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Claims to Attainments

RE: To the Arahats

RE: To the Arahats
Answer
8/21/14 2:39 AM as a reply to Paweł K.
Dear Friends,

An Arahat can claim arahatship as per buddha. buddha has said that a person can claim it for 5 reasons. even buddha has said that he's SAMMA SAMBUDDHA (1st arahat)  to 5 monks before he preached dhamma chakka. i have met an arahat in my life. to recognize an arahat you need to have a luck and you need to have wisdom att he same time.and you need to stay with that person for a long time (please refer THANA SUTTA). below monk is beleived to be an arahant. you can download the pdf and read it. 

www.shakyamunidhamma.jimdo.com

RE: To the Arahats
Answer
8/28/14 2:35 AM as a reply to Rist Ei.
Rist Ei, I see you.  Namaste!

Rist Ei is right.  I have seen several enlightened beings speak in just a few threads.  I may go through all the threads and greet them all, if I ever have time.  Daniel ingrams has gone past Enlightenment to a point of teaching.  Though an enlightened being that can teach is rare,  enlightened beings are not as rare as people seem to think.

Enlightenment, in the context I generally use, means freedom from suffering.  It is a mastering of Jhanas.  It does not take away unpleasant sensations, but it does give escape when desired.  It can be tested when pain comes, whether it is the pain of a severe toothache, the grief of a dead lover, or even the pain of despair when life becomes obviously meaningless (this despair arises from the last of the ego.  Nothing is actually meaningless).

That is it!!!  That's what so many people work for.  But never realizing that it is this simple, so many seekers become bitter when heaven does not explode into being all within them and around them.  They walk around grumbling that 'enlightenment is beyond all but the most disciplined and gifted', when all the time they just need to see that they have seen the bottom.  Enlightenment is seeing that You have no-self.  That the Jhanas are all.  When you realize this, you see the world clearly.  Enlightenment is seeing clearly.

Anytime someone says 'I am Enlightened', they very well have been enlightened in some way.  They may see clearly in one way or about one matter or another.  But the one that is needed to be a Buddha, to be an avatar, to be Born Again Saint, to be a prophet, to be a better human, is the enlightenment that allows escape from suffering through Right View, the view of no-self.

Full Enlightenement is so rare that I have not found one person with such attainment in 3 years of searching.  I do know, though, that attainment is cultivated effortlessly as the arhat works to alleviate suffering in the world with his new ability to eat his own pain.  It is called 'Noble Wisdom', 'inner knowing', 'christ-nature'.  It is a gradual cultivation that uses all your impermanent constituents as tools.  The feeling of "I" becomes one with the force of love itself.

Full Attainment should not be a goal.  It cannot be pushed through effort.  It is not of the mind or body, though it uses mind and body.  Enlightenment, once achieved, is enough as it allows you to save the world, take on all filfth, pain, and Hellfire, swallowing them as all phenomenon can be swallowed.  Enlightenment, is the beginning of True Life.

RE: To the Arahats
Answer
10/6/14 4:14 AM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
Daniel M. Ingram:
If you like the technical dogma: arahatship is not quite full awakening: Buddhahood is. Even the Theravada is very clear on this.


I've never heard this before. Is this supported by the suttas, or by Theravada tradition?

EDIT: That was confusing, haha. What I mean to say is, does the Buddha say this anywhere, or is this something that is just part of Theravada tradition, like the progress of insight and such that comes from commentaries? I remember a lot of people referring to the Buddha as an arahant in the suttas. It was my impression that it was just a word they used to refer to "someone who had been perfected," and it was what all of the monks were seeking at that time period in India.

RE: To the Arahats
Answer
10/6/14 6:37 AM as a reply to Not Tao.
It is definitely supported by the Suttas.

Consider MN 1 The Root of All Things, where the Buddha says that arahats understand something, but Buddhas (the Tathagata, as he often referred to himself) understand it "to the end".

Consider MN 4 Fear and Dread, where he goes on and on about all the stuff he accomplished.

Actually, the number of places where Buddhas are distinguished as arahats-plus-lots-more is extensive, from their past-life training and purification (Buddhas going through many, many lives to get the necessary learning and purification to become a Buddha), to the fact that Buddhas are supreme teachers of gods and humans beyond just being arahats, as well as having all the powers, having purified all behavioral traits, etc. etc.

RE: To the Arahats
Answer
10/6/14 4:54 PM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
Interesting... In the cosmology, were arahants released from samsara, or did they all have to, eventually, become buddhas to be free?

RE: To the Arahats
Answer
10/6/14 5:28 PM as a reply to Not Tao.
According to the Pali Canon arahats do not take birth anywhere.

Re:



From the Sankharaupapatti Sutta, http://dharmafarer.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/3.4-Sankharupapatti-S-m120-piya.pdf

The sutta describes how monks accomplished in certain qualities can take birth where they wish, a monk who wishes to realize the influx-free-consciousness (destruction of the asavas) here and now, and who realizes that liberation of mind and liberation of wisdom, does not take birth anywhere.

RE: To the Arahats
Answer
10/6/14 10:00 PM as a reply to J J.
Unless you read the Tibetans, who claim that bodhisattvas must wake sleeping arahats so they will go on to become Buddhas. Ah, Buddhisms...

RE: To the Arahats
Answer
10/7/14 11:44 PM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
A way to put it:

The cycle of Rebirths refers to the cycle of the rebirth of the 'ego'.  That is what is said to reincarnate as a self-perpetuating illusion into cycle after cycle of suffering due to the ego being, essentially, interconnected karmic chains of desire.  It is desire that is illusion as Truth clearly reveals that there is nothing that is 'real' enough to desire.

But Energy goes on!  Energy is not a substance but an action.  It is Karma.  Just as objects with mass carry momentum, desire also carries momentum.  It is simply the progression of states from imbalance to balanced.  It is the law of Entropy at work.  So even when The Arahant sees the truth and can understand all things clearly, He reincarnates.  But the ego does not.  The Arahant is born in his next life as someone who naturally has little or no ego and effortlessly reaches enlightenment again in their youth, and carry on in cultivation of his karmic bodies until either reaching Union and/or Self-Annihilation.

But it cannot be said that the Arahant has not escaped the cycle of rebirth.  What is reincarntated?  It is not the ego.  It is not anything that can be called a 'self'.  The Arahant reincarnates not as a deluded ego, but simply as the strings of karma that continue after extinguishing the Great Confusion.  He reincarnates as a light in the world of darkness.  He guides others, even before re-enlightenment, because without the ego, our focus of our karmic momentums naturally turn toward the Divine Desire of the Reconciliation of All Things.

After enough lifetimes, the focus on the karmic momentums has caused such purity of awareness that we must call that bundle of energy something other than Arahant.  The string of energies has united so well with the Karma of the World while at the same time in complete Union with the Divine Desire, that it can teach the WAY in any set of terms, ideas, or religion that is useful to the moment.  We call this a Buddha.  

Don't worship the Buddha.  There's nobody there emoticon

RE: To the Arahats
Answer
10/8/14 8:15 AM as a reply to Jeremy May.
Jeremy May:
Rist Ei, I see you.  Namaste!

Rist Ei is right.  I have seen several enlightened beings speak in just a few threads.  I may go through all the threads and greet them all, if I ever have time.  Daniel ingrams has gone past Enlightenment to a point of teaching.  Though an enlightened being that can teach is rare,  enlightened beings are not as rare as people seem to think.

Enlightenment, in the context I generally use, means freedom from suffering.  It is a mastering of Jhanas.  It does not take away unpleasant sensations, but it does give escape when desired.  It can be tested when pain comes, whether it is the pain of a severe toothache, the grief of a dead lover, or even the pain of despair when life becomes obviously meaningless (this despair arises from the last of the ego.  Nothing is actually meaningless).

That is it!!!  That's what so many people work for.  But never realizing that it is this simple, so many seekers become bitter when heaven does not explode into being all within them and around them.  They walk around grumbling that 'enlightenment is beyond all but the most disciplined and gifted', when all the time they just need to see that they have seen the bottom.  Enlightenment is seeing that You have no-self.  That the Jhanas are all.  When you realize this, you see the world clearly.  Enlightenment is seeing clearly.

Anytime someone says 'I am Enlightened', they very well have been enlightened in some way.  They may see clearly in one way or about one matter or another.  But the one that is needed to be a Buddha, to be an avatar, to be Born Again Saint, to be a prophet, to be a better human, is the enlightenment that allows escape from suffering through Right View, the view of no-self.

Full Enlightenement is so rare that I have not found one person with such attainment in 3 years of searching.  I do know, though, that attainment is cultivated effortlessly as the arhat works to alleviate suffering in the world with his new ability to eat his own pain.  It is called 'Noble Wisdom', 'inner knowing', 'christ-nature'.  It is a gradual cultivation that uses all your impermanent constituents as tools.  The feeling of "I" becomes one with the force of love itself.

Full Attainment should not be a goal.  It cannot be pushed through effort.  It is not of the mind or body, though it uses mind and body.  Enlightenment, once achieved, is enough as it allows you to save the world, take on all filfth, pain, and Hellfire, swallowing them as all phenomenon can be swallowed.  Enlightenment, is the beginning of True Life.

OKAY!  I can live with that (smile).   I too did some searching for beings who have left this universe and found two possibilities.   One of them is Lester Levenson and the other is the being commonly known as Lao Tszu.  There may possibly be others but they leave no energy signature for me to pick up on in my current spiritual condition.  I think most of them just go quietly.... they walk in beauty like the night.

RE: To the Arahats
Answer
10/9/14 1:20 AM as a reply to Mike Knapp.

RE: To the Arahats
Answer
10/9/14 1:25 PM as a reply to Colleen Karalee Peltomaa.
"There may possibly be others but they leave no energy signature for me to pick up on in my current spiritual condition. "

Your inner knowing has picked up on more than you mentally know.  But it is true that those who have left this universe (the constraints of your universe- though there is no other place) can not be seen for what they are except for by each other.  

But they pick up on your energy clearly.  They see you for what you are.  They are in love with you and they rejoice in the power of your path, both for the benefit of your present temporal self (You have worked for lifetimes to achieve your present practice) and for the benefits that will follow you forever onward (Forever and ever in your future incarnations) as they transform every blessed creature that is pulled into your life.

When the awakening for this temporal life is complete, your hermitage will naturally be completed, and your life will be a busy, busy work overflowing with beautiful people who are pulled to the light in you.  The ones that are meant to learn from you will naturally, magnetically come.  

Know that you are never alone!  There are mighty forces behind you, guiding you.  It is a stage in the awakening process that necessitates the perception that "I am unknown to the buddhas.  They will never notice me.  I must continue on alone.  This practice I have achieved, I achieved alone".  Those who have left the universe know that they must let you think this.  When it is no longer useful for you to think this, you will see the Great Attention that has been given to you.  Perhaps you will even learn of some of your past lives and see them with fresh eyes, seeing the moments when the Buddhas of this world blatantly contacted you.  

There are those who awaken to their true nature and live forever quietly in the world.  These are old Buddhas.  They are no longer Buddhas, as the term refers to a relationship between humans and a servant of God.  They are residing in Nirvana as reward for eons of work.  But there are those who awaken to their true nature and are not quiet.  They have a divine purpose that has been given to their nature and it is from this purpose, born from infinite love for the human animal, that all of their actions are born and fulfilled.  That is why I say there is no 'being' in a Buddha in the way that humans understand 'beings'.  The soul of a Buddha is outside of time.  The temporal lives that incarnate the karmic energies of the Buddha in your space-time universe only follow and do What is Needed for the World.  It is not possible for them to care about being seen.  It does no good.  But they see you, and they help you.  I swear on my own life that they have always helped you... Your future purpose is that of a buddha.  Not everyone has such purpose.  You must understand that your work will be so fruitful that it is simply not fantastic at all to think that, Yes!, of course you are special to them to the point of arresting their Great Attention!

They know you well, Love!  Keep Going!!!!!!!

RE: To the Arahats
Answer
10/9/14 2:00 PM as a reply to Viran Shaminda Kariyawasam.
I see you!  

You do not understand what you have done for me, old friend.  I joined this forum because I felt someone in the world and I could not find him on the internet.  This forum is, perhaps, the last bastion of untainted dhamma and my knowing told me that I would find the one I was searching for if I participated in these threads.  You confirmed for me my knowing.  Knowing the location of this Buddha has put me at ease. Please continue, and please continue growing in fervor, spreading this book and whatever other teachings that this Buddha expounds.  

Save my email, please:  cornpuffs28@gmail.com

I won't be on this forum much anymore now that I know where he is.  But if you ever need Anything, please contact me.  If you ever become confused on any matter, though I doubt you will, you must contact me.  If you need a meal, ever, please contact me.  Namaste, old friend.