Enlightenment is much rarer than most expect

[Someone here]

11 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

No seriously, my face is on here.

Link it.

[UnbornTao]

[Breakingthewall]

3 hours ago, Jodistrict said:

What I see on forums dominated by men is mostly intellectual head tripping.  The mistaken notion that awakening is an intellectual achievement that makes you smarter than the rest of the class.  I don’t see much discussion of suffering or heart.  Trying to come up with a definition is just what you would expect from the head. 

Are just realizations of the ego, flat, without depth. When the point is precisely transcending the ego . But the egos do a kind of splitting and imagine they are enlightened because their structure has changed. Now they are not matter, they are consciousness; there is no self, there is emptiness; there is no reality, there is dreaming. All of that is the same matrix of the structured mind functioning in a different structure.

[Miguel1]

Most people here haven't even mastered their survival, including me. Forget about enlightenment.

[UnbornTao]

14 minutes ago, Miguel1 said:

Most people here haven't even mastered their survival, including me. Forget about enlightenment.

Why separate them? It's a false dichotomy and an excuse.

It's best to eliminate whatever notions and ideas we may have of enlightenment. I suspect you're holding it like a sort of ideal or fantasy.

Monks still have to clean up, cook, and maintain the monastery, while pursuing enlightenment.

[Ishanga]

30 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Why separate them? It's a false dichotomy and an excuse.

It's best to eliminate whatever notions and ideas we may have of enlightenment. I suspect you're holding it like a sort of ideal or fantasy.

Monks still have to clean up, cook, and maintain the monastery, while pursuing enlightenment.

I think what he means, could be wrong, is that if one super concerned with survival, accumulation process of collecting food, money security, residence/housing, and other basic needs, then Enlightenment is out of touch for them, even though it is always there as a Potential to be tapped into or explored.

Monks still have cores to do because we still have to deal with the body and mind while pursing or attaining Enlightenment for the most part.  Ramana spent lots of time in a cave, didn't do any chores or was concerned with his Bodies condition, enough so that magots were eating his body up, until they got him out of that situation... In a normal Householders situation we cannot do that, we have mouths to feed, and stuff to do, but deeper down we know our direction and true purpose here....

[UnbornTao]

@Ishanga In your example, it was after his major breakthrough, not before. He was just a normal teenager living a normal life.

If one doesn't care now, then such reasons are merely excuses - "Someday, maybe, when the right conditions are met." There's no such thing as the right conditions; it's true now. Maybe you can't do an intensive monthly retreat at home, but you can always contemplate, regardless of life circumstances. And life doesn't stop, until it does. 

Edited 7 hours ago by UnbornTao

[Ishanga]

2 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

@Ishanga In your example, it was after his major breakthrough, not before. He was just a normal teenager living a normal life. If one doesn't care now, then these types of reasons are used as an excuse. "Someday, maybe, when the right conditions are met." No such thing as right conditions, it's true now. You can always contemplate regardless of life circumstances. 

It's True Now as a Potential only!  If One is not in Experience of this Potential, then it is not really True Subjectively.. So Objectively (me looking at You and saying You have the Potential of Enlightenment!), and You not in Experience of it and saying I am not close to it..

Of course in the beginning we have "Ideas" of Enlightenment, what it means, what it is, etc from outside sources, this is just the past masters and those that experienced it sharing, this is good for Us, its gives us hope and a method to a way out of "not knowing"..  Its like this in everything in Human Life, we learn from the past and should become Wise via that process, most do not for a variety of reasons!!

[Carl-Richard]

12 hours ago, Someone here said:

Link it.

Your laziness means you suffer.

[Carl-Richard]

13 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

 What I tried to communicate is not what you have understood.

Try harder.