In my previous two posts, I've shared quotations from Robert Saltzman's book, The 21st Century Self: Belief, Illusion, and the Machinery of Meaning. In this post I'm going to shift gears slightly and share some quotes from Saltzman's first book, The Ten Thousand Things, which is in the form of questions and answers.
I ordered this book after reading some Amazon comments on The 21st Century Self that suggested starting with The Ten Thousand Things as it was a better overall description of how Saltzman sees things.
I'm liking it, just as I like his most recent book. As noted before, Saltzman says things that I've heard said before (including by myself), but he does so in a refreshingly clear and direct manner, pulling no punches in his critiques of spirituality and religion.
Often I have no problem summarizing an author's message in my own words. With Saltzman, though, I feel that he expresses himself on various topics considerably better than I can. So I prefer to share direct quotations from him.
Here's some favorites from the first part of The Ten Thousand Things, which is all I've read so far.
Can Ramana tell me what spirituality is or isn't, or define spiritual goals for me? Of course not. I've got to deal with what I've got to deal with. Plugging someone else's Weltanschauung — someone else's conception of the world and the place of humanity within it — into my situation can lead only to imitation and inauthenticity.
I don't mean that Ramana was inauthentic — apparently he was a cool cat and a rather sweet one as well. He liked to hug nonhuman animals, always a good sign in my book. I am referring to the inauthenticity of imitators who adopt, and sometimes even preach, the guru's world view instead of facing the uncertainty and loneliness involved in living by one's own lights.
You asked for my comment. If you have the ears to hear it, the previous sentence says it all: forget what some "saint" says about life, and make your own way.
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This is a question of seeing and understanding the falsity of the habitual, repetitive idea that one can decide to change and then effect that change through "will power."
The feeling of "myself' as an independent, deciding presence, located perhaps in the area just behind and between one's eyes, takes something unitary — the totality of seeing, feeling, and thinking that really is "myself" — and creates a split between the "badly motivated myself" and the "better intentioned myself" — the one who is interested in enlightenment and hopes to attain it by working against the badly motivated one.
But that splitting is a fiction, and so is the idea of a separate, detached myself who can observe, judge, and finally choose which motivations to follow and which to ignore. Everything you see, feel, and think is you. Any splitting is only conceptual, without actual existence.
To put this plainly, there is no "little man" sitting in the middle of your skull who can decide anything. That homunculus is a ghost. No one can choose to understand. Comprehension happens when it happens and in the way it happens.
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Presently I'd say that without awareness there are no objects, but without objects there is no awareness. So it is not that objects arise in or upon awareness, as I said back then, but that objects are awareness, and awareness is objects.
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At first I felt stunned. What? All of this, including the apparent "myself," is flowing like water, beyond control, ephemeral and entirely fleeting? But as I became accustomed to the strangeness of it, I saw the freedom in it. Each moment arrives freshly in its uniqueness. Nothing ever repeats. The perceived myself of this moment cannot and will not last into the next. As a social construction, yes; as a memory, perhaps; but as a genuine happening, no.
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Many here are accustomed to self-soothing conversations in which supposition about what constitutes "reality" serves to forestall unwelcome thoughts about the apparent emptiness and possible meaninglessness of being human. One may fear that awakening to a life without goals and ideologies will lead to depression or despair and so one hesitates to take each moment afresh, free of any spiritual program.
But that very reluctance — that avoidance — is an impediment to ordinary awakened living, which requires chewing up and swallowing one's experience moment-by-moment, without explanations, without promises of future glories, and sometimes with barely enough saliva to get it down.
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Questions about ultimate sources have no factual answers, so asking such questions is a fool's pastime that can only call forth the shopworn doctrinal assertions commonly deployed against the anxieties of ordinary living. When I say "ordinary living," I mean living in the here and now without faith in a benign overlord, promises of a better future, or assurances of an eventual Nirvana.
I mean a life where a beloved friend and companion may be lost forever in an instant, and not re-encountered in some putative "Heaven." I mean a life that may have no purpose at all beyond the moment to moment living of it.
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Faith is needed only when facts are lacking. Facts are facts, and require no faith. When beliefs are treated as if they were facts, that gives rise to a kind of self-hypnosis that I call magical thinking. If you are thinking magically about the Absolute, or non-duality, or self-realization, or karma and causality, you are not awake, I say, but hypnotized.
You don't know anything about those things. You heard about them at some point, and accepted what you heard. Embracing and constantly repeating such dogma induces a trance state of credulity. Your beliefs are your beliefs merely because you believe them, which indicates nothing about their facticity. Absolutely nothing. Zero.
Awakening is not a gradual winnowing of cherished beliefs so as to hold on to the "true" ones while discarding the "false" ones. In regard to ultimate matters, you do not know what is true and no one else does either. The traditions of "spirituality" rest upon a bundle of bald assertions that, being neither falsifiable nor in any way demonstrable, abide always in the twilight zone of pronouncements that will never be facts. Awakened mind finds no interest in that — no interest in searching for what others say they have realized spiritually.
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To me, "awake" means flowing with the suchness of each moment, moment-by-moment, without searching for "meaning," looking for answers, or demanding that anything be different from the way it is.
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So for me, awakening means the end of "spirituality" in the face of the undeniable understanding that all conjecture on the nature of "myself" falls short — must fall short — of actually explaining anything.
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I am well aware that what I see and feel is a concoction of some sort or another, but this world is the world I have, and so I, an apparent constituent of this world of mine, live in it and with it — not in a world of conjecture, supposition, and mysticism about ultimate matters but here and now. That is what I mean by "awake."
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Rad ? Ha , so am I.
>> Forget what some “saint” says about life and make your own way<< It has become my understanding, upon reading biographies of those that came to see the light, that they became to see that light as a gift so to say ... something dawned upon them, out of the blue. What surprises me me that most of them if not all, after having digested more or less what had happened to them, came to speak about it in the public domain and answered questions of others as to how they, the others, could achieve the same experience, same knowledge, same freedom, same this or that as they did ..while they never did a thing to achieve it So Saltzman says do not do that, do not lissen to these sages etc, and in doing so in the public domain, he himself has become a new sage. with people flocking around him, admiring him or even worshiping him as a new savior to set them free,. So again ... nothing wrong with sages, nothing wrong with what they came to know etc they all walked their path and without doing anything, earned for themselves, that the veil was removed but what matters is that it lands in the public domain as an "wealth" ... and .. wealth as the honorable Lai Zi stressed rime and again ...attracts robbers when it is paraded in the public domain
Every quote that Brian has re-printed here from Saltzman’s The Ten Thousand Things not only rings very true but is a form of encouragement to the many people who have woken up to the reality of this moment. Such people must sometimes feel they may be an ‘odd-ball’, not conforming to the moun-tains of hype that comprise the religious/spiritual overwhelming hold on the issue.
I pick out just a few of the quotes that for me sums up how things are – although all his quotes are relevant: –
“One may fear that awakening to a life without goals and ideologies will lead to depression or des-pair and so one hesitates to take each moment afresh, free of any spiritual program.”
“When I say “ordinary living,” I mean living in the here and now without faith in a benign overlord, promises of a better future, or assurances of an eventual Nirvana.”
“To me, “awake” means flowing with the suchness of each moment, moment-by-moment, without searching for “meaning,” looking for answers, or demanding that anything be different from the way it is.”
@ Ron E.
Those that have inner experoence, I must say “life-altering” experiences , have to deal with them whether they like it or not.
The media are filled with stories of people that had NDE’s for example and how that affected their worldview etc but also their relations. It will not be the first and the last that saw their dear and near one’s break away from them as that experience did changed that person in their perseption so much so that they are perceived als a “stranger” The person going through that experience can stress what he or she wants .. Nothing has changed, I love you as before or even more … they just do no take it … as .. the person HAS changed
Personaly I had to go through such an proces with my late dear friend.
So … there is nothing wrong with a person going through a proces in which an path is shown to him or her … when a person is hungry he has to look for food.
That said others should not follow him or her in their footsteps .. in that sense I do agree with Saltzman … nobody should or even can try to wake up because another person told him he is awake .. not even Saltzman
@ RON E.
and ..the worse thing that can be done to a fellow human being, is to take away the faith of another person, certainly for psychological unconscious reeasons, as a compensation for the inability to have faith, to devote to, believe in, love this or that without giving him or her something else.
Let those that think they need a stick to walk, walk with that stick, do not take it away with the justification of truth finding nonsense
Um. I’m not too concerned with people’s life changing experiences whether that’s through an NDE, some terrible illness, getting fantastically rich, having some ‘enlightening’ experience etc. – all that is part of life.
What interests me here, with this post, is the simplicity of what Saltzman is pointing too in that it’s quite okay to be a normal, unremarkable human being, who has no need of the trappings espoused by saints, religions etc. and that an understanding of the basic fact that there is only, ever this moment and that all conjectures, opinions, beliefs etc., about myself, about who/what I am, are entirely mind-created speculations – it’s what we do. But you don’t necessarily need to believe it all as it’s only all ever appearing in this moment, in the here and now.
Everyone creates their own set of beliefs, whether in science or religion or philosophy or ethics. You choose what to believe and revisit that choice regularly.
You may choose to adopt the philosophy of one scientist over another, one saint over another, one politician over another. In one way or another you decide what are facts and what are not. Not only do you get to choose, there is no escape from it.
This is evidenced in different people choosing different evidence to support their different beliefs.
And occasionally you may ask yourself why you have made those choices.
These are all mental creations and not reality. Even the laws of science are simply today’s best attempt at an accurate story. You chose what parts of that story to believe, and your own reasons for doing so.
Reality is a little different. It is direct, beyond mind, beyond decision. What reality is is already Truth.
Getting to know reality is a matter of the path you choose. Some actually move you closer. But reality remains. So long as we use mind to understand reality we get a story. Maybe that story helps us on our journey, or maybe it doesn’t. Our interpretation of that story is going to be biased by our conditioning, so it will only take us so far.
But there are some beautiful stories, and some of them do have reflections of truth. You can only know that moving forward towards a direct experience of truth.
So, whatever you believe and wherever you are, keep walking forward.
Hi Um
You wrote
“What surprises me me that most of them if not all, after having digested more or less what had happened to them, came to speak about it in the public domain and answered questions of others as to how they, the others, could achieve the same experience, same knowledge, same freedom, same this or that as they did ..while they never did a thing to achieve it
“So Saltzman says do not do that, do not lissen to these sages etc, and in doing so in the public domain, he himself has become a new sage. with people flocking around him, admiring him or even worshiping him as a new savior to set them free,.”
Yes and no. Whatever one person writes is their own personal truth. For example, what Saltzman wrote appeals to Ron, Brian and Appreciative. They resonate to Saltzman’s story.
But does it apply to you or I? Certainly not in this life. One size doesn’t fit all.
And it may not even be a good fit for others. That’s for them to decide.
However, Saltzman’s writings might just be the rope that helps someone pull themselves out of a ditch. Especially when they find no better rope to cling to.
And while your experience is different than mine, still we both look at Saltzman and it has nothing for us.
Once you get into the stories about reality the human mind creates they are endless.
But the light of life, the song of life that fuels them is identical.
So naturally, we are drawn to the direct source of that flame and the merchant of oil that keeps it illuminated, and not to the lifeless and faded photocopies that seems to enthrall others. For them, it is life. And I honor that.
@ Spence Tepper
I wrote about a phenomena, an occurrence of how those, having an inner experience deal with it in the public domain, and its consequences .. I did not write about the appreciation of these contents by me or anybody else
problems => trauma => inner experience => public domain
Those that have these experiences go into the public domain telling their fellow human beings that things are not as they perceive them and for that reason they know better and sit on chairs what can be done for the better.
Maybe is having an inner experience an disease …. perceiving things that are not there, hearing voices of people that are not there ..who knows?
The fact is that acting upon these “voices” has caused humanity a lot of suffering until this very day
@ Spence Repper
>> Once you get into the stories about reality the human mind creates they are endless.
But the light of life, the song of life that fuels them is identical.
So naturally, we are drawn to the direct source of that flame and the merchant of oil that keeps it illuminated, and not to the lifeless and faded photocopies that seems to enthrall others. For them, it is life. And I honor that.<< How can I react to these words?? Before I read them and after I read them the scenery to be seen outside the window has not changed ... there is no song of life, etc. and there is no drawing etc etc. Saltzman in a way is joining the queue of sages, etc and I am no longer interested in sages telling about realities I do not perceive .. that is all...meanwhile their biographies have proven to be very informative for me and often they have very interesting observations to make about the human psyche... things that can be seen etc without any inner experience, shift in consciousness etc. Strange story pops up in my mind ... a young man in a separation room of an psychiatric ward in the hospital , talking in "tongues",. An older and seasoned nurse gets in, gets her large ring with keys, holds them up before the eyes of the client and shakes them as a bell for a waking up call ... and says ... Look, I have the keys to THAT door and you can get out only when you speak my language so that we can communicate .. and walked away, closing the door behind her. Those that have inner experiences are to the rest of the world as that client Spence
It seems to me that people habitually avoid understanding the basic, observable fact that there is only this moment, only now, and in that moment, anything can arise, and does, and that ever-present moment is the one thing we all have in common. But of course, we all fill that moment with our own particular stories, beliefs, opinions and speculations.
Our problem is, we are so quick to interpret the moment with our own conditioned stories. In fact, it may be that in realising the moment we feel out of control so we quickly fill it with our preferred conceptual contents. Being in the moment is perceiving ‘what is’ perceiving whatever appears just as it is before overlaying it with concepts. All of this is no longer just an idea or story we’ve heard about; it’s our actual experience – common to everyone – no need to ‘dress it up’ to suit our particular biases.
Again, Saltzman points to this: – “To me, “awake” means flowing with the suchness of each moment, moment-by-moment, without searching for “meaning,” looking for answers, or demanding that any-thing be different from the way it is.”
So, being awake is not anything special, and it is not one’s own particular truth; it just means being with the moment as it is.
@ Ron E.
You are right, well said and I agree .. not that THAT matters …. hahaha
But allow me to add this much:
The things be as they are this moment to moment … does not need, demand for observations, qualifications, appreciations of sages or anybody else.
Is it not enough to come to realize, that one can live one’s own life without asking advice from “experts” ?
The Mnt Everest exists and it can be climbed and climbing it it has offered many an fulfilling life.
Sages are to me, in a sense, like these mountaineers. That said nobody should be told that a fulfilling life is only possible to walk in their footsteps.
The difference is that climbing the mountain is a choice and for the sages it is a matter of dealing with what has happened to them ..unasked for.
As I wrote, whatever Robert Saltzman says and writes started out with having such an unasked for, life changing experience and THAT is the starting point of all schools, tradition or whatever
They all faced some mental pressure that they no longer could handle and I called it “trauma”
If a person cannot handle the situation due to pain etc, he loses consciousness ..just an example of the row of psychosomatic relationships. Who or what causes those reactions .. I have no idea…I just came ro see over time, that there is a pattern in the lives and experiences of all these sages etc.
So if “you” ..the “ME” is not able to come wih an solution for an ongoing quest, “nature” will step in and “GIVE” it.
What I mean is this … with “MY” hand, the hand being the unique variation of the phenomena “hand”, “I” know what to do, “I” am in control, “I” am the knower and the doer but as far as the “sameness of the hand” is concerned, “I” have no idea whatsoever what a hand is, why, what etc etc .. just realizing ..it is as it is … I have a hand an know how to use it
So the sameness of whatever exists has so to say a life of its own which we can only know in its “USE” we make of it … in its surface not in its depth….life just unfolds itself
Sages are offered a solution for THEIR agony, their trauma or however one wants to label it even psychosomatic disease…it is not for all
Read the life story of Prof. Arnold Ehret. He cure himself by turning his back upon doctors [Sages, experts etc] and found that eating grapes cured his problem [Trauma]. and…. THEN … having found / given the solution ..he ..GENERALIZED ….the proces with regard to ALL his personal ailments and being a human for ALL humans.
That is what happens time and again with those that have a mental trauma to deal with
as an beautiful and in a sense inspiring example of what I try to put here read the story of “IL onorevole Dottore Federico Faggin” the inventor of the microship etc. At the peak of his life having everything imaginable, in every field of human endeavor, he faced an unbearable emptiness, loneliness, meaninglessness …upon “nature” granted him with an inner experience giving him an theory, to look and experience anew.
So time for coffee .. again .. I agree with your well versed comment
AND ….
These experiences, these “gifts” are of such nature that it bypasses everything these people have ever experienced before … read their biographies.
It is understandable for that simple reason that they, those who have these experiences, want to renew them and/or continue to be as they are … sssssooo … it is also understandable that “THEY” look for means to do .
It is also understandable that they cannot keep it in or prevent it to be witnessed by those near and dear and in those HEARING ..from their fate, the desire arises to have the same
Ssssooo …i t is also understandably that practices, [How can I have the same] were demanded and created in order to have the same.
Sssooo humanity has come with an endless stream of practices to MANIPULATE the body in order to create and recreate these original experiences … these are all Variations of the same, generalizations, do-as-i-do-and-you-will-be-happy-and-know-as-I-am-an and know
Sssooo we convince others to smoke, drink, take drugs, follow guru’s, listen to music, look at paintings,go for holidays ..you name it …hahaha … let me call it the “Ehret syndrome” and especial attention should be given to the many philosophies and psychological theories and therapeutic practices …. they are ….ALL …. generalizations and outsourcing of unique, personal, “problems”
Tell me who are your friends and I will know who you are ./…. tell me the personal background of a philosopher, counselor etc and you will see it in their their and practice …
BUT ..that never worked … it cannot … the uniqueness of the sameness, …cannot be generalized.
Wherever you look, whatever you see, think, feel are aware of is an unique variation of the same. There are no exceptions… they are the proverbial two sides of the same coin, sides that never come to see the other.
Unlike the last one from Saltzman, this one was a bit more problematic; and, as a result, while I agree with the broader message obviously, but it didn’t quite resonate like the last two posts did.
Here’s what I mean by problematic:
———-
“I don’t mean that Ramana was inauthentic — apparently he was a cool cat and a rather sweet one as well. He liked to hug nonhuman animals, always a good sign in my book. I am referring to the inauthenticity of imitators who adopt, and sometimes even preach, the guru’s world view.”
Ramana’s authenticity or otherwise has nothing to do with incidentals like his being friendly with animals or his pleasant demeanor, but about his actual message itself (at least if we’re talking about authenticity with respect to reality; as opposed to merely the circular and meta, and trivial, authenticity of Ramana’s personal conduct vis-a-vis his own message). Second, and very importantly while the observation about imitators is true if obviously so: but those words taken as a whole kind of imply that the teachings of Ramana himself are authentic, without attempting to show it is so (and of course, if no such implication was intended, even if that is how it comes across, then Salzman is guilty not of error but of imprecision in expression, but in either case his words are potentially misleading). And thirdly, I don’t know that I agree with this broadbrushing of all messages, along both dimensions: first, the implicit claim that each was valid in their own context; and second, the explicit claim that none is valid universally. I mean, he can’t just say things like this without clearly showing his work, that’s just gassing away. (And maybe he has indeed “shown his work”, elsewhere in the book, in which case happy to take such on its merits).
———-
“Comprehension happens when it happens and in the way it happens.”
Sure it does. But it does seem as if Salzmann were presenting this obvious statement as a kind of fatalistic throwing-up-of-hands over whether or not we can do anything to aid comprehension (whether others’, or our own). Should that be the case, then that’s a cop-out, and yet another instance of using philosophical no-free-will in ways that simply don’t apply.
We can indeed aid comprehension through study, and experience, and critical thinking: both in general as well as in respect of this specific: and that we have no way of acting independently of preceding causes, as well as the fact that we are not possessed of a concrete abiding self, are both of them non sequiturs that have no bearing on this specific portion of this discussion.
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“Presently I’d say that without awareness there are no objects, but without objects there is no awareness. So it is not that objects arise in or upon awareness, as I said back then, but that objects are awareness, and awareness is objects.”
This I’m not very sure about. If elsewhere Saltzman discusses this in greater detail, then I’d be interested in that discussion. It seems to me that consciousness and awareness evolve basis objects; possibly at the individual level also they arise basis objects: but, once arrived at, they are probably not directly predicated on a continuous presence of objects. For instance: if I were to enter one of those sensory-deprivation pods just now, where there were no objects to focus on — or indeed, if similar were approximated via absorbed meditation — then awareness demonstrably does not evaporate away.
(This one’s less an objection or disagreement per se than a question. Has there been any bona fide research on this? If there has, then naturally the results of that are what I’ll be very happy to learn from and go with. But absent such, Salzmann’s words are a reach.)
———-
“Questions about ultimate sources have no factual answers”
What’s problematic is the wild baseless ipsedixitisms thrown up by religions and swallowed uncritically by the gullible; and we do well to summarily reject such baseless formulations: but that is not to say that “questons about ultimate sources (can) have no factual answers”. They oftentimes do yield bona fide answers based in science.
While I agree with Salzmann’s rejection of pseudo-answers provided by religions and by sundry delusionals and charlatans to such questions, but I reject the means, the route, that Saltzmann employs here to do that, in as much as it ends up throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
———-
“all conjecture on the nature of “myself” falls short — must fall short — of actually explaining anything”
I disagree. Conjecture based on systematic observations, and tested via further observations — aka hypotheses and theories — is how we “explain” a great many things. There’s no reason why “the nature of myself” should be an exception to this. …In fact, this statement of his is demonstrably wrong: we do indeed have a workable explanation of this “nature of myself” that, while always tentative always a work-in-process, is nevertheless pretty much satisfactory enough already.
Sure, when you’re practicing being in the present, during Vipassana meditation for instance, then you do throw out concepts (both wrong concepts, and correct concepts as well), and focus on the here and now. But you do that because you’re expressly practicing being in the here-and-now to the exclusion of mental constructs: and not because those conjectures/hypotheses/theories/concepts fall short.
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To be clear: Certainly I agree with Saltzman’s larger message. However, this post, and this set of excerpts, did not quite speak to me as the last two sets of them did: and that is because, like I’ve discussed above, the details of what he says contain lots of things that are iffy (either plain wrong, or else imprecisely expressed, but in either case potentially confusing and/or misleading to the reader).
I do realize that I’m looking at these excerpts standalone, and maybe in context of the rest of what he’s said further in his book they make more sense (in which case I’m happy to take that onboard, naturally, should you discuss that going forward, Brian): but still, seen standalone — which, after all, was how we’d understood and appreciated his words quoted in the last two posts — this lot falls short of the high standards of that other, later book of his.
Hi Um
You wrote
“Before I read them and after I read them the scenery to be seen outside the window has not changed … there is no song of life, etc. and there is no drawing etc etc.”
You can add, more accurately, for you.
For you there is only what you see.
But anyone can tell you that changing your point of view, turning around, walking upstairs through that door into the garden, onto the field out in the azure sky gives you a different view.
You may never see what I see and vice versa. But you most certainly can see more if you choose, with a little effort.
And if you choose to see nothing more, then it makes perfect sense for you to say and believe that what you see represents the entirety of your reality.
But it isn’t the entirety of Reality. And anyone who sees anything else has their own evidence this is true.
What is before your eyes is not what is behind you, nor what is right beside you, nor in you, though there is continuity among all of them.
Your observations of what people did who acted upon there inner vision is a negative spin. You cited the grape cure and its author. He shared his experience. Others tried this sort of fast and found good results also.
A raw food fast, a raw fruit fast can have many, many positive health and psychological benefits, according to the testimony of many in the fields of both nutrition and spirituality.
And like all solutions it has its time and place where it can help or harm. But used properly, it’s one more good solution. The person who brought that out did the world a service. It is for you and I to use our discrimination in deciding when and where it may be of some help to us.
Same for meditation. Much current research shows that meditation keeps the brain in physical condition about ten years younger than biological age.
Meditation reduces stress, improves cognitive functioning, improves learning performance, etc, etc.
It’s a thing, and like most things it can be of immense good used properly.
As Swami Ji wrote
“Using the proper technique…”
So I guess I would say it’s not Reality’s fault for the limitations of what you or I see or do not see, nor the twisted products of the biased and conditioned human mind that tries to digest and regurgitate experience with generally flawed result.
Wisdom is in understanding that mind has its limited place and function, but is by no means truth, merely a tool to help us find a better way to a limited daily truth for our own limited daily functioning.
Truth in its purety and glory is beyond mind, Um. Human mind will never grasp it. But human mind can help, largely through the discipline of putting aside thinking in favor of understanding.
@ Spence
Hahaha … long ago I came to understand that each standpoint allows for an particular viewpoint and that whatever is part of that standpoint cannot be change by any form of therapy or counseling, one can only suppress it with all its negative consequences for body and mind. If one realy wants to change the components of a viewpoint one has to change the standpoint from where everything is seen.
What you write about truth and reality and using Swami’ji’s words as a stick to lean on, are just words, empty words.. .. they might have the meaning and value YOU attribute to them but otherwise they are useless.
Those that SAID they had an brush with the ultimate truth and reality and later started to speak and write about it, and in such a way that they had followers in any magnitude and length of tome, they received it all as a gift, not that there is a giver but they did not create , did not make it happen …yet they go around suggesting that the same can be had if people only do what they say, practice this or that .. that simple doesn’t work … it never did and it will never do.
And …I never in my life asked, suggested, advised etc. anybody to change their way of life… it is given to them and them alone and they are all equipped to walk their life on their own feed … now pleas do not answer with a side track of disabled people etc
@um
Someone asked an ex-“teacher” why he left the scene.
Reply…
I couldn’t give away what was given to me.
@ B. Frank
Could you please at some more words to it?
I have an iodea but am not sure.
A guy had an awakening. He held some classes and retreats. Then disappeared. When someone after a few years found him and asked why he disappeared from the scene. He understood he couldn’t give away his awakening. His awakening was given to him yet he could not give it away.
@ B. Feank
Thank you.
What puzzels me is how a person can give away an awakening.
Whence you know a thing, when you finally see it you can never not see it again.
That is why I understand that the answers of fore example Christ to the questions put before him and the chances that were offered to him to save his life.
That last sentence puzzels me most. How do you use the word “give” here? In the sense I used it, just to say that a person did not made the awakening happen or do you use it in the sense that another person gave it to him …THAT …would be other cake to eat.
You addressed me, so i must be a reaction on something I wrote before but what?
If you would help me out I might be apple what message you want to convey to me.
@ B. Frank
What you wrote resembles, if I understand correctly, what might have happened to Yolande Duran Serrano, who explained what had happened to her and what she did to give it a place in already available literature.
Unfortunately I could not lay my hands on the English translation of her original French and my French is not good enough to read it at ease, German is easier for me ro listen and to speak but I do not like reading it certainly not these type of issues.
She had, as far as I understood, for a while also classes and retreats and than nothing was ever heard of her .. at least not on the internet.
From what I read in French and German translation … I can understand that she came to conclude that it makes little sense to talk about here experience not being able to assist others to have it and decided to walk out of the public domain. But I can’t imagine that her talking or not talking would have any impact on her “Inner silence”
@um.
Yes. I mean given in the same sense as you said. One day it wasn’t there and then it’s there. Unexpected. This person spoke about it for a while then quit because it was futile to think he could pass it on and to lead people on felt horrible.
@ B. Frank
O might not have been your intention but the words “… and to lead people on felt horrible.”… especially the word “horrible”, had a “strange” effect on me for which I cannot find words. They remind me in a way of conversations with my dear late Friend when visiting for example an museum of Ceramic art. It could happen that we came a cross an object that made us use words like .. Look how horrible the form is or the color of the glaze. …while in a “normal sense” these objects were up to the mark. It was the only way to draw attention to something that could be seen and not be seen. This type of communication was only possible between the two of us.
“that felt horrible” … I hear those words being said in my mind ….so strangely alive … i would I could express that in words, they have ..for me … such and “dark” sound of echo of the past
@um
Interesting how much you were “stirred up” upon reflection with your dear late friend.
This also reminds me of the difference between Superman and other super heroes.
Superman was BORN a superhero and tries to be human.
Other superheroes are BORN human and try to be a superhero.
Superman is sitting at the front of the audience while all the wanna be superheroes are the audience.
This struck me sometime back while listening to Byron Katie. Her “work” has reached vast numbers of people and I have yet to see another Byron Katie.
@ B. Frank
My goodness what an metaphor … with my dear late friend we would use all sorts of qualifications of people in order to describe something or make it “visible”. We never did so when other people were around because they might interpret it as disrespectful etc while that would never cross our mind .. as even those that are near and dear, those we “love” can do miserable things
What you wrote about superman etc are “dangerous” thoughts to have in mind. Although “possible and true” they also allow one to leave the middle path and drop to the right or the left, looking down or up to a fellow human being.
@ B. Frank
Googled here name …. what a pair of dazlling eyes
Thanks to the comment of B. Frank, I googled the name of Byron Katie and found this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Katie
The section “carreer”, describes yet another example of the formula of a process:
problems => trauma => inner experience => public domain => practices
and again I would like to add to it:
As the supposed powers that revealed or presented themselves failed to address others about what was the Mauj, the command etc, the message, to others beside the one that received them first, and in doing so, streams of blood were created,….
so …
in the same way those that were “given” or “received” [ by lack of beter words] an epiphany which opened a window of clear sight, often generalize what was in the first place an”solution for a particular personal problem” into a panacee for all ailments of themselves and others.
When people face an intolerable trauma the system shuts down automatically …one loses consciousness or enters coma ..nobody would think that to be a cure for everything and everybody Although “sleep cures” are used sometimes to solve a problem in hospital
The insight that followed upon “opening the window” was preceded by a trauma and the trauma by unsolvable problems … offering these insights cannot open the window from OUTSIDE
Hahaha no awakening is needed to understand that .. maybe some coffee … hahaha
Hahaha … ”
Kodo Sawaki, stated time and again that “zen served no purpose as it was good for nothing
If you read his biography you will understand.
He writes that he grew up in a slum and by accident came to know that living in a monasterie was an relaxed way of living one’s life .. so he decide to chose “sitting” as an career, as an living … hahaha and in doing so …HE …He kodo Sawaki .. solved his problem …not mine or yours
I forgot:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dd%C5%8D_Sawaki
@um
Cannot open the window from the outside. Nice.
Bk has an early book that was taken off the shelves. Some parts are quite interesting. PDF is available. It’s called Lose the Moon
@um
What’s the autobiography called pls?
@ B. Frank
I made the picture of his life reading his:
“Discovering the True Self”
and
What one of his students had to relate about him in books like:
“Opening the hand of thought” by Kosho Uchiyama
and
Watching some Video’s on Youtube about the ins and outs of the antai ji monastery
It is not what they do but how they do it ..they all tell something, psychological, about the person that acts, feels and thinks ..reading what they had to say about the living in the most famous Zen monasteries, is a treat in itself ..it is debunking the “holiness” and makes one see the human behind it all ….that is what I got aout of it.
To understand anything people do, say etc …on the outside, has it roots in the inside ..there are the keys to be found and not in the limelight of the world and not in the hands of experts
I will have a look at the moon …
@um
https://www.mensenrechten.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Byron-Katie-Losing-The-Moon1.pdf
@ B. Frank
Surfing I found this … haghaha … how could it be otherwise??
https://mortentolboll.weebly.com/a-critique-of-byron-katie-and-her-therapeutic-technique-the-work.html
P.S
I would like to have note here, that these days whomever, whatever says, expert or lay, master or student, or even my cat if I had one and could speak, does tell me ONLY about the person that writes and says it …and for me …. it is up to me to attribute value to the whole or its building details…. even in the dessert or garbage can, one might find, precious metals, stones or wisdom.
@um
I have learned reading your comments that what we say only reveals our inner life.
@ B. Frank
Thank you for the link. … …and what an remarkable organisation to have it on its site
You cannot learn anything from others that you do not know already. We are are raised to believe that everything must come from outside, from and expert …and … that we need it too.
In a sense that is correct ..after all we have to learn a language to comunicate so that we can live together in the public domain so that if you point at the moon everybody around you looks up in the sky.
That said .. when you were young, as a child you knew how to deal with your parents, when time was favorable to “rip their money” for an ice cream ..THEY, did not teach you..YOU knew it yourself.
In that vein you know everything you need to know .. so there are 2 sorts of knowledge
If you are dutch you might remember what little kids yell at one another … als what je zegt ben je zelf [everything you say is yourself] … or .. growing up when pointing at somebody with the index finger, somebody saying ..one finger points in my direction and three in yours