What If Enlightenment Is Just Another Illusion?

[theinevitableandi]

@Thesleeperhasawakened

Ecstasy gives you a glimpse for sure but nobody has an idea that it is a glimpse because they believe they are just tripppping!

[Guest]

@theinevitableandi What are you on about? Who are you? These guys are Buddhist scholars. Batchelor has had more awakening experiences than you have had hot dinners. 

They took the advice of the buddah to question and they undid the belief that there is no absolute truth.

What did you do?

Watch a video on Enlightenment and swallow a bunch of cultural horseshit and decided that your one thirty second experience had to have been proof of the religions you read about?

 

[theinevitableandi]

i didn't do shit ! what did you do? @Nomad

[Guest]

40 minutes ago, Nomad said:

"They took the advice of the buddah to question and they undid the belief that there is no absolute truth."

Yes THEY did, and they couldn't find it. But there are many others who have tried and found it. Who to believe?

[cetus]

Sorry, I inserted this video by accident and I don't know how to delete it.

 

[30secs]

the only thing to do is to walk than to talk about Enlightenment stuff.

[cetus]

What exactly is it that we refer to an enlightening experience? Could that all be just part of a natural evolutionary process of our species? Realizing that we are more than just our physical bodies? Are we getting away from the caveman way of associating ourselves to our environment only.  Everybody has a different personal view on their experience of awakening. Some call it spiritual, some call it awakening, some refer to it as ecstasy or bliss. Maybe that's all just personal interpretations of our expanding awareness of the cosmos we exist in and also other dimensions than just the physical dimension we occupy. Maybe there is really nothing spiritual about it at all. Maybe we are just beginning to experience a bigger picture of what we truly are within the universe and the unseen forces that act on it. I think about this sometimes, If there are highly advanced civilizations out in the universe somewhere, how would they interpret what we are referring to as enlightenment? Are we just awakening to the fact that we are truly multi-dimensional beings and always have been? Just a thought.      

[Guest]

@TwoDays You believe who you like. The buddha never spoke about enlightenment. Its a belief system. 

@theinevitableandithe burden of proof is not on me. It's on you. You had your taste, if you want to argue with me about it you better come up with something better than your two minute experience of personality dissociation.  

[Extreme Z7]

@Thesleeperhasawakened Ummmm. . . okay? That has absolutely nothing to do with what I said but good to know what you think, man.

EDIT: Oh I see what your saying now. No no, I didn't exactly mean to say that we can tell if someone is enlightened or not. Those are just words I used. The point of what I said is that the concepts taught about enlightenment are very different from the experiences that occur from doing enlightenment work.

I personally am still skeptical about whether we can really call somebody "enlightened". Maybe we really are already enlightened and just have a weird egotistical human being in our awareness who thinks he/she exists.

Edited March 21, 2016 by Extreme Z7

[Guest]

26 minutes ago, Nomad said:

@TwoDays You believe who you like. The buddha never spoke about enlightenment. Its a belief system. 

@theinevitableandithe burden of proof is not on me. It's on you. You had your taste, if you want to argue with me about it you better come up with something better than your two minute experience of personality dissociation.  

Of course the buddha spoke about enlightenment. What exactly do you think the achievement of "Sunyata" is? Buddhism, as it was first taught by the Buddha, isn't a belief system, it's a set of teachings for gaining insight into the nature of reality, for realization of enightenment. The current manifestations of buddhism all are beliefs (e.g. praying to deities, big statues of Buddha), but what it has become, is not what was first intended.

The Buddha didn't accept followers, he only accepted fellow travellors. He actively discouraged worship of deities. He taught to always question everything that he taught. The Buddhism that you are talking about and the Buddhism taht I am talking about are two very different things.

Edited March 21, 2016 by TwoDays

[Guest]

@TwoDays Im no philosopher but do you think im going to listen to some muppet on the internet regurgitating misinterpreted teachings on some muppetty Teal Swan worshiping yank website who cant even be arsed to watch the video and have a normal conversation about its contents over two buddhist scholars? Crazier than i thought!

[Augustus]

8 hours ago, Pinocchio said:

Enlightenment is not about experiences, it's about deconstructing reality: What is the one and only absolute truth of existence. There has to be one, and there can be ONLY one.

 

That IS the right attitude, and so is your questioning in this thread. If there is a path to truth, it's about radically honest scrutiny of absolutely everything. So, in addition to being open minded about whatever could possibly be true, also don't forget to discern and reject whatever can't possibly be true.

 

 

@Pinocchio

I agree with you about deconstructing reality in order to find what’s out there, but you are jumping to conclusion saying there is only one Truth, I think we must try to find what the reality is without our previous premises, if that what enlightenment is then I will give it a chance doing only meditation and searching for the Truth, however I don’t like trying to reach a state of being one with everything because if one try to make himself feel that he is one with everything over and over,eventually , he will succeed even thou that maybe a false feeling

We must remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and claiming that the universe is one entity without separation is very bold claim to make and it requires strong evidence    

 

 

 

6 hours ago, Extreme Z7 said:

@Augustus Yes! Good question!

I'm not enlightened but my intuition tells me that the concepts of enlightenment that are being spread around are nowhere near describing how it would be like to actually be enlightened.

@Extreme Z7

 

There is a famous yogi master in YouTube called sadguru  I heard  him saying that no matter how enlightened person try to explain the state of enlightenment he will fail , because enlightenment cannot be describe throw words no matter how, in this case maybe enlightenment is about increasing awareness (that me be possible at least in theory) rather than being one with reality, maybe it's early for me to discard enlightenment because I don't like the Idea of the unity of every thing maybe enlightenment is not about that 

Edited March 21, 2016 by Augustus

[Augustus]

25 minutes ago, Pinocchio said:

25 minutes ago, Pinocchio said:

I reached that conclusion fair and square. I didn't jump to it, and neither should you, so keep up that scrutiny.

 

 

By deconstructing reality we must find that there is only one Truth, how can this be?

 

47 minutes ago, Pinocchio said:

 

And on that note, I would add that it's an equally bold claim to suggest there is anything "out there" at all, or that any separation or distinction exists anywhere other than in the imagination. So if you require strong evidence (and indeed you should), then my suggestion would be to find evidence for that too.

 

The evidence for the existence of the real world is simply we are seeing the world, sensing and hearing it and we can see separation between things in the universe, we should stick to that unless we have a good reasons to doubting the existence of real world, and it’s not an extraordinary claim because that’s the default situation, claiming that nothing exist is an extraordinary.

 

48 minutes ago, Pinocchio said:

 

Even find that FIRST. Because all everyone has done so far in the history of humanity, is to try to prove their distinctions rather than disprove them. And so far it hasn't gotten anyone anywhere, except going in circles. So you'll want to be the one who sees the bigger picture here.

Yes, so that's NOT the way to go. To be "deluded" means to be in an auto-suggestive trance all the time, which is exactly the case. Nobody will ever wake up from that by adding more of the same.

In fact nobody will ever wake up at all...

Not sure I understand, are you saying that we should not tell ourselves anything about nature of enlightenment and we should only try to find out what reality is?  

[WelcometoReality]

12 hours ago, Augustus said:

 

 

Thanks for replying, but I'm not talking about Cartesian skepticism, what i mean to say is what if ego or self is real and enlightenment is an error in the mind caused by meditation.

In the videos Leo talked about how no one can prove that ego doesn’t exist by thinking and reasoning and the only way to prove that is by practicing meditation for hour a day, in this case you can’t prove that you are one with everything in an objective way, all you have is your subjective experience and it’s not reliable because you maybe distort it by meditation and practices like questioning where are you (self-inquiry)

 

Yes it could be that the practice of enlightenment alters the brains function. I think there was a study that showed that it is the case, don't take my word for it though I have not looked at that study myself.

Let's say that the ego is real and enlightenment is just an illusion caused by a number of reasons. Where is that ego? Have you tried to look for it? All I have seen is a group of beliefs about the world, the past and the future that together formed the sense of self. No real physical entity. 

My suggestion is don't believe in the ego and don't believe in enlightenment. In fact rid yourself of all your beliefs and see where that takes you. ☺

[Guest]

13 hours ago, Nomad said:

@TwoDays Im no philosopher but do you think im going to listen to some muppet on the internet regurgitating misinterpreted teachings on some muppetty Teal Swan worshiping yank website who cant even be arsed to watch the video and have a normal conversation about its contents over two buddhist scholars? Crazier than i thought!

A scholar is that who studies the external. A practitioner of spirituality is that who studies the internal.

The two are incomparable. Your so-called "scholars" don't know anything about what the teachings are pointing to.

And secondly, you didn't even read my post, because you are arguing something completely different. That, my friend, is the ego trying to preserve its own argument.

[Guest]

@TwoDays @AugustusPossible. Or it could be possible that you are inside your mind and I'm inside mine and your concpets about "egos" and the like are Buddhist garbage. I'm not trying to preserve an argument, I don't need enlightenment because Im not a moron whos dissatisfied with life so much that I need to loose my ego in order to live a satisfied life. I'm telling you that your spiritual seeking is just another sub personality and it's fogging you from life and the real world. It isn't a quest for enlightenment. It's a disease that you imagine that someday you will disappear in a cloud of smoke and be the master of your life. You're still acting out unskilfully even if you are buzzing and radiant you're still an idiot. Most Buddhists are. Most spiritual people are. You're not aware, you're unaware. The thing is you pick a philosophy from the fith century BC that's been bastardised by the mythical thinking of the time in order to deal with the problems of that time. History has.moved on, the problems are different, but as you hypnotise yourself with Buddhist doctrine you won't be able to see what's going on around you, you're living in the fith century BC mind and you don't even know it

[Guest]

@Nomad Bit angsty aren't we?

You have no clue about what the teachings are, and yet you try to argue with me about it.

It's like trying to argue with Trump on national policy. Your whole argument is based on disinformation.

[Guest]

@TwoDays Probably..you will never know unless you develop empathy and a capacity to see the world through another's eyes.

I can see through your blue eyes, because I was concrete operational cognition once too ya know

[Guest]

@TwoDays Watch the video. If it doesnt resonate fine. Stick with your bollocks. Who cares? End up like adi da. Its your life, not mine

[Augustus]

On ٢١‏/٣‏/٢٠١٦ at 5:36 PM, Pinocchio said:

The key is to challenge your existing assumptions, right down to their very foundations, instead of building an air castle

 

Alright.

 

On ٢١‏/٣‏/٢٠١٦ at 5:36 PM, Pinocchio said:

 

That's simply how it turns out. Deconstructing reality turns out to be invalidating finiteness, foundationlessness, reification, differentiation, emergence, dimensionality, change, co-dependence, etc. In short, duality, and the sheer absurdity of it.

 

 

 

If deconstructing reality shows me that the universe is one entity then why not, whoever I will hold my ground here and I will say we must not try to be one with the universe, actually we must not try to do anything except search for the truth, and this is something I will do.

 

On ٢١‏/٣‏/٢٠١٦ at 5:36 PM, Pinocchio said:

False assumption. As are all assumptions. What you're seeing is not a world, it's a multimedia construction of your perceptual faculties (whatever those are).

 

Sure we do not perceive the world as it is, but what we see is caused by the real world   so real word exist 

 

 

 

On ٢١‏/٣‏/٢٠١٦ at 5:36 PM, Pinocchio said:

 

I claim that truth exists. How could it not. And how could untruth exist. The very definition of the word truth prohibits it from refering to anything other than exactly what exists, no more and no less.

 

False distinction. As are all distinctions. The nature of enlightenment and the nature of reality is by definition the same. Enlightenment simply means realizing the truth of existence. Seeing what is, and not seeing what's not. Anything short of that means, by definition, being deluded.

 

 

The Truth exists but what is that truth? Is it seeing the universe as it is and not as we perceive it right now? Does this mean that enlightened person can see atoms and electrons? I don’t think that.

 So what perceiving the world as it is means? Clearly this is something can only be known if we somehow manage to perceive the real existence by a way or another, but perceiving reality is different from being reality unless of course you are perceiving yourself not the external world.