--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Dec 5, 2007, at 4:28 PM, Alex Stanley wrote: > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Rick Archer" <rick@> wrote: > > > > > > I may be misjudging this, but I'm sensing a "I'm taking my > > > football and going home" reaction in Rory's and Jim's desire > > > to drop out because they were shut down for a week. Not that > > > it's their football, but somehow they seem miffed. As if they > > > were asked to take a timeout from the game and their response > > > was, "I'm quitting altogether. I didn't want to play this game > > > anyway." > > > > I didn't see it that way. What I got from their posts is that > > taking a break let them reflect and see how futile it is for > > them to argue with those who haven't "died" in the dark night > > and had their perspective flipped inside out. My guess is that > > they're looking at the status quo knee-jerk reactions to today's > > posts and thinking they made the right choice in bowing out. > > Dying in the dark night? Samadhi is death, and I'm sure more > than a few here have experienced this, but not everyone has > long, drawn out "dark nights".
Vaj makes an excellent point IMO. There seems to be an assumption on the part of both Jim and Rory that because they went through a period they refer to as their "dark night," everyone has to do so. There seems to be a further assumption that anyone who questions their claim of not only permanent realization but the upper ranges of it is to be looked down upon because they're obviously still going through their own "dark night." As Vaj said, more than a few of us here have had our own realization experiences. We are *not* disbelievers in enlightenment. Been there, done that. It's a real thing. Despite how we have been characterized, it has never been our intention to pooh-pooh the existence of enlightenment. What I pooh-pooh every so often is *claims* of enlightenment by those whose pronouncements about that the pathway to enlightenment must be preceded by a "dark night" just don't strike us as accurate. I'm sorry, but I didn't have to pay my dues in some "dark night" to have experiences of realization. They just popped into a pretty happy and fortunate life and made it even more happy and fortunate. I know others whose experience is similar. Some are Buddhists who, like me, managed to stumble upon experiences of enlightenment -- some fleeting, some less so -- but never experienced Buddha's first noble truth, that life is suffering. It really wasn't, for me. Or for them. We *didn't* have to go through any real "dark night of the soul" to get there. For us, it was more like one moment we're enjoying a pretty happy unenlightened life, and the next moment we're enjoying a pretty happy enlightened life -- with no real periods suffering on either side of the equation. As Lao-tsu said, "From wonder into wonder life will open." For me it's pretty much all been wonder. So it's really tough for me to swing behind the assumption that everyone has to go through this "dark night" shit. Having to go through one isn't some kind of badge of honor; it's just how your particular path twisted. Other people's paths might be twisted in other ways.
