abrakamowse

@charlie2dogs Thank you very much for your response. Very rich and it makes a lot of sense. There are like 2 schools of thought (or that I heard) that one says you have to do nothing to become enlightened, because we are already it, but we can't perceive it. And another one which says you have to make the best effort until you realize that there's nothing you can do and you surrender really (not your personality surrendering, like a fake surrender) and when you really surrender you get enlightenment. What do you think about that, I really would like to know what to do, or not - do. Thanks for your time! I appreciate it.

Maybe this extract from Suzuki's book can be of help to understand better. "If you discriminate too much, you limit yourself. If you are too demanding or too greedy, your mind is not rich and self-sufficient. If we lose our original self-sufficient mind, we will lose all precepts. When your mind becomes demanding, when you long for something, you will end up violating your own precepts: not to tell lies, not to steal, not to kill, not to be immoral, and so forth. If you keep your original mind, the precepts will keep themselves." Suzuki from "Beginner's Mind Zen Mind"

@charlie2dogs Interesting. Is it possible that people call that way when you begin "walking the path" like "levels to enlightenment" but they are not really levels?

A fancy name for Enlightenment?

Yeah, I am becoming more "not attached" to thinking lately and not identified with thinking, thanks to Leo's videos and Zazen meditation that I am doing right now. I had an experience of no-identity and I was so shocked that I went to the hospital because I thought I was mad. I didn't have any guidance so that's what I thought. Now I am realizing that it was a true experience. After that I lost a lot of fear, actually I would like to repeat the experience to see if fear is still there.

@Mal Anyway I appreciate what you are telling me. I know I need more meditation to begin to understand better. Thanks!

Because of my fears?

Ok, thanks @Mal for the advice. I have that problem, always... I am afraid or scared that if I don't understand something logically I can go crazy, really. That makes me overthink too much. Thanks again! I will check Charlie's posts!

I think after that I will stop writing in the forum... Lol I will just observe

I know, I am beginning to grasp something but I realize that I "forget" things I read... and it's like I need to read them again and again. And I keep forgetting it again and again... I will just meditate.

Ok, I got it... hehehehe... I am actually doing sitting meditation at Zendo NYC... so I will need some thousand of hours more to grasp it.

Nothingness I meant "Śūnyatā" (from wikipedia) Śūnyatā (Sanskrit; Pali: suññatā), translated into English as emptiness, voidness, openness, spaciousness, or vacuity, is a Buddhist concept which has multiple meanings depending on its doctrinal context. In Theravada Buddhism, suññatā often refers to the not-self (Pāli: anattā, Sanskrit: anātman) nature of the five aggregates of experience and the six sense spheres. Suññatā is also often used to refer to a meditative state or experience. Śūnyatā is a key term in Mahāyāna Buddhism, and also influenced some schools of Hindu philosophy.

Really?

Free will is an illusion, logically. You don't need to be enlightened to understand it. Your ego thinks the source (or nature, or the universe, GOD, the I AM, etc...) is just watching. He (the source) is doing everything. The concept of nothingness is not that there's nothing at all, it means that from nothing everything comes, and nothing and everything is all. So we are nothing and everything. But maybe I am wrong. I just wanted to add it so Leo corrects me if I am wrong.

I didn't experience what you are experiencing in meditation, but I had experienced that in a dream and while I was about to wake up. Once I had a dream where I was like energy, but I was alone. I didn't get scared at that moment because I had an experience of no identity that scared the hell out of me. But after I began to learn about emptiness and no-self I began to understand more clearly. Remember that is not you who is scared, your ego is scared of that experiences. And that experiences are preparing you to accept reality. IMO.

hahahaha

I read sometime ago a book, a political book from Saul Alinksy, "Rules for Radicals" and he says a lot of things that make sense to all this we are talking about. And he talks about how when USA was needing allies the USSR was not viewed as a bad thing, then when the "enemy" (Hitler's Germany) was defeated, then the cold war began and the USSR again become a bad thing. So, we change our "morality" (I am talking at a political/government level) depending on the situation. And also studying myself I realized that sometimes I don't apply the same judgement on different situations and we are not even aware of it. Our way of making judgements also varies depending on the situations, if we know the person, we don't judge ourselves the way we judge others and we judge those that we feel more empathy differently than those others that we see them as different. It's hard to be a judge, that's why I gave up judging.

This one is pretty good... http://existentialcomics.com/comic/51

@piotr Lol... good one... :-P I found this one... hehehe

@ChimpBrain I also would like to clarify that I don't grasp the concept completely. I just understand it through a new logic I developed, but is still my ego trying to understand lol... It's good to talk about this topics that is so hard sometimes to talk to people who are not seekers.

I was having a good day that day hehehehe

@ChimpBrain no problem hehehehe... sometimes our minds are programmed to see things in certain way, and we give different meanings to same words. It's tricky, I know. It is still an idea that I understand from an spiritual point of view, but I think it can't be applied until the whole humanity had a shift in consciousness.

Where did he say that? I think he discouraged people from harming people, but he didn't say a criminal shouldn't go to jail. Or maybe I am wrong...