Ken Wilbur, Boomeriitis, The Mean Green Meme.

[Leo Gura]

@Joseph Maynor Ever hear of seedless grapes?

[Outer]

14 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Joseph Maynor Ever hear of seedless grapes?

Clever.

Edited December 19, 2018 by Outer

[Joseph Maynor]

29 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Joseph Maynor Ever hear of seedless grapes?

You dismantled my metaphor haha.  It would be weird to have seedless teachings though.  There's always some seeds in there just due to the fact that no two people are alike.  

Edited December 19, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Azrael]

@Leo Gura Valid points, man.  It's a multivariate problem we are talking about, that's for sure. I don't neglect your points here and I also get that you argue for the other side. I think the main problem here is not a JP or some leftists that may or may not be helpful with there opinions, it is that most people are either pro-left or pro-right and neglect the others completely. If we really want to progress as a whole, we have to take the people where they are and open their minds to the high dimensionality of the problem. Otherwise we are just measuring dick sizes and being rude.

[Leo Gura]

@Azrael I agree. So let's stop the culture wars that JP and Fox News are waging.

Let's stop saying the words "post-modernism", "marxism", "socialism", "feminism", "relativism", "equality", "LGBTQ", and "nihilism" as if they are bad and dangerous things.

 

[Outer]

4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Azrael I agree. So let's stop the culture wars that JP and Fox News are waging.

Let's stop saying the words "post-modernism", "marxism", "socialism", "feminism", "relativism", "equality", and "nihilism" as if they are bad and dangerous things.

Okay. I will admit I was tricked for awhile. I don't think all are the same as the few rotten apples anymore. I think you will appreciate this. This is how we change.

[Arhattobe]

Nihilism is bad for every facet of your being. 

There is undoubtably purpose in the dhamma.

[Leo Gura]

9 minutes ago, Arhattobe said:

Nihilism is bad for every facet of your being.

Except nihilism is true. Life has no meaning. So by demonizing nihilism you drive people to believe in egoic fairy tales.

There is no enlightenment without facing nihilism. Hence the Dark Night Of The Soul.

The saddest part of all this is that by rejecting nihilism JP is preventing himself from realizing God.

[iGhost]

Be as nihilistic as you can, suffer through it, feel all the pain that comes along with it (your ego will hate it) then you will go full circle and enjoy the benefits of that.

I guess that's why I have very dark humour and laugh on anything at this point.

[Arhattobe]

@Leo Gura Nihilism is not true. It might appear that way at first glance. When one plunged into non duality.

I became extremely apathetic due to that when I awakened. Turned into somewhat of a cu** matter of fact.

As I grew. 

I started experiencing, a direction that is inconceivable but can be felt in life. Just as one experiences the self. One can experience the dharma of the self. The growth of the self on a relative level within the absolute level.

This purpose I would say is one facet on non duality. It is what allows for the possibility of non duality.

I know you would disagree, but this is clear to me.

 

Nihilism or nihilistic worldview is a byproduct of awakening but one needs to go further. From fake meaning, to meaninglessness to seeing the dharma.

An egoic experiencenof this facet of reality is called god. Truth is those that experience in god, and those that experience in a nihilistic void. See two sides of one coin. The coin contains both sides, and only together can you have a clear view.

Edited December 19, 2018 by Arhattobe

[Leo Gura]

Nihilism is true, it just isn't bad. It's the ultimate Good!

Just opposite ways of saying the same thing.

Like no-self = True Self

[Arhattobe]

Countless traditions say the point of life is to reach liberation, that all beings work their way up, live their karma and dharma until they reach liberation. 

That, the possibility that spirituality even exists and just life in general. One can sense purpose and direction in it.

It might be meaningless in the traditional meaning of the word but it is not without direction, intelligence or without sense.

Thise aspects of the self are what I refer to as dharma, as non conceptual meaning.

 

Just clarifying myself. Not trying to convince you because I don’t think I can lol. Let’s agree to disagree.

cheers

[Outer]

 

Quote

 

... TMI also feels optimistic in comparison to another meditation book I reviewed, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. Its author, Daniel Ingram, counts himself as part of the same “pragmatic dharma” movement as Culadasa, and the two of them have occasionally cooperated on various things and taught together. But Ingram stresses that meditation and enlightenment do not provide many of the worldly gains their advocates promise, and in many cases can make things worse. He warns of what he called “the Dark Night”, a tendency for people midway along the path of meditation to shatter their psyches and fall into states of profound depression and agitation.

Culadasa has a rosier view of both points. He believes that the “unification of mind” produced by meditation will have its common-sense result of reducing internal conflict and improving “willpower”; it will also “overcome all harmful emotions and behavior”, leaving you with few things to worry about except the looming specter of excessive joy.

As for the Dark Night, he doesn’t like the term, and only gives it one sentence in the main text of the book plus two pages in an appendix. The two pages reassure us that enough practice in concentration meditation serves as a prophylactic:

Quote

One of the greatadvantages of samatha [concentration meditation] is that it makes it easier to confront the Insights into impermanence, emptiness, the pervasive nature of suffering, and the insubstantiality of the Self that produce Awakening. Without samatha, these challenging Insights have the potential to send a practitioner spiraling into a “dark night of the soul”.

Since the whole book is about samatha meditation, and treats everything else as something that happens naturally while you’re doing samatha, this makes it sound pretty minimal; just do what you would be doing anyway and you’ll be fine. This is a big difference from Ingram, who thinks that explaining the risk of the Dark Night and how to get through it is one of the most important jobs of a meditation teacher. Culadasa endorses this difference:

Quote

Have I seen in my students anything remotely resembling a “dark night” as defined above? Absolutely not. Nor can I recall ever having seen the sorts of extreme experiences of the dukkha nanas that are appearing so frequently in these online discussions.

There seems to be something of a consensus in the relevant community that Culadasa’s type of practice, which is called “wet” (ie includes concentration and jhanas) may be less likely to produce these kinds of problems than the so-called “dry insight” that Ingram discusses, and that if you’re doing everything right maybe you shouldn’t worry about it. Shinzen Young is another meditation teacher who moves in the same circles as Ingram and Culadasa. I found his perspective on this the most informative:

Historically it is not a term from the Buddhist meditative tradition but rather from the Roman Catholic meditative tradition. (Of course, there’s nothing wrong with using Christian terms for Buddhist experiences but…). One must clearly define what one means by a “Dark Night” within the context of Buddhist experience.

It is certainly the case that almost everyone who gets anywhere with meditation will pass through periods of negative emotion, confusion, disorientation, and heightened sensitivity to internal and external arisings. It is also not uncommon that at some point, within some domain of experience, for some duration of time, things may get worse before they get better. The same thing can happen in psychotherapy and other growth modalities. For the great majority of people, the nature, intensity, and duration of these kinds of challenges is quite manageable. I would not refer to these types of experiences as “Dark Night.”

I would reserve the term for a somewhat rarer phenomenon. This phenomenon, within the Buddhist tradition, is sometimes referred to as “falling into the Pit of the Void.” It entails an authentic and irreversible insight into Emptiness and No Self. What makes it problematic is that the person interprets it as a bad trip. Instead of being empowering and fulfilling, the way Buddhist literature claims it will be, it turns into the opposite. In a sense, it’s Enlightenment’s Evil Twin. This is serious but still manageable through intensive, perhaps daily, guidance under a competent teacher. In some cases it takes months or even years to fully metabolize, but in my experience the results are almost always highly positive. For details, see The Five Ways manual pages 97-98.

This whole Dark Night discussion reminds me of a certain Zen Koan. Although the storyline of this koan is obviously contrived, it does contain a deep message. Here’s how the koan goes: A monk is walking on a precipitous path and slips but is able to grab onto a branch by his teeth. A person standing below, recognizing the monk as an enlightened master, asks him to describe Enlightenment. What should the monk do? As a teacher, he’s duty bound to speak, but as soon as he speaks, the consequences will be dire. It sounds like a lose/lose situation. If you were the monk, what would you do? That’s the koan.

If we don’t describe the possibility of Dark Night, then we leave people without a context should it occur. On the other hand, if we do discuss it, people get scared and assume it’s going to happen to them, even if we point out (as I just did), that it’s relatively infrequent. So the take-home message is:

1. Don’t worry, it’s probably not going to happen to you.
2. Even if it does, that’s not necessarily a problem.

It may require input from a teacher and time but once it’s integrated, you’ll be a very, very happy camper.

I think it would be a good thing if people lighten up around this issue. This may help (see attached cartoon).

...

http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/11/28/book-review-the-mind-illuminated/

Edited December 19, 2018 by Outer

[Arhattobe]

A dark night is simply ones self defence mechanisms falling away, and one’s fears coming out to play until they are both cleansed and removed from one’s system and does not only have to do with the loss of meaning.

[VioletFlame]

On 12/19/2018 at 7:26 AM, Leo Gura said:

Nihilism is true, it just isn't bad. It's the ultimate Good!

Just opposite ways of saying the same thing.

Like no-self = True Self

@Leo Gura Have you read much on existentialism and Albert Camus? If so, what are your thoughts on this and also his philosophy of Absurdism?

It almost seems quite related to the liberation of fear & anguish over death one ultimately acquires from a place of Enlightenment and awakening. The search for meaning as a cause of suffering and once becoming conscious of the absurdity of life and confronting that, avoiding ignorance, and eventually unchaining ourselves from a mental prison cell which ultimately unravels us into a sense of Nirvana & acceptance.

When I read The Myth of Sisyphus for the first time as a teenager, it had a huge impact on me. Choosing philosophical suicide (or "leap of faith") over physical suicide healed me. I also thought the concept was strikingly similar to samsara. I find both existentialism and Buddhism, though both from different worlds, sort of come to some of the same conclusions. The act of mindfulness, embracing the inevitability of death, and seeing suffering as part of existence. It's not "bad" or negative because it implies to let go but never to give up either because suffering can indeed be overcome and provide the greatest meaning we search for by becoming a happier person and creating a happier life.

The only way to seek "meaning" and find God is by embracing the Absurd which I think is the solution of facing the eventual reality of termination.

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer." --Camus

Edited December 21, 2018 by VioletFlame

[Joseph Maynor]

14 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Except nihilism is true. Life has no meaning. So by demonizing nihilism you drive people to believe in egoic fairy tales.

There is no enlightenment without facing nihilism. Hence the Dark Night Of The Soul.

The saddest part of all this is that by rejecting nihilism JP is preventing himself from realizing God.

Totally.  People get trapped within one side of seeing things.  That's ultimately a clinging to concepts.  It's where concepts have placed a limit rather than provide a use.

Edited December 20, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Edvard]

On 18.12.2018 at 2:33 PM, Azrael said:

I know that very well as I have actually been in those countries and live in a comparable one myself. These countries including Germany also let in tremendous amounts of Muslim refugees and try to integrate them into the society (using that money that you talked about). This is ofc due to leftist policies.

Not all of these countries are doing this. Sweden and Germany seem to be "the worst" when it comes to this issue. Norway and Denmark have a much more moderate immigration policy, probably because of a concern about getting the same problems other similar countries are having, mixed with some reactive resistors too, of course. These issues are probably what will help move these countries to Yellow, which I think they are already beginning to do. The pendulum has to swing a little.

Edited December 20, 2018 by Edvard

[kev014]

On December 19, 2018 at 2:59 AM, Leo Gura said:

Except nihilism is true. Life has no meaning. So by demonizing nihilism you drive people to believe in egoic fairy tales.

There is no enlightenment without facing nihilism. Hence the Dark Night Of The Soul.

You haven't spoken much about the Dark Night of the Soul, any plans for the future on a video? I myself (as probably most everyone on this forum making serious growth) have gone through this. Most helpful thing would be how to navigate this time, ideally not get depressed with 'the lack of meaning' in life, and to transcend the depression if it does arise.

[Azrael]

8 hours ago, Edvard said:

These issues are probably what will help move these countries to Yellow, which I think they are already beginning to do. The pendulum has to swing a little.

How?

[Edvard]

1 hour ago, Azrael said:

How?

Because mass immigration can be seen as an excess of Green, and after having caused a range of problems, the countries are gonna be forced to think differently, or more systemically, eventually.

Edited December 21, 2018 by Edvard