Explain Zen Enlightenment to Me

Ash, it was great to hear you say that Natalie was callling you to dinner. I'm glad to see that she has recovered so much. Congratulations to her.

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Thanks.
It is great to hear that Natalie is doing so well, and is treating you so good with home-cooked meals! Lovely.

Spot on, JLNobody, that is the sort of pain I was referring to.
I am working with a therapist, which is good, and meditating too. They seem to go hand in hand, and I'm seeing progress.

I wish I had learned this stuff earlier, but I didn't. Only wish things would speed up. Laughing

It's really subtle, isn't it? Anything can be a distraction for doing what needs to be done or avoiding...my mind seems to be very well trained, as it stands, in running to and fro. Avoiding pain, seeking pleasure, trying to hold on to something that is already gone.

Ever feel like the mouth is spewing constant bs? that's how it seems lately. So much bs.

Oh well. Back to living, right. I made corn on the cob, potatoes, and buffalo steaks for a friend tonight. It was good and I wasn't thinking about anything 'cept butter Smile

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Flushd,
That's great; it's a "spiritual" realization, that everything you say is bs. Because IN A WAY it is. I sometimes feel that and the realization that everything I THINK is bs. Because IN A WAY it is. This must be what is meant by the illusory nature of our lives. When I open my eyes and just see what my eyes produce, that is real. But what I think I am seeilng with my eyes is illusion. We are dreaming--living as we do in a symbolized constructed world--but to realize that you are dreaming, that what you say and think is bs, is a form of awakening. What do you think?
See? Not all bs is bad. Indeed, "good" and "bad" are dreams (as are "real" and "illusion"). We transcend all of our constructions in enlightened moments.

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A common Joke where I live

Close your eyes and ignore the world around you.

Now your practining Zen.

Good luck with your driving.

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Open your eyes and shut off your discriminating filter: Now you are practicing za-zen.
And that's no joke.

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!! Liked your last post, JL.

Dreaming is so seductive too. So, so seductive. Foul temptress! Laughing

Somewhere here Ash spoke about pouring hot tea in someone's lap. And I've read stories, in Zen books lol, about incidents like that to help 'wake up' somebody.
Makes sense to me now! It's that zolt, that push, shaking up of old crap.

This is just a bit of a ramble, my apologizes in advance. Working out a thing out of my system...
Smile

In my life, I have often been drawn to rather extreme activities. Some healthy, some rather harmful. BUT - it's that feeling of being alive I've been after.
That zolt. That 'wake up'.
Lots of violence and physicality in my life, periods of strong shock.

Can relate to self-harmers, in a fashion, bc of the risky reckless activity I have pursued or been in the environment of.
Lots of time and mind on negativity, death, a fascination with horror and gore.
The main thrust behind it being: to feel real, to feel anything, to EXIST.

Point: focusing on pain can be a way of avoiding dealing with pain - and reality! It just sorta clicked today. How that isnt necessary. Isn't going deep enough. Is where I've been stuck for so long.

Been avoiding by holding to pain. My mind has a twisted time of that, and I was trying to shake it with my mind.

And, yeah, I meditated today. lol

............More and more enlightenment seems to me to be actually being a human who can really live. Not trying to control the whole deal, just showing up and letting it be.

But enough now. lol. Makes me happy that. A weight lifted.

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Yes, I think of "enlightenment," "self-realization," "wholeness," etc. not as having achieved some kind of understanding, some kind of insight, etc.. To me it is living fully each moment and doing this by not getting in your own way. TRYING to enjoy our life, TRYING to be selfless, and the like, renders a person inhibited, self-conscious, and spiritually constipated. Meditation, as I understand it, sets the conditions for effortless joyful experience, what Krishnamurti called "passive awareness." Work with yourself and a therapist when needed in order to free up your natural ability to live and love life. There is, I think, only one obstacle to a spiritual fulfillment and that is the TRYING ego, the illusion that there is some little "being" inside of us who must be protected and strengthened, usually at the expense of others' egos. Ash's teacher, Shunryu Suzuki, used to always remind his students that their meditation must be without any desire to ATTAIN something, like enlightenment. Your task is to learn to appreciate what you really are, not to become something else.
Sorry for being so preachy. Ultimately, it is bs, but only "ultimately." I hope my experience/perspective serves as a kind of nourishment. It depends so much on the other person's state of mind.

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JLNobody wrote:

Yes, I think of "enlightenment," "self-realization," "wholeness," etc. not as having achieved some kind of understanding, some kind of insight, etc.. To me it is living fully each moment and doing this by not getting in your own way. TRYING to enjoy our life, TRYING to be selfless, and the like, renders a person inhibited, self-conscious, and spiritually constipated. Meditation, as I understand it, sets the conditions for effortless joyful experience, what Krishnamurti called "passive awareness." Work with yourself and a therapist when needed in order to free up your natural ability to live and love life. There is, I think, only one obstacle to a spiritual fulfillment and that is the TRYING ego, the illusion that there is some little "being" inside of us who must be protected and strengthened, usually at the expense of others' egos. Ash's teacher, Shunryu Suzuki, used to always remind his students that their meditation must be without any desire to ATTAIN something, like enlightenment. Your task is to learn to appreciate what you really are, not to become something else.
Sorry for being so preachy. Ultimately, it is bs, but only "ultimately." I hope my experience/perspective serves as a kind of nourishment. It depends so much on the other person's state of mind.

Sounds like closing your eyes and ignoring the world to me.

Have luck driving.

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JL,
Your posts do help me, and push me to go deeper. Lots of it stays off the screen. Hard to express a lot in these posts, but I appreciate what you share here.
And always there are others reading who don't comment. Smile

Go to meditate without trying to attain anything, eh. There's lots of times I've been trying to attain something out it, and it made it a real struggle to actually do it too. Probably am still trying to attain something out of it - it's now more of a time to just relax and practice giving myself a break/shutting up/ paying attention to what is going on without thinking about bills and the bf!
Smile

It feels right, like getting exercise in, so now there's natural motivation to do it.

Quote:

free up your natural ability to live and love life

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Scott777ab wrote:

A common Joke where I live

Close your eyes and ignore the world around you.

Now your practining Zen.

Good luck with your driving.

Curious, where do you live Scott?

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Scott needs some serious re-educating about Buddhism.

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Oh, Scott's just having fun with me. When anyone else talks as self-righteously as I sound, I'm also tempted to shoot them down.

Flushd, regarding the problem of giving up the attaining attitude, it's my impression that meditators who are very ambitious to attain enlightenment (moksha, satori, nirvana, etc.) often quit after around five years. Those who continue, e.g., the "old timers" in the group I sit with, do it for its own sake. We meditate for two forty minute rounds every Saturday morning and then go to a favorite place for breakfast. At the coffee shop we VERY rarely talk about zen. We just (effortlessly) enjoy our breakfast (as Ash would recommend) and each other. It's a very awake moment.

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Wolf_ODonnell wrote:

Scott needs some serious re-educating about Buddhism.

Here ya go

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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? Why does that sound so familiar?

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hmm....i may have been practicing zen wothout knowing it....hm....

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Epinirvana, your chosen pseudonym suggests that. Most people throughout their day have many different states of mind. Among such states there are possiblly the non-dualistic sense of being (not having) one's experiences. These may be the moments when we feel joyful without knowing why. We look for an external situational "cause" of our momentary joyfulness without success. It could be that the "cause" is internal and unconscious. We are zen buddhists without knowing it. In meditation we increase the conditions for those moments to occur. It's like taking vitamins for the mind. Zen well-being is much more like health than understanding.

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A short, concise primer summarizing the principles and practice of Zen:

And there you have it. Any questions?

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timberlandko wrote:

A short, concise primer summarizing the principles and practice of Zen:

And there you have it. Any questions?

You sure have a way with words, timber. Laughing

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JLNobody wrote:

Epinirvana, your chosen pseudonym suggests that. Most people throughout their day have many different states of mind. Among such states there are possiblly the non-dualistic sense of being (not having) one's experiences. These may be the moments when we feel joyful without knowing why. We look for an external situational "cause" of our momentary joyfulness without success. It could be that the "cause" is internal and unconscious. We are zen buddhists without knowing it. In meditation we increase the conditions for those moments to occur. It's like taking vitamins for the mind. Zen well-being is much more like health than understanding.

I have noticed that many time i try to get into a state of mind by trying to think about things that dont exist using things that dont exist.... I find that it clears all my taughts and gives me quiet and peace, and many of my philosophys are from times like that....Is this zen?

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Timber, that is conceptually very exhaustive. But it leaves out the concrete sensation of Asherman's hot tea.
EpiNirvana, the founder of the Soto sect of Zen Buddhism advised monks to meditate by not thinking. A monk asked how he should do that. Dogen answered by thinking about non-thinking. I've never understood that until now. Thanks.
Actually Dogen distinguished thinking, not-thinking, and wilthout-thinking (these are the glosses of Kapsulis). Thinking and not-thinking (trying not to think), Dogen said, are the same; both are forms of thinking. "Without thinking" is what you do in za-zen (meditation): it is that state of mind we are always in just before thinking, i.e., pre-cognitive perception.

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Explain Zen Enlightenment to Me

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