ajasatya

you still want teachings. you want better teachers. let me tell you a little secret. nobody will come to save you. you want something for your mind to chew. you want a mental comprehension of Reality. i have bad news for you. that ain't happening. there's no ultimate authority other than your own direct experience. you can read the entire bible. you can read all zen literature. you can listen to all spiritual speeches that have ever existed on this planet. nothing will happen. jesus himself could appear in front of you right now and tell you everything he knows. that wouldn't do shit. sit down and stop demanding. what are you? nobody needs your answers and your ignorance is nobody else's fault. where the hell have i dropped my keisaku?

to be honest, i saw it happening at the very moment i finished watching this video, which was the first video i watched from you. why'd i know that? because i could feel your unstoppable thirst. a real Hearth of God looking for the Fire. i know that you won't feel complete peace until you do it. there will always be this silent voice coming from your heart. if you really manage to perform this huge leap and quit the shit out of everything to get enlightened, and if you actually do get enlightened, that'd be the perfect situation. i've being thinking for quite a while that the best way to serve Truth after enlightenment is doing something like adyashanti does. he organizes retreats in which people have no option other than doing the real work. wish you the best.

no. you're on track. keep going. if you say that Reality just is and that separation is a concept, then what is it that says "my skandhas"? what is it that possesses skandhas? you don't have to verbalize an answer. you don't have to answer it here. just contemplate the question and go further. it is one of the biggies. but be careful not to think that you're done. if you notice true enlightened masters, you'll see that they completely embody Truth. they think, speak and act naturally accordingly to their insights. their moral behavior is straightforward, clean and compassionate. they move their bodies gracefully in calm and relaxed ways. the more i read and meditate, the more i appreciate the term self-mastery that @Leo Gura uses. for me, it feels like becoming a servant of Truth.

hello, @Michael119! my experiences come easier when i am alone, not necessarily sad or depressed. i had one peak experience when i was deeply sad/depressed/anxious. that peak experience felt like an ego breakdown. are you judging your solitude with negative labels? i wouldn't! solitude is a blessing. trash culture tells us that being alone is wrong and that we should feel bad about it. are you being caught by that trap?

i laughed out loud when i noticed myself using the reputation button on your comment. but i'd agree with that decision. and @Leo Gura, your discernment has impressed me again. this forum is a true gem on the internet right now.

as soon as we start looking for mistakes of "others" we dive deeper and deeper into ignorance.

@Milos Uzelac i am mysteriously feeling very happy for you

during my last 2 years i've performed a lot of different yoga practices: kundalini yoga hatha yoga raja yoga bakti yoga and this is how i've been shaping my life: i practice kundalini yoga everytime i have the chance in some open event i practice bakti yoga mainly in my spare time. the mahamantra melts my heart very easily. my practice of raja yoga is equivalent to my zen practice (zazen), which i perform every monday hatha yoga is the one that requires true mastery for me, so i am preparing my body to become a teacher. the process involves a lot of physical pain because i am healing my shortened muscles slowly. i am already 28 so it takes quite a while. hatha yoga also involves deep knowledge of human anatomy so i have to read and practice a lot to test things in me before i can teach. when i feel like i'm ready for an yoga teaching course, i'll do it. but this is not my main income. recently i've entered a masters degree in computer science and i'm working towards becoming an university teacher. i'll be a professor with perfect health. these are my aims: becoming a zen master becoming an yoga teacher becoming a professor here a cool video i found yesterday.

@Lauritz i've been almost exactly where you've been (im a computer scientist though). i did quit the job and experienced other things. let's be honest here: finding a job is pretty easy if we're competent enough. i thought about permaculture too but in the end i choose the yoga path. don't be afraid. if you have doubts about your life, think how it'd be like to know that you were going to die in 2 months from now.

@S33K3R it is certainly a phase, since enlightenment requires such a strong commitment. but it's the practitioner's responsibility to find his own balance otherwise he'd be practicing some sort of violence to himself. about the serious energy, you're probably experiencing episodes of aversion to your own past everytime you see something that resembles it. have you been seeing your own ghosts?

the paradox is just a mental object, i agree. but it appears in the mind when we move on from the experience seeking phase and start living life normally. some practitioners experience anxiety due to attachment to mystical experiences because they lack the necessary wisdom to integrate the spiritual experiences into their daily lives. i am pretty sure that what i mean by "embrace the paradox" is what you mean by "release the paradox". the internal movement of acceptance is similar (not to say equivalent) to letting go, which is something i had never noticed before. thank you

both the incapability to be serious and the attachment to seriousness hinder spiritual progression.

i've experienced it and i am able to experience it right now. i know what you're talking about. you've experienced pure awareness, the spirit, the immaterial and fundamental emptiness. and i gave you the feedback you asked for. i said that this is just one facet of the paradox.

that's fine. you'd be simply playing with the semantics behind the words human being, which i don't find exactly an interesting task. in many ancient suttas, sidhartha gautama himself mentions the struggling that intellectually driven men encounter on the path due to their attachments to the thinking process. they face suffering because they're addicted to being right/correct and proving others are wrong/mistaken. this habit strengthens their egos in subtle ways (pride and arrogance) and they end up going in the opposite direction while convinced they're getting closer and closer to some ultimate intellectual comprehension. with Love,

then stop eating, sleeping and working. how can you read? are you using the internet? you're either trying to deny the paradox or trying to avoid the huge emotional work that's necessary to master yourself. enlightenment is not an intellectual game of concepts in some logical framework. i am a computer scientist and i had a hard time with it myself. enlightenment requires a full body commitment. heart included.

@Joseph Maynor yes, it's true but be careful not to become attached to the absolute perspective. you have to embrace the paradox, otherwise you'll be struggling forever. you are the universal awareness and awareness itself has nothing to do, nothing to improve and nowhere to go. but you're also a person, an individual being. so the real question, in which lies the true labor, is how does a human being thinks, speaks and acts accordingly to his comprehension about the true nature of reality? in order to embody Truth, one needs to practice with his heart against egoism. then true altruism will become hard-coded in his guts and he will be able to experience liberation. we can abandon positive thinking when kindness, smiling and sharing become our natural way of living.

28. found out about Leo 1 year ago.

this is TRUE. then let me propose some food for thought. what if the internet we have is some archaic form of platform/tool for spiritual union among humans? past (and present) buddhas talk a lot about using all the skillful means to spread the dharma and encourage people to practice it. why not the internetz?

@John Iverson expand your practice to all positions (lying down, sitting and standing) throughout the day. your target should be 24/7 meditation. every instant is an opportunity to practice.

@Milos Uzelac take the silent approach as an opportunity for spiritual maturation towards sincerity. don't be trapped by the healer role. instead, drop all roles.

@Dino D start slowly. meditate once a week for 2~3 months and see how it feels. let this habit sink in your body then move on. meditate more often. see how it feels after 6 months, always noticing how you are embodying the practice. then meditate everyday. take your time to completely embody the practice. after mastery, you'll be meditating 24/7 and living consciously in this big mystical thing we call present moment. insights will come naturally. you just have to do the job. that's why we don't talk about enlightenment in zen. we just practice it until we master it. it's already very rare and difficult, so we better take the most straightforward approach.

@sgn it won't work until you start working properly on your complete emotional independence. quit this self judgmental overreacting bullshit. you know what you feel. be honest about it. that's all. even jesus went mad and screamed over people because they were using his sacred place to sell stuff.

i bet they won't. i'm not talking about love as something relative. i'm talking about love as the simple fact of existing, which is already mindblowing enough. if i am to embrace duality, i cultivate the pragmatic relative love in order to connect deeply to people. if i am to embrace oneness, i cultivate absolute love and acceptance in order to contemplate existence.

@Joseph Maynor oneness is not a mystical/philosophical thing. consider your body, with a stomach and a liver, i hope . they are both pretty complex objects but they are not complex enough to think consciously. yet, they're still part of the same body! and even more, the ways they function are correlated. a dead liver results in a dead stomach and vice-versa. now, two persons. each of them can think "i" separately because they're complex enough to do so. yet, we are members of a bigger body, our planet. and planets are members of a bigger body and so on. we call the maximal body by the name of Reality, God or whatever. and it's alive! back to the two persons context. we feel sympathy for the suffering of others. we care. we can also hate each other, just like some cells of our bodies may fight/destroy other cells. two persons are connected! it's that simple.

existence is a big loving salad!