Enlightenment in relation to love/passion or why aspire enlightenment?

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: Panne

Based on the initial post in 'What is Enlightenment'-thread. Sorry if this is something which does not need its own thread. Anyway:

-tags added by me.

[QUOTE="maynoth"]Enlightenment isnâ??t something you gain, or something which betters your life, or anything like what your thinking it might be. Enlightenment is the removal of all false beliefs, and emotional attachments from a persons mind, which amounts to pretty much everything you have accumulated over the course of your life. What remains is a completely empty mind, devoid off all that is false.

The reason not many ever achieve it, is because it isnâ??t something which can be desired from an egoic viewpoint. There is no way to be enlightened and still love your family, or friends, or material possessions, or anything really. Also it becomes impossible to hate anything even the most unspeakable of evils. You can see from this description why most people turn away, before they ever get close to it.

Enlightenment is achieved by examining ones own beliefs, and discarding the ones which have no reality outside of your own mind. Now that sounds easy until you realize all beliefs have no reality outside your own mind. Words, symbols, pictures, memories, none of them exist outside the confines of your mind. The language you have learned, everything you your were ever taught in school, the customs, the way you act, who you are, your memories, everything that makes you "you" it doesnâ??t exist outside of your mind.

So if all that is gone, is there anything which still makes you human? The answer is no. There is nothing, nothing at all.

When reality is viewed from this perspective, there is only the interaction of waveforms, and the arrangement of matter and energy swirling around like a vast ocean. There are no "things" only a continually evolving pattern, or tapestry of waveforms. Human language and thoughts have no basis. There is no context, or content. All is one, observer and observed.

The Buddha said we were all asleep, and itâ??s true. We are. Enlightenment is about unlearning what isnâ??t, and seeing reality as it is.

"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world."
-Buddha

"It is your mind that creates this world."
-Buddha

"The world, indeed, is like a dream and the treasures of the world are an alluring mirage! Like the apparent distances in a picture, things have no reality in themselves, but they are like heat haze."
-Buddha

"A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering."
-Buddha

"He who loves 50 people has 50 woes; he who loves no one has no woes."
-Buddha

In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then beleive them to be true.
-Buddha[/QUOTE]

Original thread: http://www.occultforums.com/showthread. ... 395&page=8

Also, (loosley) translated from Swedish Wikipedia about Satori:

[QUOTE="Swedish Wikipedia"]
When this state has been reached the perception of the I/me ceases to exist. All we see, hear and feel is the same as us. No jealosy is present since all other (external?) units are the same as you. No anger is present since it would simply be directed towards yourself. This removal that is also a reunion with yourself can many times feel like you finally found your way home.[/QUOTE]

How can one, with this insight in mind still find happiness in ones life? If you don't have love for your friends/family/loved one or any passion left in life, then what is there to live for?

I realize this is personal experiences/perceptions of Satori/awakening, and I'm sorry to base this thread mainly on quotes. But I feel it's an important question for me, and if someone would please contribute with their 2 cents it would be greatly appreciated!

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: IAO131

93,

This presupposes that you live to have love for your friends and family.

Besides, satori could be understood as the expansion of love to infinity. Does that satisfy you?

Further, satori breaks down the barrier between one's 'self' and those others which you 'love.' Its quite satisfying. Hindus say ananda (bliss) accompanies It.

IAO131

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: Dekishitai

[QUOTE=Panne;358548]How can one, with this insight in mind still find happiness in ones life? If you don't have love for your friends/family/loved one or any passion left in life, then what is there to live for? [/QUOTE]

Nothing, one would be free. Free from suffering and dissatisfaction, rebirth and clinging to things like happiness. That doesn't mean that one would become a zombie incapable of thinking or acting. On the contrary, being free from attachment would enable you to better help others free themselves from unsatisfactory conditions. Many even take vows to help others reach enlightenment once they have done so themselves.

One thing that I should probably emphasize is that Buddhists generally believe in rebirth, and that we have been reborn countless times. Before this life you had another family, friends and loved ones, and before them you had another family, etc. Do you still have love for them? Do you even remember them? Loving your family is not wrong or bad, but if you cling to it in this life you will be reborn again and again, as will your family and friends (of this life). It's not even guaranteed that you'd be reborn as a human, you might for example be born as a lab-rat and have to endure excruciating experiments. This process will continue until you reach enlightenment, and only then would you be capable of truly helping your loved ones.

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: Draginvry

[QUOTE=Panne;358548]
How can one, with this insight in mind still find happiness in ones life? If you don't have love for your friends/family/loved one or any passion left in life, then what is there to live for? [/QUOTE]

There is nothing to live for. As long as one believes there is something to live for, or otherwise tries to find some kind of reason to live, one will not find enlightenment.

Also, love becomes irrelevant. Enlightenment is a higher state of mind than love by nature. I might also argue that joy and wisdom are also higher than love, in terms of conscious awareness.

You are also assuming that love disappears when one becomes enlightened, which I don't believe is true. It only transforms into a different phenomenon.

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: Panne

I realize your points (all of you), but still I can't really detach the fact that it seems to have some sort of negative meaning to me. Why aspire something which drastically changes life as you know it? Whilst removing all the bad things, the good things go away as well. But would this enlightenment then really be the equivalent of eternal/the ultimate bliss (or pleasent, if you will, state)?

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: corbin_israfael

This is all a misunderstanding of what Enlightenment is and it's nature. Quite simply it is Sat-Chid-Ananda or Knowledge - Consciousness - Bliss Absolute.

Joy is something you can feel even when enlightened. You can still feel love through bhakti. You no longer see the difference between yourself and the world. No longer forming attachments to the world since you know all is Brahman you no longer have desire for these things since they are all a part of God.

Or so I believe.

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: IAO131

[QUOTE=Panne;358659]I realize your points (all of you), but still I can't really detach the fact that it seems to have some sort of negative meaning to me. Why aspire something which drastically changes life as you know it? Whilst removing all the bad things, the good things go away as well. But would this enlightenment then really be the equivalent of eternal/the ultimate bliss (or pleasent, if you will, state)?[/QUOTE]

Anyone who doesnt want to give up good or bad things shouldnt be searching for this anyhow. Giving up your attachments can be a terrible thing but its been said that only when one gives up everything does one gain Everything.

Your attachments are obviously strong and you enjoy them. No need for spiritual enlightenment if you dont feel the need to pursue it - although it can make one appreciate things all the more.

It is the equivalent of ultimate bliss but its eternity is in the sense that the constructs of space and time seem to fade away - an infinite eternal moment if you will.

IAO131

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: Draginvry

[QUOTE=IAO131;358682]Anyone who doesnt want to give up good or bad things shouldnt be searching for this anyhow. Giving up your attachments can be a terrible thing but its been said that only when one gives up everything does one gain Everything.[/QUOTE]

I have to agree. If one is unwilling to give up attachments, they have no business searching for enlightenment. They are certain not to achieve it, and they will only cause themselves pain in the process.

But I still maintain my position that you don't actually lose passion when you become enlightened. You only lose obsession (what most people mistake for passion)

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: Panne

May be very true what you say. For now, anyway; who know what the future will hold. But surely, one should be able to gain a stronger spiritual connection through various practices (hence enriching your life) without having to drastically alter your living conditions (yet, perhaps ones attidtude)?

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: Qez

How can one, with this insight in mind still find happiness in ones life?

Any happiness that -- can be found -- is not real happiness; it is a phenomenal experience, a dualistic high. A giant pendulum that is pushed high on one end represents "your high" but inevitably it must release and it eventually swings in the opposite direction. That is why the Buddha said, every phenomenal happiness exists with its opposite (misery + suffering) with time separating them.

If you don't have love for your friends/family/loved one or any passion left in life, then what is there to live for?

Enlightenment is *the* great love. Those simple yet breathtaking moments of your life - a perfect sunset, a momentary glance into your lovers eyes, the first look of your newborn child -- the mindless moments when you just simply exist without thinking, without judgement, without commentary. This is what enlightenment is like. You "don't have love" - you are love - and the realisation is, you never were anything else other than this. The love you think for your friends / family / loved *one* is a fabrication, a discrimination of the mind. There is no friends, there is no family, there is no loved "one" - there is love, endless love that is here, that is now, and there is nothing more. Read the poems of Rumi, he calls it divine inebriation - intoxicated with love for everything and everyone.

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: Qez

[QUOTE=Draginvry;358689]I have to agree. If one is unwilling to give up attachments, they have no business searching for enlightenment. They are certain not to achieve it, and they will only cause themselves pain in the process.

But I still maintain my position that you don't actually lose passion when you become enlightened. You only lose obsession (what most people mistake for passion)[/QUOTE]

Time is the great separator, the past and the future separate us from this precious moment. Without time, the ego could not exist because identity exists purely from past experiences and projections into the future. Enlightenment can be achieved right now this very moment by simply being aware, by being present, by being mindful. There is nothing to achieve, and trying leads to more and more suffering. You cannot do anything to "become enlightened" because it is our natural state. The Tao Te Ching says enlightenment is realised through non-action. The window to enlightenment is surrendering to the present moment.

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: immortal

Personally, I don't think that enlightenment is "forever", I mean, you have your experiences and in those moments everything makes sense, like popping the bubble for a moment. Certainly, the strength of those moments can deeply shape your view of the world, it carries with it a resonance with what is and what isn't and that you have a few more clues in the big riddle. The things that aren't fall away either graciously or through trial.

True Love: What better affirmation to know that you were already on the right track. Even if the physical aspect is not there what has been carved by care is yours and yours alone. And what a teacher She/He is--but who is the source? Who makes the grass green...

Love is "only" one stop too, it's not the only satori(?). It's one of many on the path and it comes after and precedes others. There is the world too. And don't forget that He/She will never in fact complete you for an almost simple obvious reason...

But why aspire?... Why not? What of the power knowledge?

Maybe not for everyone, but for anyone who genuinely wants it...

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: Kath_

[QUOTE=IAO131;358682] Giving up your attachments can be a terrible thing but its been said that only when one gives up everything does one gain Everything.
[/QUOTE]
this echos what i've learned from my mentor.


I'm not buddhist myself. But it seems to me that people emphasize the 'nothingness' of enlightenment, while the 'everything-ness' of enlightenment is much less discussed. people seem to focus only on the sacrifices and the lessening of self, and give little lip service to the disproportionately enormous gain and expansion of self as a non-finite being.

but again, i have my own path, it only overlaps buddhism to a degree, so i am not speaking for them per say.

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: IAO131

[QUOTE=Kath_;365957]this echos what i've learned from my mentor.


I'm not buddhist myself. But it seems to me that people emphasize the 'nothingness' of enlightenment, while the 'everything-ness' of enlightenment is much less discussed. people seem to focus only on the sacrifices and the lessening of self, and give little lip service to the disproportionately enormous gain and expansion of self as a non-finite being.

but again, i have my own path, it only overlaps buddhism to a degree, so i am not speaking for them per say.[/QUOTE]

Indeed although I was quoting Jesus and specifically Meister Eckhart's many repetitions of this. Every mystic should read the selected works of Eckhart - genius.

Imagine the world as a circle. You are necessarily a partition or slice of this circle with the not-self or environment in all other parts. As long as you are in division, as long as the world is in multiplicity, as long as there is 'you' and 'him' or 'this' and 'that,' there will always be sorrow. In short: (1) All component things are impermanent [anicca] and have no everlasting identity [anatta] (2) As long as you are identified with a component or a part of the whole you are led into suffering [dukkha] and are always in conflict (3) If you expand your notion of self to include the Universe, to become the Self, or if you destroy your notion of self to let the Universe include all things then there is a unity... "Then, and then only, art thou in harmony with the Movement of Things, thy will part of, and therefore equal to, the Will of God. And since the will is but the dynamic aspect of the self, and since two different selves could not possess identical wills; then, if thy will be God's will, Thou art That." (Liber II) ...or... "A man must think of himself as a LOGOS, as going, not as a fixed idea. "Do what thou wilt" is thus necessarily his formula. He only becomes Himself when he attains the loss of Egoity, of the sense of separateness. He becomes All, PAN, when he becomes Zero." (Antecedents of Thelema)

IAO131

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: Draginvry

[QUOTE=Kath_;365957]But it seems to me that people emphasize the 'nothingness' of enlightenment, while the 'everything-ness' of enlightenment is much less discussed. [/QUOTE]

This is because the masters know that if they revealed everything that is to be gained from enlightenment, then people would only seek it with more fanatacism, and become that much more attached to it. When one becomes that much more attached to it, they are only that much further from obtaining it.

It is more beneficial to keep enlightenment in a veil of mystery. This helps people focus more on the path to enlightenment (the journey) rather than the aspects of enlightenment (the goal). Because you do not have an eye to see the path when both eyes are focused on the destination.

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: Kath_

I've had, my whole life, a sense of something missing, like a forgotten memory, but vast in scope. something... just on the tip of the tongue, but out of reach. something enormously important. though i don't possess the full content ...yet. i do now know what it is, although its somewhat ineffable.

it seems to me that there lay 2 paths to the same end, namely 'oneness with all and nothingness'.

on the one hand you have the traditional route, to chase the nothingness to its ultimate conclusion, whereapon the everythingness blossoms at once in the same beingness as the nothingness achieved. and on the other hand you have the less popular pursuit of 'everythingness', which when achieved blossoms alongside nothingness in one and the same state, etc.

I am definitely one to lean towards the latter path, and i am well paired with a likeminded mentor who has completed this herself.

i disagree that to lust after the prize is necessarily detrimental. at least in my route. in the traditional path, such attachment could be detrimental. I can see your point in that. but when circling around the other way, this lust only compels the seeker onward. cognizance of the prize serving to draw a determined focus on the steps in the path, in the now.
__

i've recently voluntarily forfeited 'everything'
so your quote hits very close to home at the moment IAO131

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: immortal

I don't understand the differentiation between nothingness and the other in the sense that nothing is truly pointless, but also serves a purpose--just a direction change or maybe a realignment. Everything is as it is but it's coming from a different perspective, like, not the false ego. The true ego, in this definition, a reflection of the whole self, rather than something against it. The difference between resonance and discord, where the frequency is, in both instances, the same.

If I understand the idea of tithe then this is the time spent with god or the whole self or from the idea of ego, nothingness, so meditation that is the strengthening of that bond between the ego and whole self, the co-operative agreement between the two. But we spend time between the two and each serves the other, in a practical sense.

Maybe like following the current of a stream as opposed to trying to swim against it. I mean to be human there is a certain inescapable momentum to where and what you are doing by default. I think stripped down that is the mean.

I don't think that lust (religiously associated) or obsession (medically associated) are useful definitions in defining the experience, the moment, it's just a matter of practicality. It doesn't mean that I don't have hopes and wishes or desires, but maybe its the hangups about having those things that affects people more than the actual things themselves. I mean like worrying about worrying, which leads to more time sharing on useless things where those cycles could be better spent elsewhere or not at all.

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: Seraphiel

Just my two cents on the matter is a quote from the Shugendo page:
"Enlightenment" and "Nirvana"? They are dead trees to fasten a donkey to. The scriptures? They are bits of paper to wipe the mud from your face. The four merits and ten steps? They are ghosts in their graves. What can these things have to do with you becoming free?

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: Yoshiaki_Abe

Which Shugendo page? That strikes me as a bit liberal even for a shugenja to write. Though they have their own form of Buddhism combined with mountain asceticism, that doesn't mean that they don't also seek enlightenment or nirvana. Link please?

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: Yoshiaki_Abe

[QUOTE=Seraphiel;368429]"Enlightenment" and "Nirvana"? They are dead trees to fasten a donkey to. The scriptures? They are bits of paper to wipe the mud from your face. The four merits and ten steps? They are ghosts in their graves. What can these things have to do with you becoming free?[/QUOTE]

OK - after a quick search, I find that I was right. It is attributed to a Zen monk named Te-shan who was infamous for burning books and records. Just like I thought, the quote has absolutely nothing to do with Shugendo.

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: myblindeye

My Five Cent's (They removed one's and Two's from our currency - Five is our smallest coin!)

On my humble travelings in this mortal shell, I have noticed some people are born sports(wo)men, others have a head for science, some make friends easily and others are born loners. I could go on but that's the gist of what I see...

Someone who seeks Enlightenment, yet is unwilling for the moment to give up attachment, should still walk the path, if that is the path they are drawn to.

The reason for all the scriptures, the Ko and Ann's, the various schools of thought is because everyone is at or comes into the path at various stages and with various skill levels and/or ability to comprehend.

"I can tell you what a lemon tastes like, but you will never know unless you actually take a bite and taste it your self" is similar to a common quote. Some people will grasp this easily while others will have to think (Meditate) upon it to come to an understanding.

Its fair enough to say that if you can let all your thought go, all your attachment go, that a person can achieve enlightenment in an instant. Unfortunately this is not possible for 99.999% of people. I'm not saying the statement is false, but to do it would take an incredible amount of discipline/willpower. The human mind does not stay still by our own nature which is why Meditation is a vital tool in most faiths. That is why we walk a path...

Some people may not be ready to release their attachments, but they may walk further to conceive what is meant in the teachings about non-attachment or even that ultimately they are not giving it up at all, just evolving...

There are so many ways of describing Enlightenment, Ultimate Reality and many other concept from many other cults/faiths. This is because of the limitations in our ability to use Language to convey Knowledge, and though Ive heard of Direct Transmission, I have yet to meet anyone with this ability... thus I must walk the path further to understand an inherent knowledge.

Many people have many different understandings on Ultimate Reality and Enlightenment. The one that I gel with is a Taoist concept in the Tao Te Ching, The first chapter of the first book:

The way that can be spoken of
is not the constant way;
The name that can be named
is not the constant name.
The Nameless was the beginning of Heaven and Earth;
The Named was the Mother of the myriad creatures.
Hence always rid yourself of desires in order to observe its secrets;
but always allow yourself to have desires in order to observe its secrets;
These two are the same
But diverge in name as they issue forth.
Being the same they are called mysteries,
Mystery upon Mystery -
The Gateway of the manifold secrets.

This has given me great understanding, but I must still practice discipline to still my mind.