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Any progress?
lobster
Crusty Veteran
I believe the idea of progress is more useful than advanced teachings of placelessness . . .
For myself others improvements which inspire me are always welcome.
Today I did 32 parts of the body meditation which was mentioned in another thread.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patikulamanasikara
Sadly I was not sure where my spleen was but luckily found some bile.
I also found nothing particularly revolting and end up offering all the delicious bits to the hell realms occupants. I did not like snot much but you would be amazed what demons feed on. Ah well will try harder next time . . .
Are you making progress? How?
For myself others improvements which inspire me are always welcome.
Today I did 32 parts of the body meditation which was mentioned in another thread.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patikulamanasikara
Sadly I was not sure where my spleen was but luckily found some bile.
I also found nothing particularly revolting and end up offering all the delicious bits to the hell realms occupants. I did not like snot much but you would be amazed what demons feed on. Ah well will try harder next time . . .
Are you making progress? How?
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Comments
Well when I first came to this site I'd been meditating regulary and felt like a new person, staying sober was a huge progression for me.
Then it all went tits up and I forgot or couldn't be bothered as I was too busy feeling sorry for myself... well thanks to you guys, the sunshine and some mettha meditation I feel back on track.
First AA meeting tonight so watch this space.
As for the 32 parts of the body meditation I'll have to try that later as haven't got a clue what its all about... lobster it sounds a bit yucky ...you're not selling it very well
can deal with the yucky stuff AND still hold that
baby....Awww...poor thing..
Give me the baby....and I'll tell you where all that
yucky stuff goes and where it came from...
When I joined my sangha, I had an aspiration to do vajrayana practices. To do that, I had to take refuge vows, bodhisattva vows, a specific study curiculum, make formal study and practice guidance arrangements with my guru, get permission to begin ngondro from my practice instructor, the sangha's director of practice, and, of course my guru.
I've done all of that, step by step. Is that progress?
I've been doing the first stage of ngondro for a while, now. I keep track of my prostrations on a mala. One bead = 108 prostrations. It moves from one to the next, slowly, but surely.
Is that progress?
"Do not try to become anything.
Do not make yourself into anything.
Do not be a meditator.
Do not become enlightened.
When you sit, let it be.
What you walk, let it be.
Grasp at nothing.
Resist nothing."
Ajhan Chah
Either you're enlightened or you're not.
I used to concern myself with whether or not I was making progress. Now I don't. That certainly appears to be progress.
The limitation to the "idea of progress" is how often it is only a renovation of ones ego's suite instead of placelessness which is really the posting of a no vacancy sign on it's door.
I am not sure if I subscribe to one being advanced over another or if it's one being about change whereas the other is about being a useful change.
Useful in the spiritual sense, I define, not as what is handy to bring about measurements but simply whatever softens and dissolves our attachment to identity.
That is your door?
It is just a trading post.
Limitations are unlimited. There is a place for limitations. This is is not an unlimited post.
What you say is true but how it is placed is not my place to know . . .
Let me put it another way:
'Soften and dissolve', harden and be. Emptiness is form and form is emptiness.
. . . .or progress is empty even when it exists.
Too hard? For some, for sure. For others, Nothing simpler. Now you are talking. Never too late to do well, more.
:clap:
So what?
everyone is enlightened
the illusion is that they are not
. . . as for the illusion of progress
All illusions progress, even if not going anywhere . . .
http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/2010/06/on-enlightenment-an-interview-with-shinzen-young/
The idea of progress is based on the relative positioning to the absolute.
So for example those afflicting themselves with drugs, stimulation, avoiding illness, killing others etc. will find it more difficult to create the space and well being to avoid suffering. This is why the Middle Way exists and has degrees of involvement.
Of course you knew that.
I can and try to speak from my experience. When you see 'that everyone is enlightened' on one level, it is extraordinary that people suffer and convolute their Buddha Nature. In a sense as we may have heard, the samsaric and nirvanic are identical in essence but out relative positioning or experience is limited usually to samsara.
What is a gal to do?
Encompass the totality? Enter the stream of wholistic, non differentiated being? Sure.
So perhaps the same is true of delusion?
This goes right to the top. For example even a benevolent Boddhisatvah needs to have a wrathful 'mask' to fit certain benevolent/compassionate requirements.
This is why a good teacher may be quite hard on favoured/advanced/close/experienced students, when they are ready and even when not quite ready . . .
The abusers make use of this of course BUT the genuine is always unmistakeable
I think so, check it out. Swam a mile in 31 minutos.
Samsara and Nirvana are not at the same time. That would be like saying when a light switch is flipped it is both on and off.
How did the AA meeting go @jae ?
I certainly understand "dependent arising" on much more than an intellectual level since I started meditating a couple of years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratītyasamutpāda
You bet your qubit superposition it is . . . is not, isn't though . . .
A bit is the basic unit of information. It is used to represent information by computers. Regardless of its physical realization, a bit is always understood to be either a 0 or a 1. An analogy to this is a light switch— with the off position representing 0 and the on position representing 1.
A qubit has a few similarities to a classical bit, but is overall very different. Like a bit, a qubit can have two possible values—normally a 0 or a 1. The difference is that whereas a bit must be either 0 or 1, a qubit can be 0, 1, or a superposition of both.
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/superposition
Its unobstructed view.
To use your analogy the light is always on. But our eyes are not open.
Shall we revisit these statements in a little more detail @Citta?
Ontology deals with metaphysical being; I am happy to stand corrected.
So samsara and Nirvana are not states of being according to your assumption?
However: Samasara is a state of suffering that is forever being or becoming; Nirvana is a state of liberation that is being or becoming...
The light may be on, but there is none to observe it, or is there?
Samsara is grasping or ego. Nirvana is non-grasping or lack of ego. That's what I meant by the lightswitch on or off. If you are not grasping then you can't be grasping.
Thus it is a 'bit' and not a 'qbit' @lobster. You cannot grasp ego and not grasp ego at the same time.
Nagarjuna said the kleshas were not real. Thus samsara is also not real. But nirvana is real in the sense that it is the ultimate (permanent) refuge.
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
We can let go of the very let going and the grasping of differentiation.
A practical example from my experience: I consider myself an atheist who believes in God. That is impossible, ridiculous just to express. I do not try and understand, explain or grasp how that is possible. I can not.
The ability to hold or 'grasp' contrary or paradoxical conditions is at best a natural state but a potential trap for the unwary.
So I would totally agree with your 'grasping is not letting go'. To let go of common sense or clear defining is not required. However it may happen. Nothing to grasp hold of . . .
As a beginner we have to let go of our tendency to grasp dukkha. We have to kind of hold it softly, despite its tight grip on us . . .
But it's not grasping contradictory ideas. It is grasping ego. You are either grasping ego or not. Unlike being an atheist and a deist at the same time.
What are you grasping for an emptying of self to be different to a fullness for?
If you insist, you are right. Now you have a form of emptiness or is it an empty form?
No Samsara and Nirvana are not states of being.
Samsara is absence of Vew. Nirvana is is an unchanging resting in what is always the case.
Any progress?
I can think of my life as a success-story but at the same time I can easily think of my life as a huge mistake unfolding.
It’s just context. It just depends on how I measure and compare; what criteria I choose.
When I want to avoid both “spiritual materialism” and “getting seriously depressed”, I have this shortcut:
Practice for the sake of practice.
If my enlightened life isn’t taking place here and now it isn’t taking place anywhere at all.
There is a framework in which this is coherent: bringing about the end of suffering. It's basically a form of internal right speech, and right resolve, i.e., that you will only entertain ideas which are honest, beneficial and timely. Most of the time it's useful to be thinking as a rationalist who rejects beliefs which have no tangible basis. Sometimes, it's useful to foster and attend to a sensation that there is some kind of kindly intelligence underlying our experience. The honesty in the rationalist position is obvious, while the kindly-intelligence sensation is just that: a sensation which can be maintained without attachment to a hard cosmological position, and so is not necessarily dishonest if approached in the right way. As for when one or the other position is beneficial and timely, that's a matter of experimentation, but the kindly-intelligence sensation works roughly the same way as a metta practice.
@lobster said > What are you grasping for an emptying of self to be different to a fullness for? If you insist, you are right. Now you have a form of emptiness or is it an empty form?
Hi lobster. I'm not sure what your first sentence means. Grasping to emptiness is indeed suffering. Trungpa called it 'shunyata poisoning'. Your second sentence was also (for me) hard to understand. There are not different forms of emptiness. There are different forms who are empty.
I think you are getting at the shentong, rangtong thing. Emptiness of a full self? Or emptiness of an empty 'other'?
Echo betaboy:
Sounds like you have been reading Jed McKenna. If not, then I think you might like him.
I love Jed. Awesome pointers. There is no 'progress'; either you are awake or you are not.
I have no idea if I have made any so-called 'progress'. What would it feel like?
I generally think I have learned a lot, but I do not think I am enlightened.
As I consider the question, two other questions pop up:
First, is it possible for someone who is not enlightened to think they are?
Second, is it possible for an enlightened one to not know they are?
More stable attention on the object of meditation, more reliance on meditation in stressful situations to avoid unwholesome actions, noticing more quickly that the mind has wandered, bringing the mind back to the object of attention more quickly when it wanders, faster and easier disidentification from defilements, increased honesty in assessment of the state of one's practice, abandonment of comforting but progress-impeding ideas like "no such thing as progress, what would that even look like?"
Yes, it happens all the time. It's happened to me.
No, an enlightened person knows.
Yes.
Being empty of self/ego does occur to some but is outside of my experience. I have only met or been around people who have qualities and operate from a self. This self may be very different to how we generally express this. States of absorption, samadhi, jhana etc may leak over into 'normal' consciousness but the person returns.
Let us say we have some light, where does the darkness go? The eyes are open but only when closed or open do we grasp at a sense of light being or absence.
Talking about such things is not helpful unless we have 'encompassed' non duality. This is why the subjective movement towards the light (progress) is more useful than
for the wisdom of nirvana . . . however we do or do not grasp that . . .