Being a light unto yourself
Jeroen
Not all those who wander are lostNetherlands Veteran
I have come to the realisation that the Buddha was right to tell us to be a light unto ourselves. There is only so much you can learn from others, and instead of just finding writings that you agree with it is better to develop your own understanding. This requires that you get to know yourself, and understand your place in the world, and comprehend what you think is significant.
In a way, by reading and memorising the sayings of the Buddha you end up adding a layer of conditioning to all those that were there before, and by speaking from that knowledge it is often the Buddha who speaks. Your own voice, drawing on your own understanding, can get lost in the endless thoughts of other people. This happens when you speak on topics you have only read or heard about, but that are not your lived experience.
Getting to know your own beliefs (as opposed to other people’s beliefs) is an important step.
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I suppose it depends on how take it. If you mean learn to think for yourself rather than parrot what others have said, I can get on board with that. If you mean whatever you think or feel is right and no one else has anything worthwhile to teach you, not so much.
Regarding lived experience, there is a certain weight or authority that comes from it that doesn't come from book learning. But its not everything, still listen to the person who tells you they read in a book that the Earth is spinning away from the sun at the end of the day, rather than the one speaking from lived experience that the small glowing orb is the one that is moving.
I’d say, rather listen to the test-flight pilot who has been up so high in his plane that the curvature of the Earth became visible…
Doesn't the knowledge that comes from books come from people's lived experience? What's the distinction you're making about second hand information from someone and information from the writings of Buddhist teachers or science, etc?
Often what is in books is not directly relatable to someone’s lived experience, unless it is a memoir. Books are not always written in good faith - often the motivation is to make money.
I’m not saying that books aren’t a good information source, there is a whole argument in epistemology to be avoided there, but books are often written based on other books and papers from journals even if they are non-fiction. And those sources are less easily checked for factual accuracy. Even the good faith of scientific studies can’t be guaranteed, as climate change science has shown.
I'm not sure I'm really understanding what you're saying. It felt like you were maybe saying something binary like lived experience=good, book knowledge=bad. Maybe that's my perception and you're saying something more nuanced.
Apart from that I'd add the word grok. Not the AI but the original term meaning "to understand something completely and deeply through intuition or empathy. It is a verb that means the knowledge becomes a core part of who you are, rather than just basic memorization". Its kind of like the idea of knowing something well enough to be able to explain it to a 6 year old rather than rote memorization. I think that is maybe something like what you're pointing to?
All spiritual knowledge comes from building and retaining ongoing self-awareness. Meditation is only the tool to learn HOW to be self-aware.
“You have to do your own work; Enlightened Ones will only show the way. Those who practise meditation will free themselves from the chains of death.” Dhammapada 20.276
This is interesting. So far, I know myself from the things I do to show my feelings, like making coffee in the morning for my mother or hanging up the laundry when it’s large sheets that she can’t manage. I observe my feelings to know my heart.
I am aware only of my emptiness, in which thought, feelings, senses, etcetera manifest.
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I'd say this is where lived experience really shines, knowing yourself. No book can show you that. Or what samadhi is like, or seeing the Grand Canyon. Words or pictures never do it justice.
But this doesn't mean the finger pointing at the moon is bad. It just means that its not the point, the moon is. I suppose at some level rejecting the finger is a skillful means if one is the type of person who tends to get hung up on the finger as a way to move off of it. Like meditating on the ugly aspects of the body.
The old adage: "If you would know others, first you must know yourself."
Though I am no scholar, no "Great Teacher", I share this minuscule grain, this seed which I carry and occasionally (often?) mislay:
One can not change the world of one does not change him/her self. We have our formal teachers (master, mentors...). They guide us, give us knowledge, perhaps direction. Then there are the other teachers, the other mentors. These mentors surround us every day. Who are they? They are friends, bosses, fellow workers, employees, neighbors, strangers, even enemies...the people we encounters in the course of the day or evening.
The gaze, the smile, the frown, the joy, the tears, the interest, the indifference....all are lessons, subtle and blatant actions and words. All are lessons..all are teachers.
If we wishes to grow, to change, our eyes, our hearts must be open to the lessons. To understand the lesson is to grow the heart (light). To misunderstand or not accept the lesson is to grow the dark within.
Peace to all
Ah ha the difference between childish and 'like a child'
My feeling is this limited processing continues ad infinitum
...but then what do I know...
I think you're right
One can memorize all "80,000 teachings" of the Buddha and know the words yet not realize the heart of the Buddha. It is said that Devadatta memorized all the teachings of Siddhartha. Yet he failed to understand Siddhartha's heart and opposed him as his self declared enemy, attacking Siddhartha and his disciples repeatedly.
Suri and Handkuo were considered simple beings, unable to eve distinguish between themselves who was who. Yet, they understood the Buddha's heart and were among the first to achieve Enlightenment.
Study is a necessary part of Buddhist practice. But study without understanding is no more than an exercise in ego. It is not the words, but what is within the words, the message hidden within the message, that we must seek. It is in using the words to understand the heart of the Buddha and thus open one's own heart to the true message and meaning of the words.
A scholar studied the writings and practices of a certain school of Buddhism for twenty years. He knew the "How", but did not understand the "Why" of that school's success.
When he approached a senior member of that school, he explained his conundrum.
To which the leader said to him (the scholar), that it was time for him to see the why. It was time for him to DO. It is said that once the scholar took the action, pt all that theory, all that study, into action, by applying it through action, he immediately understood.
From the leg of stude and the leg of practice grows the leg of understanding and faith.
Without practice, study is just unverified theory
Without study, practice is like wandering in a fog.
Without practice and study, faith is meaningless, blind
Thus Faith is at first no more than a willingness to study and practice.
As one studies, learning the WHY
As one practices, sharpening the HOW
One's faith grows and manifests into the NOW
The mind grows, the heart expands to enfold all within and without
The Buddha shines from within to light the way for self and others.
I forget who said it but I was told that :
We are all children of the Buddha
Being children of the Buddha, we are each Buddha
We just haven't awakend to that reality yet.
Peace to all
“The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of the word is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.”
― Chuang Tzu
I came across an interesting quote from Herman Hesse’s book Siddhartha, in which a wanderer of that name meets Gautama the Buddha and tells him that he can’t follow him, because he himself had also only found the enlightenment without following anyone. The only teaching Siddhartha would take from the Buddha is ‘to be a light unto yourself.’
There are other teachers who have made similar points, such as Jiddu Krishnamurti’s famous speech that ‘truth is a pathless land.’ Or Osho’s assertion that there have been many millions of Buddhists, but have they created one more new Buddha?
Ultimately these various teachers can place your feet upon the path, but then you have to let go of their helping hands and make your own way forward using what they taught.
How many Buddhas have been created by people doing their own thing?
I kind of feel like there is an important distinction between having to walk the path on your own, aka no one can do it for you, and making your own path.
"The only teaching Siddhartha would take from the Buddha is ‘to be a light unto yourself.’"
Six words given... Carried more than 600,000 words would have been able to give.
In the story, Siddhartha comes upon a ferryman. His act of ferrying people across the river was his 'light unto himself'.
Well, one at least, the Buddha himself. But potentially also others like Jiddu Krishnamurti and Osho, who both very much walked their own paths. If you listen to Osho’s stories about his childhood, he was very independent-minded.
That is true, and perhaps it would have been more right to say that you have to make your own path. The Buddha had teachers of meditation, but he never really followed a master.
And then the Buddha taught a path for people to follow. I don't think you can count Krishnamurti and Osho as possibilities but ignore people like Nagarjuna, Padmasambhava, Bodhidharma, Milarepa, maybe even contemporaries like Ajahn Chah, Thich Naht Hahn, or the Dalai Lama.
Its possible, Buddhism does talk about the pratyekabuddha, the solitary realizer. Its also possible to go astray and delude yourself like many self proclaimed gurus have done.
I guess my overall feeling is it isn't obviously better to find your own way. There are pros and cons of each.
I did a little more looking and the full quote is
This is told to Ananda when the Buddha is dying as a reassurance in practice going forward without the Buddha. Truth here is referring the the Dharma.
In conversation with Claude, I had it list more succinctly than I can the failure modes of community practice and solo practice.
The strengths of each mode are basically the weakness of the other. So going back to my first response. If you mean something like genuine self discovery rather than succumbing to group think I'm in agreement. If you mean you no longer need anyone else to keep you honest, I worry about that path. I also wonder if it isn't also a sophisticated justification for being avoidant, which is something I have to guard myself against.
You’re not wrong, you can view Buddhism as a conglomerate of many schools led by different Buddhist enlightened teachers. But then why would the Buddha teach, ‘Be a light unto yourself’? And why would all the many enlightened teachers stay within Buddhism?
I just finished reading Herman Hesse’s novel ‘Siddhartha’, it provides a possible way this might go, in which the main character meets Gotama but leaves him and years later ends up listening to a river in company with a saintly ferryman as a path to enlightenment. Towards the end of his life he achieves it, it’s a wonderful book.
One of the things he says at the end to his lifelong friend Govinda are that knowledge can be shared, but wisdom cannot. It seems that the strange turns of his life furnished him with wisdom which he can’t share, and of this he says that words are inherently untrustworthy. Instead he supplies Govinda with a vision as proof of his enlightenment.
It is of course true that it’s a novel, and real enlightened people don’t furnish visions. But my experience of Osho’s presence is that there are people with extraordinary auras, something which you can perceive as out of the ordinary with a sense beyond the usual.
I had a follow up post that got into it a bit more about it being a reassurance for practice after his death. My point is that there are beneficial readings and unbeneficial readings, not that you should strictly follow whatever a teacher or the scripture say.
Maybe because the teachings the Buddha laid out are at core true? Subsequent teachers have made changes and iterations on what the Buddha taught too.
Maybe the people teaching other paths are the unenlightened ones? It isn't that Buddhism isn't true, its that people teaching other paths haven't actually discovered the Truth. Just saying that's a possible solution to your question... Are you sure your interpretation is the correct one?
I've experienced this too, some more powerful than others and with slightly different qualities. Therefore I think there are levels of spiritual attainment, people can have that spiritual aura without the enlightenment of the Buddha or perhaps an Arhat. I'm unsure if the literature speaks to what level of attainment that sort of presence appears.
Edit: Actually here is something that speaks to that sort of presence. Also an honorific the Dalai Lama receives is Kundun (literally presence)
https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Wang_tang
I am beginning to think Hesse’s point about words was a good one — both the Buddha’s words and our words are essentially incomplete. The best you can do is fingers pointing at the Moon. And that includes the Dharma.
Yes, the words aren't the thing. I'm also saying that they're not nothing, the words that point in the direction of wisdom are different than the words in Metallica lyrics.
A thirteenth Century monk wrote:
_When you hold the lantern for others, you light the way for yourself.
_
However, you can’t learn to be wisdom by just learning the direction of wisdom. The words of the teaching are actually of no use, without the experience of ripening the soul.
That’s kind of a big portion of the book, where Siddhartha goes to the city after seeing the Buddha and coming close to awakening, and takes up with the courtesan Kamala to learn the arts of love. It’s only after spending years there, learning to be like the ‘childlike people’ and loading up his soul with sin amongst the merchants and gamblers that he hears the sound of Om again. All the practice of asceticism has been of no use to him.
Its called practice.
Those words don't mean anything, its only in the seeing that wisdom arises. It can't be that words don't matter until you need them to point to something.
I’m not sure if seeing is enough for wisdom to arise, I think it is more experiencing that is needed.
I came across an Osho quote about the book Siddhartha. It said for the vast majority of people finding the path by themselves is not possible; they need a guide, and then some may succeed. Siddhartha from the book is like the Buddha, he has to go it alone, being a shadow is not possible for him, that is not his type. But that doesn’t mean it is so for everyone.
That makes perfect sense to me.
Totally not the point. The first line was admittedly meant as hyperbolic mirroring of what feels like the core of your argument. It's the second line that matters. You can't say words don't matter and then use words to point to your moon.
Does it make sense for you and your practice as a very realized being? Or is it an objective truth about reality? Is it right, or is it right for you?
Even if it is right for you, there are still pitfalls.
I think experiencing is very much to the point. People’s character is not formed by what they read or even see, but by what they experience — what they know in their bones. The things that they do automatically, because they know, not what they have to think about because they have learned it.
That seems like a pretty pedantic point parsing out seeing vs experiencing. The right word seems to suddenly matter quite a bit.
I agree. I think my point is through skillful practice that sort of "groking" is possible too. Contemplation and meditation on something like impermanence or emptiness can produce a deeper, felt understanding. I've made that point in this thread and other times too about letting intellectual learning seep into one's being.
I think you don't think that's possible, at least this is what it sounds like to me. Is that what the seeming disagreement is about?
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I think this is one of those things that are correct only through certain lenses. As @person points out, we don't cut off the finger pointing to the moon. There is a Middle Way.
Like a teaching that teaches how to think rather than what to think, Buddhism is more like a practice as opposed to a belief system.
The First and Second Noble Truths make sense. That which lives suffers unease either through physical and mental maladies or the stress that comes with them. As we work on the Fourth Noble Truth which is the Eightfold Path, we can directly witness the Third Noble Truth which is that suffering can be transformed.
Beliefs are ok to put to the test but I try not to have faith in them. Especially my own.
Words of wisdom, however incomplete they are, do have a certain value. They can touch something of realisation inside, making you aware of something that you had known deeply but forgotten. Similarly they are the only means of communication we have here.
But it seems to me that on the level of knowing that a flame is hot, there aren’t many realisations that trigger that level of knowing. Avoiding a flame becomes reflex, not something you think about, and it’s knowing of a different category than belief.
I’ve never really come across a meditation which produces understanding. For me, understanding is something that arrives instantly on reading or hearing something, not later. So on contact with material from the world.
Its like everyone knows they will die, but someone with a cancer diagnosis or a life threatening accident knows it in a different way. Buddhist contemplations and practices offer a path to bring that theoretical knowledge down into the lived knowledge. Though almost dying is a much faster and more reliable, if slightly more dangerous path.
In my experience, its like this. At times when reading or contemplating a feeling of the reality of it will hit. The practice is to then sit with that feeling until it subsides. At that point contemplation or study continues until the feeling arises again. Its something like a metta meditation where you repeat phrases and visualizations to generate a feeling. Only its on something like impermanence or emptiness.
Buddhist practice offers real character change, if you practice rather than only read and study. Not only in my experience but in the experience of a multitude of other people.
I remember from transcribing a talk into text where my teacher had referred to a written teaching, the subject of the talk, as "frozen awakened mind/heart". So being frozen it's not the same as the actual mind of the author (or orator) but we get something from that mind and we try "to defrost" it I guess
That analogy makes sense to me as well. Its like knowledge is frozen wisdom.
Btw, thanks for meditating with me too. I don't ever think about thanking people on the insight timer anymore, but I notice when you thank me.
@person that's one of my favorite features of insight timer is to feel connection with other meditators. And I consider it a part of dedication of merit to the enlightenment of beings
All my impediments are mined. Fortunately all The Buddhas (and others) are also Mind. We have to inflate and burst until our Bodies and Bodhi shine and our buddhas just a shoo step away...
“No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.”
~ Kahlil Gibran, quote from The Prophet
On a related note, my mother just declared “everything online is AI”. Which may soon be coming true… if you can no longer trust video footage as a facsimile of the real world, or text as having been typed by a human… maybe it’s time to find an entirely-analogue hermitage somewhere?
Tee Hee
Back to analogue?
Here is somone I have on my wall shrine as a manifestation of the Maitreya
Quite raw, that video @lobster… the way he talks about his parents dying at quite an advanced age in nursing homes struck me as an awful way to go, I can’t imagine living through that and not feeling some measure of guilt about it.