Religion of not knowing

[Lunitik]

Sorry, it was Naropa's master, Tilopa - the originator of the Mahamudra method, which is exactly this: instantaneous enlightenment. Naropa is equally interesting though, he has attained simply looking a girl readying a bow... years of practice and nothing, then BAM, and he went on dancing and causing a ruckus in a cemetery for the rest of his days.

 

[Thomas]

It strikes me —
In the religion of not-knowing
What is there to know?

Is this not ignorance posing as a virtue?

God bless,
Thomas

 

[radarmark]

Thomas -- Admitting not-knowing when it is not known is a virtue. Ignorance does not imply not knowing. Very, very intelligent and wise people often fall into this camp.

Lunitik -- Tilopa was some 250-350 years after Huineng and was not of the patriarcial lineage. Not that it really matters--gurus can be alive or dead.

 

[Lunitik]

It strikes me —
In the religion of not-knowing
What is there to know?

Is this not ignorance posing as a virtue?

God bless,
Thomas

It simply means you will be open to whatsoever arises, not having prepared answers for life.

If you simply meditate rightly, all arises of its own accord as your energy is increased, why will you need to know anything about it when you encounter it yourself? Do you need to study how to walk through a door? It is not so different...

 

[Lunitik]

Thomas -- Admitting not-knowing when it is not known is a virtue. Ignorance does not imply not knowing. Very, very intelligent and wise people often fall into this camp.

Lunitik -- Tilopa was some 250-350 years after Huineng and was not of the patriarcial lineage. Not that it really matters--gurus can be alive or dead.

Interesting, I may look into Hui-Neng at some point.

You are right though, why say you know a thing, why pretend you are knowledgeable when you have merely borrowed extensively from others and memorized? This is why I go on seeming to harass you, because you do not share your own insight into the experience if it has happened to you. If everything is inferred from elsewhere, what have you really gained?

This is why I find Christians and other scholarly types so annoying, they simply accept the stuff they read and actually dispute truth based on it. I am very against this, because it simply isn't helpful to pretend you have a clue when you don't, and it is extremely damaging to be filled with answers before you know the truth of it.

Truth can be experienced, but it cannot be known - anything said about it beyond the raw experience is not useful, maybe just a device, maybe someones idea about it, but it will do harm more than good to believe anything about it - just touch it yourself and see, then there is no added nonsense.

 

[Lunitik]

An example of the damage of this is that Thomas goes on arguing it is grace that has happened, how much effort is he putting into residing in the experience? Since he doesn't think he did anything for it to happen, it is probably that he doesn't even know he can reside in that state...

I am not saying it isn't grace, but it is given because of your endeavor, not randomly just because you're a good Christian. Your current experience is based on your capacity, meditation is a way to increase your capacity, and eventually that becomes your natural state... this is what Jesus has done, although the Church tells you he was born this way. You accept their statements, and thus pursue nothing more, for me this is spiritually criminal.

What is experienced in the glimpses of grace is the case all the time, you have simply become aware of it in an instance then returned to normal - you needn't have returned to normal experiencing at all, the bliss of it can remain always, the unity and feeling that you are in everything, it can be your natural state, constantly renewed so you do not even build a tolerance. This is what humans have been created for, to share in the Godly experience, but somehow we have gone astray.

 

[Thomas]

Hi radarmark —

I'm only teasing! You know what contemporary culture is like, besotted with 'soundbite spirituality'

God bless,

Thomas

 

[Lunitik]

Hi radarmark —

I'm only teasing! You know what contemporary culture is like, besotted with 'soundbite spirituality'

God bless,

Thomas

Christianity is 99% 'soundbite spirituality'.

Standing out in the street yelling their hearsay, knocking on everyones door doing the same... few Christians have experienced anything of truth because they already think they know when they have experienced nothing. Christianity has created a type of retardation, spiritually, because they treat religion like any other topic to learn about - you can't learn religion, you have to experience it directly.

In Science, in Math, in History, whatever outward study, facts are facts, you needn't rediscover them. It is good language cannot express the divine, it means only experience can tell you anything about it. Religion should be restricted to experience and how to gain it, free from mythology and all other nonsense. If it doesn't help you encounter truth, it is taking you further from it - this should be the basic premise of all religious seeking. Then, the fire, then the encountering of the Holy Spirit, then the giving of yourself to that, but people are convinced they only need baptism by water to be saved - this is criminal.

If you have only been baptized by water, you are still in the tradition of John the Baptist, it is only when you are baptized with the Holy Spirit that you are part of the Body of Christ. Still you are not Christ if you're perceiving yourself as distinct, still you have not given yourself utterly to Him. Jesus says he was animated by God, that nothing he did was his own doing. Christians ignore this, but he speaks of what actually happens when you take on the Holy Spirit, something so fundamental and yet so little understood. It is the tradition of men that has provided this warping, yet what else is Christianity today?

 

[Thomas]

It simply means you will be open to whatsoever arises, not having prepared answers for life.

This from someone who, it seems to me, declares the infallibility of their own knowing, and spends a lot of time and effort telling everyone else how little they know?

God bless.

Thomas

 

[Thomas]

An example of the damage of this is that Thomas goes on arguing ...

You are never more wrong than when you assume to know what others think.

You are full of judgement.

I sometimes think you are so possessive of what you have, you vigorously refute the possibility that anyone else can come anywhere near your perfection, to the degree that you cannot actually see what others are saying.

God bless,

Thomas

 

[Thomas]

Christianity is 99% 'soundbite spirituality'.

Nice soundbite!

God bless,

Thomas

 

[Lunitik]

This from someone who, it seems to me, declares the infallibility of their own knowing, and spends a lot of time and effort telling everyone else how little they know?

God bless.

Thomas

It is not the knowing of men, it is of that which resides in me, and even your own tradition says that is infallible.

 

[Lunitik]

You are never more wrong than when you assume to know what others think.

You are full of judgement.

I sometimes think you are so possessive of what you have, you vigorously refute the possibility that anyone else can come anywhere near your perfection, to the degree that you cannot actually see what others are saying.

I do not judge at all, I comment on nonsense, trying to direct it back to truth.

Do you think God is Christian? Do you think he wants you to emulate Jesus? It is not so, he wants you to find your own way to him, to love him directly and completely, so much that you realize you are not at all because you are merged with him fully.

Christians speak of this, but they say it comes after death only. I am not interested in what you are saying if I can see you are still expressing your ego. You identify with Christianity, radarmark identifies with Quakers, these alone are enough to ensure what I speak of will not happen - it is enough that you not be saved.

What does it really mean to be saved? It is to be saved from your own delusion and fear, it is to encounter what you actually are - as radarmark says, ultimately you realize there is no distinct entity which is God, you yourself are the divine. This cannot happen when you uphold your identifications though, you have to die for the divine to live in you. This is my experience, that which was born of this body is dead, only God resides here now.

All that is spoken about God, it is naught but the experience of those who have dropped all fallacy, they are omnipresent, they are omnipotent, they are omniscient, this is the state of the flowering of consciousness. Identification with the body and mind are as a plastic flower, they lack the true fragrance of religiousness, it is a self-created limitation, there is no need for it. The plastic flower is not of the seed, it is of the market, let the flower bloom and automatically you realize the truth I speak. It wants to bloom, but how can it on concrete? That is what organized religion is, but you have not even understood the parable of Jesus.

By letting go of knowledge and merely being open to the blooming of consciousness, there is a possibility. Otherwise, the seed dies never having realized its destiny, never encountering its potential. You cannot be so hard, you have to be malleable like soil, you have to permit it as soil permits, but organized religion creates nothing but rocks.

 

[radarmark]

You are right though, why say you know a thing, why pretend you are knowledgeable when you have merely borrowed extensively from others and memorized? This is why I go on seeming to harass you, because you do not share your own insight into the experience if it has happened to you. If everything is inferred from elsewhere, what have you really gained?

You are entitled to that opinion. I infer only in the realm of samvṛtisatya. I do not infer in paramārthasatya. Nor (as you complain about) do I feel compelled to discuss it ("the way that is spoken is not the way").

This is why I find Christians and other scholarly types so annoying, they simply accept the stuff they read and actually dispute truth based on it. I am very against this, because it simply isn't helpful to pretend you have a clue when you don't, and it is extremely damaging to be filled with answers before you know the truth of it.

So you do not read the Sanātana Dharma (I consider Buddhism, Jainism, Daoism and the non-Vedic religions of India as well as Hinduism are part of it). Your loss. In addition, there is no reason whatsoever that a Christian (or for that matter a Jew or a Muslim) cannot also be a member of any of the Sanātana Dharma groups (except, of course, if the Religion—the exoteric church—forbids it). The Pali Canon and other Greater, Lesser, and Three Vehicles writings are most authoritative. The Tathagatha has come and gone many times and one can benefit from his or her words. By dismissing the Scriptures you miss the metaphysics, the logic, the debates that tell you where your vehicle came from (it explains a lot). If you look carefully at the lives of even Tilopa and Naropa you will see that they, too, studied and taught. It is my humble opinion that only Huineng was suddenly awakened without study. I grok the truth (as I experience it) and do not have to debate the sublime as it it were dross. I have no answers, I have no truth, I have only my experience (which does include willful consciousness).

Truth can be experienced, but it cannot be known - anything said about it beyond the raw experience is not useful, maybe just a device, maybe someones idea about it, but it will do harm more than good to believe anything about it - just touch it yourself and see, then there is no added nonsense.

That is just what I said. 'Tis only the experience that counts and once you put it into words it is no longer experience and no longer counts. What our difference in approach is that you (seem) to have fallen under the spell of a pretty Westernized Vajrayana teacher and I follow the words of Huineng (by way of Suzuki Roshi). Vajrayana is a valid approach (in that it pragmatically works). The other vehicles work as well, it is a matter of what suits you. That is what the Tathagatha taught (at least within the non-Vajrayana traditions). The nonsense (from my point-of-view) is this insistence on sharing of the sublime and on "one way". Neither of which mesh with the sensitivities of my Native or Quaker beliefs.

 

[Snoopy]

Hui-Neng

Hi Friend

Can I recommend this essay? It gets under the skin of Hui-neng, bifurcations, training methodologies and related issues. It's quite long but it makes for interesting reading. I've always thought the supposed division between sudden and gradual to be simplistic to the point of spurious and this essay puts some flesh on those bones, I think.

http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/HistoricalZen/Legends_in_Chan.html

 

[luecy7]

If one has the do, then one has the spirit.
If one has not the do, then one has not the spirit.

If one will do, then one will have the spirit.
If one will not do, then one will not have the spirit.

If one has done, then one has had the spirit.
If one has not done, then one has not had the spirit.

Have the do?

Is the religion of not knowing, the religion of not doing? By my experience, I say yes it is.

 

[luecy7]

That is just what I said. 'Tis only the experience that counts and once you put it into words it is no longer experience and no longer counts.

Confession is not an experience?

Some spirit is good, and some spirit is evil. Should one know, or not know, the difference?

 

[Lunitik]

@radarmark

Please get this idea that I speak of "one way" out of your head, no, I speak of one destination, I insist on 7 billion plus ways because every individual should be utterly unique in their journey home and their expression of home. I merely say no way or path is necessary at all, it is herenow if you are willing to experience it and I try to show all how to awaken this moment.

The way or the path is naught but the minds attempt to postpone, it is utterly false to say there is a way because you only need stop and be open to it this moment. It is always the case, you are it, why delay this realization and miss happiness and bliss more than needs be? For me, it simply doesn't make sense...

 

[Lunitik]

Is the religion of not knowing, the religion of not doing? By my experience, I say yes it is.

It is the religion of doing without thought, without ready made answers and without the past at all dictating your response to different events. It is to live naturally rather than artificially...

Modern Christianity, best as I can tell, have become little more than self-help, giving you answers for situations that may arise... this is a disgusting thing, you have to learn how to let go to the moment, how to not bring in any ideas and simply permit what is, participate as necessary without any attachment to it, simply enjoying what is happening.

 

[luecy7]

Watch, Do. Speak, Hear. These are interactions within duality, when there is not two, they mean nothing.

Guide, Pray. Prayer is often misunderstood by Christians. Jesus continuously goes away for long periods to pray, yet Christians think he is talking to God. This is strange because they say he is God, then who is he talking to? No, prayer is a state of gratitude and love, not a sequence of requests. It is actually meditation that is described when Jesus leaves to be alone and pray.

Teach, Learn. Confess, Forgive. Again, only relevant where there is two.

Think, Act. Thinking and action is not actually that different, you only perceive it so because you distinguish inner from outer. You create a duality here, see that they are one: thought is merely inner action.

Sacrifice, Freedom. How do you consider these dualities? If you are sacrificing, you are exercising your freedom to do so. If you are sacrificed against your will, it is something else. Still you are free to choose how you face it... they are simply unrelated.

Your word, your way, and your life, are divided and dismembered. I tell you honestly: this was glaring by the interaction with you, and not merely by the exchange of words here. Make your word, your way, and your life... one, in union.

The Golden Rule is fundamentally dualistic, it brings in "other" in every incantation I have seen. It is perfectly good to accomplish an environment of respect, but it is not very spiritual. Indeed, it has come as the result of the first ever Interfaith dialog in Chicago around the turn of the 1900's, it is a grounds for discussion, but that very discussion can only exist because they understand they do not agree - it is a way to remain apart, not a way to unite.

You think living by the golden rule is being dualistic? I think living by being a hypocrite, is being dualistic.