[cellularmitosis]

Your Zen is showing :)

I really enjoy posts like this which take a subject which is usually discussed from a "mystical" or "spiritual" perspective, and instead attempt to approach it from a physiological perspective. This pleases the knee-jerk part of my brain which often screams "skip the mumbo-jumbo and show me the data!" (and I'm slowly working to tame that part of my brain, because I recognize that an "empirical or be damned" approach is not a balanced one).

In "The Way of the Peaceful Warrior", the author discusses how the idea of enlightenment being fully realized in an instant (like turning on a switch) is a misconception, and that in reality, its more about having enlightened moments, and then increasing the frequency of those moments, like slowly ramping up your enlightenment duty cycle over the course of several years.

This bit was one of those enlightened moments: "I realize that I should not ask myself how happy I am but rather how attached am I to happiness".

[blueprint]

No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history. Buddha himself never claimed he was enlightened through meditation. That's a fabrication of Buddhist monks whose level of consciousness is quite a bit lower than that of Gautama. Nowadays, the misunderstanding has been passed down for thousands of years, so what I'm saying now seems unacceptable in modern society.

If you accept that meditation is a way to get Enlightenment then it opens the possibility that anyone can be Enlightened. But in human history, only one or two men had the evidence that they could perceive everything in the world and could tell the Truth. Instead, Buddhists will tell you that you have to experience things to understand and prove them. But that is not the case of a scientist, philosopher, and Enlightened Beings - all of which can immediately show evidence when they point out something in truth.

The term of Enlightenment means "opening eyes to what is in the reality". It's used similarly in Eastern languages to mean "to realize".

So a truly enlightened being can point out things in reality exactly as they are and can tell the law of how the world works.

So when you learn about happiness from an Enlightened Being, he doesn't teach you about sitting in meditation until you can train yourself not to care about happiness anymore. That's a way to lose yourself in the end.

Instead he can teach you exactly what the conditions are for happiness which must be fulfilled in order for you to be happy.

If someone claims he's Enlightened and teaches about happiness then they must be able to point out that where happiness is, what it is, what is the way to happiness, and what is the cause to lead you to the goal of happiness.

The reason why attachment is a problem is that attachment is one of the sources to make karma, and you can't be happy forever without conquering your karma (before it conquers oneself).

Things in the world operate by a very simple principle - and this principle lies at the essence of what is taught by all Enlightened Beings when they teach about "what is" in the world. But because the monks and Zen masters didn't learn this principle, I can realize that they don't know anything about true Buddha's teaching.

I'm telling you this because I'm worried that people will fall into danger practicing Zen and other forms of Buddhism. The truth in Buddha's teaching has degraded to the point that no one can know Buddha's teaching through the existent Buddhism - which although superior because of Buddha's teachings, nowadays has a similar quality to Christianity and other religions. I've seen people deceived so many times by monks and it's getting worse as time goes on.

[Alex3917]

"Buddha himself never claimed he was enlightened through meditation."

He claimed he was enlightened by following the four noble truths, of which meditation is one component. It might not be possible to achieve enlightenment through only meditation, but it's probably not possible to achieve enlightenment without meditation either.

[blueprint]

What are the four noble truths, in short?

[Alex3917]

The relevant one in this case would be the 8-fold path, which has right mindfulness and right concentration as two of its steps.

[blueprint]

I see that you understand these as steps to be enlightened and perfect oneself, but these are not the things that the saints practiced before becoming Enlightened, but rather afterwards. The reason is that you already need to have a very high level of consciousness before you can distinguish right and wrong correctly - it can't be practiced until you've already realized.

[spoxaka]

what you say makes sense to me. I too doubt that by some chance Buddhism teachings turned out to be better preserved throughout millenia then any other "very old teachings" whatever it may be - Christianity or something else. Any information has the tendency to be misrepresented.

where can I read more about your point of view?

[blueprint]

Thanks for having an open mind. :) It's hard to meet someone like you.

I learned like this from my teacher, a man who claims Supreme Enlightenment. He says that he is a Tathagata. It's the same name that Gautama Buddha said others should call Him while he is alive. All His teachings are free and for a while before he passed away he was available for answering the public's questions.

Here's one site with some decent English translations,

http://www.tathagata.co.uk

[jonhendry]

"I learned like this from my teacher, a man who claims Supreme Enlightenment. "

And there it is. WOOOOOOOOOO

[kinleyd]

Oh come on, blueprint, that is the Tathagata[1], the only other enlightened being besides the original Tathagata to have graced earth? And the bump on his forehead is the Third Eye? You've got to be kidding me!

"Therefore, being diligent, frugal and honest are just right way and law to get happiness."[2] I think someone really missed the point here - this is probably taken directly out of the Protestant work ethic; definitely doesn't come from Buddhism.

[1] http://www.members.tripod.com/tathagata2000/

[2] http://www.members.tripod.com/tathagata2000/happiness_and_pe...

[blueprint]

You're right, it definitely did not come from Buddhism. Buddha's teaching itself does not derive from Buddhism, nor Hinduism, nor any other religions. It's derived from the world itself.

Here's a quote I was able to transcribe this from Tathagata,

"I'll speak very clearly here. Buddhism has nothing to do with all the Buddhas."

[theorique]

I learned like this from my teacher, a man who claims Supreme Enlightenment.

No offense intended, but where's the evidence? Yes, enlightenment is a personal and subjective experience, but do you have any independent citations or accounts of your teacher's enlightenment.

e.g. his name, other followers, etc.

Extraordinary clams require extraordinary evidence.

[blueprint]

Yes, I'm sometimes in touch with a few of the other members. Tathagata's teachings are available for free online, his life story is there and he was a politician in Korea as well as a self-made businessman, so that should be easily verifiable.

What he asked people to do is to verify what he says before believing. In case you didn't see it, I left a link to one of the sites made by another member, it has some decent English translations. The proof that he is Enlightened is in the content of his teaching. Nobody who is not Enlightened can say the content that he has said. He also traveled the world to visit universities and religious institutions and met so many people. You can listen for yourself. Here's some audio of him meeting with American professors http://guiadelavida.com/audios.htm

[theorique]

Thanks! I will take a look.

[Alex3917]

"No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history."

Not sure what basis you have to say that. There are plenty of people who claim to have attained enlightenment who are alive today. There are even how-to guides that tell you exactly what to do down to the tiniest detail, e.g.:

http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2010/11/going-for-str...

[blueprint]

There are huge numbers of claims, but who among the multitudes has the evidence? If any Buddhist monks or temple has Buddha's teachings, they should also have the ways of life from the problems to the resolutions. But they don't have them, and instead they use meditation to trick people into giving up the real answers. It's the same thing as giving themselves up. This is an important point and the root cause of this needs to be informed to people in society.

Every time I've gone to religious institutions, temples, etc. to verify, 99% of the time they turn out to be false gurus with self-contradictory or hypocritical claims - they just use words to get the better of people - and there's a huge gap in their level of consciousness and that of a truly Enlightened Being.

The evidence that someone is Enlightened and a Tathagata (one who opened his/her eyes completely to the world) is that s/he can explain things in the living reality precisely and can answer all concrete questions on the spot with exact answers. But if I were to go to the Buddhist temples and give them some basic questions they might be very uncomfortable and tell me to leave.

The only reason someone does not give an answer to a question is that they don't really know.

[omarchowdhury]

Since when was enlightenment equal to having perfect phenomenal knowledge?

You seem to be equating enlightenment with omniscience. Are you not?

Please tell us what questions you are asking as a qualifier on whether or not someone is enlightened.

[blueprint]

> Since when was enlightenment equal to having perfect phenomenal knowledge?

Yes, one of the abilities of someone who attains Enlightenment is that they become able to perceive things in the world exactly as they are, and can inform them to people exactly.

> You seem to be equating enlightenment with omniscience. Are you not?

Not exactly, but it's like that. I can say that their vision is greatly widened because they see from a much higher level. There are some things they can see which are very distant, and sometimes they can help people who are also very distant, using their power of consciousness. However, I've heard Tathagata say he doesn't use his mind very much, and that he simply sees everything that is inside an object when it is in front of him.

There are many people who claim the ability to see through walls and tell where other people are (mediums). They do that by letting their consciousness contact and receive information latent inside energy that's in the air. They call that wandering energy by terms like spirits, ghosts, dead souls, etc. However, besides the fact that it can be very unreliable and dangerous to do so, a living Buddha never keeps company with the dead, and only informs people of what he saw with his own eyes.

> Please tell us what questions you are asking as a qualifier on whether or not someone is enlightened.

Answered this in a sibling question, let me know if you're left with any unanswered questions

[omarchowdhury]

Look. You are not enlightened, so you cannot know what it is to be enlightened. Simple logic.

From what you just wrote, you seem to think possession of abilities or 'siddhis' means one is enlightened. Buddha stated putting those into reverence is an impediment on the way to enlightenment.

Overall, take a look at your position. You are clinging to conventional knowledge. You are speaking of things you claim knowledge of, but never experienced firsthand. You then use your incomplete, second-hand knowledge as a basis for what enlightenment is and how a being is to get there. You are spreading false knowledge and ignorance. Become enlightened beyond any doubt and then come tell people who is wrong and why you are right.

[rosstafarian]

Why do hot dogs come in packages of ten and hot dog buns come in packages of eight?

[theorique]

Mu.

[gnaritas]

> There are huge numbers of claims, but who among the multitudes has the evidence?

And here you are making all kinds of claims, without presenting a shred of evidence. Ponder on that.

[blueprint]

That's not true.

Let's verify what you said.

If you quote me on something you can't find a shred of evidence of, I'll see if I can tell you what it is.

[gnaritas]

I don't have to find evidence for your claims, the burden is on you to support them. Anyone who says no one has ever attained enlightens through meditation is lying. I know he's lying because such a statement is literally impossible to support rationally and scientifically, no evidence can be provided for such a statement.

Don't make claims you can't provide evidence for, and most especially don't make claims that are impossible to provide evidence for. Learn the difference between matters of fact and matters of opinion. You are speaking of your opinions and presenting them as facts, facts require evidence, opinions do not.

Evidence can only support successful ways of becoming enlightened; positive assertions that are falsifiable. You may say this is known to work, or that is known to work. Evidence cannot say nothing else has ever worked.

You also claimed enlightened beings must be able to rattle off an answer to any question of what's happening in reality. Find another word, that is not the accepted meaning of enlightenment, you are trying to redefine it to fit your masters own extreme definition of the word, one so extreme it only includes him and Buddah.

[lobo_tuerto]

What about?

"No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history."

And:

"Buddha himself never claimed he was enlightened through meditation."

Look at:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4165192

[Evgeny]

There are huge numbers of claims, but who among the multitudes has the evidence? If any Buddhist monks or temple has Buddha's teachings, they should also have the ways of life from the problems to the resolutions. But they don't have them

I would really like to know how you test this - how do you approach the evaluation if someone is enlightened or just pretending?

[blueprint]

The wall is that we first have to know what Enlightenment is very correctly to check if something meets the criteria for Enlightenment. The way to verify what something is, lies in the results it makes - just like our example of a fruit tree. Seeds and leaves may look similar across an apple, plum, and cherry, but we know instantly what it is when we see, smell, and taste the fruit.

I've reported Master Tathagata's definition that Enlightenment is 'the opening of one's eyes to the world'. He's also said that Supreme Enlightenment (that of a Tathagata) is opening eyes to reality completely. So the first thing is - ask them any questions in reality - if they are unable to give the answer that can be verified in the reality (if they cannot realize what is in reality) then they have not completed their Enlightenment.

A second thing I'll leave with you is like this. A bodhisattva cannot have attained Enlightenment completely - because if s/he had, then the one would be a Buddha.Yet it seems that a Buddha only comes to the world once every 3,000 years or so. The term of Bodhisattva means "gods who have good power and are seeking for the truth". (Sorry cannot cite as it was in yet-untranscribed audio from Tathagata) They protect Buddha, but could not remove their karma totally yet, so they are still seekers. However, sometimes some Bodhisattvas who have a power to stop their karma can get into the same dimension that the Buddhas reside in (paradise). So the second thing to check is whether they claim they are Enlightened. It's a red flag to me.

The third thing is that an Enlightened Being never lies. Instead, they bet their life every day in order to inform people of the truth - this is the proof of their love for mankind, and it is the greatest teaching. So your continuous verification of what people say (imho, according to the facts in the world) is essential whether or not the person actually has evidence that they know truth, or is telling a lie.

Hope this helps

[lobo_tuerto]

How can you know what Enlightenment is very correctly? does that mean that you are yourself Enlightened? If so, that would explain how can you sanction everyone else's Enlightenment, like all of Zen monks, etc.

Also, how do you know that indeed a Buddha comes every 3000 years? where is the Truth pointing to that?

[acous]

My understanding is limited, but I thought that enlightenment was a buddhist term used to describe significant subjective perceptual changes which are more likely to occur with enough quality meditation practice. I was under the impression that there are thousands of people alive today, in various traditions like Zen, who claim to have experienced these changes in perception in various guises.

  a truly enlightened being can point out things in reality exactly as they are and can tell the law of how the world works.

Is this derived from a particular definition of enlightenment? I'm not really familiar with the buddhist religious texts etc.

[blueprint]

Good question.

Enlightenment, in the context you mentioned, indicates that you abandon one consciousness and get a new one.

However, what happens through meditation is not the same as that and it has a different point than Enlightenment - meditation is an activity for changing your mind, and the result of modern meditation is that your mind gets darker and you can lose yourself. People can see lots of illusions in the darkness of their minds, and within a relatively short period of time through meditation they can make contact with some very strange phenomena.

What is the source of the strange phenomena in their consciousness? It can happen because they contacted an external consciousness. If the practitioner is weak-willed, the wandering consciousness will enter them immediately and can push their own consciousness out of the way and just drive their body. At that moment, they will show a different kind of behavior, oftentimes claiming knowledge of something that they didn't see with their own eyes (what they don't know).

When the other spirit enters them, their own consciousness just becomes dormant and feels less of a burden so people mistake this for nirvana and peace. People don't recognize this about themselves and only try to change their mind through meditation because they don't know the structure of consciousness and how the mind is generated. The fact is that people's consciousness doesn't change very much without Enlightenment, so no matter how much they practice meditation they won't be able to know Buddha's teachings until they open their eyes to how the world works.

There are two things in the core of consciousness - karma, and virtue. If you have more karma it makes your mind darker, and if you have less Karma and more virtue (conscience), it makes your mind brighter. This happens because what you have done gets input into yourself again. Because people have their own karma, they have their own perspectives and perceptive ability, but can't easily find out what result in their life comes from what questions they have because they can't see what causes lie in themselves and what kind of problems they have. That's why we need a good teacher. Buddha noted that common people always see things in the exact opposite way, and it's because they have karma.

On the other hand, an Enlightened one can realize what is in the actuality because he burned out his karma completely and doesn't use his mind to perceive the world. As a result of stopping and removing his karma, he can recover his own consciousness, and if he can keep his life then he comes to attain his Enlightenment through his life activities teaching what he can see. It's through this teaching that Enlightenment is attained, but until now this teaching hasn't been passed down properly.

So the reason why meditation doesn't work to produce Enlightenment is that it's not a way to recover and save oneself - it's a way to abandon oneself and never be reborn. It's the exact opposite of Buddha's teaching!

[gawker]

I can see similarities between your views and my views on Buddhism and it's fairly interesting to see how diverse it can be.

For me, enlightenment is a life state that we go through on a moment to moment basis. We go through 10 different life states every moment. It is possible for anyone to find happiness regardless of circumstances. I do agree that abandoning one's self is completely opposite of the Buddha's teaching and in fact, an enlightened person is one who seeks happiness for both him/herself as well as the happiness of all living beings.

Interesting discussion! Thanks!

[floptikal]

If you are interested in Blueprint's (Paul Shapiro) theory, and check out the "true" Buddha, you can find more info here:

http://www.members.tripod.com/tathagata2000/

Paul has even made a ipphone app for him here: http://itunes.apple.com/app/enlightenment-lite/id449546123?m...

No?

[omarchowdhury]

Why couldn't anyone be enlightened?

The Buddha said the true nature of all beings is that of enlightenment.

[blueprint]

I would ask you to give me a citation, but I'm not sure if it will be so helpful.

We know all the scriptures were written by monks, perhaps 500 or more years after Gautama Buddha passed away. Most of the time they just wrote down what they wanted, or from their own ideas and opinions.

"Buddha nature" is one of the first lies that Buddhist monks tell people. People donate to the monks who practice meditation because they want to invest in someone who is spending all his time on a path they think will get to Enlightenment. But it is not virtue to donate to the monks.

Someone only can have Enlightenment and Buddha nature by removing every falsehood from inside themselves. But if he did that he'd be a Tathagata in this lifetime, and it is ultimately very rare to encounter a living enlightened being.

[omarchowdhury]

You are obviously cherry picking.

One of the first things you said in this thread is a reference to what Buddha said.

Actually, your reference itself was false. You said that Buddha said enlightenment cannot come through meditation, yet, Buddha stated enlightenment can come through adherence to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, one of the limbs of that being right concentration/samadhi/meditation.

"Most of the time they just wrote down what they wanted, or from their own ideas and opinions."

I would ask you for a citation, but it obviously would not be helpful. You only write down from your own ideas and opinions and think it is Truth.

Again, you are cherry picking.

[lobo_tuerto]

Why would you say?

"Most of the time they just wrote down what they wanted, or from their own ideas and opinions."

When your master's webpage at:

http://www.members.tripod.com/tathagata2000/questions_and_an...

Says:

"What is the proof about a Tathagata? > The proof is in the Buddhist scripture."

Seems contradictory, no?

[blueprint]

There are certain things we can know for sure through the scriptures, and finally I have a chance to talk about this question on this thread, so thanks for asking. :)

Gautama Buddha taught for about 40 years and met lots of people. If we try to summarize just a few parts, of _all_ of his teachings over his entire teaching career, what do we come up with?

The two things are as follows:

1. Transmigration

2. The law of cause and effect

An Enlightened being tells about 'what is' in the world, and can teach people how the world works. That's exactly what Gautama Buddha taught, although he taught it quite a long time ago.

Finally, there's more evidence in the content of the prajna paramita sutra, if you have seen that one, which explains about some cases in perfecting oneself and opening one's wisdom eye. No one can explain that content without already having been Enlightened.

[gawker]

Yes,that is true (I'm most familiar with Nichiren Buddhism so I can only speak for that). Every living being's true nature is that of enlightenment.

[awakeasleep]

Does anyone know the simple principle? Is it the golden rule?

[blueprint]

Yes, I have some understanding about it so I can explain a little, but it's necessary to learn from an Enlightened being directly to get perfect understanding. The good news is that it is indeed simple, but it's not easy for everyone to accept, no matter their age or educational career.

The principle means that something is determined - like the formula in arithmetic whereby 1 + 1 = 2; as long as the question (and definitions of factors) remains the same then the result will always be exactly the same.

I can state that the fixed principle of the world is that things make results repeatedly through what is inside themselves.

We can find that everything that exists in the world does so through actions, and the structure which we can verify is produced through the process of activities is that of an object which moves through three states (dimensions), changing itself depending on the specific things (causes) in the object.

A clear and simple example is that of fruiting trees. An apple tree only knows how to make apples because that's what's encoded inside itself. Through the process of its life, if it can produce a fruit with seeds, thereby keeping its own origin, it can be reborn again if it's got the right environment.

The golden rule is not so helpful because the problems to necessitate the rule are not present in the rule itself (like commandments). People who don't already have virtue can't awaken their conscience through the golden rule (to get the result - morality) because the very source of the solutions (the problems) are missing. Instead, when people learn and correctly understand the principle they don't need to be told to do good and not to do bad, they naturally start to recognize from what causes good and bad results happen to themselves, so they don't want to do anything that would harm themselves after they confirm.

[Psyonic]

"but it's necessary to learn from an Enlightened being directly"

Then how did Buddha himself learn it?

[blueprint]

Gautama Buddha was a special case of someone in whose past lives there was endless awakening. It was for this reason that he was able to be born with very little karma left, making him able to get enlightenment through his individual practice of asceticism. So he's the one who became a Buddha for the very first time from being a Bodhisattva. But keep in mind that his practice was very different from anyone around him, and there was no one who practiced the meditation of the day who was able to be Enlightened like he was.

With that foundation, I can answer your question a little more directly by telling you that he was able to realize Buddha's teaching through the world itself, after he opened his own eyes. (Buddha's teaching means how the world is operated, so everything is its evidence and can be found through any examples)

If you have any doubts please keep asking questions :) This can be dangerous territory if mistreated

[arjn]

Regarding Gautama : you know this how ? Were you there when this (allegedly) happened ?

[spatular]

So, as I understand, this is also a main principle of most modern sciences: outcome of a proper experiment must be reproducible. In other words, given enough detailes that matter, it's possible to predict behaviour of the system.

Also if an Enlightened being sees the world as it is and gets perfect understanding directly, he(she) can make what is generally considered scientific breakthroughs with ease. Does it really happen?

[blueprint]

Actually, He claimed to understand entirely how gravity works and is generated. He also had very extensive knowledge of medical science, and how consciousness works. I've personally listened to about 50 conversations with American researchers he traveled across the country to meet, and not one of them asked him a question to verify the evidence of his claims, or learn more. No one wanted to learn from him, but not one could answer his simple questions about their field of study. I really regret this about them because I'm finding lately that I have some questions I should have asked him when I was younger.

Yet, despite his extensive travels, it seems so easy for people who claim philosophical or scientific knowledge to criticize him before they verify who he is and what he really can perceive.

Psychologically speaking, why do people behave like that? In my experience it occurs when they don't want their falsehoods to be revealed.

[omarchowdhury]

Those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know.

[SeppoErviala]

The Way that can be told is not the eternal Way.

[Produce]

To condense that long explanation, the principle is that the universe is a chaotic system. It is: self similar, inherently unpredictable and deterministic. Seriously dude, read up on Chaos Theory.

Now here's where it gets interesting. The mind is fully contained in the universe - it is physical. So emotions, thoughts and feelings are all things. They are emergent behaviors of this physical reality. Hence the dual mode of thought being incorrect - there is no distinction between objective and subjective, they are one and the same. So if the universe is deterministic and our experience is physical, then there is no free will.

[rubashov]

> No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation

Maybe because no one has attained "Enlightment", whatever that means. Go say the rosary.

[calinet6]

> whatever that means

More profound than you realize. When you start to understand that, then you'll be closer.

It's really not that complicated or mystical.

[rubashov]

I understand it perfectly. You're a heathen. Submit to God.

[zbuc]

> So a truly enlightened being can point out things in reality exactly as they are and can tell the law of how the world works.

That's one of the points of meditation, though, is it not? To "perceive things as they actually are in reality"?

[blueprint]

It should be, but there's no concrete teaching of how things in the reality are and how the world works, in current Buddhist scripture, much less any kind of meditation.

The meditation that Buddha taught is vastly different than the modern ones. He let his disciples sit when they had nothing to do. What he guided them to practice is not to do with breath, nor concentration, nor compassion. But much more concretely, he taught to try to pursue and then confirm the reality of what you've heard, and that you should only allow yourself to accept the reality once you've confirmed. Confirmation is essential because people can easily deceive themselves when they misunderstand something.

If there's anyone who opened eyes to reality through meditation, you should ask them concrete questions about things in the reality to verify. They probably have understood the term reality as one experience, state, or object, which is the indication that they are being deceived by someone/something. You'll have to verify case-by-case to be sure.

Reality can be defined as the set of results which are determined to appear from the problems that things in the world have. Because these results are determined in a fixed principle, someone who knows Buddha's teaching can easily recognize an discuss any field of study at length without difficulty, even if they've never studied it before, because they can realize how it works and thus recognize the problems (matters) involved in the field through the person they're talking to.

Hope this helps. Ask any questions if I can clarify something

[zbuc]

Thanks for the reply...

> Reality can be defined as the set of results which are determined to appear from the problems that things in the world have. Because these results are determined in a fixed principle, someone who knows Buddha's teaching can easily recognize an discuss any field of study at length without difficulty, even if they've never studied it before, because they can realize how it works and thus recognize the problems (matters) involved in the field through the person they're talking to.

I don't agree with this. My perception of reality is: examining without adornment, recognizing anatta and anicca. That is, to look at all things without coloration from judgement and to recognize them both in their selves and not-selves(in other words, the simultaneous existence and non-existence of a phenomenon, related to its dependent origination from the surroundings).

I don't think it has anything to do with an egotistical human view of "reality" -- such as being able to understand any subject without having been exposed to it. Of course you can't understand anything without having been exposed to it... you are still a human, you still have a brain, you still have memories and collected knowledge.

Reality isn't, to me, about words or concepts, but instead it concerns the inherent nature of phenomena.

[blueprint]

I read your message - i've heard but never learned about anatta and anicca, so I don't know what experience you had. But I'm interested so I'd like to confirm about it through simple questions if it's alright..

So, my question is, what could you know (or become to realize) through that teaching?

Thanks

[zbuc]

You could come to realize the nature of reality, in Buddhist thought. The three marks of reality in Buddhism are anatta(not-self), annica(impermanence), and dukkha(suffering/dissatisfaction).

The basic teachings of Buddha say that all things share those attributes.

So, in practical terms, all things will pass, and things aren't necessarily what they seem, and attachment causes suffering. Even more practically -- don't take everything so seriously.

[Alex3917]

"I really enjoy posts like this which take a subject which is usually discussed from a "mystical" or "spiritual" perspective, and instead attempt to approach it from a physiological perspective."

The more you understand both perspectives, the more you realize that the differences between them aren't actually that big. If you listen to enough buddhist geeks talks this becomes apparent pretty quickly.

I'd also recommend reading the journal article Mechanisms of Mindfulness: A Buddhist Psychological Model:

https://springerlink3.metapress.com/content/e85w20n04r3n7502...

It basically takes the buddhist model mindfulness and translates it into an academic model. It's a good example of a case where the only difference between spiritual beliefs and academic ones is the language used to express them.

[jshen]

" the only difference between spiritual beliefs and academic ones is the language used to express them"

I'm not sure what is meant by "academic", but if it's a synonym for science then I disagree. Watch the link below (feynman on the scientific method), a little after the 5 minute mark he talks about the problems of "vague" theories. This vagueness is where spiritual beliefs usually diverge from scientific beliefs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw

[Volpe]

But buddhists generally aren't vague, they are extremely expressive about what they are talking about. Are you refering to something specific?

[jshen]

I've heard a lot of Buddhists talk about mind being separate from body. If you push them on it they get very vague very quickly.

[Alex3917]

What's generally meant by the mind being separate from the body is that the idea that we control our bodies by thinking is actually an illusion. The way Buddhists know this is that in the body starts controlling itself without any input from the mind, something you can experience relatively easily from meditating. It only took me about 6 or 7 days to achieve the beginnings of this. (Scared the crap out of me, but it was insanely cool at the same time.)

[jshen]

This is rather vague. When you get specific it stops being spiritual. For example, I have decided I will go to the gym tonight. I haven't gone yet, so clearly my mind is aware of my decision to go the the gym before my body actually goes to the gym.

Of course, you didn't mean that. You meant something like "if I'm driving my car, and an animal runs in front of my, my body reacts before I am consciously aware of it". This is true, but I'm not sure what this has to do with spirituality. What is "spirituality"?

[wamatt]

I know what you mean. It's all about the underlying patterns and concepts and their relations to one another.

[saraid216]

Yeah, when they say enlightenment is like a lightning strike, they tend to fail to mention that the lightning hits again. And again. And again. And again. :P