• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Zen enlightenment

Matteo Martini said:
Thanks Bodhi Dharma, that` s an answer to my question.
So, like Christian and Muslims we are here back to the good ol` faith.
Nothing wrong with it, as I said before there are already a good number of religions which rely almost uniquely ( may I delete the " almost " ?? ) on blind faith.
Of course, if I will not be one of the " two or three individuals that have been there".
Or, should we change the previous sentence as " of the two or three individuals that, according to some sources, have claimed they have been there"
Click to expand...


Nope. I already told you, "faith" in something unreachable, that you cant see smell or touch, is one thing. Im asking you to trust us, in that you will see, for yourself. Until you see there is not really a point in trying to show "it" to you.

You see, there is something going on here, in this very thread, that its completely invisible for you. Ironically, what you cant see (for the moment) is all the proof you need!

This alone should make you wonder, how can two or three of us can share a "secret language" that is invisible for you?

Because we have seen!
 
roger said:
... engaged in the moment...
Click to expand...

I like that.

roger said:
Interestingly, my girlfriend is a neuroscientist, and her institute is involved in this research. They will be studying this phenomen using MRI and other techniques, and will be testing, among others, the Dalai Lama. Stay tuned...
Click to expand...

HEY!! Interesting. Can you point us to some web page or something about it?
 
Re: I have no idea if this contributes to anything

sackett said:
Back in the days when I still watched TV (only public TV, of course) I saw a show about a Zen retreat in California. The attendees all seemed to be well-heeled Bay Area yuppoids. An interviewer asked one of them, a woman in her 40's, "What do you hope to accomplish here?" The woman laughed condescendingly and replied, "Heavens, I hope I don't accomplish anything!"

It takes years of effort to be that much of a smart-ass. I wanted to pour a bowl of green tea over her head - yes, and then break the bowl on her smug, conceited, supercilious noggin.

This was a very good Zen experience. I'm still working on it.
Click to expand...

Maybe you can get the same answer if you ask the same question to an homeless person: " What do you want to accomplish in life being an homeless person ?? ", reply of the dirty, long-bearded and old homeless person: " I do not want to accomplish anything in life ".
Maybe all homeless people ( or most of them ?? ) are Zen Masters, then ..
Even if they do not know it.

And I am pretty sure it did not take years of training for that homeless person to give you that smart answer.
 
Re: Continuing to mouth off about Zen

sackett said:
Matteo: Yes, of course it was coincidence when the chopsticks broke. The Zen part, both for my girl friend and for me, was in the experience of that instant.

About satori: Most, maybe all Zen instructors will tell you that you must continue to examine your experiences of satori, or they will in time become no more than distant memories. Of course, that may be enough for some people. Satori is, after all, an event happening to exactly one person - and you are Lord Buddha, supreme in the realm of yourself.

As should be obvious by now, I'm attracted to the paradoxical in Zen. It's a path that leads away from the false dichotomies to which human thought is prone: this as distinct from that. "No hand, no fist. All one thing," growled the master after slapping one monk and punching another.

No, confrontation with paradox is not enlightenment, it's only an intellectual clarification. It's not the subjective experience of seeing reality. But it's great fun, especially when you're playing with people's heads -- and if you're not playing with people's heads, you're not practicing Zen.
Click to expand...

So, if the chopstick experience was " the experience of that instant", I had many " experiences of other instancts ", like when my car broke down in the middle of the highway, when I felt down skiing, etc. are they anything special worth talking about ??

About satori, I hope it is clear that I did NOT experience any atori at the moment or in the past.
And about your faithful belief in Lord Buddha, you are talikng about a person that suppposedly lived about 2500 years ago, with no other evidence of his life other than some books ( of course more than 2000 years or so ). So not very much evidence about the real life of this person, I think.

About the fact that " this " is distinct from " that " I see no dichotomy here, a car is different from a house, is not it ??
 
roger said:
For what it's worth.... I spent quite a bit of time in zazen in my late teens/early twenties. None of this koan nonsense, or irrationalities, just following my breath, and eventually, just sitting. No big deal, nothing to write home about. Anyway, one day I had a motorcyle accident. Could have been a big deal, but other than ending up on crutches for awhile I walked away from it. I was mostly (pychologically) numb for a few hours following it - the trip to the hospital, xrays, all that.

Coming home - BAM! Everything dropped away and I started giggling nonstop. I could go on and on in words but what's the point? I don't say that in any mystical way, but how do you describe love in words, or any feeling/emotion/brain state? Can't really be done. Anyway, so far as I can tell this was what they call a "tip of the tongue" experience - I was still thinking "hey, this is new" - ie I was still observing it happening.

I totally agree that this must be a brain state; after all, we are meat. It was fun, I spent a few weeks just totally engaged in the moment, but over time it faded away. It's really not something I feel I want to chase, or get again. I view it as a different brain state, not a 'better' one, or closer to "truth" or reality, or anything like that. I can see how this sort of thing could be very useful for someone who spends their lives mulling about what could have been, "I can't believe so-and-so said that", all that negative energy. On the other hand, I get a heck of a lot of milage BY mulling over things. For me, it's part of the creative and intellectual process.

I'm not poo-pooing it, as I draw on it all the time. Heck, this morning I started to get irritated because the person in front of me was driving too slow to catch the next light in time, and then I laughed at myself, realized what I was doing, and just sat back and enjoyed my drive.

Zen? Not zen? I don't know, I don't care. What I experienced felt exactly like what all the descriptions of those brain states sound like, and it wasn't too much like I had imagined it was like beforehand. Like Kevin, I think the same brain state is experienced in many cultures. I suspect those that have near death experiences may be shocked into it.

Interestingly, my girlfriend is a neuroscientist, and her institute is involved in this research. They will be studying this phenomen using MRI and other techniques, and will be testing, among others, the Dalai Lama. Stay tuned...
Click to expand...

Mmm.. now satori happens after motorbike accidents, after praying Jesus and in near-death experiences ..
One possible explanation is that, after a shock of any type, you just feel " strange ", as you should feel, and you call this a " satori " or a " mystical " or a " communion with God " experience.
Just an alternative, down-to-earth explanation, of course, I do not want to say that satori does not exist, of course.
 
Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
Nope. I already told you, "faith" in something unreachable, that you cant see smell or touch, is one thing. Im asking you to trust us, in that you will see, for yourself. Until you see there is not really a point in trying to show "it" to you.

You see, there is something going on here, in this very thread, that its completely invisible for you. Ironically, what you cant see (for the moment) is all the proof you need!

This alone should make you wonder, how can two or three of us can share a "secret language" that is invisible for you?

Because we have seen!
Click to expand...

Bodhi Dharma,
the main difference between the faith of the Christians and of the Muslims is that you will " see " the Truth after death, while with zen, you can have a satori in this life.
However, while if you practice well ( do not drink, not go with women, help the poors, go to church, .. ) in Christian tradition you can make a safe bet that, at least, you might go to Purgatory, with Zen you can practice like the best Zen monk and do Zazen five hours per day for all your life and still do not get to satori.

This is how I see it.

The problem I was explaining you is the term " safe bet ": when you make a bet ( like you called it ) trying to reach satori spending years of your life in a temple, you have to have something you can count on, you can not go to the first temple you see and do Zazen for five years and then discover that maybe the Master of this temple has not reached satori at all and his teaching are useless.
My master ( I am in a temple in Tokyo ) said that the Master of one of the biggest and most famous temples in Tokyo " is not enlightened at all ".
Of course, he and some of his discpiles have passed the Mu Koan and have experienced satori, but how can you trust one and not trust the other ??
This is my question.

Another question: since the " satori experience " can provide a unique experience of well-being that could help possibly billions of people to feel better and to cope with many of life` s problems in a more effective way, I can not see why the scientific community has not put huge efforts ( which is not writing ten or twenty books about the correlations between Zazen and neurology ) into understanding the basic brain mechanisms involved into the satori experience.

Please do not tell me that science can not explain satori, I already know it, but science can ( better, could ) maybe explain better which are the basic environmental conditions that easy the happening of the satori experience.

It is a big mystery why the scientific comunity for the last 100 year has mostly decided not to deal with this subject.

Again, please do not tell me that Western scientists are mostly locked into a materialistic vision of the world, satori is not a paranormal experience, and we even have a few Japanese neurologsts and specialists ..

Regarding the other sentence " Because we have seen! ", that means that you experienced satori ( even for one moment ) ??
If so, why did not you tell this earlier ??
 
Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
Nope! Its is the "impact of the moment"
Click to expand...

So, let` s go to a disco, find out the big security guard full of muscles that looks like and orangutan ( the big monkey ) and yell at him " hey big monkey, here I have some bananas for you .. "

He will hit you hard and you will have many " impacts of the moment " !!

Sorry, I have just finished zazen, it is 9 in the morning here in Tokyo and I am quite in a mood.

I hope nobody gets offended by my little joke.
 
Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
I like that.



HEY!! Interesting. Can you point us to some web page or something about it?
Click to expand...

I agree with Bodhi Dharma ..

May we have some other info about your girlfriend` s work ??
 
Matteo Martini said:
... with Zen you can practice like the best Zen monk and do Zazen five hours per day for all your life and still do not get to satori.

This is how I see it.

This is my question.
Click to expand...

Yes I understand. It depends on you, on what do you want. You have asked that very same question to yourself several times, thats why you are in a Temple. Maybe its time to move out, if you are having problems with your desire to know what is all the fuss about. It is not late to return to your daily human life. ;)

Matteo Martini said:
Regarding the other sentence " Because we have seen! ", that means that you experienced satori ( even for one moment ) ??
If so, why did not you tell this earlier ??
Click to expand...

Does it really matter if I have? Furthermore, that doesnt put you any closer to "it". What possible reason do you have to believe me?
 
Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
Does it really matter if I have? Furthermore, that doesnt put you any closer to "it". What possible reason do you have to believe me?
Click to expand...

Absolutely YES !!

Of course I have no certain reason to believe you, but one thing is not to have witnesses at all, another is to have witnesses from people that maybe that you do not know in person, but who say " It is real I experienced it !! "
 
Matteo Martini said:
Absolutely YES !!

Of course I have no certain reason to believe you, but one thing is not to have witnesses at all, another is to have witnesses from people that maybe that you do not know in person, but who say " It is real I experienced it !! "
Click to expand...

Ok, Then I have experienced it. No, that is an understatement. I have been transformed from a human-like ego to the unthinkable, non perspectival astonishment of "THAT"*.


*for the lack of concepts, sorry for the crude approximation.
 
Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
Ok, Then I have experienced it. No, that is an understatement. I have been transformed from a human-like ego to the unthinkable, non perspectival astonishment of "pure experience"*.


*for the lack of concepts, sorry for the crude approximation.
Click to expand...
Er, did you kill the ox, or turn it loose?
 
Matteo Martini said:
About your " very old friend " who has experienced " somehow become one with the universe, you lose a lot of your mental habits, and the high lasts for some time ", may I know if he/she is reachable ? Where did he/she practice ?? etc.
This is the kind of info I was looking for ..
Click to expand...

We've lost touch now, since I've moved to Tasmania, and it wasn't an entirely positive experience for him. He was more or less disconnected from reality for some time, and started his own idiotic cult during that period which he has now dissociated himself from.

Although I can't speak for him, if he feels now as he did when we last talked he'd advise you to pursue "enlightenment" within the structure of some folk tradition that has mechanisms in place to make such adverse outcomes less likely... like Zen buddhism. You can muck about with it yourself, but some people do go a bit loopy that way.

If you read between the lines, a lot of religions and religious schisms start when one person wigs out and believes they have received a revelation. In one Gospel this is exactly what happened to Jesus in fact - he walked into a river and suddenly "realised" out of the blue he was the messiah.

About the similarities about Christian prayers and Zazen, I can not see how you compare the two phenomena.
Either God exists or it does not.
Christian believe in God, Zen Buddhists do not.
So ( at least ) one of the two whould be wrong, right ??
Click to expand...

As far as I'm concerned there is no God, and there is no God involved in these religious experiences.

Enlightenment events are brain seizures triggered by some combination of stress, sensory deprivation, emotional turmoil, repetitive chanting, dietary restrictions and who knows what else. You can get them chanting Christian prayers in a church and fasting while tormented with guilt for your sins, or chanting mantras at a retreat and eating crappy food while tormented with your boring life. In either case it can happen when you're meditating or it can be triggered by a seemingly unrelated event after you've been meditating.

And please consider that the Church itself ( I have some experience about this ), when a person who might become Saint says anything about mystical experiences during praying, the Church itself is skeptic about this and values the possibility of self delusion, hysteria and psycho problems, I have been told this by a parish in Milan who works close to the Congregazione delle Cause dei Santi, which is the organism of the Church which manages miracles, Saints, etc.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. The last thing any established religious institution needs is people wigging out and declaring that they have received a revelation. Such people tend to nick off with a chunk of the flock and found rival religious institutions. What priest wants a member of their flock deciding that they have more spiritual authority than the priest does?
 
Matteo Martini said:
Mmm.. now satori happens after motorbike accidents, after praying Jesus and in near-death experiences ..
One possible explanation is that, after a shock of any type, you just feel " strange ", as you should feel, and you call this a " satori " or a " mystical " or a " communion with God " experience.
Just an alternative, down-to-earth explanation, of course, I do not want to say that satori does not exist, of course.
Click to expand...
Well, as I said, I have no idea if that was 'zen', by which I meant satori, only the descriptions that other people wrote finally made sense. Certainly what happened was nothing more than a shift in consciousness, and not the destruction of the ego that seems to happen with deep enlightment, if such things happen. In any case, I think satori, if it exists, has a prosaic explanation based on how the brain is wired.

Like you, I'm sceptical, but also open to the possibility that it exists. That's why the ongoing brain research is so interesting.
 
Matteo:

About Lord Buddha: I am the most irreligious man you’ll ever meet; I don’t for one moment believe in Lord Anybody. I use Buddha’s name metaphorically to mean that you are the sole inhabitant of your mind; you have sovereignty over your thoughts, or at least you can try to gain sovereignty through correct practice.

When your car breaks down or you fall while skiing, you alone can say whether these were moments worth talking about. I have read of a man experiencing satori while looking down at the foam of his own urine; I have read of a man experiencing satori when about to commit suicide out of despair at not experiencing satori.

As for this versus that, or tathata as the Buddhists say: You have completely misunderstood the meaning of non-dichotomy. Excellent! You are making exactly the progress you should! Continue straight ahead!

Unlike Bodhi Darma Zen, I have no stick to beat you with. I apologize for that.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
. . . . he'd advise you to pursue "enlightenment" within the structure of some folk tradition that has mechanisms in place to make such adverse outcomes less likely... like Zen buddhism. You can muck about with it yourself, but some people do go a bit loopy that way. . . .
Click to expand...

Good advice. I see a parallel here between meditative practice and psychoanalysis. In the case of the latter especially, it's almost impossible to get anywhere in isolation; you need help and guidance. And (funny thing) there's a body of shrink tradition just as there's a body of folk tradition in monasteries. In both cases, of course, the "tradition" is a written one, repeatedly examined by many practitioners, and it can be relied on in the right hands.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom