neko:
Hello Kim,
I would not consider Elena Nezhinsky's standard for awakening to be comparable to what Shinzen Young calls enlightenment. Namely, I consider myself awakened by Elena's standards but not enlightened by Shinzen's.
Hi Neko,
Personally I am not involved with LU but I was once accepted as a guide there (though never gave any guidings there) and therefore I got an access to their Facebook-groups for guides and other materials. So naturally I looked around and checked what it's all about. But whether if I have extensive, really in-depth knowledge about them, I don't. I have just an overall impression of them.
I have a couple of friends who awakened through LU. And those cases I would also pass as valid stream entries. It seems Elena herself is also awakened. I emailed her to ask about the statistics of LU and she gave me those numbers. I didn't give it much more thought than that. Considering the volume of awakenings verified by them by what seems a group of guides of varying levels of understanding, yes, it is probable that not all of those 1000 people, perhaps even a significant group of them wouldn't pass my tests of awakening or Shinzen's.
In overall, maybe I shouldn't have even mentioned LU in the text. On the other hand, I think it is worth mentioning even if not all of those 1000 LU-awakened people wouldn't pass my requirements or Shinzen's. In the cases of my two friends there is no question about it. A couple of years ago LU had a FB-group for guides in which there was a requirement for 3 other guides, together with the actual guide doing the guiding, to give their verification if it had happened or not.
In the quote from BG-interview he defined what Shinzen means with enlightenment.
Nikolai .:
I cant remember where the quote is, but I
remember Shinzen saying when he talks of 'enlightenment' he is
referring to the 1st stage of awakening, stream entry, not arahat...The
more unifed your mind, the more transformative the enlightenment
occurence and then that conditions what you are selling/sharing with
others. Sudden awakenings may occur for some who have unifed their minds
to different degrees. Other yogis may require the hard slog and gradual
progression to unify the mind. Others may have a sudden awakening but it doesnt do much 'damage' or partial 'damage' (Damage in a positive sense). Others may have a gradual progression but at the moment of awakening, it may be partial due to a partially unifed mind.
Teachers may be speaking from their own
experience of their own awakening which may have been partially, or
fully or not at all influenced by a unifed mind. And each will have a
different path to these possibilites concerning unifying mind
pre-awakening. So we have all these disagreements and "My enlightenment
is better than yours" stances because of the many possible outcomes. "My
path is quicker and more efficient than yours!". But what is the end
result one is spruiking? Is it one born from a partially (infinite
degrees of partial?), not much at all, or completely unifed mind when
the awakening moment occurs? How transformed is the mind for what you
are trying to sell as a 'better' path or approach or technique or this
or that? How unifed are the minds of the LU folk when they have their
insights? How unifed are the minds of the pragmatic dharma folk doing
the noting technique at the moment of cessation? I've read many varying
degrees of transformation post "awakening" over the past 6 years here
which makes me fully stand behind Culadasa's view below. We are seeing
so many differences.
"My path is better than your path" is just a symptom of this.
Edited a few times.
Nick
Hi Nick,
Nick's post got me thinking of specific areas of the conditioned human mind
where awakening/stream entry/enlightenment and the pre-awakening and post-awakening
purification of the mind takes place. I have divided this into two main categories:
1. me, the subject
2. any mental and emotional content, many objects stored and arising from the subconscious mind
Here, obviously, we are dealing with the first category, the sense of me. Now. In my work there have been a few cases where I've kept people digging deeper even after their awakening, even though is not what I usually do. These people were spurred on by their breakthrough and motivated to continue, so I had few of them continue for a few extra days. And they did well. But by no means were able to finish the second category, the purification of the mind, in that period of time with this method that is designed to shoot down the sense of me, and that's all. So, personally as a teacher I am not concerned whether the guidance process has any other effect, or that it makes any other damage, than fully see through the sense of subject-entity.
I watched a video of Francis Bennett and Adyashanti having a chat about the further process of mind purification (nr. 2) after (or before) awakening (nr 1). At first I was kind of puzzled because they made obvious points... Of course, such a further process
exists... Why do they make such a big deal out of it... Then I figured that many satsang-teachers say the sudden awakening is all there is. So these gentlemen were having the chat to correct this view. Which is nice.
So I think that when we start speaking of which method is really the bestest spiritual path, we have to be exact in defining which category of processing (1. or 2. or both) the method is concerned with. I never made the claim that the two part formula is "a fix-all" thing because it isn't but it works like magic in regards to shooting down the illusion of the self in the place of subject. In the method that I am involved with, we have a whole tantric method to facilitate the pre- and/or post-awakening mind purification (2.) which also works like magic, ha.
svmonk:
Baba,
Well, according to the tradition, strong determination sitting worked for the Buddha. Of
course, he already had a few years of full time jhana practice under his
belt with the Jains, something that is pretty rare today. And I've also
seen a couple of enlightenment stories by contemporary Thervadan monks
in which enlightenment occured through strong determination sitting.
That said, I agree that it probably won't work for everyone.
Actually,
I've practiced with Shinzen and I think the most powerful practice he
teachs is Noting Gone. The idea is to apply the Mahasi noting practice
to when some sensation/thought disappears. Airplane noise is a good
place to start.
Svmonk,
Well sure, that's what they say in the tradtition, haha. I am sure Shinzen has many good techniques to share but sincerely... with the result he is having I don't get why he has said that this method is the best for stream entry. Maybe it's best for someone who has tremendous faith in the tradition but that's another story...
Pablo M+H:
Thanks Nick for Culadasa's quote. A great explanation!! I'll buy his book. Thanks again!!!
Yeah, thanks for that wonderfully enlightening quote. It seems Culadasa's name is like the new black on this forum. It's every where.
Baba