Mmh... to recommend a book, try Herman Hesse's Siddharta, quite good, and you do not need much background information to understand it.
How did Buddha know he achieved enlightenment?
- Thread starter SpicySamosa
- Start date
Yorda: Buddha achieved enlightenment.
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M*W: From where do you get your bounty of wisdom?
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M*W: From where do you get your bounty of wisdom?
Leo Volont
Registered Senior Member
SpicySamosa said:
You are looking at it quantitatively. I think you are using the idea of "ultimate achievement" as an expression of degree.
Buddha was able to recognize a qualitative shift from one kind of experience to one entirely different. From individual to Cosmic. From self to transcendent.
Enlightenment is self-evident. You cannot possibly miss it, it's like a slap in the face. A sure sign is breaking out in laughter, usually at your own previous efforts. There is also the feeling of floating two inches off the ground, and everything you do seems effortless. Was Buddha's experience the ultimate? Calling this or that "ultimate" invites a mindset of competition, which in this context is beside the point. The ultimate is also the ordinary. That being said, there is the idea that Buddha held back from presumably floating off into the wild blue yonder in a state of total non-differentiation in order to help guide others.
Leo Volont
Registered Senior Member
spidergoat said:
A positive mode swing is NOT enlightenment. It is just an indication that you might be bipolar.
OK, thanks everyone who contributed.
My understanding is that Buddha didn't achieve the greatest state as the descriptions of the state he achieved are those of very basic stages. The highest stages were unknown to Buddha.
My understanding is that Buddha didn't achieve the greatest state as the descriptions of the state he achieved are those of very basic stages. The highest stages were unknown to Buddha.
Leo Volont
Registered Senior Member
SpicySamosa said:
It really becomes a moot point after awhile.
Once I was into reading Aurobindo... I even spent some time at an Aurobindo Ashram. He wrote about all the different 'levels' in painful detail, but after reading volume after volume, it all began to sound the same.
... have you ever climbed a mountain and continually thought that the rise you see before you must certainly be the top, only to find that when that rise is reached, another slope awaits. This may be frustrating to the climber, but at least he is climbing. Those at the foot of the mountain talking about it.. I can't see the utility of endlessly going over the Charts and Maps. It is a cliche, but a good one -- "the Journey of a Thousand Miles begins with the first step". Thinking about it is good up to a point, and then you need to actually begin doing it.
All these people who claim that Buddha was only a rank beginner... have they achieved even a fraction of what they are dismissive about what Buddha achieved? For all of Aurobindo's books, I really used to wonder whether he just wasn't blowing it all out ... of his imagination.
Besides, to stick to the analogy of the Climber, Buddha was convinced he reached some ultimate end. Why would anybody second-guess that? He went from self and ego, to a Universal Consciousness. Wouldn't that be enough? He thought so.
But I have noticed one thing about Realized Saints and such, it is that they may be very Realized and Enlightened and still not very sophisticated about how they can explain it. Enlightenment does not necessarily come with Communication Skills and an education in High Blown sounding Metaphors. Buddha's problem may have been that he did not have the Intellectual Inventory necessary to fully explain his Conscious and Spiritual State. Afterall, he had been a spoiled Prince, not a scholar of Philosophy, Theology and Psychology.
Leo Volont
Registered Senior Member
Dreamwalker said:
But as Herman Hesse books go, it was really not one of his best. and it probably wasn't the most honest presentation of the life of Gautama Buddha. It was Hesse, once again, examining his ambivalence regarding Spirituality.
I am not saying it is not good to examine one's own spiritual ambivalence... perhaps no other subject is more important.. but I am saying that all of his other books did it BETTER.
Leo Volont said:
Oh, I agree with you there, but it is quite a good book on the topic of enlightenment and the various ways and perspectives of and on elightened persons. I did not recommend it because it displays Buddha's life well, more because it focuses on the issue of spiritual enlightenment.
Leo Volont
Registered Senior Member
Dreamwalker said:
I read them so long ago....
Which one is your favorite Hesse book?
"Steppinwolf" made a huge impression, but I think "Dameon" may have been more meaningful. "Glassbead Game" was an interresting concept, but it seemed to be a bit more detached emotionally than the other books.
This obsession with the Buddha's personal experience seems to flow from the Christian tradition of worshipping a deified person, which is inappropriate in this case. There have been hundreds, thousands of Buddhas, all of them realizing a profound breakthrough to the best of their natural ability. While I agree there are stages to enlightenment, the enlightenment itself is the same, the differences being intensity and duration, usually based on the personality of the student. Buddha's experience must have been intense, given the many years he sought wisdom, and his determination. But, it is very easy to fall back into old patterns, especially when everyone around you is trapped in delusional thinking. I think the lesson is to trust yourself, only you know if your problems are resolved, don't follow an artificial chart or timeline of what is supposed to happen.
Leo,
Enlightenment is different from bi-polar disorder. It isn't undefined happiness such as that caused by imbalance in serotonin levels, but a resolution to a philosophical conundrum. The happiness itself isn't the goal, just a by-product. The initial shock wears off. In fact, I have found it's actually a strange kind of indifference that settles in, not the uncaring indifference of the mentally absent, but a release from the constantly judging mind in favor of a more naturally effective mind. Instead of "making" your mind work towards your own questionable ends, it takes a back seat, contributing when necessary, but not wrapping itself constantly around your perceptions. An analogy I though of when it happened to me was "de-clutched". I think the mind can work in more than one way, perhaps enlightenment is a relocation of the mind's "center", like a reorganization of the thinking cycle. You know how things can work better sometimes when they aren't forced?
Leo,
Enlightenment is different from bi-polar disorder. It isn't undefined happiness such as that caused by imbalance in serotonin levels, but a resolution to a philosophical conundrum. The happiness itself isn't the goal, just a by-product. The initial shock wears off. In fact, I have found it's actually a strange kind of indifference that settles in, not the uncaring indifference of the mentally absent, but a release from the constantly judging mind in favor of a more naturally effective mind. Instead of "making" your mind work towards your own questionable ends, it takes a back seat, contributing when necessary, but not wrapping itself constantly around your perceptions. An analogy I though of when it happened to me was "de-clutched". I think the mind can work in more than one way, perhaps enlightenment is a relocation of the mind's "center", like a reorganization of the thinking cycle. You know how things can work better sometimes when they aren't forced?
Leo Volont
Registered Senior Member
spidergoat said:
I've read the same books you have, so you don't need to give me your scholarly analysis of what Enlightenment is ... a turtle quoting eagles. But you still sound just like a turtle.
My description may sound scholarly, but that's just my pendantic writing style. I assure you that what I write about isn't simply book learnin'. It will always sound the same until you are able to read between the lines. What was that line from the movie Dead Man? "...the eagle never learned so much as when he submitted to learn from the crow...".
"True words aren't eloquent;
eloquent words aren't true."
vs. 81 Tao Te Ching
"True words aren't eloquent;
eloquent words aren't true."
vs. 81 Tao Te Ching
Leo Volont
Registered Senior Member
spidergoat said:
I like the Vatican's approach. Words can be derivative... people can learn what to say to 'sound' enlightened. What can't be faked, or what is so very much more difficult to fake is the Miraculous. So the Vatican insists upon Miracles.
Many of the New Age Movements 'discourage' Miracles, pretending they have a choice, maintaining that Miracles are shallow and showy. But I find that line is being used simply as an excuse. Like Paul redefining the Holy Spirit because he did not have it, we have people renouncing the Miraculous also because they do not have it.
So, it would be my understanding that a person can say he is Enlightened only if his understanding of Things goes all the way to the core of Being, where that very Being could be modified. Without the ability to Control and Modify Existence, there is no Enlightenment... or at least no proof of it.
.... Oh wait... there may be lesser degrees of Enlightenment, short of being able to modify matter. This could be through demonstrating Direct Knowledge of things beyond the ordinary sphere of the perceptions -- to know things at a distance, or to know the content of other people's minds. It does not go to the Core of Being, but it does show some partial transcendence of Self.
Leo Volont
Registered Senior Member
BeHereNow said:
Do you know how Buddha died? It seems that this one village wanted to honor Buddha to such a degree that their ordinary sause was not considered good enough, and so they spent a few days tinkering with it... until it quite had gone bad. So Buddha was ******** by what must have tasted really great.
Crab puffs.