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Fear of Enlightenment
skullchin
Veteran
Anyone experience it? I do (consciously) from time to time. I think I'm afraid enlightenment will make me boring. Anyhow, my conscious fear is that my subconscious fear of enlightenment will slow my progress
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As to it making you 'boring'.....I don't see it. I just don't. I've watched many interviews with Buddhists that I would consider to be at some stage of enlightenment and they are still able to express themselves uniquely, have a sense of humor, and are 'fun' to listen to. Maybe I'm just boring, I dunno.
Namaste
How do you know know that you are not already?
Imagine if all of Buddhism rests on a mistranslation of "The Path To Excitement."
namaste
Ah, ANOTHER good reason to find a long-term, skillful teacher.
I'm in not position to say whether the teachers I have met are enlightened or not, but people flock to their peace, to the warmth that washes over you from their eyes, and to the total attention they give you when you speak with them. Boring? Hardly.
You see, if you encounter teachers like this, then you never need fear enlightenment for yourself!
In other words, I dont think you should worry about it.
"Boring" is just an excuse I think, the self does not want to cease to exist and it maybe knows that if enlightenment occurs, it will die. It does not want to die. It wants to persist...and do the stupid things that it does because it thinks it can get "something" from those things, which it never does... I know of these feeling because I have had them myself in the past. They caused me to stop practicing. BIG MISTAKE!!!
But your "self" doesn't cease to exist.
All that ceases to exist is the mistaken idea that your "self" matters.
Think of something that you absolutely ADORED when you were little but are now totally unmoved by now. It's like that. The object/item still exists, but you just don't feel it holds anything important for you anymore.
What if the item you adored burned in a fire and all the ashes blew away with the wind? Would it still exist? I guess it would really depend on what one's definition of "self" is.
Not already what? Enlightened, or boring?
Mtns
Booring:P
I know I am quite a dharma bore to my friends and family. Dharma does that to you, especially when it first starts revealing itself to you and you get excited by those "oh yeah!" moments and want to share it.
namaste
Enlightenment to me, seems like it would give you a lot of wise and important things to say about others, the world and life itself, so that isn't boring at all.
I thought about what I considered the 'boring' aspects of Buddhism for a long time. My semi conclusion then was that it was the boring part of being Buddhist that I wanted. I was, and am, through with all the drama, poisonous passions, confusion, anger, hatred, grief, disappointment, and all the other crap that comes from being deluded and vested in a delusion. Boring was just fine by me.
But now that I've lived with it for a while longer the 'boring' description doesn't come up in my mind anymore. What I used to see as boring I now see as healthy, peaceful, confident, psycho-spiritual balance.
I wouldn't worry about it, Skull. I really don't think 'boring' applies to Buddhism, enlightened or not.
Whether 'you' become boring or not is a judgment to be made by others but let me assure you that living becomes anything but as the forest clears and the mountains come into sight.
I agree Skull, I don't have anything to base this on...but its there just the same. Being enlightened I think sounds boring too. Is it worth it? IDK.
Sometimes people (my mother) thinks she has all the answers as a devout Christian (Methadist) But for crying out loud she is very rigid.
I'd like to drag her down off her freaking pedastil (sp) sorry. She makes talking to her difficult. (and that is not only on religion but anything you bring up.) I do not talk to her about religion, and I do not talk to her about life and the deepness of it.
Or more correctly she thinks too deeply about it as a judgemental state and (as with a lot of baby boomer's parents) they are just not the funnest people to be around. Way too rigid and too quick to abuse the term of corporeal punishment. Just telling you not to do something would suffice but if someone spilled a glass of water she would grab the ping pong paddle so she could give you your just rewards.
When we talk its "Hi" "Where you off too?" "Whats for supper." I think she thinks I don't even think about life. I am very sure she is determined I am going to hell.
I would like to get her to relax more. But alas. She is getting very old and snappish with me. (80 years old) I am pretty sure she thinks she is a fun person to be around. When she laughs its usually because someone fell or tripped. Its weird. Just weird.
My decades of work with the troubled and confused, some with diagnoses and others without, alongside my developing meditation practice has led me to a clearer understanding of what I heard R. D. Laing say all those years ago about "mental illness" being an adaptive response to a mad world.
The mother of one of my clients who suffered with and died from HIV/AIDS said that she saw him and his fellow sufferers as responding in their own body/mind to the damage humanity has done to Gaia's own immune system.
Whether that has any grain of truth - and one would need to accept the Gaia hypothesis - we can certainly compare the reluctance to get 'sane' with the way we cling to our delusions. Every teacher, be they Buddhist or other, make it quite clear that Awakening means the dissolution of the ego, and we have all worked very hard to create our ego! No wonder we resist: it looks like death, even though our teachers tell us that it is life. As the Tanakh puts it: "I set before you Life and Death. Choose Life."
I have Schizo-affective disorder, which is very similar to Schizophrenia and let me tell you, I don't feel ANY excitement whatsoever being under this condition.
Actually, it's scary, nerve wracking, embarrassing, and who knows what else, anything, but never exciting. At least not to me, but I've heard of people who get really into their delusions and have a great time figuring them out, acting out on them and relaying them to others, so I guess those were the people you were referring to when you made the comment above.
It would be great to have positive voices in my head instead of the ones I have, and I think that if I had a constant stream of encouragement or jokes in my head, it would definitely be exciting. Hahaha.
Mtns
I know you are right Briget, I used to wonder what brought us to earth in the first place. I suppose to experience its wonders. Course with all the emotions involved including sadness, grief, and pain swirling around us it can be difficult to see its beauty. There are hunger and wars fought over religion or greed or jealousy its sad. I sure hope this bumper crop of new children all over the earth coming up so despise war that it is wiped out completely and maybe someday we can grow to know our neighbors in peace. It's a thought and prayer. It brings me to ask a question but will need a new thread.