The Power of Meditation

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The Power of Meditation

Weaning ourselves off of our egotistical hang-ups is the be-all and end-all of growing up. Our egotistical hang-ups with the god concepts are the bane of religious thought, a scourge on humanity, and a blockade to the mystical.

What helped me was to realize that the Buddha entertained no god concept. Trying to conceptualize the source of it all in words, images, and even thoughts is the actual problem and it always leads to a dead end and a wailing wall of frustration.

Moses went up a mountain and sat still.
Gautama went into the forest and sat still.
Jesus went out into the desert and sat still.
And their minds were opened up.

As odd as it sounds Gautama is the only "religious" speaker who took the First Commandment seriously. When Moses meditated on the mountain and his mind opened his strong ego asked this mystical space he was in "Who are you?" and the Awakening response was "I am that I am and thou shall have no conceptions about me!"

Enlightenment is a trans-rational experience that cannot be conceptualized or wrapped in words or thoughts or pictures, it is simply Understanding.

As hard as it is for your ego to do you know that you have to sit back and impartially observe the "side taking" your ego gets involved in to maintain its artificial sense of self. Like Humty Dumty your ego will sit nervously upon the wall of meditation between pro and con, right and wrong, good and evil, without choosing a side and something marvelous will happen. Your Original Nature will burst open and the shell of egotistical duality will shatter. Your "friends and family" will try to put you back together again for their ego identities are relative to your ego taking sides.

A totally open mind is sideless, even though there's no such word as "sideless!"

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Welcome to A2K Pudgala. Its always nice to have a few more Buddhists on site. There are a number of threads on, about or of interest to Buddhism here. There are at least half a dozen Buddhists about. I'm Soto Sect, but we have representatives of several other Buddhist schools/sects here as well.

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Re: The Power of Meditation

pudgala2 wrote:

Moses went up a mountain and sat still......
.........Jesus went out into the desert and sat still......

No, they prayed to God --- a Person, not a force or a 'mystical space'.

You may dispute whether such a Person exists or not, but that was their belief and they didn't meditate in the sense you are trying to imply, by 'opening their mind to sidelessness'.

Trying to co-opt Moses and Jesus to lend some legitimacy to your own practice simply shows how baseless it is.

Moses and Jesus prayed , i.e. talked with God, submitted themselves to what they believed His will to be.

A 'mystical space' doesn't have a will, nor does it speak.

Far from wanting us 'not to have conceptions' about Him, the God of the Bible (hence the God of Moses and Jesus) invites us to know and understand Him to the point of becoming like Him in holy behavior.

God also has given us parameters (His commandments) to guide our living. This would be diametrically opposed to the type of 'sidelessness' that you imply Moses and Jesus would have opened themselves to.

If your practice is valid on it's own, you wouldn't need to suggest that Moses and Jesus were adherents when they clearly were not.

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Greeting Asherman and thank you for your welcome.
Although I am an admirer and follower of the BuddhaDharma I lay no claim to being a "Buddhist." I have been labeled a Zen Buddhist and must admit I have an affinity for Zen "teachings." I joined A2K a couple of months ago but couldn't find a suitable thread to enter so I decided to start one and see if there are any like minded travelers here on the way to Enlightenment and the ending of mental anguish. Even though the release of all sentient beings is an inner and solitary experience, it is always a joy to share insights with others that might catalyze and hasten the release.

real life I chose to start a new thread because I did not want to intrude or interfere with fixed mind sets. I have no interest in disputing anything and/or persuading anyone. The legitimacy of my practice is based upon the realization of the Truth of Suffering and is not baseless but it is beliefless, even though there is no such word as "beliefless!"

As the mystic Vernon Howard once put it, "Why believe when you can Know!"

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Re: The Power of Meditation

real life wrote:

No, they prayed to God --- a Person, not a force or a 'mystical space'.

You may dispute whether such a Person exists or not, but that was their belief and they didn't meditate in the sense you are trying to imply, by 'opening their mind to sidelessness'.

Well Jesus was Jewish so i cant really argue with you there, but as well for Moses his mother taught him Jewdism while he spent alot of time in his Eygptian family so he may have gone up to meditate, to try to think out wich god was real.

I think any diety would like open minded meditation, meditation isnt just a budist term. I think that god might speak to you, when you meditate your trying to listen, maybe thats what happend to moses....

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Re: The Power of Meditation

real life wrote:

pudgala2 wrote:

Moses went up a mountain and sat still......
.........Jesus went out into the desert and sat still......

No, they prayed to God --- a Person, not a force or a 'mystical space'.

If your practice is valid on it's own, you wouldn't need to suggest that Moses and Jesus were adherents when they clearly were not.

Yep, you caught him out using the trick very common among christians....namely, pretending that everyone in the world has the same fundamental belief as you (eg. there is a "higher power") and that differences are just culture/language problems, thus adding false credibility to your particular "faith".

Meanwhile, the truth is that no two people agree exactly about ANY faith...which is just what you'd expect if the "gods" in question were subjective creations of the individuals imagination combined with indoctrination, and not at all what you'd expect if one true god really existed.

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The Truth About Humpty Dumpty

Humty Dumty sat on a wall (in deep meditation)
Humty Dumty had a great fall (profound breakthrough)
All the priest forces and all the king's men (social pressures)
Couldn't put Humty back in his ego again!

To educate means to lead out.
To evolve means to unfold and open out.
To enlighten means to break through the shell of conditioned beliefs.

The purpose of life is to keep on growing up and not to become an emotionally arrested, religiously colorful, fragile Easter Egg!

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pudgala2 wrote:

Greeting Asherman and thank you for your welcome.
Although I am an admirer and follower of the BuddhaDharma I lay no claim to being a "Buddhist." I have been labeled a Zen Buddhist and must admit I have an affinity for Zen "teachings." I joined A2K a couple of months ago but couldn't find a suitable thread to enter so I decided to start one and see if there are any like minded travelers here on the way to Enlightenment and the ending of mental anguish. Even though the release of all sentient beings is an inner and solitary experience, it is always a joy to share insights with others that might catalyze and hasten the release.

real life I chose to start a new thread because I did not want to intrude or interfere with fixed mind sets. I have no interest in disputing anything and/or persuading anyone. The legitimacy of my practice is based upon the realization of the Truth of Suffering and is not baseless but it is beliefless, even though there is no such word as "beliefless!"

As the mystic Vernon Howard once put it, "Why believe when you can Know!"

There is no such word as 'beliefless' because there is no such thing.

You believe in what you refer to as the Truth of Suffering, whatever that means.

You are not 'beliefless'. Far from it. Is this not so?

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The Power of Meditation

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