tatsumaru

It has been suggested by the Buddha that emptiness belongs to the world of duality ("emptiness is form, form is also emptiness" or in other words yin is yang, yang is yin), and that clear light is beyond duality and is therefore not empty, because it's not form. In other words it's REAL. What do you think about this? I see. So how can I learn to recognize it, as Naropa suggests?

"Behavioral and electrophysiological data have challenged the intuitive assumption that human behavior is the result of conscious intentions. This notion has important implications for delusions of control in schizophrenia, where patients experience bodily movements as not being controlled by themselves." In other words non-schizophrenics perceive that they have control while schizophrenics perceive lack of control. Since scientific data suggests the absence of free will, schizophrenics may have a better grasp on objective reality. Study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29208423/

Sounds really good. I think you will also enjoy Connected Breathing a lot. It's insanely cathartic. People release so much stress they can't remain in one place sometimes.

There is no such thing as "truly horrible" it's just a perspective. For some, out of body experiences are a welcome entertainment, for others they are perceived as horror. I talked to my mentor about depersonalization horror once and he said "Looks like they weren't depersonalized enough." LOL! The horror comes from your clinging to your default state of existence. You feel like it's something precious that you need to protect. If you were able to panic then your I didn't really dissipate. How can someone who doesn't exist be scared? Obviously this experience is part of what is possible in life so why not just integrate it? Don't demonize it. An orgasm is also scary if you are afraid of orgasms. Watching a mother give birth is the weirdest/scariest thing if you don't know what's going on. It all depends on the framing: Negative framing of birth: A bloody tumor is tearing her vagina open and the mother is screaming from pain. The mother can't take it anymore. Positive framing of birth: A necessary pain required to produce the most beautiful thing in the world - a new piece of life. The mother is excited to hug her newborn baby. So you can see we really direct our own horror movies. Reality isn't inherently horrific. Next time when it happens just be aware and check it out, maybe it contains new data, new insights about reality. What I have realized is that life is super weird and the only thing you can do is go further. Excluding possibilities, running away from the unknown creates the perception of nightmare. Why are you running away from it?

I don't know if he even existed, but that's how the story goes. Plus the definition of enlightenment is pretty much tied to what the Buddha first achieved. Now, don't ask me if he really was the first one, because I don't know that, but that's also irrelevant. If you feel uncomfortable using Buddha's story to navigate, then simply look at your life - you know you existed before your name and before the concept of enlightenment, but you sought anyway therefore the uncertainty was already there. Later you filled your head with concepts and started defining your life based on these concepts/beliefs. To seek enlightenment because the Buddha achieved it is like to seek God because the Bible says there's such a thing.

It's very important to realize why you are really seeking enlightenment. The Buddha didn't seek enlightenment and he didn't know about it. He started his journey looking for the root of suffering. Now that the secret is out, people are seeking enlightenment. However it would appear that enLIGHTenment or uncovering your own light is not what you find, but what's left after all that is false is gone. Thus seeking it is a distraction from finding it. If you surrender with the expectation to become enlightened then you aren't really surrendering, because the desire for things to be different than what they are comes from the ego. In fact the Buddha realized that the root of all suffering is the resistance to what is, and the shortest path to enlightenment is the appreciation of what is. I don't think that's a real paradox because I think the goal of seeking enlightenment is artificial and is not a proper goal. A better goal is to have the desire for things to be what they are (to align yourself with reality). From intellect's POV there's no enlightenment and since intellect is the sense that seeks, it's pointless to seek enlightenment. In fact it's pointless to seek truth as well for it cannot be found since it cannot be lost. We attach meaning to our beliefs and that is the reason while we feel that truth also lurks somewhere in the same dimension. When we realize that beliefs are meaningless, the search for truth is over. (and that's when you begin to notice it.)

I want to start a discussion on something which according to Tantric Buddhism is the most important practice of all. The practice is called Non-Meditation. The name is quite confusing because most newcomers assume that Non-meditation means "Don't meditate" which is not the case. Before you reply make sure you understand that I am NOT advocating against meditation, nor am I a promoter of Buddhism, this is just food for thought. In fact Non-Meditation is a type of Meditation, but that's probably one of the worst way to communicate what it is. In Vajrayana Buddhism it is suggested that ordinary meditation should eventually become unnecessary and move aside for non-meditation. For many, ordinary meditation belongs to of the world of hope and fear; a diversion one uses until they realize that it will not lead to enlightenment. Non-meditation is a topic that will surely upset millions who have vested meaning, money, and measure, sitting on a cushion. Millions believe that meditation is the path to happiness, compassion, god realization, and enlightenment. Surely, meditation has provided solace to many, but solace is a temporary thing. Hui Neng reportedly scolded his monks for spending too much time sitting in meditation….He said that meditation is unnecessary, and warned that such practice can easily become a narcotic. Many Western meditaters are so intoxicated by their practice that they see themselves as loftier to those who don’t formally meditate, like drug addicts see themselves as superior to non-users. Few people seem to realize that Buddha did not realize enlightenment through meditation,…he realized enlightenment through appreciation, when he ceased meditating. Through the meditation he nearly died. The American Esther Hicks said something quite appropriate to this subject, “We teach meditation, or quieting the mind, because it is really easier to teach you to have no thoughts, than to teach you to have pure, positive thought. We would rather you be in a state of appreciation, than in a state of meditation, because in appreciation you are a vibrational match to Source.” The Buddha didn't really teach that the root of all suffering is desire. This only leads to the desire to have no-desires which is the same problem. Instead he taught that the root of all suffering is the desire for things to be different than what they are. The way I understand it a desire for things to be what they are is equal to appreciation/non-meditation/direct experience. @Leo Gura talks about this kind of non-resistance to what is, and how the ultimate goal is to become like a superconductor and not have any resistance to what is true. Saraha said, “Mind is the basis of samsara and nirvana. Once you realize (its nature), rest in the ease of non-meditation.” Meditation is a fabulous tool for training the mind to interact with time in a different way. Whereas the sahaja of non-meditation/non-resistance uncovers that which is beyond time; the Present. Taking refuge in sahaja, which is not a preoccupation with meditation or yoga techniques, is a Short Path to effortless truth realization. “In a state of non-meditation, you attain Mahamudra”- The Short Path of Kagyu.

@Shin How can one let go of extremely traumatic events? My uncle just tried to commit suicide - he tried to hang himself and he also opened his neck with a knife and stabbed himself. It was a horror blood bath. He's schizophrenic, and hearing voices and he's in deep suffering. He says he can't take it any more. I am just so sad about this. Are these people beyond repair? Should we just let them kill themselves? Furthermore can these people get out of hell on their own?

@HighestPeople don't know anything - that's why they cling to their so called normalcy - anything that stands out threatens our fragile balance which is not even real balance. It's been like that forever. What kind of sick society burns someone on a stake just because this person had a different opinion? Let's not forget that "normal" is just someone's opinion on how things ought to be. "It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - J. Krishnamurti

Well, why not put some meaning to it?

I don't think that's what it means. The way I understand it is that analysing your past actions makes you feel like you were the one making them. For example you start moving your finger to prove that you have free will and then you retroactively analyse "I moved my finger without a reason, therefore I have control over my finger.", but you don't realize that it's only because the notion of free will is externally challenged that you are moving your finger. In other words you are just a cog wheel in the whole machinery and when it's time to turn you turn, when it's time to stop you stop. This is pretty much what determinism is all about.

Best enlightenment song ever:

That video was really good.

During my trip in India last year I had the realization that the intellect is incapable of certainty. Its job seems to be to browse the past, but it doesn't possess the capacity for certainty. As I let go of beliefs, faith, religion and hopes I arrive at a very bizarre place, a place of complete uncertainty. All kinds of fears that I suppressed through wishful thinking and hopes begin to resurface here. It's not nice. In this situation one quickly becomes aware of the reason why everyone clings to their beliefs so hard. So now what? I am here completely clueless. Logic is no longer helpful for I have realized that even logic is based on beliefs. Some beliefs on which logic is based on are: "cause precedes effect", "empirical data is meaningful", "insights are meaningful", "reality obeys logic", "logic accurately describes reality", etc... One of my first spiritual inspirations was a guy called Jed McKenna. He started his journey based on the assumption that there's truth and that truth is the simplest thing possible. In other words he believed that if something could not be further simplified then it's fundamental... Although I have listened to all of his audio books multiple times, he never really explained how he confirmed that there's truth. Anyone with enough imagination can come up with a version of the universe where reductionism is futile. Example: I've heard people say - "Well if there's no truth then the truth is that there's no truth.". Wrong. If there's no truth, then there's no truth. It's easy to see why you can't generate certainty via mental gymnastics and that any statement can be questioned as long as you have sufficient imagination. Probably that's why Carneades exclaimed "Nothing can be known not even this." This is a very interesting statement as it's not simply the nihilistic "Nothing can be known". First it tells us that nothing can be known and then it takes away that as well. What's left is not a statement but a very peculiar state of mind - a type of emptiness. The thought process collapses for a moment... It is my understanding that zen koans such as "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" were designed to help us collapse all logic and mental gymnastics and focus our awareness on this emptiness. The heart sutra states - "...no ignorance, and no termination of ignorance..., no attainment, and no non-attainment..." At this point the logical mind is like "wtf, pick one...", but my understanding is that the logical mind is missing the point. The point is again to become aware of this empty place which isn't something and isn't nothing either, for nothing is also a concept. Although this is quite profound it doesn't answer any questions and it doesn't solve a lot of suffering. It didn't produce any samadhis for me (maybe I don't spend enough time meditating on this emptiness) and it didn't make me realize that form is emptiness and emptiness is also form either. You see philosophy for me is part of the problem for as Richard Feynman stated "To answer any WHY question, one must begin with an assumption" - otherwise there's no basis to start from. But do you really want to start from a belief like Jed McKenna? Do you really want to assume? I certainly don't. And to be honest these assumptions seem equally worthless to me as religion or any other belief system. Here's what I intuit (I could be wrong): You don't surrender to understand, because if you have an expectation you can't surrender. If you are hoping to get something out of your surrender you don't really surrender. The desire to surrender arises out of the realization that the senses cannot grasp reality. In other words instead of asking why should I surrender, it's better to ask, why should I not surrender. Most people feel that by surrendering they will be trading one real thing for another. That there's some sort of sacrifice or loss involved. Is that really the case? Here's another good one: "Without the past, there would be nothing to think about, let alone someone to think it." - From the TV show Sens8 The Zen Masters call this journey The Gateless Gate, because what you are surrendering never really existed in the first place. From Ego's point of view there is a journey to wake up. From the point of view of someone who is awake there is no journey, because you were just dreaming. So why am I writing all of this? Because I desperately want to go further. I have been stuck here for a while... So where's Trinity? How do I get out of here? What's next? Did you enjoy this humble revelation of mine? I am looking forward to your comments.

That's probably the best answer. It's not what you expect - check it out.

Seems like I am stuck here:

I know what you mean, but I don't think you will reach the end of the darkness by faith. Courage is probably what you need. Faith is rooted in the idea that you will eventually make it if you keep going, but there's no guarantee that at the end the You that you think you are will survive, what's the point of faith at that point. You are facing your ultimate fear and if you are hoping that something will protect you that's flawed. I think eventually you surrender the Ego because you are tired of resisting the flow and you just go to whatever's next.

I did not say I will not try it, I just said I am a little bit sceptical. I will actually try it. I think mindfulness meditation as a practice is quite important and I think I have ignored it a bit too much.

Well Jed said that there's no-self so he sounds more like he's at the level of advaita fake-enlightenment. (no-self, union with God, Brahman etc.) If we can trust the sutras (which Jed apparently did) then the no-self level of awareness is an illusion: I don't like the word God because people use it to mean whatever they want and the word like any other word was created to refer to a specific idea (don't disrespect language by having your own definitions for every word because then communication becomes pointless, it's better to create your own word or language if the current one doesn't fit your goal): As you can see it's about a divine being having power over and controlling other beings. Thus we can see why it's not very spiritual to want to be an eternal God or any other God for that matter. God is the ultimate Ego and is super-red on the Spiral Dynamics scale. Yeah it's a little bit like the pendulum in Spiral Dynamics swinging between Ego and Other. At first Hinayana (Theravada) says Life's suffering but we can escape in Nirvana. That's designed to detach you from materialism. Then when you are ready comes Mahayana which says there's actually nowhere to run and there's no-self. That's designed to detach you from your idea of what the self is. When you are ready comes Vajrayana which says you are now sufficiently liberated from falsity to hear the truth - there is a real self and there's eternal happiness, and the idea of no-self belongs to the dualistic world of being and non-being. Yeah we don't really know what enlightenment is, but it probably has something to do with light (enLIGHTenment). As you can see each spiritual school calls their highest experience enlightenment. Enlightenment is one thing in advaita and an entirely different thing in Vajrayana Buddhism. This is what happens when everyone starts attaching their own meaning to a word. IMO Jed is likely not-enlightened, just a little bit crazy, and maybe he did stumble upon some gems. The Buddha and Lao Tzu also did not disappear when they became enlightened (although these are just stories). Yes whole, but union with reality is unlikely the goal. How are you going to unite something unreal with reality? Whatever is real is already real (unless the world is completely fucked up and you can turn real into false and false into real etc.). Oneness is also religious - If there's One then there are many for One is a unit and a unit implies separation and separation isn't union after all. I don't buy this. Those are the kind of made up explanations of what's going on which the advaita guys like to come up with. Why does reality need to know anything? If it exists it's already working, it doesn't need to study anything, especially perspectives. I think the left brain is mostly survival - to remember not to touch the hot stove during your journey in this dimension. Lol! Why would one hope for what is certain, that's nonsense? Hope and Faith are based in memory/intellect. You can only hope for something that's in your past. As long as you are hoping, praying, faithing you are just coming up with stuff. Tilopa said: How are you going to surrender if you have faith? Faith that you will get what you want? Faith that it will be good? Those are all expectations and expectations are not surrender. To really surrender the price is everything - all your faith included. That's what Jed said no? That which hopes for things has no place in reality.

That scenario suggests that Life has a separate mind which "goes where IT wants". In other words that's like a religious God who makes the decisions. Whether I have control or not is unclear. The whole idea of science is that there's control, while in God-religions there's some form of pseudo-control: God gave us the free will to choose whether we want to suck God's dick and go to paradise or not and get raped in hell for eternity. Thanks God, we really are free to do whatever we want! I think this surrender of control that we see in many spiritual religions is a actually a surrender of responsibility. Oh life just does whatever it wants and I can't control it so it's not my fault. And then you go eat because you don't want to die. It's dishonest. Now surrendering Ego's control over to something more meaningful is something that I don't have a problem with. How did you confirm this? Are you awake? A lot of Tibetan sages are depicted as completely crazy - some of them literally smearing their faces with poop etc. In many ways I don't have much of a choice - to choose between eating and dying from starvation is not much of a choice - it's like choosing between paradise and hell. However there are some monks who have chosen to die from starvation and they did. Buddha almost died of starvation when he thought meditation would lead to enlightenment.

There's a difference between loneliness and aloneness. Loneliness implies lack. Aloneness implies acceptance. Aloneness is not something specific to you. We are all born alone, all live alone and all die alone. So in a sense this brings us together, because we are all in this situation whether we get it or not. We are not separate - consider a mother giving birth to another human being. For a while they are the same thing then it becomes another person. You are able to feel the hot water, smell the bacon, fondle your cat - you are not disconnected from the world. Why do you want to have more than one consciousnesses? Maybe you want to double the excitement? I think being a little (but not a lot) depressed is helpful on the spiritual path. I used to be so depressed I cried every morning after waking up for just realizing I was still alive. Now that's gone. I am still slightly depressed but it's more like melancholy. I am definitely not perfect - I am neurotic, I am full of regrets, I am often sad, I am sometimes a little bit paranoid, but I have also learned not to take life too seriously. I may die tomorrow. I may not achieve enlightenment. But I can have my peace right now. Start with peace. Have you watched Eckhart Tolle and Sadhguru's videos on YouTube? If not I highly recommend these guys. They will be the best friends you've had in a long time. You will forget about your depression before you know it.

IMO REAL is something that does not and can not change, otherwise what are you even referring to? Seneca said “Do not regard as valuable anything that can be taken away”. Whether there's anything eternal like that is not clear to me. It has been suggested by some that the real Present is not even a part of time and that within the dimension of the absolute Present nothing ever changes. In high-level Buddhism it has been proposed that the 6 senses (5 senses + intellect) cannot even observe the present, only the past. Apparently there are some meta-senses which can observe the Present. That's going further than the Zen "carry water, chop wood" thing. The Buddha didn't carry water or chop wood, nor did Tilopa or Naropa. While the idea sounds nice I haven't confirmed it myself so I am only sharing it as food for thought - maybe its true, maybe its not.

What do you mean by real? So how do you know that something is actually existing and is not a hallucination? And also what does it mean to exist? These kind of questions are really problematic because there really is no intellectual answer. There is a mental gymnastics exercise in Buddhism called dependent origination and it tries to prove that nothing really exists because for something to exist as a separate thing it must arise in and of itself otherwise it wouldn't be separate, but then if it had some inherent nature then it wouldn't be able to change because it's only that thing, but since we know things change then they don't exist. I don't value it that much. It's still based on assumptions so it can never satisfy me.

Actually, now that you ask - I am not so sure. I think there is some part of me which wants this whole journey to be safe and another part which wants to wake up at any price and this internal conflict is tearing me apart. I have a confession to make - I have a deep fear that enlightenment may actually be some form of derangement or going crazy (not as in crazy wisdom, but as in mental facility crazy). The reason for this is that I don't know how to distinguish between real and hallucination so I am afraid I could be going schizophrenic instead of waking up or anything like that. I feel like I am ready to make the shift, my heart wants it desperately but this fear is holding me back. I like this. It's good and it's honest. I will do it. I guess you are right. I am trying to make life fit my preconceived notions of what life should be like. But it's also not that simple. I don't want to be some sad person who just got beaten by life too much and finally gave up and resigned to his powerlessness. Acquiescence doesn't seem to be fulfilling. How do you deal with the paranoia and the deep doubt? I constantly fear that this might be a simulation and that the whole spiritual journey might be part of the matrix. Do you simply allow yourself to become crazy and hope its enlightenment? That doesn't sound very healthy. I am a little bit sceptical about meditation. This is an excerpt from the notes of my spiritual friend: I am not sure what non-meditation is exactly yet. Chogyam Trungpa talks about this and it is clear that it doesn't mean "not meditating" but rather some higher form of meditation that goes further than the basic senses. Thank you for taking the time to read through this and for your kind words. I appreciate your help.