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as we progress …
lobster
Crusty Veteran
Dear Friends in The Way, https://newbuddhist.com/discussion/26749/mindfulness-losing-it
And we all are in our own Way 
As we progress, change in capacity, nature, practice, devotion, usefulness occurs. How so?
Well this is what I am aware of:
- Calmness influences our interactions ☯️
- We are the chicken … that crossed the road/path 🤔
- The other side is always different
- All roams lead to roads … eh … all roads lead to Rome … then again …
- Destinations are not an end to means but a mean arrival wherever we are!
- Do not trust your self … but wait … we are all ourself. Trust that.
- This world is the Pureland. Paranirvana full of Buddhas, Christs, Thaws, Thors and melting pots.
- Listen, observe, feel the environment. Engage! (Jean Luc Picard)
What are are your noteworthy progressions? 
https://medium.com/mind-cafe/youve-been-thinking-about-enlightenment-all-wrong-1f4b3a99e3fa
4
Comments
Be human first before belief/ ideology/ agenda
We are in many ways created by our environment/genetics but also don't let those things dictate who you are and what you do.
Respond rather than react.
Plant seeds rather than trying to force change.
After you've worried/angered over your problems, once, twice, three, four times. Let go and deal with things as they come rather than continuing to strategize battle plans that may never materialize.
In spite of what your mind may tell you the only direction available is forward.
There's more than one way to be right and more than one way to be wrong.
No one is ever completely right or completely wrong.
The greater the conviction of your rightness the more of your wrongness you're blind to.
And vis versa
Intellectual understanding is only a shadow of experiential understanding.
Intuitions come first, the intellect is our lawyer justifying what we feel.
Thesis -> Antithesis -> Synthesis
The greater the area of your circle of knowledge, the greater the circumference of your ignorance.
The more of these I write the more my conceit grows...
When irritated the answer is almost always to let go.
Look deeply, pay attention to your first impression but don’t always be satisfied with it.
We are all one with the great universe.
So treat everyone you meet like God in drag (Ram Dass).
Have the courage to stand by your conviction when your goals are noble.
Don’t be afraid to change your mind when you discover your goals are less than noble.
All spiritual thought is beautiful if you let it move freely.
The world would not be without you, you are an integral part, so respect yourself.
Sing, dance, create, celebrate your existence!
It is not the destination but the journey that is worthwhile.
They are very insightful. Conceit/arrogance, lack of humility can be dangerous. We have to watch this (mana)/tendency.
However …
https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/pride-in-buddhism/
I was just reading this article, and it seems to me that no two spiritual traditions seem to agree on what enlightenment is. Given that, why not have fun extra definitions such as the one in the article. Enlightenment in 45 days as an easily-learned shift in perception, sounds great! What would it mean for Buddhism though if it were true?
Adyashanti also says something like that, that enlightenment is more akin to a shift in perspective. But he doesn’t call it easy, and has talked a lot about the consequences, aftermath, temporary and sometimes halfway nature of it.
I had almost the exact opposite reaction. To me it took something important and valuable to work towards in Buddhism and diminished it to something pretty mundane. It may be true (the article notes that the research isn't peer reviewed) that there is a common "enlightenment" experience that is much more accessible to people. But just because the article and Buddhism use the same word doesn't mean they're pointing to the same moon.
It could be a moon being pointed to or maybe an ocean of varying depths.
I can totally understand that, and agree. I don’t recall anyone in modern times having an enlightenment experience like that of the Buddha, for example. But on the other hand the Buddha would declare all kinds of people as enlightened, monks by the dozen and sometimes by the hundred.
… meanwhile …
It is all ocean dependent on moon tides. Sometimes deep. Sometimes lagoons. We swim differently according to where we are.
Relax, you are in the ocean. It is not god, nirvana or drowning. It swims through us just as we swim.
What is Progress?
Progress is measurable
Progress is ephemeral and can not be measured
Progress is never lineal
Knowledge is not progress - it is merely knowledge
Wisdom and compassion are progress of themselves
If you are better, stronger, greater within yourself, you have made progress
Progress is visible
Progress is unseen
Progress is knowing you/we have much further to go and are willing to proceed
Progress is in trying
Progress is getting back up
Progress is always taking the very next step...
Peace to all
Accept what you cannot change and change what you cannot accept.
Imagine a line, of infinite length. On a circle it is always infinite, whatever the circle size.
We are that circle, moving in a spiralling spring. Like a slinky spring, going over and through itself.
We think we were going up or down a mountain, one who sways … and we are the mountain in a mounting picture.
Grow that which is wholesome, reduce that which is unwholesome. Eating still takes place but instead of delivery, cook. Then later, instead of cooking unhealthy, cooking healthy. Listening and reading Dhamma has a natural way of reducing cravings and desires with less effort required for the wholesome option over the less wholesome option. The cravings for fast food diminish of their own accord and I find myself snacking on fresh raw vegetables instead of cookies and candy out of preference than force.
Occasionally a craving will catch me strongly and I will go with it but it does not last like it used to. It is not as sticky in the mind or in the emotions of regret and such as it used to. It falls away and return to the wholesome. Of course there is a ripple effect, a reverberation of habit and behavior and circumstance, and I will see how this goes from here.
Its interesting because it is also what progress you expect. If you’ve never meditated, to go to a life which includes regular meditation is unexpected and a large change, while as you have settled down an tried a few different types over the years and then do one more year, the change isn’t as great.
In a way the need for progress is a fallacy, it is the mind asking “is anything happening” and kicking off a round of self-observation and analysis. So to consider progress draws you into your thoughts and away from continual meditation.
I've heard of meditation in part helping to experience samadhi absorptions in meditation. But now I don't think any Samadhi lasts forever so I think maybe I will have some Sama "don't" and this is not a feeling of absorption but likewise not having a good concentrated feeling is itself not a score card saying to fuss up experience again to get out of that Sama "don't" that seems to blanket the minds play.
Post meditation we feel a charge or not and what to do with it then? Trungpa in the lojong training the mind said to be a child of illusion post meditation, but I tend to be a more cautious child than many.
I think to some people, enlightenment is the goal and to some it is a necessary step towards the goal in the form of Right Understanding. In the first view, not many actually experience enlightenment and in the second, enlightenment is perfectly ordinary and just a way of seeing the universal world with many of us experiencing it as part of the process. As if it is much easier to finally understand than it is to live accordingly with all fetters cast aside and old habits re or de-conditioned. That of course takes practice and skill.
I first started thinking along these lines when I heard the Zen parable about rivers and mountains https://terebess.hu/zen/qingyuan.html
It is at the point where many people are too ashamed to admit seeing the dharma unless they can perfectly embody it while many others self proclaim enlightenment and don't live up to our expectations.
The wheel turns but is not as swift as could be.
I think we are all imperfect practitioners @david
It could be you're right. However nobody else could live exactly from your perspective. As far as seeing things from different angles is concerned, we hit the jackpot.
I believe I read somewhere a long time ago that when finding and studying black holes, scientists have a tricky time because they are not findable directly as nothing yet measurable can escape the event horizon. This causes them to be invisible against the backdrop of the blackness of space.
One of the techniques used to locate them is to view the surroundings for clues and distortions indicating a direction and triangulate to the emptiness they all point toward.
Since the black hole itself cannot be viewed straight on, the perspectives of the stuff around it are needed to guide the scientists.
Apparently this works because each thing they observe points from its own unique perspective to the same general location of emptiness. The more unique perspectives combined, the more accurate the map of the black hole's location.
Each unique perspective provides more of the missing data, more clues, a stronger picture which would be less without them.
It seems in living our own unique perspectives, we collectively become an extension of that which we indicate toward to any who look close enough to find.
Are you suggesting we make an enlightenment detector which works on data from a specially-trained cadre of mindfull observers? Sort of like a black hole detector which works on data from stars. For detecting enlightened ones at long distances.
I had one a while ago; it could be titled 'doing something different'.
Mrs Tosh never keeps still. She's like a shark, if she stops she dies. One consequence of this is that she's always in MY way around the house.
So on this one occasion I couldn't find my car keys. I'm running around the house looking for them and Mrs Tosh is blocking my way by being in the kitchen doorway. She let's me past. The keys aren't there, so I head for the living room, and wow, she's in the way again. Nope, they're not in the living room.
So I head for the passage that leads upstairs, and flip-me-sideways, she's in that doorway now, blocking my way, again; doesn't this woman ever stay in one place for a moment!!!!
Anger welling up inside me I stop, force a smile, and say "After you!", graciously offering a hand out in the direction of her travel. "Thank you" she says.
What might seem like a small thing was actually a massive internal win.
I ought to do stuff like this more often.
This is a pretty funny visual @Jeroen . I'm imagining a machine you stick your finger in and it tells you if you're enlightened or not with a red or green indicator.
Not trying to make the point for a detector so much as express an appreciation for many different perspectives working together. Like in seeking to find what is unable to be comprehended or expressed, we can look for the signs in the things we can comprehend and express. Since we are all on different places along the path, it helps to have multiple interpretations from various perspectives pointing in the same direction. Things such as the various schools and teachers, 10 ox herding pictures, Heart Sutra, koans, etc.
Just like the Buddha indicating which of his followers were strongest in certain forms of meditation or certain components of the 8FP and if I recall correctly, would direct individuals with specific challenges to specific practitioners since those practitioners saw from a particular perspective. Or how he taught variations of gradual training multiple times in slightly different ways across many Suttas.
Small is big, black is white, emptiness is full. Soon truth will be a lie … whatever next …
The harder we grasp, the more we have let go …
Good points from @FleaMarket, who may have it all totally wrong, which is a right … 😵💫
According to those who encounter me, I've never been quite right and they've never been quite wrong. Why start now?
sooner or later, with few exceptions, we realize that progression for progression sake is not progression. Then we really begin to move in the direction of progress.
Peace to All
Insightful. I'm recovering from a training injury; squats where my aim was to get as much weight on the bar as possible, progressing over time.
So I'd try to add 5kg every week or two, working at a 4 to 6 rep range where if I could do 6 reps, I'd add 5kg, which would take me back down to 4 reps, then work upto 6 by the next week, or week after that and then add another 5kg. I did this for about 8 months.
I was very much focussed on the numbers, rather than listening to my body and consequently I hurt my knees and haven't squatted in about two months now.
Progression for progression's sake has actually weakened me.
I did similar with meditation too, and turned it into a competitive sport using Insight Meditation Timer where other 'competitors' could see how long I'd been meditating for. I built up to an hour a day, sickened myself of it, and just stopped.
Next week I think the knees have recovered enough to start squatting again, but will I learn?
my progress: give up is an option. a problem might solve itself, but if not take the l or loss.
make friends outside your circle. you never know we might jive.
practice do make perfect. just hang in the struggle of effort in your life making life.
...with heart, things can get done. motivational love.
my next future progress is to realy know, take it easy expression means in mind,body,breath. ty ma earth for air, you are our mother, a mother of means to breathe in the good free gift.
and ty sidartha for your lion's roar, fearcly compassionate ohm. my lord of the 4th set prime liniage of transformer. and yea, rodimus prime will be a wonderful 5th set,lovingkind to us organis sam nature.
Enlightenment can send you mad, get you crucified, start religions, wars or just be eased into a warm bathing you have always been showered with.
In other, take it easy. Be sensible. Don't be too crazy before it is time for the hatters, haters and baiters ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajahn_Amaro
... Oh that Julian is quite a gal ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Ten_Thousand_Buddhas