This Small Clip Made Me Question Buddhism & Meditation

[r0ckyreed]

1 hour ago, _Archangel_ said:

If you have 10 hours a day to dedicate to meditation chances are that writing a book isn't even a priority, and all you care is awakening. i don't think a monk would want to be the new NY best seller, otherwise it wouldn't be a monk.

But what do you think about the clip in my original post?  It confirmed my deep-seated doubt that you can meditate for 50 years and never reach infinite intelligence.  How can you raise your intelligence if all you do is sit and do nothing?  To become wise and intelligent requires having new experiences and insights.  There is only so much that can be learned at a university or monastery.

What is an awakening if your IQ is still at 75?  What is awakening if you don't even know any facts about the universe or how to simply live life and pay taxes and treat people with kindness and love?  Just because one raises their consciousness to the realization of no-self does not mean that they are intelligent and truth-realized.  There is more to it than cessations.

Edited February 10, 2023 by r0ckyreed

[Moksha]

4 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

How can we learn, create, or remember anything if we cannot engage with our thoughts? This is my critique of meditation and people who are anti-thinkers.

Meditation is not anti-thinking. To the contrary, it develops the discipline for proactive thinking. Most of us are entangled by our thoughts, as if they define our ultimate nature. When you are centered in awareness, you no longer identify with your thoughts, but are able to direct them with intelligence and creativity far beyond what was possible before.

That is what I meant earlier about killing the elephant vs. learning to ride it where you want to go. The brain is an amazing beast when it is tamed. All true creatives, including Einstein, understand how to operate from this inner space of mystery which is who you actually are.

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.

- Einstein

[Breakingthewall]

3 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

What is an awakening if your IQ is still at 75?  What is awakening if you don't even know any facts about the universe or how to simply live life and pay taxes and treat people with kindness and love?  

On 8/2/2023 at 1:35 PM, r0ckyreed said:

 

 awakening it is realizing what existence is, what you really are, and it has nothing to do with the level of intelligence or worldly wisdom. what you are is the absolute, and you are even if you are mentally retarded with a coefficient of 25. But It is true that we are human and we must live a human life. or so I think. It is not enough for me to sit down to meditate and realize God. I want to contribute, I want to do, I want to be part of humanity and unravel the mystery of being human. there will be infinity to be god. I'm aware that this desire is pure ego, but anyway, to Caesar what is Caesar's

 

Edited February 10, 2023 by Breakingthewall

[gettoefl]

 

 

 

Questioner: You say reality is one. Oneness, unity, is the attribute of the person. Is then reality a person, with the universe as its body?

Nisargadatta Maharaj: Whatever you may say will be both true and false. Words do not reach beyond the mind.

Q: I am just trying to understand. You are telling us of the Person, the Self and the Supreme (vyakti, vyakta, avyakta). The light of Pure Awareness (prajna), focussed as ‘I am’ in the Self (jivatma), as consciousness (chetana) illumines the mind (antahkarana) and as life (prana) vitalises the body (deha). All this is fine as far as the words go. But when it comes to distinguishing in myself the person from the Self and the Self from the Supreme, I get mixed up.

M: The person is never the subject. You can see a person, but you are not the person. You are always the Supreme which appears at a given point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the person.

Q: When I look at myself, I find I am several persons fighting amongst themselves for the use of the body.

M: They correspond to the various tendencies (samskara) of the mind.

Q: Can I make peace between them?

M: How can you? They are so contradictory! See them as they are: mere habits of thoughts and feelings, bundles of memories and urges.

Q: Yet they all say, “I am”.

M: It is only because you identify yourself with them. Once you realise that whatever appears before you cannot be yourself and cannot say, “I am”, you are free of all your ‘persons’ and their demands. The sense ‘I am’ is your own. You cannot part with it, but you can impart it to anything, as in saying, “I am young”, “I am rich” and so on. But such self-identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage.

Q: I can now understand that I am not the person, but that which, when reflected in the person, gives it a sense of being. Now, what about the Supreme? In what way do I know myself as the Supreme?

M: The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness. To know the source is to be the source. When you realise that you are not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that fearless awareness is your very being, you are the being. It is the source, the Inexhaustible Possibility.

Q: Are there many sources or one for all?

M: It depends how you look at it: in other words, from which end. The objects in the world are many, but the eye that sees them is one. The higher always appears as one to the lower and the lower as many to the higher.

Q: Shapes and names are all of one and the same God?

M: Again, it all depends on how you look at it. On the verbal level everything is relative. Absolutes should be experienced, not discussed.

Q: How is the Absolute experienced?

M: It is not an object to be recognised and stored up in memory. Rather, it is in the present and in feeling. It has more to do with the ‘how’ than with the ‘what’. It is in the quality, in the value; being the source of everything, it is in everything.

Q: If it is the source, why and how does it manifest itself?

M: It gives birth to consciousness. All else is in consciousness.

Q: Why are there so many centres of consciousness?

M: The objective universe (mahadakash) is in constant movement, projecting and dissolving innumerable forms. Whenever a form is infused with life (prana), consciousness (chetana) appears by reflection of awareness in matter.

Q: How is the Supreme affected?

M: What can affect it and how? The source is not affected by the vagaries of the river nor is the metal by the shape of the jewelry. Is the light affected by the picture on the screen? The Supreme makes everything possible; that is all.

Q: How is it that some things do happen and some do not?

M: Seeking out causes is a pastime of the mind. There is no duality of cause and effect. Everything is its own cause.

Q: No purposeful action is then possible?

M: All I say is that consciousness contains all. In consciousness all is possible. You can have causes if you want them, in your world. Another may be content with a single cause: God’s will. The root cause is one: the sense ‘I am’.

Q: What is the link between the Self (vyakta) and the Supreme (Avyakta)?

M: From the self’s point of view the world is the known, the Supreme — the Unknown. The Unknown gives birth to the known, yet remains Unknown. The known is infinite, but the Unknown is an infinitude of infinities. Just like a ray of light is never seen unless intercepted by the specs of dust, so does the Supreme make everything known while remaining unknown itself.

Q: Does it mean that the Unknown is inaccessible?

M: Oh, no. The Supreme is the easiest to reach for it is your very being. It is enough to stop thinking and desiring anything but the Supreme.

Q: And if I desire nothing, not even the Supreme?

M: Then you are as good as dead, or you are the Supreme.

Q: The world is full of desires. Everybody wants something or other. Who is the desirer? The person or the self?

M: The self. All desires, holy and unholy, come from the self; they all hang on the sense ‘I am’.

Q: I can understand holy desires (satyakama) emanating from the self. It may be the expression of the bliss aspect of the Sadchitananda (Beingness–Awareness–Happiness) of the Self. But why unholy desires?

M: All desires aim at happiness. Their shape and quality depend on the psyche (antahkarana). Where inertia (tamas) predominates, we find perversions. With energy (rajas), passions arise. With lucidity (sattva) the motive behind the desire is goodwill, compassion, the urge to make happy rather than be happy. But the Supreme is beyond all; yet because of its infinite permebility all cogent desires can be fulfilled.

Q: Which desires are cogent?

M: Desires that destroy their subjects or objects or do not subside on satisfaction are self-contradictory and cannot be fulfilled. Only desires motivated by love, goodwill and compassion are beneficial to both the subject and object and can be fully satisfied.

Q: All desires are painful, the holy as well as the unholy.

M: They are not the same and pain is not the same. Passion is painful, compassion — never. The entire universe strives to fulfil a desire born of compassion.

Q: Does the Supreme know itself? Is the Impersonal conscious?

M: The source of all has all. Whatever flows from it must be there already in seed form. And as a seed is the last of innumerable seeds and contains the experience and the promise of numberless forests, so does the Unknown contain all that was or could have been and all that shall or would be. The entire field of becoming is open and accessible; past and future coëxist in the eternal now.

Q: Are you living in the Supreme Unknown?

M: Where else?

Q: What makes you say so?

M: No desire ever arises in my mind.

Q: Are you then unconscious?

M: Of course not! I am fully conscious, but since no desire or fear enters my mind, there is perfect silence.

Q: Who knows the silence?

M: Silence knows itself. It is the silence of the silent mind when passions and desires are silenced.

Q: Do you experience desires occasionally?

M: Desires are just waves in the mind. You know a wave when you see one. A desire is just a thing among many. I feel no urge to satisfy it; no action needs be taken on it. Freedom from desire means this: the compulsion to satisfy is absent.

Q: Why do desires arise at all?

M: Because you imagine that you were born and that you will die if you do not take care of your body. Desire for embodied existence is the root cause of trouble.

Q: Yet so many jivas get into bodies. Surely it cannot be some error of judgement. There must be a purpose. What could it be?

M: To know itself the self must be faced with its opposite — the non-self. Desire leads to experience. Experience leads to discrimination, detachment, self-knowledge — and liberation. And what is liberation after all? To know that you are beyond birth and death. By forgetting who you are and imagining yourself a mortal creature, you created so much trouble for yourself that you have to wake up, as from a bad dream.

Inquiry also wakes you up. You need not wait for suffering — enquiry into happiness is better, for the mind is in harmony and peace.

Q: Who exactly is the ultimate experiencer — the Self or the Unknown?

M: The Self, of course.

Q: Then why introduce the notion of the Supreme Unknown?

M: To explain the Self.

Q: But is there anything beyond the Self?

M: Outside the Self there is nothing. All is one and all is contained in ‘I am’. In the waking and dream states it is the person. In deep sleep and turiya it is the Self. Beyond the alert intentness of turiya lies the great, silent peace of the Supreme. But in fact, all is one in essence and related in appearance. In ignorance the seer becomes the seen and in wisdom he is the seeing.

But why be concerned with the Supreme? Know the knowers and all will be known.

 

- i am that, chapter 20

[r0ckyreed]

14 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

awakening it is realizing what existence is, what you really are, and it has nothing to do with the level of intelligence or worldly wisdom.

Realizing what existence is takes a lot of intelligence and wisdom I would think. God is more complex than calculus. But I guess you have a point that one could understand God but not calculus since calculus is something invented whereas God is something Absolute. But I would still feel like that the person who realizes God is more intelligent than a mathematician. Intelligence is such an interesting and complex concept. I think intelligence and wisdom are deeply connected.

I guess you could have an awakening and stop learning after that. Yeah, awakening isn’t the end goal.

[r0ckyreed]

16 hours ago, Moksha said:

Meditation is not anti-thinking. To the contrary, it develops the discipline for proactive thinking.

I guess meditation can be very broad. I think meditation is important to learn to not identify with thoughts and let them control you. And I also think it is good to let the mind wander for creativity. So I guess you could call the former Vipassana and the latter Do Nothing.

[Breakingthewall]

1 hour ago, r0ckyreed said:

Realizing what existence is takes a lot of intelligence and wisdom I would think. God is more complex than calculus. But I guess you have a point that one could understand God but not calculus since calculus is something invented whereas God is something Absolute. But I would still feel like that the person who realizes God is more intelligent than a mathematician. Intelligence is such an interesting and complex concept. I think intelligence and wisdom are deeply connected.

I guess you could have an awakening and stop learning after that. Yeah, awakening isn’t the end goal.

No, it's different. You are a door that closes infinity. if the door is opened, the absolute infinity manifests itself. Perhaps, being human, intelligence is necessary to identify the mechanisms that block, to know how to use psychedelics, to do what is necessary. but if this happens, it has nothing to do with intelligence or wisdom, it's just unfettered reality

[Inliytened1]

On 2/8/2023 at 6:35 AM, r0ckyreed said:

I wanted to share with you all the first video clip that made me question Buddhism and meditation.  Ever since I understood the first 30 seconds of this video, I had an insight that Buddhism and meditation alone are not conducive to the highest levels of intelligence.  

I always wondered why I had meditation has stunted my memory.  I realized that if you stop thinking, you stunt your intelligence, and you stunt your memories.  Memories require repetition to keep them alive and so does learning.  Leo even pointed this out in his new video on Insight, where somewhere in the video, he stated that he cannot meditate because he is too curious and that Buddhist monks simply aren't that curious about life.

This made me wonder that Buddhism is about attaining Nirvana, some fairytale of an end of suffering, rather than the goal of pure understanding.

Watch the first 30 seconds of this video.  Meditating for long periods of time comes at a post.  That cost is pure understanding and intelligence.  What I have gained from meditation is calmness and peace of mind, but I would not exchange that for intelligence/understanding.

Then, of course, Jed McKenna helped me to see the problems within Buddhism and meditation.

I still meditate from time to time, and it is helpful, but 10-20 minutes a day is all I think is necessary.  

The main reason why I meditate now is to cultivate my ability to be joyful, aware of the beauty all around me, and to be satisfied with nothing.  I think meditation is really important for happiness and peace of mind but excessive meditation comes at a cost.  

I no longer expect any deep insights from meditation anymore.  I get those through observation and contemplation.  

Here is the video below! Enjoy!

 

Just keep your mind free and discover for yourself.  If someone told you your mom was a bad person would you take that on faith?  No external force should ever influence your direct experience.   This is because external forces are second order.  They are imagination.   Your own direct experience is first order.

Edited February 11, 2023 by Inliytened1

[Moksha]

7 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

I guess meditation can be very broad. I think meditation is important to learn to not identify with thoughts and let them control you. And I also think it is good to let the mind wander for creativity. So I guess you could call the former Vipassana and the latter Do Nothing.

There is a third way of "thinking", beyond disidentification from involuntary and wandering thoughts. It is purposeful creation that is born of your ultimate nature, and is directed toward a specific goal. You don't know in advance what the answer will be, but you focus awareness on the question without imposing thought. In the silent sanctum of pure mind, a solution arises.

This is how Einstein, who was a poor student but also a brilliant mystic, realized relativity.

Words and language, whether written or spoken, do not seem to play any part in my thought processes. The psychological entities that serve as building blocks for my thought are certain signs or images, more or less clear, that I can reproduce and recombine at will.

[Moksha]

12 hours ago, gettoefl said:

M: What can affect it and how? The source is not affected by the vagaries of the river nor is the metal by the shape of the jewelry. Is the light affected by the picture on the screen? The Supreme makes everything possible; that is all.

?

[_Archangel_]

@r0ckyreed *facepalm* Did you even read what i wrote? You still believe serius meditators  just "sit and do nothing" which, i repeat, is WROOOOONG. You have NO idea what meditation is. You have No idea what buddhism is and you show it by boiling it down to No Self  and Cessations.

You can be humble and curious and try to learn or continue to feed you preconcieved biases how mush you want. Up to you.
 

 

[Inliytened1]

4 minutes ago, _Archangel_ said:

@r0ckyreed *facepalm* Did you even read what i wrote? You still believe serius meditators  just "sit and do nothing" which, i repeat, is WROOOOONG. You have NO idea what meditation is. You have No idea what buddhism is and you show it by boiling it down to No Self  and Cessations.

You can be humble and curious and try to learn or continue to feed you preconcieved biases how mush you want. Up to you.
 

 

Excuse me but sit and do nothing meditation works as well.  Quieting the ego is all it takes. 

[r0ckyreed]

9 hours ago, _Archangel_ said:

You still believe serius meditators  just "sit and do nothing" which, i repeat, is WROOOOONG.

What else are they doing?  

If they are actually contemplating and deeply questioning reality, then I have no problem with "meditation.  The issue is that you will find monks and other people like Jianyu, who have IQs of 75 and have little understanding of reality after years of meditation. That concerns me. Meditation isn't enough to understand reality to its fullest.  If all one does is meditates and follows Buddhism doctrine, then they are missing out of 99% of the rest of reality.  However, I think a good point is made that it is a matter of the quality and kind of meditation that one does.  

9 hours ago, _Archangel_ said:

You have NO idea what meditation is. You have No idea what buddhism is and you show it by boiling it down to No Self  and Cessations.

I guess I don't.  I thought I knew what it was.  What more is there to meditation than counting breaths and repeating a mantra?  I thought meditation was supposed to be simple, as simple as being present?

I thought Buddhism was about alleviating suffering through its noble truths and eight-fold path?

Anatta or no-self is only a 1/3 of Buddhism.  The other 1/3 is anicca, impermanence and 1/3 is dukha, suffering.

9 hours ago, _Archangel_ said:

You can be humble and curious and try to learn or continue to feed you preconcieved biases how mush you want. Up to you.

I prefer to be humble and curious.  That is why I made this thread.  The small clip gave me doubt, and I want to see what evidence there is or if there is anything that was missed or overlooked.

So far, I have done satisfaction meditation really successfully.  I am able to embody high levels of happiness from no external stimuli, but my understanding and intelligence hasn't change at all.  Meditation has been a method for bringing peace to my mind rather than pure understanding.  Can you see this?  What insights cannot be gained through traditional meditation?

[_Archangel_]

@r0ckyreed i can see your couriosity. I will just say then - investigating the nature of a sensations IS deeply questioning reality.
The only difference is that with contemplation, you start with a mental idea or concept. Both  these paths though, if practiced correctly, bring the seeker to transcend thinking.
In other words, with meditation you concetrate on the senses to transcend thinking, with contemplation you use thinking to transcend thinking.
Yet again, Meditation has many nuances.

When you say "Meditation isn't enough to understand reality to its fullest" it depends on what you mean, cause it is more then enough to liberate your Self, understanding the Grand Scheme of Things.
Meditation might not be appropriate if you want to understand if you're better off buying a house or go on rent.

So all my tips here boils down to buying a thick meditation manual because there is much more to Buddhism then you simplistic notions.

Your main delusion is that you think you can't derive a world insights from the miniscule sensation of touching of you index finger on the knee.
The object you are observing, wether it being a sensation or a concept, doesn't matter all that much, is your attitude and what you search in it that's far more important.

To close, even though i don't exclude the possibility in some poeple of losing some thinking power, i provided you  with evidance that Creativity and hardcore meditation can coexist. Some more? Search up Daniel Ingram on youtube.

[Carl-Richard]

There is a trade-off with having a silent mind: you'll have very few thoughts, but whatever thoughts you do have will carry a lot of significance and be crystal clear. When your mind is loud, you'll be more capable of ruminating over the same things over and over, but much of that is just repetition, unclear thinking, logical dead-ends, fear-based and reaction-based thinking. But sure, being obsessed about something can certainly produce some result that a lack of obsession couldn't produce, but will that product generally be one of virtue and deep genuine insight, or one of ego and delusion? All I know is that the people I consider "enlightened" tend to have the deepest and most streamlined minds I've ever seen. On the other hand, the people I consider "obsessed" tend to have deeply troubled and chaotic minds and often over-complicate the simplest things.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[tuku747]

If you can be happy doing absolutely nothing

Then You can be happy doing absolutely everything