discern help from nonsense requires a bit of a bullshit meter.
Best wishes.
Peter loves Sally and tries to tell his friend John about the overwhelming wonder of it all. On and on Peter talks and John listens because Peter is his friend and Peter seems to have some need to express his enthusiasm or doubt or whatever. Within Peter's tale there may be things that press John's personal buzzers. Or maybe John is just bored out of his mind, wishing that the topic would turn to baseball or travel or some other more interesting topic.
Because spiritual endeavor and the experiences that go with it can seem so 'important,' so 'grave,' so 'wonderful,' so 'scary,' so 'touching,' etc., sometimes the one who experienced those experiences can impute a weight to them. And the experiences may in fact be pretty important. But the plain fact is, experience cannot be transmitted. This doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't talk about them. It just means that the one with the experience is responsible for his or her own life, his or her own experience.
My Zen teacher once explained it to me this way. "Suppose you don't know what tea tastes like and you ask me how tea tastes. I can say it tastes like this or it tastes like that. But eventually, you just pick up the cup and take a sip. Then we both know what tea tastes like."
Personally, I have tried to transmit various so-called spiritual experiences again and again. Was I naughty or wrong? I don't know, but I do know I have done it. What such efforts did help me to see was that imagining such things have a lofty or profound importance -- that because I was moved, others should or could be moved as well -- is foolish. Not bad or wrong... just silly. Maybe others are moved. Maybe not ... just like baseball or gardening or hang-gliding.
As Shunryu Suzuki Roshi once said of Zen practice, "It's important, but it's not that important." He might as easily have said, "You are important, but you're not that important."
Talk or don't talk -- just keep an eye on things.
It can be very beneficial - for donor and recipient.
Many times I have benefitted from others sharing with me - this forum is an example.
Generally thinking you're enlightened is the bad one, not to mention telling others you're enlightened.
And visions/experiences aren't themselves always synonymous with insight. There are a lot of weird things that can happen during meditation. An insight will change your view, literally changing your mind concerning the world.
@taiyaki lol, yes that is very true. Unfortunately I have no teachers, but somehow I have been lucky enough to get as far as I have. I guess my bullshit meter is not completely broken lol.
Thank you for the replies. They are always very appreciated.
Opening my heart up with the spirit of "let everything be my teacher" has created a mental environment that has allowed me to go back over events of my past, and in doing so helped me to see many learning points that I overlooked or was too disconected to use and apply at the time. I have been able use these messages of hindsight in my present moment to teach me many things, but most of all to remind me what compassion and what love is.
These things become so difficult to see when you are stuck on the hampster wheel of trying to reconcile your idendity with outside perceptions and interior confusion.... but lo and behold, I have uncovered many attempts of people who have shown me compassion over countless years. So many have brought me "bowls of rice" and simply said "eat", yet at the time I refused them because I was busy "starving" myself, thinking I could find some truth in some parreleled self-punishing way. But now, I can hear these compassionate voices and see these compassionate eyes of yesterday and can cleary know now exactly what they were trying to do for my heart: which was to show me love in a myriad of ways. And I couldn't be more greatful.
So while your current insights may mean very much to you, it may take some time before they resonate with others... So if you love and care for people that are starving themselves , then give them a "bowl of rice"... it is up to them if they want to "eat" it.
Your tale about Peter and Sally reminds me of various biographies I've read over the years of aristic types in the 18th and 19th centuries writing about profound experiences they have had witnessing deep performances (plays or music), or composing and performing.
I remember reading about how Tchaikovsky was moved to tears while he came up with the main theme for his Sixth Symphony and began composing in his head while he was traveling. Something similar, close to profound productive inspiration, afflicted Wagner when he composed the operas of the Ring Cycle. In both instances, Wagner and Tchaikovsky relayed their profound artistic inspiration (which is really spiritual for them) via written word in letters to close friends.
We of course just read about their experiences, and however profound they were for them, we simply don't have their senses and emotions. Of course we can have our own reactions to their artistic creations. I guess that's one thing about art: it does seem to be able to transmit emotions and feelings, such that different people can have profound reactions to the same performances.
Ultimately though you would think that everyone's experiences are at bottom personal and to a certain extent, we are alone in when it comes to how we feel, however good we are at letting other people know about them.
Realizations on a deeper level have such an inpact on 'self-centeredness' that it's quite naturally that people don't share them. Because it's not theirs, they can't really say "I realized non-self" for example. See how this is not natural to say? The realization comes by itself, nobody does it. Same for all other stuff actually, but people don't notice it.
However, if you pay careful attention to what people are saying and you know your way around the suttas a bit, it's possible to find out who may be enlightened and who certainly is not.
I certainly wouldn't say to not share visions or realizations where appropriate but that means revealing it where those listening understand that the foundation of a daily meditation practise comes first.
I am also a big fan of only teaching about it through the full digestion of such experiences and then only after it manifests clearly in one's daily practise.
I've witnessed too many unnecessary lay & monastic face plants when the above conditions have been side stepped.
Faceplant-a skying term - falling on one's face-more dramatic and painfull than mere tripping- usually happens too fast to protect oneself- on snow it's usually no big deal but in the spiritual realm, even for the ardent, many folks who end up leaving their practise, do so after faceplanting.
The key word in my sentence about faceplanting in my last post was "unnecessary".
Most Masters don't encourage the horizontal transmission of visions and realizations simply from watching their longterm effects within the Sangha.
ones ego can inflate immensely if one doesn't have a solid practice.
not only ego but life reveals the mandala of all the shit we choose to ignore on the path towards awakening.
thus realization and insight is worthless unless it is actualized in our practice and more importantly in our lives.
http://www.amazon.com/After-Ecstasy-Laundry-Heart-Spiritual/dp/0553378295/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342757982&sr=8-1&keywords=after+the+extacy+the+laundry
this is a good book to read.
What an unexpectedly rude response.
I get that my answer wasn't what you wanted but since you did ask me what I meant, it's pretty ungrateful to denigrate my efforts at responding to your request. My mistake in thinking you'd understand it though. I was wrong.
Asking one to stay in the parlance of the ancients and then claiming everything is your teacher is simply a PC falsehood when choosing to exclude the "slang". (faceplant) of today's world..
Faceplant, going over the wall, going splat, imploding, even flecon de mais are just often used monastic terms for serious difficulties.
The other word you took umbrage at was "un necessary" which you said was confusingly subjective.
Welcome to reality.
I particularly chose the word un necessary because if we all truly maintain a priority on the fundamentals of our practise, then the sharing of visions & realizations will not cause problems. I used the word un necessary because if any of us give those shared visions and realizations a status over the fundamentals of our practise, then what used to actively keep us from feeding our ego (the fundamentals of our practise) is seriously weakened.
This is when the ego easily connects those previously mentioned visions and realizations to our sense of identity. It is an un necessary delusion because if we had just stuck to our fundamental practise, the ego would not be able to dominate enough to connect those experiences to our identity..
This is also where simple delusion turns into compounded delusion. ( a simple delusion can be relatively straightforward to address whereas a compounded delusion is truly difficult to address because it conceals and re enforces it's true origins beneath covering alternative delusions.)
In a spiritual practise, such a compounded delusion often partakes of an attachment to an important aspect of our spiritual practise which can make it almost impossible to deal with. We believe ourselves to be practising when in fact we are just fortifying our own ego beneath spiritual clothing.
The long term effects run the gamut from long term practitioners just quietly disrobing, all the way to the scandals that have imploded in almost all of our schools.
This is enough of a un needed complication to a practise for Masters to rightfully curtail as it is also a difficulty that even the Masters themselves can fall prey to.
Dismissive sounds awful. I'll check any future posts of mine for that..
Thanks
Just an absolutely beautiful post my friend. I couldn't agree more.
One reason such things are not discussed is because of jealousy that can rise in others hearing about whatever it may be and pride that can go before the first persons fall.
I personally see no benefit, in telling someone, such things.
Sorry I know this is off topic...
Teaching me humility again and again.
I have tried sharing some of what I'm learning- and while I agree it starts with the best of intentions, there are moments when that my pesky ego picks up the baton and runs with it. I'm embarrassed by this, but thankful that I did this with a close enough friend: she put in my place and hopefully saved me from the Deep Pompous. Preaching is as far from enlightened as one can get! So people will laugh if you try and explain any of this to them. There are ideas and then there is practice.
I used to be a teacher (of other subjects), and also I love to write. In both we are taught "show don't tell". That is my aim now: To the extent I can teach anyone anything about their own life, I want to quietly "be the change". Besides, I am a learner and not a teacher when it comes to life, to Buddhism- and most of everything else. And I am not learning only from Buddhist leaders- I learn from quiet individuals who command my respect, from my children, from nature... from everything I can... And I need to remind myself of that every day.
Exception: This site. I have surges of energy, questions, unbridled enthusiasm, wild curiosity and the desire to process things verbally- and that is why I am thankful to have this site!
NO
but saying 'I realized, I am Enlightened, I vision this and that' is not advisable
if we do so the doubt arise in others' mind and that itself a bad thought for them and that is dukka
why should we make dukka for others?
instead
what we realized can be shared with others, or we can lead them without using 'I am SO and SHOW'
then others will grasp the 'shared things' according to their capacity (according to their sadda, viriya, sati, samadhi, panna-five faculties)
and investigate the shared things further using their five faculties which it self improve their five faculties to make them five strenth (pancha bala)