Best places to live while pursuing enlightenment?

[Zion]

What factors are most important when choosing to move somewhere whilst also pursuing truth? I'm looking to move in several months, & I was interested in any ideas other's might have as to where to go. If it were anywhere in the world, where would you choose to live & why? I ask, is because I'm finding it difficult narrowing down one good place I could call home. What things should I be looking for, to live in a place that accommodates the pursuit of enlightenment & truth?

 

So far, I have these factors taken into account:

- Highly prone to natural disasters

- Sociability

- Cost of living

- Amount of healthy grocery stores

- Best soil quality

- Best water quality

- Best air quality

- Best weather year-round

- Most eco-friendly

- Population

- Depression rates

- Most walking-friendly

 

Anything I'm missing?

 

I've found that, when looking for reviews on certain places, the reviews are very scattered & biased. To the point to where I don't know how to determine if they're truthful or not.

Anything helps, thank you!
 

[anxious_turtle]

A cave in the jungle?

 

No, but seriously - I've been contemplating the exact same question for a long time now. From living alone in a forest, to joining a hippy commune, to becoming a monk in a temple, to moving into a very small village. 

I'm a nature guy - I hate constant car buzzing, large groups of people, the social pyramid, the hustle to go to school, then to uni, then to get a high-paying job, the consumerist culture, the constant ads everywhere, the gossip, the fakeness of people and their preoccupation with social status, their hedonism, etc, etc.

So, naturally - now I'm moving into the biggest, dirtiest, loudest, lewdest, most expensive city in my country.

After lots of thinking that just seems to be the "truest" place for me to be in at this moment. I had to give up a significant part of my ego to admit that. (at least I saw it as significant at the time, no doubt there's bigger ones)

I guess my point is that there are no universal "best places" for enlightenment. 

To parrot Ram Dass - Even if you go to a very fancy, clean, woke place to get enlightened, you may get very high, but the moment you return to visit your parents or something, your dad may say something that'll instantly bring you down - wake up some neurotic pattern that has been asleep for a long time, just because you were away - and you realize that, at that moment, you're not very awake anymore.

By all means - go and live in a cleaner, more evolved part of humanity! But enlightenment is about dropping all dualities and now you're creating a duality between what places are "good for enlightenment" and what aren't. It's the ego that needs certain circumstances to make it happy and productive. 

Zen temples apparently used to be among the "best" places for enlightenment. But when somebody knocked on the gates to "sign up and study enlightenment", they told him that there's nothing to learn here and nothing to attain. And so the pupil had to stay for more than a week in front of the gates before they took pity on the poor fool and had to let him in.

 

Of course, my ego would also like a nicer cleaner place at some time - so I'll follow this thread in case something interesting comes up.

Good luck to you!

[fridjonk]

There really is no best place to pursue "enlightenment".

But if I play along, I'd say Scandinavia or something like Switzerland. It's not cheap to live there, but it's worth it for all the things they provide you with like healthcare and union rights. Most of Scandinavia ticks the boxes you mentioned, but it comes with a higher price to get all those things. 

[Moksha]

Awakening is an internal journey, and can happen in the most unlikely of places. Focus on the journey rather than the place. Once you do awaken, you will laugh, as you realize that places are only imagination  Ultimately, there is no time and no space. Relative reality only exists within the infinite, changeless, timeless dream of Consciousness.

[Lyubov]

I would say as long as you aren't in a war torn country or a place that is very violent, overcrowded and polluted you will be fine. Most developed countries and living on a middle class salary will do fine.

[Zion]

@anxious_turtle @Moksha

1 hour ago, anxious_turtle said:

But enlightenment is about dropping all dualities and now you're creating a duality between what places are "good for enlightenment" and what aren't. It's the ego that needs certain circumstances to make it happy and productive. 

I understand that. Though as of right now, my ego is not as easily manageable as perhaps it would be, if I were in a more loving environment. A place of peace for the ego can create transcendence of it's need for a peaceful place.

[Moksha]

10 minutes ago, Zion said:

@anxious_turtle @Moksha

I understand that. Though as of right now, my ego is not as easily manageable as perhaps it would be, if I were in a more loving environment. A place of peace for the ego can create transcendence of it's need for a peaceful place.

There is no place of peace for the ego. It is incapable of peace, only endless insatiability. It is not about being in a loving environment, but about finding the love within yourself. Victor Frankl did this in a Jewish concentration camp, of all places. One might even argue that places of pain are more conducive to awakening than places of peace.

[Zion]

1 minute ago, Moksha said:

places of pain are more conducive to awakening than places of peace.

 

2 minutes ago, Moksha said:

There is no place of peace for the ego.

What make this so?

[Sine]

It seems like there is a lot of conscious communities in Hawaii - But I only know this from youtube and people I have spoken to. Have not been there myself. 

[Moksha]

2 minutes ago, Zion said:

What make this so?

People often require extensive suffering, to be willing to see the ego as the very source of that suffering, and to let it go.

The ego thrives on conflict, and its sustenance is the energy that it steals from your true nature. It is all about judgment and struggle, and it will fight tooth and nail not to let you find peace.

The way to defeat the ego is not to fight it, but to see it for what it is. When the ego crawls out of its corner, as it inevitably will, allow it to scurry across the spaciousness of your Self, without identifying with it. Attention amplifies, so don't attend to it. Instead, attend to the Consciousness that you are.

[Zion]

@Moksha Wow, a lot to contemplate there. Thank you.

[Moksha]

@Zion ?

[Dingo]

Once you awaken, your homeland would benefit greatly from you sharing with them your insights... Let's try to leave noone behind. Stage turqiouse is collectivist for a reason

I moved to Scandinavia from eastern europe to get better education and experience society half a generation ahead (literally how it feels). I intend on coming back to aid in the evolution of the society I grew up in. 

[blackchair]

14 hours ago, Dingo said:

Once you awaken, your homeland would benefit greatly from you sharing with them your insights... Let's try to leave noone behind. Stage turqiouse is collectivist for a reason

I moved to Scandinavia from eastern europe to get better education and experience society half a generation ahead (literally how it feels). I intend on coming back to aid in the evolution of the society I grew up in. 

this