Since truth cannot be conceptualized, you cannot look back on the experience to again re experience truth. The experience becomes a memory and is dead, this is not truth.

you cannot re-experience a revelation just by revisiting the events in your memory, this is true. however, you are still able to recall easily enough the severity of what it was you experienced and the impact it had on you at the time, you do not forget altogether what had occurred simply because you cannot reproduce the experience at will.

Looking back and saying, "yeah, not a whole lot happened" is a rather good indication that no gushing waters of truth burst forth through the dams and flooded the conscious mind, whereas, for example, looking back and saying "holy m&**&^& that was incredible WTF was that?!?!" might suggest something was indeed experienced.

the small number of spiritual revelations and epiphanies i have had in my life have been by far and away the most profoundly exciting experiences I can recall.

if it happens, you know about it.

What you are describing is not comparable to what was being described in the op.


The problem is meditation seeks to end the concept of self or ego and so there can be no place for water to rush in. Then 'experience' becomes the wrong word, because there is no experiencer.

Of course the ego will look back and say 'I saw nothing'.
And these are superficial compared to choiceless awareness and the understanding of its use (non use).

Found this poem today via a suggested video on youtube. (Hearing "uncontrived", poof, seeing saw clearer and insight flashed of it's own natural accord, which is how it often occurs.)

In the imaged field of empty delusive appearances,
whatever appears, let it rest in its uncontrived singularity,
and in that moment it dawns only as brilliant emptiness.

In the empty scope of myriad self-dissolving thoughts and visions,
whatever moves, relax and let it alone, just as it falls,
and contemplation of reality arises within the movement.

In the moment when mind and objective field are seamless sameness,
relax into its aimless, traceless, natural purity,
and internal luminosity shines as heightened pristine awareness.

(by Longchenpa)

PS. Here's the two-minute video that might be helpful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32o8WPEGtV0

AJ?

As the poem says, There is one Dharma, not many.

Just as you could use different languages like German or French or Italian or English to talk about the same thing; you can sometimes use the language common to Taoism or Zen; Christian or Sufi (see Rumi) mysticism to talk about the same thing.

When you know something, you see it expressed in different forms in different languages.

(Does that mean when you quote the Tao Te Ching or the bible or the Koran you give full endorsement to every word of it? No.)

ok

Would it be possible for you (OP) to translate a couple of the poems in the first post into specific actions and outcomes in some everyday situations?

a) Like say... if I can know everything, how can I use this to study better?
b) What does it mean to walk freely and undisturbed? Specifically in your life
c) What does it mean that doubts vanish? I mean, that could be dangerous.... what situations in life did you have doubt in that you now do not.

Feel free to assume that I am blind, unable to comprehend stuff, that my asking leaves me unable to cherish enlightenment yadda yadda yadda etc etc etc. Let the spiritual hammer rain blows on my thick skull, I don't care... just give me some specific actual life content as you have experienced it for some of these claims.

a. The poem says, there is nothing you will not be able to know. In this moment, in the immediate, present circumstances of reading this sentence, there is knowing available to be seen--in this experience, about the "content" of this experience--behind/beneath/outside of the mentation. So, while technically, *we can know everything; we will come to it on a "need-to-know" basis, actualizing it a bit at a time, moment by moment.

It's more of an 'entertaining'. Read the poem a few times. Neither accept or reject it. Cherish no opinion for or against it. Don't engage the like vs dislike reactionary thought engine. Just innocently, curiously entertain the poem. Then, it's possible, that as the Mind is given something new to entertain, that 'invitations' to see and realize will arise naturally and of their own accord, outside of the mentation.

b. I travel lighter. The "weight of the world" falls away.

c. The doubts that are reactionary thoughts--the commentary that creates an artificial, imaginary, mental drama--don't exist outside of mentation. So, if not engaged in mentation, doubts vanish.

The feeling of 'doubt' that is a survival mechanism (this ladder isn't safe, my car won't make it on this icy, mountain road) remains and will run on it's own. No worries. The 'doubts' that are a self-centered, egoic reaction vanish without mentation; they lose their allure and fall away as they are seen through, for what they are.

If you look at the poem in post #54, doubt is an appearance in the imaged field. (A reactionary thought is an appearance, just like an odor, it can come and go and not be taken personally) We don't fight or deny or strive against it. No, just let it rest uncontrived, relax and let the appearance alone and just as it falls, contemplation of reality arises within the movement; and there, if anything need be known, it can be known.


*or said this way, the One Mind already knows everything. We "know" what we realize, what we see of that knowing.

I just don't see any connection to a religion that worships an external almighty God (and vital to Christianity, a man-God). Why do you even refer to this inner "spiritual truth" using the word god?

From another thread, the following posts show how confusing this is. I did at least find out that you used to be a Christian, which explains why you use scripture and Christian-centric language a lot (you could have mentioned that yourself when I asked you, to save me some time digging through your old posts, btw). But it is still unclear why you are drawing any comparisons between your old and your new philosophies:
From that same thread, neeel responded:
To answer "what you actually mean by god", all you ended up saying was:
and when pressed on the truth of the comment "you intuitively know"

I am was interested in the answers, but unfortunately I don't think I'll find out what you are really suggesting because you prefer to dance around questions rather than face them head on and give direct, easy to comprehend answers, combine that with you ignoring a lot of the questions directed at you. In contrast are posters like ramana and neeeel who at least try and make the effort to explain difficult to conceptualize ideas, it seems futile for anyone to get anything substantial from you

That's an incredibly bold statement to make. Although there are similarities between what christ and buddha taught ultimately the two are figure-heads of different philosophies and systems of belief.

enough with the sky daddy bull already, this is over-simplified mumbo-jumbo that nobody should be bothering with, but even the subtler inner truths that are alluded to in christ's and buddha's teachings have differences enough to set the two apart.

the two truths may overlap, but not in their entirety.

Just want to re-iterate, most of those quotes were from another thread (AJ's Do The Math! thread). I don't think the context of that thread changed the meaning of neeeel's post I quoted though, I was using it to illustrate my point.

Ye, its just an opinion, and I cant back it up strongly( maybe if I did more reading on what each said), but it seems to make sense given what I do know about them. buddha sat under a tree for x nights, and had a realisation. Jesus went into the desert for 40 days , and had a realisation. They both seem to be talking about the same thing ( lack of a separate self). Whereas one concluded "everything is empty" the other concluded "everything is god". The difference in teachings could just be down to the people who reported their words, and not the teachings themselves. As is obvious from this thread and the Do the math thread, its not easy to explain, and its not easy to understand.

the fact that they are figureheads for different beliefs is irrelevant.

Forgive me. Let's hit the reset button and wipe the slate clean. Treat me as BobbyTwoDucks who made one post on the forum: the poem in the OP followed by the word, discuss. Go from there.

Jesus taught with a Judaic context, relating to the Torah etc. I think a good teacher would teach in terms the students know, understand, and somewhat believe in.

I sometimes wonder if thats the difference. Also mixed with the understanding that people will recount stories in terms of their own conditioning.

Quite the potted history that neeeel! While I will agree there is room for difference of interpretation and there are some similarities in what the two taught, I do not concede that the core of the teachings of one parallel the core of the teachings of the other, although i could of course be wrong.

yup!

Jesus - the worlds first pantheist. o_O

If Self-realization, if perfect nondual limitless ordinary actionless awareness is the inescapable intrinsic state of all our being, then, we should expect to see, at the least, hints of that idea, in varying forms, in various religious literature from around the world.

Unfortunately, your post here completely ignores my criticism of your approach to these issues. This is symptomatic of the kind of cultish thinking I first noted as problematic. So, since they are being handed out itt, here is a koan for you: Given your experiences, how would you find out if you are wrong?

I agree that the complexity arises when we start thinking about our experience (that is, start using concepts analyze and understand our thinking and experience of the world). What I disagree with is that this thinking doesn't actually give us greater insight into the nature of our experience of the world. Cognitive and evolutionary psychology, biology, literature, history and other intellectual pursuits that would be impossible without conceptualizing our experience give us new information about what we experience, how we experience it, and how our experience can mislead us about the true nature of the world.

Thus, when a field like physics tells me to be suspicious that my experience of the world is accurate, I'll pay attention. When cognitive science tells me to be suspicious of how I understand my experience of the world, I'll pay attention.


Nah, our experience of the world is too biased to be taken as giving us all or the most important of the truth about the world. We can't know the truth of the microscopic world, or of the cosmos through direct experience. We can't know scientific laws through direct experience. We can't even know our experiences through direct experiences (because of illusions and cognitive biases).

I don't know what you mean by "possible," so I can't tell if I agree with your first sentence. By how I mean "possible" (as logically possible in the standard Kripkean sense), yes it is possible, but not very interesting as it seems to be false (unless you are using a special meaning of "deepest" or "fully").

Yes? So?

The whole point of the poem is to see through the discriminating mind's game of judging on a right/wrong scale. There is no self who is right or who is wrong. The mentation used to "find out" if one is right or wrong is the fruit of ignorance.

So then to reflect on 'truth' (I'm not sure what word we give it in this thread), is to defile it, possibly. Then the only way to test that theory is to 'experience' it with no reflecting back on that moement. When you do that you can't come back and say "I tried that and now when I reflect on my past I still didn't experience truth"

The mind doesn't see truth and come back and reflect and see it again. When the mind stops reflecting, it sees it.