You may hear that meditation makes people more calm and happy. You may also hear that it opens the gateway to a demonic dimension and turns people into hell-bound zombies.
Say you rather believe the first one of those claims. So you try it out for yourself. You meditate for a few weeks, every day, and you find it helpful.
Do you know from this that the second claim, the one about hell-hounds, was not true? No, you don't. You place a bet on it. You use your own experience, your intuition, the feedback from your friends, and whatever information you find online and in books, to evaluate your chances.
So, now you feel like you might be about to really, truly, ultimately let go of your ego. Let's assume for a bit that this is actually correct (which it usually tends not to be). So you might turn into an amoral evil being, or into a vegetable, because you lost whatever it was that kept you sane. Or you might walk into the light and become a buddha.
All your experience might tell you that you should do that final step. You might have meditated all your life. You know stuff. You've... seeeen things.... us people wouldn't believe... You might be close to death, so it probably doesn't matter anyway.
But this is still a bet. There is still a chance that you are wrong. The christians might be right, or who knows, maybe the scientologists. You do not know that.
All you can do, is trust your experience, and train your intellect to reject superstition and irrationality, and give things a try if you think that they might be worthwhile.
Above all, know that you could be wrong.
Empathy. Rationality. Sensuality.
Showing posts with label enlightenment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label enlightenment. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 14, 2018
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
If contentment is subversive, then meditation is an act of revolution
More freedom, less exploitation.
Less need, more freedom.
More peace, less need.
More mindfulness, more peace.
More practice, more mindfulness.
Less need, more freedom.
More peace, less need.
More mindfulness, more peace.
More practice, more mindfulness.
Saturday, April 11, 2015
My Enlightenment
I distinctly remember the moment. It must have been 8 years ago, and I can still remember the subway station and the escalator I was riding.
I was deeply into buddhism and self-improvement back then, and I was trying to meditate or at least working on my mindfulness every second I could spare.
That moment on that escalator, I was enlightened.
Of course, a few moments later, the experience was over. I tried to get back into it, but to no avail. On the other hand, I couldn't quite shake the feeling that this was actually it, the real thing. It had lasted a little longer than those experiences usually used to, and it had felt as if it actually were to last this time.
There is a certain humor in buddhist books when they talk about enlightenment experiences, a kind of humor I tended to enjoy, and which I still think provides a certain safeguard against fundamentalist idiocy. They talk about how nibbana is not a state of being, and how reifying it is itself a block on the road to nibbana. They revel in the paradox, and that's fine and very appealing.
But still, I did believe that enlightenment was a real possibility in some way, a goal to be reached at some point.
Looking back, I think that this is a huge problem, but nog quite in the way the buddhists say. It is a problem because, from what I have read in the meantime, and from what I see in the world and in my own life, I gather that enlightenment is just not possible. Our brains just don't seem to be wired in a way that would allow them to overcome their own illusory self. The oh-so-bad discoursive monkey mind will always kick back in.
Looking back on what you might call my "spiritual journey" (blargh), I think that this change of mind has proved to be a good thing. Very good indeed. Now I judge my mindfulness - and boy, do I judge it! - based on whether it is useful to myself, my life, and probably the lives of people around me.
I think that this is way more down to earth, realistic and mature. It certainly has me use less of the jargon, even in my internal monologue (I always tried to avoid it in public anyway). Less attachment to enlightenment. It was an act of letting go, disentanglement, un-identification, de-attachment.
It has me pretend less, see more of how things actually are. And that's ultimately what enlightenment is about, isn't it?
I was deeply into buddhism and self-improvement back then, and I was trying to meditate or at least working on my mindfulness every second I could spare.
That moment on that escalator, I was enlightened.
Of course, a few moments later, the experience was over. I tried to get back into it, but to no avail. On the other hand, I couldn't quite shake the feeling that this was actually it, the real thing. It had lasted a little longer than those experiences usually used to, and it had felt as if it actually were to last this time.
There is a certain humor in buddhist books when they talk about enlightenment experiences, a kind of humor I tended to enjoy, and which I still think provides a certain safeguard against fundamentalist idiocy. They talk about how nibbana is not a state of being, and how reifying it is itself a block on the road to nibbana. They revel in the paradox, and that's fine and very appealing.
But still, I did believe that enlightenment was a real possibility in some way, a goal to be reached at some point.
Looking back, I think that this is a huge problem, but nog quite in the way the buddhists say. It is a problem because, from what I have read in the meantime, and from what I see in the world and in my own life, I gather that enlightenment is just not possible. Our brains just don't seem to be wired in a way that would allow them to overcome their own illusory self. The oh-so-bad discoursive monkey mind will always kick back in.
Looking back on what you might call my "spiritual journey" (blargh), I think that this change of mind has proved to be a good thing. Very good indeed. Now I judge my mindfulness - and boy, do I judge it! - based on whether it is useful to myself, my life, and probably the lives of people around me.
I think that this is way more down to earth, realistic and mature. It certainly has me use less of the jargon, even in my internal monologue (I always tried to avoid it in public anyway). Less attachment to enlightenment. It was an act of letting go, disentanglement, un-identification, de-attachment.
It has me pretend less, see more of how things actually are. And that's ultimately what enlightenment is about, isn't it?
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