Questions About Enlightenment

[zasa joey]

leo said that enlightenment is our true nature. enlightened self is the true self. well if so that means that a newborn child must be enlightened before his ego is developed. but as leo said that is not the case. why is that so and how the fuck is it the natural state for us? and how the fuck is such timeless, omnipresent, unchangable thing that is us so easily mistaken about its own nature? 

[Hillary Kapan]

Terrific questions!  I wonder the same things.  I don't have any answers, but here are some thoughts.

Enlightenment can be considered as freedom from self-definitions.  Presumably, babies don't define self, so that checks.

However, if we reincarnate repeatedly, then we're on a longer trajectory and maybe babies, while free of self-definitions still have a ways to go, just like the rest of us.

Personally, I find it helpful to no longer think of 'emptiness' or 'pure consciousness' as unchangeable or even timeless in an absolute sense...I find it works better in my life and practice to imagine consciousness--the ability to experience--as evolving, not static, just evolving so slowly, it's not yet noticed.  Ultimately, I don't have a clue, so I'm into whatever  helps, is practical, etc.  Thanks again.

[zasa joey]

thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[Nic]

This is a very interesting question that I've been asking myself too, this is what I came down to:

Our fears are based in lies, knowledge, uncovering the lies , getting rid of knowledge will set you free, not the fact of having no knowledge at all. A baby might not be enlightened because he doesn't have any lies to uncover, he has nothing to free himself of. This is also the case for people who lose their mind or memory, they are not enlightened.

But in this enlightened state, not all knowledge gets lost, so called enlightened people still can talk, read, calculate, ride a bike... They are just free from lies, illusions that depends on the self image to exist.

[Henri]

In the West people are happy with the idea of reincarnation;`Great to have many lives`. 

In the East they have a different opinion about it, they see it as failure to be born again. It means one is having left some karma and got to deal with it in an other, new life. This karma exists also in being born as a baby where one has to develop both body and mind first (!), before even be able to start with burning the old karma. Being born is karma and before getting rid of ones ego one must first suffer in creating a developed ego. 

Life in this existence is all about karma.

[SkyPanther]

14 minutes ago, Henri said:

In the West people are happy with the idea of reincarnation;`Great to have many lives`. 

In the East they have a different opinion about it, they see it as failure to be born again. It means one is having left some karma and got to deal with it in an other, new life. This karma exists also in being born as a baby where one has to develop both body and mind first (!), before even be able to start with burning the old karma. Being born is karma and before getting rid of ones ego one must first suffer in creating a developed ego. 

Life in this existence is all about karma.

This is true;  To add to this, if we go with the idea of Karma, "good" (unselfish) Karma can also lead you to a heavenly rebirth, (and of course it depends on the path here, I am mainly talking about Buddhism).

There are 31 spheres of existence in Buddhism,  the "human" level is the "middle" between the pure suffering and pure pleasure spheres. 

As soon as the good karma is used up you drop a level, or, if you are in the "suffering" (hell) planes, as soon as the bad Karma is used up, you go up a level.  The point of enlightenment, (in Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism) is to stop craving/desiring rebirth, and escape Samsara. 

Of course this is the non-secular view;  From a secular point of view self-actualization is just realizing that the ego/self entity is an illusion. 

Edited March 21, 2016 by SkyPanther

[Khin]

On ‎3‎/‎16‎/‎2016 at 0:51 PM, zasa joey said:

leo said that enlightenment is our true nature. enlightened self is the true self. well if so that means that a newborn child must be enlightened before his ego is developed. but as leo said that is not the case. why is that so and how the fuck is it the natural state for us? and how the fuck is such timeless, omnipresent, unchangable thing that is us so easily mistaken about its own nature? 

There are levels of mind. Enlightenment (Nirvana) is the highest level of mind. In Highest level, mind stop existing. Not even awareness. That's why enlightenment is referred to as nothingness. In babies, mind exist. They feel, know, and want. That's why they are obviously not enlightened. In Buddhist scriptures, ego started to develop when the egg is started to fertilize. I'm just sharing what I know though.

Ego is not only selfishness but also not knowing and lack of awareness. Babies has all of those characteristics. They don't know anything. They are also selfish in their own ways such as they only know what they want and can't think for others.