Being fed up with all things spiritual
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
This morning I woke up with a deep sense of dissatisfaction over all things spiritual. I often do my meditation in the morning, but today I did not feel like it at all. Maybe it was the dream I had (about trying to catch a group of mice and hamsters with my bare hands) but even reading spiritual books made me feel repulsed.
I tried thinking of Papaji, of Nisargadatta, of Osho, and none of it felt like it was of any worth. It was as if in the night there I had communed with some deep part of myself, and it had told me, these things were not proper guides. And there was an emotional reaction on my part, I believed and actually felt something real about this.
Once someone in a similar mood went to see Nisargadatta, and he said it was a valuable state in which deep work could be done. Oh the irony, that a valueless piece of writing should be giving me advice.
Comments
What do you think it means, this mood? I very rarely have feelings of this type, once every half decade or so, and I think they are significant. A sense of dissatisfaction, repulsion, almost disgust can be a kind of sickness, I think it would be wise to pay attention.
My first reaction when reading the OP was to say that maybe (!) there is another area of life which warrants your attention at this time, instead of spirituality.
The other option, which comes to mind now, is that you might have overdone something, such as reading, etc.
Hard to say really, a few thoughts come to mind though.
Its likely something that has been building up. It could be an emotion from elsewhere in your life that is bleeding over. It says more about your particular relation with spirituality, or these forms of spirituality, than spirituality itself. I've learned from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and taking cold showers that doing things you find valuable and beneficial even when you don't feel emotionally motivated to do so has value.
I think that a meditation practice is a beckoning to the disassembly of our ego based identity.
If one's meditation has been limited to specific externals factors (like moods) then that process of disassembly will inevitably lead you to whatever attachments keep that ego structure still standing.
What you call a dissatisfying mood is actually what your practice has been beckoning to.
This dissatisfying mood is your teacher, either as the limit of how far into the deconstruction you are currently prepared to venture into..or the door through which such limitations can be transcended.
One of the primary reasons for setting up and keeping to a formal meditation schedule is to help us move that practice beyond the limitations of our likes and dislikes.
I suspect your current dissatisfaction holds the potential of deeper meditative depths beyond what you have yet to have experienced.
This seems unlikely. My life is about as low-stress as it is possible to get. Apart from the mouse.
It is a purely subjective experience, but it was quite powerful. Good point though that it relates to how I had been approaching spirituality.
It isn’t so much that I wasn’t ’emotionally motivated’, it was like that repulsion, that disgust was making me feel ill just thinking about it.
Very interesting.
I agree, but I am tempted to see it as an indication that further spirituality in the way I had been approaching it is harmful to me at present. I was thinking of halting all spiritual reading for a good long while.
Perhaps. My meditative practice has been quite minimal for a while, just ten minute sessions at irregular intervals, but I have been having energy experiences often and lengthily, sometimes for hours a day, which may be associated with spiritual reading. So we can toss all that into a pot and call it regular spiritual activity.
Certainly today has been quieter, spiritually, than for a long time.
W> @Jeroen said:
Welcome to Samsara's waves of Dukkha ....This too shall pass...You just need to ride them out....
I experience something similar from time to time - not a sense of repulsion but a sense that I am just reading the same repetitive thing over and over again, nuanced in various ways, but the same thing nonetheless, and that I need to stop reading it and focus completely on what's going on under my nose - a return to real mindfulness, "not dependent on words and letters"
I am wondering if this might sometimes be related to some of what can happen in the mind just prior to sudden enlightenment. The mundane vs the spiritual : an artificial duality sensed so strongly that there is an emotional reaction against the very existence of this imaginary duality, and if the reaction is powerful enough, then Wham! The mind is propelled into an entirely different plane, a plane where neither exists.
Very speculative, of course, but something to keep in mind?
Yes, that was definitely an element of it, that all these guru’s whose satsangs I was reading were essentially saying the same thing, that I didn’t need to read it again. For me there wasn’t a sense that I needed to do anything positive, just that I needed to stop looking at spirituality.
Bill Gates has finally succeeded in getting microchips implanted in you. They replicated inside your body and now all acted in unison. It was all part of the plan all along. Now you will start fulfilling your assigned tasks. Your spiritual journey is over. You’re an automaton now.
We hope you’ll still stay on NB and send reports.
Or looked at another way, if it wasn’t Bill Gates or drone birds, maybe it was a galactic ripple in the cosmos. Or a microscopic ripple in YOUR cosmos.
It does seem actually very interesting to suddenly have a new uninvited lens through which to see things. By all means check it out. Besides spirituality there may be other things that will look different now. See where it takes you. Some of the best opportunities are (seemingly) random, sudden.
Yeah it’s certainly more than a little against character. The feeling also vanished after about 15 minutes. The agents of the Matrix have taken me over, obviously. But after ten years of immersing myself in it, the signs couldn’t be more clear. The universe decided to hit me over the head with a big club of emotion.
I’ve decided to take a break from spirituality — reading, writing, meditation, practice, discussing, Buddhism, guru’s, nonduality, everything. Until further notice.
I’m hoping @how is right and there will be more to follow.
There is so much on New Buddhist besides the Buddhism that I’ll keep up the morning visits, but I may not contribute as much. An occasional report I can manage though.
I think it was Nisargadatta who said something like-
Fed up?
Good news!
Still and excited?
Good news.
Giving up but still ...
Or as they say ... "Mind the moves, not the movement" ...
Have a great day everyone
Which reminds me of ...
He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears
~Michel de Montaigne~
Spiritual and mundane are not separate.
Your spiritual journey is necessarily interconnected with your day to day real world of just living. Your spiritual practice can be seperated from your mundane, worldly affairs but each will none-the-less affect the other. In melding the mundane, the material, with the spiritual, you grow and advance. In separating mundane from the spiritual, you will reach stalemate.
Being honest about it, I dropped the whole concept of religion in any form some time ago. Instead for a few years now I have been searching through the words of those who are held to be enlightened, in a search for truth and freedom. These of course included the Buddha, but also people like Papaji, Osho, UG Krishnamurti, and others.
It was Osho who said, religion is largely a product of the priests, with only its deepest roots in the resonant concepts of enlightened sages. Therefore, don’t be a Buddhist, but be a Buddha. And if you have to ask ‘how’ that just shows you are still in the clutches of the mind. Just trust that you are a Buddha and let go.
I was considering freedom a while ago, and I realised one of the great things about the words of the enlightened was that they make you more free. Freedom from conditioning, from illusion, from desire, from clinging, even from the spiritual search itself. Freedom is the natural consequence of letting go of clinging in all its forms.
What is left in the end is certain core principles, like Love, Truth and Being. These seem to function like rudders guiding your essence.
This reminds me of a feeling I've held about spirituality. I've engaged with it at a character level rather than a personality level, if that makes any sense.
Yes it does, character is a layer deeper than personality which is more superficial. In the same way, engaging with the words of the enlightened is a deeper level than being part of a religion.
But in a way, that is also a hazard. Taking in a lot of powerful concepts from different sources can be confusing. That means, not taking in too much, taking it lightly where appropriate, meditating on where your personal emphasis lies, are all important.
For me, freedom from conditioning was a good starting point. Science, materialism, skepticism, the democratic left, eco-activism, Christianity are all prevalent sources of conditioning worth examining closely.
I have slowly been dipping a toe back in the water. I’ve noticed what I react strongly against is directives — that one should do this or that. I’ve in the past been reasonably quick to agree with things, but now I feel as if that has loaded certain facets of my mind with too much ‘stuff’.
Spiritual books often have an element of showing you what you should do, if only by telling you how great it would be if you could do… in these kinds of cases I am going to go slower, taking more time to read books and preserve my own standpoint while I read.
But I think reading the words of the enlightened, and listening to them, is where I will start.
You think? Like this?
https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-your-brain-is-doing-when-youre-not-doing-anything-20240205/
... or maybe some other arrangement?
The most common sand trap on life's fairway is found in the thoughts & feelings that we identify with. Much of a Buddhist practice is just learning how to progress around such traps rather than continually falling into one after another of them.
And there's the trap!
You’re right of course that if you just go with what you already thought then you’ll never learn anything from books and what would be the point in reading? But what I am getting at is that the correct approach to reading books is synthesis, not accepting immediately what the book says, nor rejecting it and keeping your opinion intact.
That's the problem. Your opinion.
My guru told me that true devotion was an open heart. In Buddhist parlance, this is the same as open mind. Clinging to an opinion, keeping it intact, as you say, is not having an open heart. This will present difficulties, making attainment of the path all the more difficult.
Having an open heart is not simply blind acceptance of what is written. The correct approach is synthesis between what you feel to be true, and the truth of what is written.
No, that's really not it at all. You never mentioned "blind acceptance" until now, and my guru wasn't talking about that.
You seem to have an issue with it. You should work on that before you start digging into the teachings of enlightened masters.
What you "feel" to be true is nonsense. Your belief and feeling has nothing to with anything. In fact, the only thing you need feelings for is lovemaking.
What is written is often not true, that is the first thing to be examined. Then if you can find a spark of what’s true in it, you need to test it against your own understanding of that subject. Only then can you accept it.
That is still being open to change. It just slows down the process of reading.
Really. You know this because ........
Seeing as you've written an awful lot on this board, should we consider it untrue? Of course not, but based on what you said, it would make perfect sense to simply disregard everything you've written as falsehood. Right?
There's nothing wrong with a critical eye towards what you read, but that doesn't mean you start from the standpoint of untruth and go from there. If something is not true, then it is not true and nothing changes that. It's like pouring syrup on a pile of dog poo and calling it a stack of pancakes. You can call it whatever you want, but the fact remains it's a pile of dog poo. With an open mind, you have no opinion. You let the reading take you where it will.
There is actually a form of meditation you can use with reading wisdom texts. It's called analytical meditation. It allows you to test what you're learning. It's especially useful in studies of writings or teachings on emptiness - a difficult subject and AM really helps.
There's a mountain of information out there. Much of it contradictory. Without a skeptical mind, one is likely to be blown this way and that, taking on whatever one has been most recently exposed to.
More than that though a thorough and true understanding of most topics requires multiple points of view. Its like my avatar picture, "how something appears is always a matter of perspective."
I've been around enough spiritual teachings and at times have heard highly respected and realized teachers say obviously mistaken things to the point where I test the information I'm taking in, as a goldsmith would.
Tee Hee! Thank god I am always silent, with never an opinion on ... oh wait ... That sure ain't me.
I can not be convinced I am right. I do know when I am wrong [lobster engages mind to keyboard and rants some more ...]
I like the gold standard of analytical meditation brought up. Used in Nyingma Tantra incidentally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Who_Say_"Ni!"
You can of course do so, and it would probably be good for you. One persons understanding of what is written is not necessarily the same as another, and so one person may see truth where another sees falsehood. Just reading things casually becomes unhealthy at a certain point.
Indeed. That is more or less where I ended up.
Let's have a few examples?
Penor Rinpoche's claim that tobacco originated from a demon is something specific that has stayed with me. Other things come more in the form of sloppy thinking that gets passed off as definitive truths.
https://www.lotsawahouse.org/tibetan-masters/jigdral-tutop-lingpa/pith-instruction-to-abstain-from-tobacco
Or I could go back to teachings that place hell at a depth below the surface of the earth at such a distance as to place it all the way out the other side and into space. A general attitude that gives credence to the idea that the Buddha's teachings on Mount Meru has some sort of basis in reality, maybe on a grander scale than Earth though.
Did you consult Rinpoche, or did you simply dismiss the teaching out of hand because you disagree with what you read?
I know the PR died in 2009. You could consult his lineage holder for clarification. Or you could simply dismiss the teaching. Which is the wiser course?
You see, this is where the guru comes in. They hold the keys to oral instructions. You can study solo, without guidance, and achieve some understanding. But chances are, you'll miss the point entirely.
I mean, the history of tobacco is pretty clear. This teaching on tobacco is presented as a revealed teaching, (a terma) and taught as if its real. I think its an example of why the Buddha himself taught to test the teachings rather than take them in as a matter of trust or respect in the teacher.
I'd also add that there is an important distinction between being skeptical and cynical. Skeptical has a test to be passed, a bar to be cleared, it simply demands some level of proof. Cynical stubbornly rejects claims, there's no openness.
Termas are generally like that, and they sometimes run contrary to mundane knowledge. That does not mean they're untrue. It means you lack understanding of what's being taught. How many termas have you read? If there's a Shambhala center near you, go there and see if you can get a look at Trungpa's terma, the Sadhana of Mahamudra.
I'm pretty sure that PR didn't care about the history of tobacco. Nor does the terma he discovered.
You refer to the Kalama Sutra, right? The teaching of the KS presents specific guidelines how to test a teaching. He did not leave that to our whim.
I've always felt that what passes for skepticism is more of an excuse to not commit yourself.
One last, when you were in high school, they taught the Speed of Light. 186,000 miles per second. You believe that, right? Did you test that? It's right up there with Pi as important numbers go. Deserves testing, right? With the right equations, you could probably figure it out with the calculator on your cell phone. Have you done that?
I care. From my perspective its fine and good to have metaphoric teachings that teach an important lesson. I'm a big fan of fantasy and fiction that tell deeper truths. I care, because not being able to distinguish reality from fantasy in a relatively harmless situation as the tobacco teaching creates a state of mind that is more vulnerable to harmful fantasy. Think of how objectionable some modern Christian beliefs are and how gullible its followers are in believing them.
There is a certain amount of trust one has to put in knowledge others have come to. I do have faith in the scientific process. I have come to be much more skeptical these days of scientific reporting and individual studies. A rough rubric that I think makes sense is that 90% of what appears in science textbooks is right and 90% of what appears in science journals is wrong or incomplete.
I did spend the formative part of my Buddhist life in Tibetan Buddhism. I've sat at the feet for many hours of Geshes, Rinpoches and college professors. I've come to believe that their words are in fact not the words of a perfect teacher. That in spite of often considerable knowledge and realization they are still human and subject to flaws and misunderstandings. There is a lot I have to learn from them, but taking it in unquestioningly I think is a mistake.
So, @IdleChater, do you believe that tobacco originated from a demon? Among South American shamans the spirit of the tobacco plant is known to be a powerful protector, that too is ‘revealed knowledge’, is it any less valid than that of the rinpoche?
I think this is the crux of the problem. Its a struggle in the modern world when we have access to so many perspectives. Its a blind men and elephant problem, and we're not always sure there even is an elephant!
No. But I'm not dismissing Rinpoche's teaching because of that, either. But it's not a question of belief.
Buddhism isn't defined by anyone's belief. Truth is not defined by anyone's belief.
If someone takes umbrage over a literal statement without going to the source for clarification, they have a much bigger problem than a lack of understanding.
Can you explain what you mean here. It reads to me like you're saying you do reject the teaching on the origin of tobacco, but then you say you don't dismiss it.
Do you mean you don't take the origin of tobacco literally, but still value the metaphorical or moral message of the teaching? Or something else?
But what is true? Is something true simply because its Buddhist? What about all the other religion's claims to truth?
That's a pretty high bar not to reject or question a teaching unless you can talk directly to the person who said it.
Sounds like you are spinning your truth into a cocked hat.
It is one of the things I have trouble with in Tibetan Buddhism, that they accept things like demons and protector spirits as having real shared, worldwide relevance. My understanding of these things is that they have only a limited, personal sphere of influence, that you may encounter them in meditation or a dream but that in the end they too are conditioned phenomena.
Ofttimes a craftsman/woman engulfed in his or her act of creation is profoundly more spiritual than the "spiritual" acts so reverently performed by others. What makes this so is that the craftsman's work is a pure act of his/her soul or heart, caught i the selfless wonder of the creation, of the act. The spiritual acts are too often acts of habit or necessity where the meaning and/or true purpose are ignored or forgotten. Instead of being an act of seking or clensing, it is a heavy chore. The tending of a garden by an acolite may be either just another chore or a pure loving act of bringing forth life and caring for nature. It is the heart, the mind which makes an act a chore or spititual, painful or rewading, a step down, a wall or a step up.
Peace to alll
For example, look at the history of Dorje Shugden, a protector spirit of the Gelug school. Prior to 1930 he was held to be a minor spirit, but certain proponents within Gelug made his worship central and eventually some said he was a fully enlightened being. I mean, it’s all very woo-woo, made up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorje_Shugden
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorje_Shugden_controversy
I luvs the woo-woo chew-chew or train as she is sometimes dogmatised.
As a Buddha myself. Not necessarily at all times and in all sciences/seances or saturated suttras, I know a thing or 108 about how to unchange my mind set.
[smoking buddha disproves this message]
You seem to have a real bug up your backside about this protector business.
How much do you actually know about them? Do you know what they actually are and what their function is? I kinda doubt it. I think it's one of those things where you have pretty much made up your mind and are content to use it as a cudgel to beat on Tibetan Buddhism, which, BTW, I suspect you know very little about as well.
Have I pretty much got that right?
PS: Protectors, or "Dharmapalas", are deities not spirits. Like Avalokiteshvara.
Actually, I used to study at a Gelug Temple and made some good friends there. Although the subject of deities, spirits, whatever you choose to call them, did not come up at the time.
And it shouldn't have. Dharmapalas are tantric deities - Vajrayana - and the practices surrounding them are esoteric.
So I gotta ask, and with all due respect, why are you discussing something you seem to know little or nothing about except for what you got from Wikipedia?
And it's not what you, or I choose to call them. They are Deities.
From what I have read @Jeroen perhaps you should steer clear of Tibetan Buddhism or any path that has "woo woo" as you disparagingly term it. From my understanding (and I am happy to be corrected if I'm wrong, and that's a possibility as I am no expert) Zen and Western/Secular Buddhist paths do not have devas or deities.
After all, the Buddha did not demand people accept his teachings blindly but to test them for themselves. I think the fact there are so many different Buddhist paths in existence are testament to the fact people took that advice. Wouldn't it be better to find a path suited to you rather than try to fit a square peg into a round hole and be so frustrated?
I say this while I too am reassessing my current path in Buddhism.