I have a few comments to make to those who responded to my first post to this
forum before this thread is closed.
Thank you for responding. Attempting to figure out what is going on here will
probably take me a bit of time.
There are obviously persons on the forum who seem to know each other by name,
although I have not been able to
correlate them with their email addresses mostly. It has been many years since
I
was in Fairfield.
Even the last time I passed through Fairfield was almost a decade ago, and I
did
not interact with any meditators at that time.
'yifuxero' yifux...@yahoo.com wrote: [responding to] '...is there a
generic
way to describe the journey of Enlightenment? ' Yes, "How to Attain
Enlightenment" ...by James Swarz at http://www.shiningw orld.com. Then read
"Back to the Truth, 5000 Years of Advaita" by Dennis Waite, http://www.advaita.
org/uk Along with the 3 S's of course.
>When you go to these websites and see a lot of Sanskrit terms, this hardly
>seems
>generic, except perhaps to someone from India who would be familiar with these
>terms. I suppose a really generic description of 'getting' to enlightenment
>would be a pipe dream. Too many cultural variations and individual variations
>in
>peoples' initial beliefs about reality probably would doom this approach.
>Mahesh
>Yogi seemed to try this, but it became clear that he could not contain his
>cultural roots and other predilections, and this seems to have created an
>organization that is two faced. Most organizations have an inner and outer
>face,
>but the TMO, as you abbreviate it here, has a logically impassable gap between
>its two faces, and I think that causes it all sorts of problems.
>
'Robert' babajii...@yahoo.com wrote: More thoughts on the subject would
provide
the intellect with more room to play, to attempt to 'pin down'
>what enlightenment 'Is'...But enlightenment is not a thought process, it's not
>of the mind
>...It's getting beyond the mind, as experienced by transcending thought, by
>transcending the mantra
>...Becoming familiar with just being with 'Being'...
>Also, during sutra practice; it's a matter of staying in 'Transcendence'
>...it's a matter of solidifying 'Being' in your experience of 'I'... ...R.
>I would agree that enlightenment is not a thought process, but experience does
>contain thoughts regardless of whether one is before or after that event.
>Enlightenment has to contain everything, but in the beginning, some kind of
>sorting out process seems to be needed. And perhaps this is where the problem
>of
>special vocabulary arises, for example, how does one describe a state of
>experience to someone who has never experienced that state before?
>
'whynotnow7' whynotn...@yahoo.com wrote: ...I am not sure there is a way to
greatly simplify the language and ways we discuss enlightenment.
>Somehow the desire to "get there" leads both to the diversity of expression
>about the pathless path,
>
>and the agility to ultimately make one's way through the forest of knowledge
>presented. I agree we need some conditioning to refine our discrimination
>towards that we are seeking.
>
>As for putting that coherently so that everyone gets it? I dunno, a fool's
>errand perhaps-
>
>Seems like if someone is going to get it, nothing stands in their way.
>And given that all of us think and experience so differently, perhaps the
>diversity of expression is a good thing. :-)
>That is the feeling I get from everyone's response to my posts.
'Ravi Yogi' raviy...@att.net There are plenty of intellectuals and
skeptics
on list as well, may be your questions are too broad,
>you could may be start off by breaking your questions into smaller pieces?
>Posting an initial post with something that bashes TMO and/or MMY will also
>endear you to
>
>many and make more respond, just kidding. I didn't mean to or wouldn't dare to
>put an end to any discussion.
>
>It was just my 3 cents.
>I think that is a practical idea. A compromise for forum ADD. As for the TMO,
>Terror Management & Oppression,
>
it has some good sides and some dark sides. Organizations have this tendency to
drift into weirdness
if they do not pay attention to the context they are in. Same for Mahesh (which
means dispeller of darkness, I think),
I once saw a video of him, people clapping in the background and he was just
chuckling to himself, and I was
wondering 'what am I seeing here?, is this for good, or for something less
good?' At the same time,
I heard an audio someone played for me many many years ago, and Mahesh said
'transcendental meditation
is the relationship between master and disciple', and while I never felt any
strong attachment to any teacher,
this statement had the effect of freeing me from the grasp of any teacher, and
made the process self contained. How many people do you know seeking
enlightenment looking for everything outside of themselves for guidance?
Sometimes yes, but for everything? Mahesh also said, I believe, that any
process
that results in transcending
is transcendental meditation. Many people using a variety of techniques seem to
have gotten this result,
so decrying a person's chosen method to get a result just because it is not
one's own method does not
seem normally a decent thing to do, even though there are lots of stupid things
one can get involved in,
things that do not work well, or are fluff. I assume this thread on
Transcendence and Language is closed unless there are some last thoughts by
anyone. I will try to curtail verbosity, but I like precision, and I am not
able to be on the forum as much as many
of you seem to be able to be. I will probably not be able to keep up a running
conversation.
I like being online, but my life is not on the Internet. I hope yours is not
either.
