Why Are Asian Countries Becoming So Materialistic And Moving Away From Spirituality So Fast?

[Prabhaker]

1 minute ago, Key Elements said:

You don't need an enlightenment experience to become enlightened

I can discuss about Gandhi at length but if you think that "You don't need an enlightenment experience to become enlightened", then all discussion will be futile.

[Key Elements]

@Prabhaker I didn't say that. I said:

1 hour ago, Key Elements said:

You don't need an enlightenment experience to become enlightened, although it helps.

Gandhi lived like a monk and spoke like a monk. He may not have had an enlightenment experience. That's ok. He probably understood what it is. Plus, he may have been too humble to even write down his experiences if he even had any. Who knows? Did you know Martin Luther King was a friend to Thích Nhất Hạnh?  He's considered an enlightened monk. Martin Luther King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize, although he never got it.

In other words, we don't know what's going on in people's personal lives. Enlightenment is very personal. It's between you and God. In other words - You and You, not you and someone else. 

Edited May 7, 2017 by Key Elements

[Prabhaker]

12 minutes ago, Key Elements said:

Gandhi lived like a monk

Gandhi was sleeping naked with young and minor girls, as he was experimenting on celibacy. If he was enlightened, what was the point in experimenting ?

Gandhi never made a secret of sleeping naked with is great-grand daughter and the wife of his great-grand son. It may have been his way of testing his control over his sexual drive, but these women were used as guinea pigs. If he had used other adult women, it would have been nothing more than interesting gossip. But Gandhi chose a teenage blood relation and a great-grand-daughter-in-law for his sexual whims. It is as unforgivable as it is unbelievable. 

Edited May 7, 2017 by Prabhaker

[Key Elements]

@Prabhaker Seriously? Yikes! I didn't know that.

Well, you get my point. My point was we don't know who had enlightenment experiences and who doesn't if they are too humble to say it or write it to the general public. At least Martin Luther King didn't do that. 

[Prabhaker]

13 minutes ago, Key Elements said:

At least Martin Luther King didn't do that. 

Gandhi was a honest and courageous person, so he made everything public. Martin Luther King was not a mystic, nether he taught others about enlightenment. Martin Luther King Sr was an American Baptist pastor, missionary, and an early figure in the Civil Rights Movement. Why an enlightened person will waste his time in a Civil Rights Movement, when he knows the root cause of all problems,i.e, unconscious humanity ?

Edited May 7, 2017 by Prabhaker

[Key Elements]

37 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

Why an enlightened person will waste his time in a Civil Rights Movement, when he knows the root cause of all problems,i.e, unconscious humanity ?

Why not? Not everyone has the same occupation. Not everyone have to be a mystic or hermit. 

He nominated Thích Nhất Hạnh, an enlightened monk, for Noble Peace Prize. Thích Nhất Hạnh was a good friend of his. When good friends come together, they talk about everything. They don't bother about who's in what religion. 

Edited May 7, 2017 by Key Elements

[Prabhaker]

Just now, Key Elements said:

He nominated Thích Nhất Hạnh, an enlightened monk, for Noble Peace Prize

Enlightened person don't take noble prizes, they are crucified.

[Key Elements]

34 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

Enlightened person don't take noble prizes, they are crucified.

Yes, I get your point. Another monk who was part of Thích Nhất Hạnh's monestary set himself on fire and burned himself up in protest against the Vietnam War without even screaming. What I'm trying to say is, all these other famous people count - all these prominent famous people like Martin Luther King - giving the general public wondering why and aways asking why. Besides, Martin Luther King did sacrifice his life. He was assissnated.

Edited May 7, 2017 by Key Elements

[Prabhaker]

Just now, Key Elements said:

Martin Luther King did sacrifice his life. He was assissnated.

Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated, but he was not assassinated for his enlightenment teachings. Many people sacrifice their lives but enlightened masters are tortured because they teach enlightenment and break your sleep.

[Key Elements]

@Prabhaker We still need the others who don't actually teach enlightenment. Actions speak louder than words. If we just had those who taught enlightenment, it wouldn't work. This world is colourful, not just black and white. The path is not a straight line. It has curves. 

Edited May 7, 2017 by Key Elements

[Prabhaker]

13 minutes ago, Key Elements said:

We still need the others who don't actually teach enlightenment.

We need people who are not teachers, but we don't need unconscious humanity. We need scientists, musicians, administrators but if an enlightened person is wasting his time in a political movement (it only tells he is unenlightened), he can't be forgiven. Enlightenment is a rare happening, and if a person can influence masses , must teach enlightenment, his time is very precious for humanity. When you will grow spiritually, then only you will understand it. 

Edited May 7, 2017 by Prabhaker

[Key Elements]

34 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

we don't need unconscious humanity. 

Everyone is a stepping stone to make humanity more conscious. 

[Prabhaker]

Just now, Key Elements said:

Everyone is a stepping stone to make humanity more conscious. 

Then what makes humanity unconscious ?

[Key Elements]

30 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

Then what makes humanity unconscious ?

People, the masses, not going within discovering themselves. They can't just stop whatever they're doing.

For me, Martin Luther King was definitely a role model. No one can just take a leap and understand what is the full blown enlightenment. 

So, what do you think makes humanity unconscious? 

[Prabhaker]

Just now, Key Elements said:

Martin Luther King was definitely a role model

I agree , he was a great person, he was important for humanity but he was not enlightened. An enlightened person is more precious not only for humanity but for whole existence. 

3 minutes ago, Key Elements said:

So, what do you think makes humanity unconscious? 

Our unconscious way of living.

[Key Elements]

31 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

Our unconscious way of living.

Which is why for quite a while I could not stop watching this video:

I posted this a few times already. If they had great hospitals and great security equal for all, life would be best - without destroying the environment or population explosion. 

[Key Elements]

@Prabhaker I've been doing a bit of thinking. It looks like tactfulness is valid. Monks have been doing this for ages, not revealing "occult" knowledge to those who are not ready for it. It's not just done in this way. You could teach it in hidden ways, and teach it /share it directly to those who are completely ready for it. Just like being a life coach to teaching enlightenment stuff, but not revealing everything all at once. 

Do the enlightened masters really have to be sacrificed / crucified like that? It does catch the masses attention; we still have a long way to go.

I like to think that we're past that age where masters have to go like that. I think we are past that. We have sayings like, "Those who don't understand history are bound to repeat it." We are at stage orange, not purple/red.

[Prabhaker]

4 minutes ago, Key Elements said:

Do the enlightened masters really have to be sacrificed / crucified like that?

One very foundational thing will have to be understood, and that is that the people you call bad are never so bad as the people you call good. The bad people are bad, but they have no excuse about being bad. They know they are bad, and they have nowhere to hide themselves. But the people who are thought to be good - respectable, honored, respected, religious - they are the real dangerous people because their badness can hide in their goodness. They can murder and will not feel that they are murderous. They can kill and can go on feeling that they are doing that killing for the good of those who are being killed.

The ordinarily bad, the criminal, is exposed. He knows that he is not good And that is the possibility of transformation: he can understand and can come out of it. But the so-called good hides under his personality. He may not be able to understand what he is doing, for what reasons he is doing it. He can always manage to rationalize.

That's how it happened. And not only in the case of Jesus; it has been happening always. The priests w ho were murderous never thought that they were doing anything bad. They thought that they were saving their religion; they thought that they were saving the morality. They thought: "This man is dangerous. He is corrupting the youth."

That was the charge against Jesus - that he was corrupting people, he was destroying the old morality, he was creating a chaos. And that was the charge against Socrates, and that is the charge against me. It has always been so.

The priests: whether they are Hindus or Greeks or Jews, it makes no difference.

The priests are the protectors of the old. The temple is of the past; they are the protectors, the guardians of tradition. Of course Jesus looked dangerous to them.

He could destroy the whole structure.

It is not that they were deceiving themselves. They may have thought, without a single suspicion, that they were perfectly right. "This man is dangerous. To destroy this man is to save the society." And of course whenever there is such an alternative - that you can save the whole society by killing one man - the murder is worth it. The priests killed him because of their goodness, because of their virtue, because of their morality. They killed him in the name of God; they killed him very innocently.

This situation has been arising again and again in history. There seems to be no possibility to change it. 

The only possibility is that Jesus should be so moderate that he doesn't hurt anybody. But then he is useless. He could have managed, he could have been very moderate and liberal. He could have talked like a politician who talks much but never says anything, who says many things but is always vague. He never clearly asserts anything; you can never pinpoint what he has said.

If Jesus had been tactful, he could have saved himself, But then there would have been no Christ also. And that would have been a greater murder. 

[Loreena]

1 hour ago, Prabhaker said:

The ordinarily bad, the criminal, is exposed. He knows that he is not good And that is the possibility of transformation: he can understand and can come out of it. 

You're such a nice guy. 

I sometimes feel empathy for criminals. Because they could be doing wrong things without a genuine intention to cause harm. Maybe the circumstances made them do what they do. Maybe they never got a chance to transform themselves. Maybe they were messed up in their childhood. I feel punishment is like "two wrongs don't make a right." 

What do you think ?

 

Edited May 8, 2017 by Loreena

[Prabhaker]

1 minute ago, Loreena said:

What do you think ?

Girls love bad guys & marry nice guys !

You must know there was a time when mad people were thought to be criminals and they were thrown into prison, and there they were beaten. It was only a few hundred years ago that it occurred to anyone that these people are not criminals, they are suffering from a certain disease. By beating them you cannot beat the disease out. You are simply being idiotic. They need treatment, and you are mistreating them. And the same is true about all criminals, because I don’t see that any criminal is born a criminal. The way he is brought up, the society in which he is brought up, makes him a criminal. And once his mind starts becoming criminal, then you have to change the whole way of his mind. It is no use chaining him, throwing him into jail, beating him — it does nothing. It is simply reinforcing in him that when he comes out he will be a confirmed criminal, a graduated criminal.

Your imprisonments, your prisons, are universities for criminals, from which they graduate. So once a man goes to jail, he comes out having learned many things from old criminals with whom he has been there. And all that he learns from your behavior is that to commit the crime is not the crime, but to be caught is the crime. So he learns ways not to be caught.

You have to change the track of his mind which moves into criminality. And that can be done. Biochemistry can be of much help, medicine can be of much help, psychiatry can be of much help. Now we have every resource to make that man a dignified human being.

Service is not needed, what is needed is a sharing of your consciousness — your knowledge, your being, your respect — but first you must have it.

The greatest problem of humanity is that they don’t know anything of meditation. That is the greatest problem. Neither the population, nor the atom bomb, nor hunger… no, these are not basic problems; they can be easily solved by science.

The only, basic problem that science will not be able to solve is that people don’t know how to meditate.

The Dalai Lama said, “If every 8 year old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation.”