RE: Enlightenment MCTB style ;) - Discussion
RE: Enlightenment MCTB style ;)
Stranger_Loop Stranger_Loop, modified 8 Months ago at 4/1/24 8:23 PM
Created 8 Months ago at 3/31/24 10:28 AM
Enlightenment MCTB style ;)
Posts: 70 Join Date: 3/17/23 Recent Posts- You had a weird spiritual experience and a friend suggests you might be enlightened.
- Pick up MCTB. Your experience sounds kind of similar to Streamentry but you can't really be sure. What if it was just an A&P, that would be embarrasing?Anyways 4th path sounds cool. Start meditating with the goal of becoming enlightened.
- Quickly come to understand that maps and your position on them are more important than enlightenment.
- Investigate all experience, right here, right now, with the goal of figuring out where on the maps you are. Otherwise, you wouldn't feel superior to the people you could feel superior to or would have to admit that you messed up in calling your attainment. Better yet, just don't admit it to yourself or anyone else and try to match your experience to the map.
- Trying to locate yourself on the map is surprisingly difficult. The self, this moment or a map that exactly fits your direct sense experience are harder to locate than anticipated.
- You keep investigating experience. Everything seems impermanent and shifts happen, things start breaking down. Sensations and thoughts just start to appear but they don't belong to anyone anymore. Sensual desire has stopped mattering to you. You are focused on one thing only, locating yourself on the map.
- You read other dharma books. None of them really seem to care about your problem exactly but some have other questions about buddha nature or the sound of one hand clapping which sound similar to your problem.
- There are still parts of you left. They are subtle and in the background but you are certain that with more precision and calm you can identify them and finally tell the teacher at your local Zen group that you had an A&P and maybe you should take over the teaching sometimes.
- You are starting to lose hope. Even the last sensations seem to just be happening on their own. Doubts appear in your mind. Is there even such a thing as a map of enlightenment? What if you disappear? How will you place yourself on a map? How will you write the girl on tinder about how enlightened you are when there is no time?
- Everything seems contradictory. It feels like you never meditated at all. There is just this. You keep sitting for a while.
- You have an idea. If you can't brag about your attainment you could still write a post making fun of maps on Dharmaoverground and seem even more enlightened.
Edit: Of course, the book warns against all of that I am just retarded. It's by far my favorite dharma book.
Martin, modified 8 Months ago at 4/1/24 12:21 AM
Created 8 Months ago at 4/1/24 12:21 AM
RE: Enlightenment MCTB style ;)
Posts: 1057 Join Date: 4/25/20 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko, modified 8 Months ago at 4/1/24 6:24 PM
Created 8 Months ago at 4/1/24 6:24 PM
RE: Enlightenment MCTB style ;)
Posts: 3142 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent PostsBahiya Baby, modified 8 Months ago at 4/1/24 7:00 PM
Created 8 Months ago at 4/1/24 7:00 PM
RE: Enlightenment MCTB style ;)
Posts: 865 Join Date: 5/26/23 Recent Posts
I'm imagining a world in which there are types of enlightenment and you can like fuck up and get stuck with worse kinds of enlightenment.
shargrol, modified 8 Months ago at 4/1/24 8:04 PM
Created 8 Months ago at 4/1/24 8:04 PM
RE: Enlightenment MCTB style ;)
Posts: 2757 Join Date: 2/8/16 Recent PostsI'm imagining a world in which there are types of enlightenment and you can like fuck up and get stuck with worse kinds of enlightenment.
Enlightenment MCTB style ;)
Stranger_Loop Stranger_Loop, modified 8 Months ago at 4/1/24 9:09 PM
Created 8 Months ago at 4/1/24 9:09 PM
RE: Enlightenment MCTB style ;)
Posts: 70 Join Date: 3/17/23 Recent Posts
I hope Daniel wouldn't mind ;) and that I did the book at least some justice by investigating direct sense experience, not giving up before 4th path and having exceedingly high standards (for locating myself on a map).
MCTB is by far my favorite dharma book and I always found that part incredibly motivating. Every time I failed at it. Again and again.
> Still, give a poor rice farmer basic vipassana instructions and watch them practice well, gain insights, and run rings around some affluent intellectual westerner with the maps who can’t follow basic instructions and instead hyper-analyzes everything but the sensate phenomena they are supposed to be investigating.
And it turns out thinking about the maps is as good as any other experience to investigate ;).
MCTB is by far my favorite dharma book and I always found that part incredibly motivating. Every time I failed at it. Again and again.
> Still, give a poor rice farmer basic vipassana instructions and watch them practice well, gain insights, and run rings around some affluent intellectual westerner with the maps who can’t follow basic instructions and instead hyper-analyzes everything but the sensate phenomena they are supposed to be investigating.
And it turns out thinking about the maps is as good as any other experience to investigate ;).
Olivier S, modified 8 Months ago at 4/2/24 2:46 AM
Created 8 Months ago at 4/2/24 2:43 AM
RE: Enlightenment MCTB style ;)
Posts: 996 Join Date: 4/27/19 Recent Posts it turns out thinking about the maps is as good as any other experience to investigate ;).
Some people (even traditionalists) interpret the "fourth foundation of mindfulness", dhammanupassana/dhammasati, not as "investigation of phenomena in general", but as "investigation of the dharma", ie, the laws of the mind/reality, perhaps as taught in the pali canon, perhaps not — so, reflecting on the wings to awakening or the four noble truths — a map — would be considered vipassana/mindfulness. Reminds me of Psalm 1: "Beatus vir qui non abiit in consilio impiorum, et in via peccatorum non stetit, et in cathedra pestilentiae non sedit; sed in lege Domini voluntas ejus, et in lege ejus meditabitur die ac nocte."