Aakash

if i said its the very fact that you are aware, that is enlightenment. what would you say to me?

# the different degrees of knowing! # enlightenednotenlightened #roadtobuddahhood #excusemecaniorderonecupofthehighestconsciousnesspossible this is the biggest mindfuck i've ever come across in my life "how do you know that what you know is true"

YES enlightenment does solve all your problems just not the level of enlightenment that is easy to obtain you can start working on yourself now and make things better; but looking to solve your problems using enlightenment is not a practical solution to say the least. you'll be fishing in the ocean for a single fish. so i would just take the odds to use personal development work to solve your issue. but nonetheless it can help with understanding the problem of why you are suffering in more clear detail. overall the answer is both yes and no.

it is basically how to live a good life whilst awake, what have all of you decided to do with that awareness (ps. i know theres nothing to do really, i'm just curious about all your thoughts)

OMG thats actually the funniest thing, its the 2nd fetter aswell ! You my friend, have made me see so clearly today. dude theres only one way to find out which spiritual teacher found the deepest insight, you have to take all teachings WORLDWIDE to its pinnacles you can never know except in your direct experience whether buddah had reached perfect enlightenment. you can never know if there is a teacher who had a better consciousness but literally YOU as the awareness you are can never know unless you try everything out. to get the deepest flavour of knowing!

@winterknight yup okay totally agree with you. i didn't know the part about the advance development bit, and i totally am an exception. i did self-inquiry for 6 years and 4 of those years i didn't know i was doing it. so i can see how that happened thank you

@Leo Gura @sleepyj i think i've just realised that this is the whole problem with epistamology how do you know that what you know is truth you can't ever know, until all the questions you've ever thought about asking are answered. and even then how do you know you have asked all the questions what you know isn't absolute by any standards even if you say the truth has to be even if the truth hasn't been explored to its fullest degree how do you know the buddah experienced the highest consciousness or was he just a symbol for the fact that the highest consciousness is infinity how do you reach infinity and stop at infinity the answer is you don't. you can never know and thats why enlightened masters always refine their techniques.

will certainly update if i come across a crazy realisation or something. thank you for your help

@winterknight i totally agree with you, in a sense yes i am talking about a system like the eight fold path because self-inquiry doesn't ensure that you develop in this way. it ensures that you find the true nature of the self which is the buddah nature in my opinion. yes other hindu systems exsist, but how comes self-inquiry (the method itself, while doing it) isn't able to encorporate such values and beliefs. to me its pure direct cut to the truth. but enlightenment doesn't garuntee development or maturation of the self and the method of self inquiry does not either. where as the method of reaching your buddahood has it incorporated into the structure as a whole. i guess what i'm really asking if enligthenment is enlightenment without any distinction is the end of self inquiry the same as reaching buddahnature? or does it exclude the development in certain areas.

@sleepyj my brother; that was a classical piece of literature. i can't complain or argue with that. This is why the only solution for me was to seek out enlightened master, maybe this term means buddahood, and so i will accept that i am deluding myself for the time being. thats the things with degree of enlightenments that your not even sure where your at! thank you for this debate, i really enjoyed myself and getting to hear your points of view. do you have any questions to ask me?

@Joseph Maynor lol thats a good way to put it, but i'm not trying to use the language, i'm trying to point to the actual thing. so does that make it buddahood/ enlightenment is my question

sorry about that i'm done editting it

non duality = there is not two but one true nonduality = there is only [must be left blank because the word is only a pointer] words would include nothingness, emptiness, awareness, consciousness so true nonduality is the true self the true self is buddahood for me, the true self is the thing that you are, the only thing that is real in reality the thing that the one is made from without any distinctions being made what this thing is, is your true nature but you can know it to many degrees the different degrees are the different degrees of enlightenment nonetheless the way we define enlightenment as seekers is a realising or recognising of the true self the very thing that i am. to recognise it you have to quite the mind is this not buddahood?

i get why self inquiry is the royal road to enlightenment now; but theres one thing i don't get, why is it that even though enlightenment is finding the true self that self-inquiry enlightenment doesn't match up to buddahood in comparison terms? i agree you find the same awareness in both methods but buddhist traditions overall have a more structured embodiment system that you just can't get with self-inquiry what's your thoughts on this?

@sleepyj i would say i only have fetters 7 and 9 that get me, but even then its because i haven't read much about the fettas and understand them that this is only a quick judgement. and maybe recently with 8 because of my realisation itself. but my point still stands, i think you can become an enlightened individual without going to complete buddahood. buddhahood is a lifestyle in my opinion, sure the consciousness levels there are crazy high and in time with the present moment. but you can become enlightened on different level. still there must be one thing that holds enlightenment in place is the realisation of the self.

@Jkris they're basically categories of delusions that one can trance themselves in becoming attached to these delusions is what causes suffering and therefore the 10 fettas are about suffering and working your way through each fetter completely ensures that your delusion doesn't come back, because by its own nature its falsehood. reality is like an illusion creating machine so to speak, anything you think of with your mind will turn into an attachment and delusion will follow, even before the attachment the delusion comes the fetters destroy the mind and the illusion that is the mind and thats the end of individual self, well supposedly, because mind insinuates there is a seperate self. without a mind there wouldn't be thought, emotions, feelings, past , present , future, now, words, language, object , a subject, distance, time , space, attachment, duality. there wouldn't be any of this. revealing how the minds function works shed light on it. but becoming a mind without attachments is for masters of enlightenment

yes i have cleared the first fetter, many people on this forum have. personally, i have realised the true self. however, if i had to put it in fetters terms, no way have i cleared many of the fetters and still ignorance will get me at many turns. but either way in the end the delusion is still a delusion and the self remains the self ... hence the reason i wrote this post on how to become an enlightened MASTER. i haven't embodied the values really well on my journey, still remanents of the self remain but i don't doubt that i have realised buddah nature so to speak. maybe that makes me a bodisattva. question: can you explain the 2nd fetter to me.

@sleepyj THANKS i've always been wondering the dynamics of the fetters, i couldn't grasp them but now i totally understand, its amazing the realisation your giving me right now and how deep the attachment to things can go. i guess arhat means perfect buddah then, just like enlightenment and then theres enlightened masters. the buddah himself had to make a path to perfect his enlightenment would you say a person can become enlightened without going through a complete ego death or reaching the stage of arhat? by enlightened i mean understand the true nature of self i think i also magically understand why leo goes through so much self-deception checks to make sure he's not creating any

@cetus56 that video is amazing! point-proven right there, just have to find your thing! CHICKEN IN THE CORN

@sleepyj wow those were very nice insights, i tried to follow the eight noble paths just for the past week, there was an incident where i had been lying (a very old lie from months ago) that became back to haunt me. i told the truth for this very reason of the path and i came to understand that i didn't have to worry about it anymore, you articulate your words very wisely, you must really have studied buddhist tradition wholeheartedly. are you by any chance an arhat yourself?

@Joseph Maynor i agree, its like the end of the hero's journey returning back home, I couldn't see this part of the journey whilst i was wound up trying to save the world, and rid the world of its low consciousness. i used to think that it was the job of enlightened people to do something extraordinary like the buddah. as for the hero's journey part. i always wondered why the hero never went back to the village and spread the word about this amazing adventure and the trials and tribulations a person went through. but now i understand better after leo's video of what a cult is and i'm much better off for it. the end of the true hero's journey was at the end of the journey. when he went back to the village there was no need for him to start another journey because he became fulfilled and content with the journey he had already been on , he had fought the dragon or found the holy grail. this is synonymous with the master then returning to normal life and then as the master of his skill set. if a student were to ask for help, he would guide them. not because he knows best and went and sought out the opportunity to teach the younger generation but because the younger generation helped seek him out or he sets up a dojo a place for those who seek to come to him in guidance of the skill.

@cetus56 @Jack River i'm keeping a word document of everything people say for my journey :') i've written your helpful comments and insights about creativity and carlos santos on there! thank you so much.

@sleepyj i am leaving the forum to master the presence of awareness/nothingness ( i am pure awareness, but more i mean master a particular lifestyle) after today for a good while, i have been on here for 2 months daily. so i would like to hear your opinion on each of them to soak up as much wisdom as possible if you have the time. the first one i would like to hear about is correct speech and correct mindfulness

@ajasatya Thank you dear friend i will most certainly read it as much is needed to understand the book genuinely.

@Shadowraix A life of non duality, sitting neither side of the fence. and recently i've started to think that its a quite mind. i normally use the mind the react to social situations and thats about it, then intellectually to do my work