Is It Necessary To Study Buddhism To Reach Enlightenment?

[WhatAmI]

Hi.

Ive been meditating every day and have noticed that i am calmer and more aware of my actions and self expression.

However, i feel like i want to be progressing faster. Where i live, theres a three year buddhism program that teaches you about enlightenment and nirvana and shit. Theres assignments and activities and exams. Should i attend this? 

I watch leo's videos and they havr helped me so much, would this course be a beneficial add on?

My concern is that its just going to put more beliefs and dogmas in my head.To those that study buddhism, has it helped you or hindered your spiritual journey?

Thanks in advance Xx

[charlie2dogs]

27 minutes ago, WhatAmI said:

Hi.

Ive been meditating every day and have noticed that i am calmer and more aware of my actions and self expression.

However, i feel like i want to be progressing faster. Where i live, theres a three year buddhism program that teaches you about enlightenment and nirvana and shit. Theres assignments and activities and exams. Should i attend this? 

I watch leo's videos and they havr helped me so much, would this course be a beneficial add on?

My concern is that its just going to put more beliefs and dogmas in my head.To those that study buddhism, has it helped you or hindered your spiritual journey?

Thanks in advance Xx

Buddhism is for the expansion of human consciousness.  you could spend the rest of your life there and still not be enlightened.  Why are you seeking enlightenment, what do you think it would be like to be enlightened?

[WhatAmI]

53 minutes ago, charlie2dogs said:

Buddhism is for the expansion of human consciousness.  you could spend the rest of your life there and still not be enlightened.  Why are you seeking enlightenment, what do you think it would be like to be enlightened?

How exactly do they teach you to expand your conciousness?

I dont necessarily need to be enlightened. I  Technically already am, but all of my conditioning and attachments have made me feel separate from everything.

 

I want to feel completely 'one' with everything and Everyone. And detached from this body. I dont want to preserve anything. 

 

My question is whether buddhism will help me feel that connection with life, or whether it is just another organisational ladder to climb and distract me from my purpose.

 

 

 

[charlie2dogs]

12 minutes ago, WhatAmI said:

How exactly do they teach you to expand your conciousness?

I dont necessarily need to be enlightened. I  Technically already am, but all of my conditioning and attachments have made me feel separate from everything.

 

I want to feel completely 'one' with everything and Everyone. And detached from this body. I dont want to preserve anything. 

 

My question is whether buddhism will help me feel that connection with life, or whether it is just another organisational ladder to climb and distract me from my purpose.

 

 

 

you said: How exactly do they teach you to expand your conciousness?

when you are subject to some things, and you contemplate or meditate those things they expand in your mind and can cause expansion of human consciousness.

you said: I dont necessarily need to be enlightened. I  Technically already am, but all of my conditioning and attachments have made me feel separate from everything.

where did you get this idea that you are technically enlightened if i may ask, if you had been you wouldnt be asking these questions, and you would have already dropped the conditioning and attachments

you said: I want to feel completely 'one' with everything and Everyone. And detached from this body. I dont want to preserve anything. 

can you give me one good reason why you would want to be one with everyone and everything?  did you ever consider that an enlightened being might not even make such a statement, that maybe that has nothing to do with enlightenment.

you said: My question is whether buddhism will help me feel that connection with life, or whether it is just another organisational ladder to climb and distract me from my purpose.

Buddhism can only lead you on a path to expand your consciousness, if, and when possible.  contemplating buddhist teachings might even do more for your consciousness than the internet guru's and teachers, but it wont in itself give you what you are asking,

and finally what is your purpose, will it be the same 5 years from now, 10, 20 years,

[Mal]

@WhatAmI

The question is, can you afford NOT to study Buddhism?

I've heard that if you don't study Buddhism you will be reincarnated as a fox for 500 lifetimes!

So, take that as a warning!

 

Edited July 20, 2016 by Mal

[HereNowThisMoment]

12 hours ago, WhatAmI said:

I want to feel completely 'one' with everything and Everyone. And detached from this body. I dont want to preserve anything. 

These are ideas about what you think enlightenment is. Enlightenment is about truth at its most fundamental basis. Your username is "What am I?" so you are familiar with that question. Ask yourself that and try to get to the bottom of it. These expectations of what you think will happen are just other concepts. 

12 hours ago, WhatAmI said:

My question is whether buddhism will help me feel that connection with life, or whether it is just another organisational ladder to climb and distract me from my purpose.

Are you ever not connected with life? Buddhism, Hinduism, gurus, spiritual teachers, etc. can only point in a direction. They can say words and you may even think you fully understand them when they are saying them (see below), but adding more knowledge is not necessary. Getting tied to a teaching and expecting that that teaching is the authority is not going to get you closer. Much of the value of the teachings is not in the teaching itself, but in exhausting the need to search. The underlying truth becomes more apparent over time until you realize that none of those descriptions were ever necessary. 

12 hours ago, WhatAmI said:

I  Technically already am, but all of my conditioning and attachments have made me feel separate from everything.

This is what I mean when I say that you can hear something and think you understand it. The idea that you are already enlightened is not flawed, but if you truly understood why that is then there would be no reason to ask this question. Explore this for yourself. 

[HereNowThisMoment]

Just to clarify, when I say "truly understood" I do not mean an intellectual understanding. 

[Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj]

It can be usefull  to study buddhism but there is A LOT of dogma there, even in sects like Zen. So be careful to not fill your mind with fantasies about spirituallity or getting addicted to "styles" or perspectives of consciousness. But sure study it but remember to not get lost in it and study more than you practice.

[SaynotoKlaus]

 I believed these no-self stories right from the beginning. I never understood anything , but i believed and learned them anyway because it was supposed to be like that since i'm unaware and egotistical. I wanted to progress faster and dedicate all my free time to this.

 This has torn me up on the inside in the last months. I lost my passion for everything i used to like and my meditation sessions were more like torture instead of bliss (like they used to be). I couldn't even sleep properly at night. All because i keep having these thoughts firing up in my head all the time - " there is no me" , "i'm not my mind" , " there is no one to be aware" , etc. These buddhist stories make you believe that you are divided , that your desires and thoughts are just burdens you need to get rid of. It's similar to what the other religions do , make you think your body and mind are dirty and you need to purge yourself in order to be good. It is toxic.

 The real improvement you get is from the meditation exercises. They make you more aware , calm and with better focus. The theory is just nonsense.

 Do your research on it if you want to , but be skeptical. YOU need to figure out what is true and works don't let others tell you , like i did. Now i need to unwire all these beliefs , and i feel like a fool.

 Also observe how to people who preach this stuff behave. Are they emotionally mature and happy , or do they have the same bad habits as the people they are preaching to?

 

Edited July 21, 2016 by SaynotoKlaus

[WhatAmI]

@HereNowThisMoment

On 20 July 2016 at 0:40 AM, HereNowThisMoment said:

These are ideas about what you think enlightenment is.

Buddhism, Hinduism, gurus, spiritual teachers, etc. can only point in a direction. adding more knowledge is not necessary. Getting tied to a teaching and expecting that that teaching is the authority is not going to get you closer.

I do this unconsciously. I'm not sure why but somehow I feel like I'm 'missing something' and like maybe I need more knowledge or more wisdom from someone to speed me along the enlightenment journey.

It's so easy to access more knowledge about this topic from youtube, that I forget that it's not the content that I am looking at which matters, it's the 'thing' which is OBSERVING the content.

I need to refocus my attention on the observer, not more knowledge. thanks for your help  xx

[WhatAmI]

@Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj

On 21 July 2016 at 9:02 PM, Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj said:

 there is A LOT of dogma there, even in sects like Zen. So be careful to not fill your mind with fantasies about spirituallity or getting addicted to "styles" or perspectives of consciousness. But sure study it but remember to not get lost in it and study more than you practice.

OMG that's so ironic that you mentioned that because Zen was the next thing on my list to explore. There is a Zen group in my home city as well which meet up every week and do sitting and walking meditation and I'm like 'damn that would be so good!' This will be a great meditation habit to include.

do you think it is more useful to practice on your own? that a group or something would make you feel like you NEED the group meditations to be enlightened? And that if you practice alone you are on your own journey and aren't comparing yourself to other people's journeys?

I literally had to google the differences between zen and buddhism haha and found this: 
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Buddhism_vs_Zen

So far I'm liking the 'idea' of Zen more but again it's just more studies and ideas. I swear the amount of effort I went into pondering meditation groups and studies could have been better spent just meditating. 

[WhatAmI]

@SaynotoKlaus

On 21 July 2016 at 10:44 PM, SaynotoKlaus said:

 I believed these no-self stories right from the beginning. I never understood anything , but i believed and learned them anyway because it was supposed to be like that since i'm unaware and egotistical. I wanted to progress faster and dedicate all my free time to this.

 This has torn me up on the inside in the last months. All because i keep having these thoughts firing up in my head all the time - " there is no me" , "i'm not my mind" , " there is no one to be aware" , etc. These buddhist stories make you believe that you are divided , that your desires and thoughts are just burdens you need to get rid of. It's similar to what the other religions do , make you think your body and mind are dirty and you need to purge yourself in order to be good. It is toxic.

 The real improvement you get is from the meditation exercises. They make you more aware , calm and with better focus. The theory is just nonsense.

 Do your research on it if you want to , but be skeptical. YOU need to figure out what is true and works don't let others tell you , like i did. Now i need to unwire all these beliefs , and i feel like a fool.

 Also observe how to people who preach this stuff behave. Are they emotionally mature and happy , or do they have the same bad habits as the people they are preaching to?

 

Aww it's okay, the exact thing happened to me too! I just wanted to progress and believed the whole "there is no mind, there is no self" story right off the bat. Every day I felt divided. At work, I would literally look at people and think "I am not this body, this is not reality, what's real is what can't be named' and the depressing story just got bigger and bigger and i just hated on life.

Whenever I was meant to focus on something, say an assignment, I would just think "why am I studying this? I should be doing enlightenment work, focusing my effort on this is just a distraction from meditating" and I would get depressed and it would take me twice as long to get the assignment done. 

Every thought I had, I judged as "bad" before letting it go. I believed that having a mind that wasn't focused on the present moment was a "bad thing" and I would hate myself for losing focus and would guilt trip myself into starting again. 

I've wasted so much time judging my thoughts and actions relative to my spiritual progress, and in fact it just got me further and further away. 

I need to rewire so many thoughts and beliefs, too. I feel like I need to meditate twice as hard now to get rid of those thought processes hahaha. But guilting myself got me no where the first time round, so I'm avoiding guilting myself now.

I feel like the people who preach this stuff are mature and content because they have practiced those ideas their entire life. In leo's recent video he mentioned that idea that there are enlightened people that are awful at business, and need newbie personal development advice about business. The people that preach are happy, but I don't think they are as fully developed as they could be.

In terms of the people I know that are following buddhism, this one girl has progressed so much with buddhism that now she ONLY hangs out with buddhist friends. she doesn't hang out much with people of other religions or beliefs. In one way its good that she is attracting people that are going to help her advance in her journey, but at the same time, I feel like you develop so much by having friends that 'challenge' all of your beliefs.

I have one friend that is super anti-spiritual and like doesn't believe in the soul or anything and is fully invested into science. Contrast that with me, who loves ideas about consciousness and the universe and the soul. Whenever I talk with her about this stuff, at first I want to protect my beliefs but now it's gotten to the point where I can accept that all these beliefs are simply beliefs, and there is no way to know what is really true. All that I know is based on my experience, and the same goes with her, so who is to say what is correct and what isn't?

I am still questioning 'what is happiness' for myself and what my unique expression of happiness is. And whether it is possible to be fully in this state.

I'm coming to the conclusion that buddhism is just more beliefs, and I will never fully know what is real until I experience it. And the only way I can experience it is from my observation/meditation  how are you going with unwiring what you've learnt?

[Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj]

12 hours ago, WhatAmI said:

@Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj

OMG that's so ironic that you mentioned that because Zen was the next thing on my list to explore. There is a Zen group in my home city as well which meet up every week and do sitting and walking meditation and I'm like 'damn that would be so good!' This will be a great meditation habit to include.

do you think it is more useful to practice on your own? that a group or something would make you feel like you NEED the group meditations to be enlightened? And that if you practice alone you are on your own journey and aren't comparing yourself to other people's journeys?

I literally had to google the differences between zen and buddhism haha and found this: 
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Buddhism_vs_Zen

So far I'm liking the 'idea' of Zen more but again it's just more studies and ideas. I swear the amount of effort I went into pondering meditation groups and studies could have been better spent just meditating. 

I have never done group practice so I don't know what to say about it, I will try it our in September though. It can probably be great and motivating but be careful about dogma and beliefs.

[HereNowThisMoment]

18 hours ago, WhatAmI said:

I do this unconsciously. I'm not sure why but somehow I feel like I'm 'missing something' and like maybe I need more knowledge or more wisdom from someone to speed me along the enlightenment journey.

I deal with this all the time too. A large part of it is just that there are so many different interpretations of what enlightenment is out there that it is hard to not get distracted. And just being a logically driven person it is hard for me to let go of my desire to rationalize everything. If you're looking for good info though I'd say read Peter Ralston's stuff. I've read the Book of Not Knowing and that definitely helped clarify a lot of things. I'm going to read Pursuing Consciousness soon too (I have some bigger priorities in my life right now to attend to). Aside from those books though I've stopped looking for other sources of info. I'm not trying to hold Ralston up as an absolute authority, no one should be held up in that way, but he is the most straightforward and thorough teacher that I've come across and his information can point me in the right direction. The main point of reading information though is to put it into practice, as long as you're doing that then you're doing what you can. 

[Khin]

@charlie2dogs Do you really know the main teachings of Buddha? The main goal of Buddhism is to reach Nirvana. I don't know about enlightenment because everyone is having different opinions. Nirvana is also called "end of sufferings." My translation of enlightenment is Nirvana. And a person doesn't need to claim himself as a Buddhist to do things Buddha taught. It's the freedom in Buddhism. Which means you do or don't, we don't care.

Reincarnate as this or that and ghosts and bla bla bla are some bed time stories which people told their children. 

The real reincarnation and this ghosts stuff are not the same as people think.

 @WhatAmI Buddhism will help you a lot. But... do not go for traditional beliefs and religion. Go for teaching. Especially, the core of his teachings. 

If you are not sure, you should search "Why Buddhists are so eager to reach Nirvana." If you agree, then move on. If not, search something else.

Edited July 27, 2016 by Khin
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