Funny :)
Acutally, there are some variables which have to be set for enlightenment to occure, and it doesn't happen "without any reasons". In other words, you have to set up your mind to become capable of enlightenment, and then you reach it. But this isn't like reaching something, it's better like getting rid of something (no wonder that it's called riddance).
Egoless-ness is actually enlightenment itself. Abrahman Maslow worte about temporary enlightenment-experiences in such mental state where one actually doesn't perceive his/her ego and time at all. They only remember the event and the whole feelings and thoughts after it was finished, but they didn't experience it as "is happening currently with me" because there was no thought of "me" and "now" during the event. Keeping this state of mind 24/7 is what is basically called enlightenment.
So technically, enlightenment has to be prevented by egoless-ness, and that is the thing what you cannot reach by will. All what you act for by will is reached through the ego, hence the will for the egoless-ness cannot be attained. This is why not-acting and not-thinking (i.e. mindlessness) leads to the desired mental state for enlightenment. Let me put here down that "sitting and doing nothing just watching the wall" does not equal mindlessness. Mindlessness is about not attaching thoughts to the target of focus, and not about losing focus.
This is about the same paradox issue like self-consciousness. The more you know about the mind and the thoughts, the more you realize how impossible it is to become aware of ourselves. There is no "self" actually, yet we all experience it. Thus, there is no enlightenment, it's just that in the state of enlightenment, the awareness of the self dissolves into Nirvana, or Brahman, or whatever...
From another way, we could say that enlightenment is the mental state where we not only believe totally, but we know for absolute sure, that anything and everything is possible. Just think about how hard it is even to realize your convinctions and prejudice in some cases, not to mention to overcome them... No wonder that the book was talking about this issue on 300 pages, yet, it still stayed incomprehensible :)
I think the concept of enlightenment will always stay paradox and incomprehensible because it can only be understood with such wisdom that can only be attained through enlightenment itself. So you won't ever see a difference (like Buddha said: everyone's true nature is the buddha-nature). Eventually, we can say that there is only Nirvana and nothing else, and there is neither Nirvana, nor anything else.
Sure, as long as you believe "nothing" to be the opposite of "something", independent from observation, you'll find this difficult :)
Acutally, there are some variables which have to be set for enlightenment to occure, and it doesn't happen "without any reasons". In other words, you have to set up your mind to become capable of enlightenment, and then you reach it. But this isn't like reaching something, it's better like getting rid of something (no wonder that it's called riddance).
Egoless-ness is actually enlightenment itself. Abrahman Maslow worte about temporary enlightenment-experiences in such mental state where one actually doesn't perceive his/her ego and time at all. They only remember the event and the whole feelings and thoughts after it was finished, but they didn't experience it as "is happening currently with me" because there was no thought of "me" and "now" during the event. Keeping this state of mind 24/7 is what is basically called enlightenment.
So technically, enlightenment has to be prevented by egoless-ness, and that is the thing what you cannot reach by will. All what you act for by will is reached through the ego, hence the will for the egoless-ness cannot be attained. This is why not-acting and not-thinking (i.e. mindlessness) leads to the desired mental state for enlightenment. Let me put here down that "sitting and doing nothing just watching the wall" does not equal mindlessness. Mindlessness is about not attaching thoughts to the target of focus, and not about losing focus.
This is about the same paradox issue like self-consciousness. The more you know about the mind and the thoughts, the more you realize how impossible it is to become aware of ourselves. There is no "self" actually, yet we all experience it. Thus, there is no enlightenment, it's just that in the state of enlightenment, the awareness of the self dissolves into Nirvana, or Brahman, or whatever...
From another way, we could say that enlightenment is the mental state where we not only believe totally, but we know for absolute sure, that anything and everything is possible. Just think about how hard it is even to realize your convinctions and prejudice in some cases, not to mention to overcome them... No wonder that the book was talking about this issue on 300 pages, yet, it still stayed incomprehensible :)
I think the concept of enlightenment will always stay paradox and incomprehensible because it can only be understood with such wisdom that can only be attained through enlightenment itself. So you won't ever see a difference (like Buddha said: everyone's true nature is the buddha-nature). Eventually, we can say that there is only Nirvana and nothing else, and there is neither Nirvana, nor anything else.
Sure, as long as you believe "nothing" to be the opposite of "something", independent from observation, you'll find this difficult :)
Pathfinder, are you speaking from direct experience? Otherwise what you say is something you have read in books, heard from people, and accepted. Accepting something as the truth without experiencing it directly is a "religion like" behavior.
Please note I'm not saying you're not spiritual, I don't know you! I'm just saying that, speaking for myself, the only thing I can say is: I don't know a lot of things for sure in life!
That said, I could well believe that someone with no "spiritual" knowledge at all, someone who have never meditated, did yoga or prayed, may become enlightened. I could well believe that enlightenment may occure to someone who didn't seek it at all or didn't even know that term. Why not?
In fact, reading and "learning" about spirituality may well be the biggest pitfall on the spiritual path! What do I know! As you said, I probably can't even know what enlightenment really is or if it really exists.
Please note I'm not saying you're not spiritual, I don't know you! I'm just saying that, speaking for myself, the only thing I can say is: I don't know a lot of things for sure in life!
That said, I could well believe that someone with no "spiritual" knowledge at all, someone who have never meditated, did yoga or prayed, may become enlightened. I could well believe that enlightenment may occure to someone who didn't seek it at all or didn't even know that term. Why not?
In fact, reading and "learning" about spirituality may well be the biggest pitfall on the spiritual path! What do I know! As you said, I probably can't even know what enlightenment really is or if it really exists.
By direct experience do you mean to ask if I'm enlightened? I'm not :)
Is there any kind of knowledge in your mind now, any kind, which you did not read in books or documents written by someone else, heard from someone, or which is your own thought, but yet, still it is based on knowledge what you read or heard somewhere? Is there any kind of knowledge in you of which you can say that it's absolutely your own?
There is none.
What is experience? Do you really think that we may never accept anything without experiencing? Did you ever experience that poison kills you? Did you ever experience that sulphuric acid is actually a poison to your body? How do you know that it is?
Look, you can tell everyone about everything that it's just written, and that because of this, it's not acceptable for you. Mostly people strive for things which they do not have personal experiences about, but they think about it and while they can't confute it, they accept it. It's up to us how far we want to go in this thinking, and when do we reach a line where we say that this is too much beyond that which we can accept as reality.
You sometimes seem to me like if you'd be searching and searching, and you'd probably passed the answers you're looking for at least a dozen times, but you search so much for such a perfect and undeniable answer that you simply miss it.
It's not the extremes which hold perfection, the only perfection can possibly be found in the balance of the extremes altogether. But mostly what we need is not the perfect but the ideal. For you, as it seems from my point of view, the ideal means something what can be experienced instantly and totally, like some kind of a close encounter of the third kind :)
This is why we can't see perfection, why we can't understand the truth. We want the world to be ideal, not perfect, and we imagine this ideal world pretty precise. Yet, the world won't be like that. This is where suffering and pain begins. And what would spirituality stand for, if it doesn't even offer a riddance of suffering, or a reward for it? :)
We usually make mistake by imagining that the world has to exist without anything evil (and of course we like to determine what is evil); we imagine that the world has to offer eternity in some ways, like in some kind of spiritual life or something; we like to think that there are opposites without any gradient transition from one into the other, and that we can live our life best by addicting to one of them, and denying the other.
There are lots of mistakes we like to make, and we even hang on to these, we cherish them, we create stories and movies based on these ideas, and we fear a world in which all these would seem unreal. Hence we deny reality, we deny the truth, and whatever we may call spirituality, it's often just a cry out for our dreams to come true.
Is there any kind of knowledge in your mind now, any kind, which you did not read in books or documents written by someone else, heard from someone, or which is your own thought, but yet, still it is based on knowledge what you read or heard somewhere? Is there any kind of knowledge in you of which you can say that it's absolutely your own?
There is none.
What is experience? Do you really think that we may never accept anything without experiencing? Did you ever experience that poison kills you? Did you ever experience that sulphuric acid is actually a poison to your body? How do you know that it is?
Look, you can tell everyone about everything that it's just written, and that because of this, it's not acceptable for you. Mostly people strive for things which they do not have personal experiences about, but they think about it and while they can't confute it, they accept it. It's up to us how far we want to go in this thinking, and when do we reach a line where we say that this is too much beyond that which we can accept as reality.
You sometimes seem to me like if you'd be searching and searching, and you'd probably passed the answers you're looking for at least a dozen times, but you search so much for such a perfect and undeniable answer that you simply miss it.
It's not the extremes which hold perfection, the only perfection can possibly be found in the balance of the extremes altogether. But mostly what we need is not the perfect but the ideal. For you, as it seems from my point of view, the ideal means something what can be experienced instantly and totally, like some kind of a close encounter of the third kind :)
This is why we can't see perfection, why we can't understand the truth. We want the world to be ideal, not perfect, and we imagine this ideal world pretty precise. Yet, the world won't be like that. This is where suffering and pain begins. And what would spirituality stand for, if it doesn't even offer a riddance of suffering, or a reward for it? :)
We usually make mistake by imagining that the world has to exist without anything evil (and of course we like to determine what is evil); we imagine that the world has to offer eternity in some ways, like in some kind of spiritual life or something; we like to think that there are opposites without any gradient transition from one into the other, and that we can live our life best by addicting to one of them, and denying the other.
There are lots of mistakes we like to make, and we even hang on to these, we cherish them, we create stories and movies based on these ideas, and we fear a world in which all these would seem unreal. Hence we deny reality, we deny the truth, and whatever we may call spirituality, it's often just a cry out for our dreams to come true.
By direct experience do you mean to ask if I'm enlightened? I'm not :)
Is there any kind of knowledge in your mind now, any kind, which you did not read in books or documents written by someone else, heard from someone, or which is your own thought, but yet, still it is based on knowledge what you read or heard somewhere? Is there any kind of knowledge in you of which you can say that it's absolutely your own?
There is none.
Is there any kind of knowledge in your mind now, any kind, which you did not read in books or documents written by someone else, heard from someone, or which is your own thought, but yet, still it is based on knowledge what you read or heard somewhere? Is there any kind of knowledge in you of which you can say that it's absolutely your own?
There is none.
I think there are two different levels of knowledge here. One on which I think you have to accept some things you can't necessarily verify by yourself, and the second on which it can be dangerous to accept anything.
The first is the scientific level, which contains everything related to the physical world. For example, I do accept that man walked on the moon, even if I wasn't there to verify. I also accept that some drugs can cure some diseases, even if I don't understand exactly how.
The second level is the spiritual/religious level. On this level, I think it can be dangerous to believe anything without experiencing it by yourself. I think it's dangerous to accept something like "god exists" or "enlightenment exists" without knowing it by experience. It's so easy to say anything on those topics!
But of course I'm open to hear opinions of others on spiritual/religious topics and try what they say: yoga, praying, meditation, talking to god. But those have to be experiencing, you can't just say they are "the truth" or something similar just because you read it in some books or because your parents told you so!
Anyway, I like the taoism way of talking about the ultimate truth: it's not this and not that. Is it a God? No. Is it your soul? No. Remove all concept and the truth may be there. You don't have to accept anything, in fact it's quite the opposite.
For you, as it seems from my point of view, the ideal means something what can be experienced instantly and totally, like some kind of a close encounter of the third kind :)
Yes.
This is why we can't see perfection, why we can't understand the truth. We want the world to be ideal, not perfect, and we imagine this ideal world pretty precise. Yet, the world won't be like that.
Again, you speak like you are really sure of what you say. Maybe the world will be like that. The fact is I don't know!
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Then the books continue for 300 pages about what enlightenment is, about yoga, about meditation and about other ways to reach it! :-)