ajasatya

i laughed out loud when i noticed myself using the reputation button on your comment. but i'd agree with that decision. and @Leo Gura, your discernment has impressed me again. this forum is a true gem on the internet right now.

as soon as we start looking for mistakes of "others" we dive deeper and deeper into ignorance.

@Milos Uzelac i am mysteriously feeling very happy for you

during my last 2 years i've performed a lot of different yoga practices: kundalini yoga hatha yoga raja yoga bakti yoga and this is how i've been shaping my life: i practice kundalini yoga everytime i have the chance in some open event i practice bakti yoga mainly in my spare time. the mahamantra melts my heart very easily. my practice of raja yoga is equivalent to my zen practice (zazen), which i perform every monday hatha yoga is the one that requires true mastery for me, so i am preparing my body to become a teacher. the process involves a lot of physical pain because i am healing my shortened muscles slowly. i am already 28 so it takes quite a while. hatha yoga also involves deep knowledge of human anatomy so i have to read and practice a lot to test things in me before i can teach. when i feel like i'm ready for an yoga teaching course, i'll do it. but this is not my main income. recently i've entered a masters degree in computer science and i'm working towards becoming an university teacher. i'll be a professor with perfect health. these are my aims: becoming a zen master becoming an yoga teacher becoming a professor here a cool video i found yesterday.

@Lauritz i've been almost exactly where you've been (im a computer scientist though). i did quit the job and experienced other things. let's be honest here: finding a job is pretty easy if we're competent enough. i thought about permaculture too but in the end i choose the yoga path. don't be afraid. if you have doubts about your life, think how it'd be like to know that you were going to die in 2 months from now.

@S33K3R it is certainly a phase, since enlightenment requires such a strong commitment. but it's the practitioner's responsibility to find his own balance otherwise he'd be practicing some sort of violence to himself. about the serious energy, you're probably experiencing episodes of aversion to your own past everytime you see something that resembles it. have you been seeing your own ghosts?

the paradox is just a mental object, i agree. but it appears in the mind when we move on from the experience seeking phase and start living life normally. some practitioners experience anxiety due to attachment to mystical experiences because they lack the necessary wisdom to integrate the spiritual experiences into their daily lives. i am pretty sure that what i mean by "embrace the paradox" is what you mean by "release the paradox". the internal movement of acceptance is similar (not to say equivalent) to letting go, which is something i had never noticed before. thank you

both the incapability to be serious and the attachment to seriousness hinder spiritual progression.

i've experienced it and i am able to experience it right now. i know what you're talking about. you've experienced pure awareness, the spirit, the immaterial and fundamental emptiness. and i gave you the feedback you asked for. i said that this is just one facet of the paradox.

that's fine. you'd be simply playing with the semantics behind the words human being, which i don't find exactly an interesting task. in many ancient suttas, sidhartha gautama himself mentions the struggling that intellectually driven men encounter on the path due to their attachments to the thinking process. they face suffering because they're addicted to being right/correct and proving others are wrong/mistaken. this habit strengthens their egos in subtle ways (pride and arrogance) and they end up going in the opposite direction while convinced they're getting closer and closer to some ultimate intellectual comprehension. with Love,

then stop eating, sleeping and working. how can you read? are you using the internet? you're either trying to deny the paradox or trying to avoid the huge emotional work that's necessary to master yourself. enlightenment is not an intellectual game of concepts in some logical framework. i am a computer scientist and i had a hard time with it myself. enlightenment requires a full body commitment. heart included.

@Joseph Maynor yes, it's true but be careful not to become attached to the absolute perspective. you have to embrace the paradox, otherwise you'll be struggling forever. you are the universal awareness and awareness itself has nothing to do, nothing to improve and nowhere to go. but you're also a person, an individual being. so the real question, in which lies the true labor, is how does a human being thinks, speaks and acts accordingly to his comprehension about the true nature of reality? in order to embody Truth, one needs to practice with his heart against egoism. then true altruism will become hard-coded in his guts and he will be able to experience liberation. we can abandon positive thinking when kindness, smiling and sharing become our natural way of living.

28. found out about Leo 1 year ago.

this is TRUE. then let me propose some food for thought. what if the internet we have is some archaic form of platform/tool for spiritual union among humans? past (and present) buddhas talk a lot about using all the skillful means to spread the dharma and encourage people to practice it. why not the internetz?

@John Iverson expand your practice to all positions (lying down, sitting and standing) throughout the day. your target should be 24/7 meditation. every instant is an opportunity to practice.

@Milos Uzelac take the silent approach as an opportunity for spiritual maturation towards sincerity. don't be trapped by the healer role. instead, drop all roles.

@Dino D start slowly. meditate once a week for 2~3 months and see how it feels. let this habit sink in your body then move on. meditate more often. see how it feels after 6 months, always noticing how you are embodying the practice. then meditate everyday. take your time to completely embody the practice. after mastery, you'll be meditating 24/7 and living consciously in this big mystical thing we call present moment. insights will come naturally. you just have to do the job. that's why we don't talk about enlightenment in zen. we just practice it until we master it. it's already very rare and difficult, so we better take the most straightforward approach.

@sgn it won't work until you start working properly on your complete emotional independence. quit this self judgmental overreacting bullshit. you know what you feel. be honest about it. that's all. even jesus went mad and screamed over people because they were using his sacred place to sell stuff.

i bet they won't. i'm not talking about love as something relative. i'm talking about love as the simple fact of existing, which is already mindblowing enough. if i am to embrace duality, i cultivate the pragmatic relative love in order to connect deeply to people. if i am to embrace oneness, i cultivate absolute love and acceptance in order to contemplate existence.

@Joseph Maynor oneness is not a mystical/philosophical thing. consider your body, with a stomach and a liver, i hope . they are both pretty complex objects but they are not complex enough to think consciously. yet, they're still part of the same body! and even more, the ways they function are correlated. a dead liver results in a dead stomach and vice-versa. now, two persons. each of them can think "i" separately because they're complex enough to do so. yet, we are members of a bigger body, our planet. and planets are members of a bigger body and so on. we call the maximal body by the name of Reality, God or whatever. and it's alive! back to the two persons context. we feel sympathy for the suffering of others. we care. we can also hate each other, just like some cells of our bodies may fight/destroy other cells. two persons are connected! it's that simple.

existence is a big loving salad!

@Nahm oh and i ended up forgetting the compliment you made. thank you! but you must have it as well, since you are able to sense kindness in me. and my impressions about you based on your posts confirm it (in my perspective)!

due to my ability to surrender, i am able to experience enlightenment. that's pretty much it. now about the question you asked: how does one know if he is enlightened? before i say anything, i have to say that's a GREAT question. i asked it myself many many many times. but why is it a hard question to answer? because when it comes down to enlightenment, there's no ultimate authority other than your own direct experience! there's no certificate of enlightenment, so i have to diagnose myself somehow. these are the parameters i use: i should be able to be feel compassion instead of playing the victim i should be able to focus on what i am doing right now and do it gracefully i should be able not to identify with thoughts and not feel unnecessary anxiety or remorse i should be able to feel free and content even when life doesn't offer satisfaction i should be able to appreciate deep eye contact and silence with any company i should be able to contemplate the immateriality of the universe and the miracle of conscious experience i should be able to use wisdom to truly help others instead of feeling like some kind of special guru i should be able to enjoy sitting still and doing nothing i should be a temple of peace for everyone around me i should be able to enjoy life at it fullest without the need for strange substances i should be able to put people above any doctrine and enjoy the practice of any religion i should be happy to work and afford my own existence

@Max_V he's right. even for enlightenment to happen, you have to drop all your desires. you have to drop the desire to become enlightened. you have to just sit for no reason. just sit.

@How to be wise this is the knowledge we need to transform ourselves: the more egoistic we are, the more we suffer from jealously, impatience, greed, loneliness etc.