Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
I have realized true zen.
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
You/not-you misunderstand me/not-me. I/not-I completely realise this, and need no convincing.
However - as I/not-I think you/not-you yourself pointed out - 'one' (is that any better?) is constrained by language to use personal pronouns.
this makes no sense and i don't understand why the self is needed to be enlightened. The reason you said this is because the reductio made you expose your contradictions.
you must have a self to be arrogant , yes. However enlightenment is not the opposite of self because that would suppose that the self is one thing and the non self another. sorry i dont believe you buddha.
Such an urge is a response to an egotistic concept.
Good, this is good. deletion will therefore not be an issue....
There is a reason, you outlined it in your above response. You had an impulse. One born of ego. You had to simply tell someone of your achievement. therefore, you were responding to an ego-based compulsion.
There is nothing else it could be, there is nowhere else it could stem form.
A A zen Buddhist Monk from Deal
Said, "Though I know that pain isn't real,
When I sit on a pin
And it punctures my skin
I dislike what I fancy I feel".
There is no you, but when a rock hits your head, it's still painful.
A sense of humour is a wonderful thing, particularly when the joke is on you.
I'm sure the time the Buddha spent meditating - both before and after enlightenment - made him laugh too....
From useful to use-less. Well, yes, I can see how that might seem like progress.
I wonder what would happen if all Buddhists followed this example?
This would have a severe impact on fellow workers, colleagues and friends.
I do not personally find this a skilful result....
Your enlightenement should bring a heightened sense of awareness, compassion, consideration and empathy. Not deaden it.
I fear you are resigning from social life, but this is not proving to be constructive, if others are seeing a negative aspect to your attitude...
people flocked to the Buddha and were eager to follow his footsteps and learn by his example. It seems your Enlightenment has not achieved the same response.
I'm inclined to agree, here....
I find you completely misunderstand the concept of non-duality. There IS a self, but equally, there is a Not-Self. There is an inseparable co-existence. I think you miss this point.
No, but you responded to them.
Rather than remain indifferent to the impulse, appraise it, and question its skilfulness, you responded to it, without apparent rhyme, reason or justification.
An Enlightened Mind would do nothing without sound justification.
It would also do nothing with sound justification.
I don't know the answer to this question.
I'm going to take everyones advice and go get hit by a stick.[/QUOTE]
I disagree that all urges come from ego. The urge arises like the pain of being hit by the rock. It has a stimulus, it comes, it goes, though it is not real.
What do you mean by the self and the non-self? I no longer trust these concepts to language and it could be possible we're discussing the same meaning and totally missing each other.
hahahaha exactly
http://www.enlightened-spirituality.org/bankei_zen_master.html
all the best.
And this is where you fail.
Who - literally - is doing the pretending?
And more importantly - why?
An enlightened mind does not play mind-games, nor have the need, desire or compunction to pretend anyway.
Pretend - what?
Your moment with your yoga teacher was a moment of realisation, nothing more, nothing less.
It simply 'was'.
Nothing special, or significant.
I've had dozens of similar moments.
They're simple moments of 'ahaah-ism'.
Ho-hum.
You are enlightened yet cannot express it adequately.
That's interesting, don't you think?
Many peoples thoughts exactly...Not a skillfull action. :hrm:
How can an impulse arise out of emptiness?
Heh, nah... in my opinion there's reason to be nice even to the egoic ones. With time, perhaps birdshine will be more than a troll. You know who woulda loved this thread though, DD.
With warmth,
Matt
It's simply that your premise is extremely flawed.
Furthermore, your comment here is absolute testimony to how miffed you are that we're apparently not taking you seriously.
Again, I point out - an Enlightened mind would give a damn whether anybody was interested or not.
Their serenity and propensity to rise above such petty appraisal would be manifest.
I think you should take a leaf out of Fagin's book.
Review the situation, because I think you'd better work it out again.....
You're sure you're not enlightened, Federica? :P
Yeah, it's kind of funny. It is probably best not to take ourselves too seriously whether or not we are enlightened.
The main reason I posted my ridiculous thread was to exagerate the way such claims on an internet forum may appear. Whether or not the OP is enlightened - who can say - but making such a claim in the first place on the internet (or anywhere, for that matter, but especially online) is certainly questionable.
If the OP is not enlightened I hope that my post is seen as skilful in showing why we shouldn't claim to be enlightened on the internet.
If the OP is enlightened then I sincerely apologize.
"There is no Enlightenment outside of daily life." - Thich Nhat Hanh
.
The chances of him being enlightened are significantly less than you or fed being enlightened. How can I tell? What basis do I use?
When we read his words, can't we hear the self-embellishment? The clinging to enlightenment as a place? The speaking without purpose? The un-penetrated mystery of his own urges? The distaste for his opposition? The missing compassion? He then went and posted invalidations to moral questions, rather than responding with moral teachings like the Buddha did... doesn't that help navigate his claims?
Now, one might say that those qualities might be projected into him, and that is certainly possible. However, anyone who has done study of suttas or sat for a long time usually has difficulty projecting onto the words of buddhas, because they ring with such clarity that their strength makes us see. And here, what it appears that most of us see, is someone who is mistaking a non-dual view with enlightenment, which is common for those who have not taken refuge in the jewels. Especially the sangha, which is a fine place to root our humility and ordinariness.
Its like he's holding a sphere of non-dualism in one hand, claiming that its him (even to himself) and so every time he reads words, he routes it to the sphere... which is just a projection of non-dual space. This non-dual space seems to be his master personality, making it difficult to be fluid or directly helpful in the moment. Its a good lesson in spiritual materialism in my opinion, because it reminds me that attainments are not the goal, they actually can impede our progress.
Not that birdshine should be ostracized for his misconception, but he most certainly needs to come down a little from his realization high before communicating directly with him will be available. If a Zen teacher were near him, he'd be back already
With warmth,
Matt
One point I would like to make.... if this forum was not serious I wouldn't waste my time. If there weren't people sharing practice in a serious way, it really would be a waste of time. There are Enlightened people. It is not a myth. It is not a realization reserved for the historical Buddha, to be worshiped and held as a ideal for us mere plebes. That is truly a pathetic attitude. I have had the good fortune to meet people who are very Enlightened and recognize that basic capacity in myself and others. Seeing people make misguided claims to "Enlightenment" we can fall into the other extreme of wallowing in our non-Enlightened status, which is no better. I think it is wrong to say that something about this medium in inherently unserious. It is a valid means of communication with people all around the world about our practice, and yes our Enlightenment too. We are Buddhists to realize Enlightenment after all. So just as we should not go around thinking we are Enlightened, we should also be careful about projecting our own feelings of deluded status on everyone, while exhalting a Buddha we only read about.
If it begs that we are self aware enough to conceptualize a being such as ourself, and we are a sum of the parts of what compose us, then could it not be possible that it is not just the whole that is conscious, but the parts as well?
Additionally, I've been hit by a lot of sticks, and it hasn't made me any wiser.
If I were wise, I'd stop being hit by the sticks!
So I suppose by asking who you are, I am asking what you are.
You say you are enlightened, but what does that actually mean until you tell how you have transcended that which is yourself?
We're all enlightened to different degrees, for enlightenment is nothing more than the pulling of one's mind from the dark.
It is funny, but learning does arise from ignorance, does it not?
Existentialism through Nihilism, Hot from cold.
It is odd, ironic, and funny, no?
Good point Richard.
I hope posting this online was a humbling experience for you. It's extremely arrogant to declare yourself enlightened, or in any way more spiritually developed than others. This last post only shows that since people didn't rush to congratulate or exalt you for your grand achievement, that you aren't interested in discussing or even acknowledging what others are trying to tell you. Did you ever think that your so-called "true Zen" may simply be another illusion? Once you decide to stop practicing or progressing, there is no opportunity to develop further, and you close yourself off to everything except this delusion of grandeur.
I understand your message of innate enlightenment, that we are all (in the absolute sense) "enlightened" - the idea that in the ultimate realm, at one point or another we all possess the primordial qualities of a Buddha. However, this is not the same as declaring our current, flawed human selves to have reached some all-knowing plateau of knowledge. And really, on an internet forum, it just sounds silly.
Koan by Linji:
If you meet the Buddha, kill him.
Interpretation by Wikipedia:
Thinking about Buddha is delusion, not awakening. One must destroy preconceptions of the Buddha. Zen master Shunryu Suzuki wrote in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind during an introduction to Zazen, "Kill the Buddha if the Buddha exists somewhere else. Kill the Buddha, because you should resume your own Buddha nature."
Blessings to you, a Buddha-to-be.
I was about to say the same thing when I first saw this thread.
I wish I understood that!
P
Based on what I have seen in teachings, I feel safe to say that they would never go online and make the claims that you have. And if anyone refuted what they said, they would never respond. Because of this, I do not accept your claims.
You mean I'm not the old git dancing like a monkey?
....oooohh you are responding to the OP.:D yes it is absurd to see claims like this. It usually comes from folks who are practicing alone, or who have been reading about Zen and pondering. In Sangha such talk is not given the time of day.
Well, you are an old git... but your ego wants you to be the old git...
As the OP seems to have entered a parinibbana all of his own, I think we can knock this thread on the head.
"See? it's in the past!!"
Thanks to all who contributed.