[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.

[blueprint]

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

I've only claimed that Tathagata is a truly Enlightened being and asked you to confirm what happened to him. But your logic is flawed. There are certain axiomatic qualities of Enlightenment, and one of them is realizing things in the actuality. Therefore, what an Enlightened being says about truth and actuality should be verifiable (as well as stated falsifiably). So there are certain non-trivial things that ordinary people can know about the state of and get from the teaching of an Enlightened Being, even if they can't yet see from the same level or have as much virtue.

The people who make claims that Enlightenment is not externally verifiable are usually practitioners of meditation or looking to sell you something.

> 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.

I'm not sure the formal meaning of siddhi, never heard the term, but that's probably not what I'm indicating. The term ability can be applied to a wide range of things. How are you using the term (what abilities are you indicating)?

> 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.

There are two categories we can put things in the world into: those that are visible and those that are invisible. To see the visible, we need to open our eyes and we need to learn about what exists and how it exists. To see something that is invisible, on the other hand, we need a principle. What is taught at universities, however, is just how to make logic, which can easily be fed different words or the wrong assumptions and can output the wrong result. There is no one at universities I've met who satisfactorily understands the principle of how the world is operated, so they cannot perceive things which are outside their own knowledge (that of human beings) or that which is derived from their own knowledge. That is why I sometimes may point out something which falls outside your field of vision. So I would like to point out that the accusations you've brought against me are actually more applicable to your situation.

[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.

[blueprint]

> 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.

This is where there is a difference between your level and my level of understanding about the world.

What you said about knowing that someone who makes a non-falsifiable statement is a liar, is actually a lie. It's not only the fact that you didn't understand the statement (and therefore can't accurately judge if it's falsifiable), and besides the fact that you yourself do not know if there will be anyone in the future who manages to prove the statement (you're making the same mistake you're pointing out), but there's another, more essential reason that I know you don't know what you're talking about.

An apple tree only knows how to produce apples because that is what is encoded in its nature (origin). There is nothing in the world that shows some kind of behavior or result that it doesn't already have inside its nature.

The reason I can say confidently here that the practice of meditation does not lead to enlightenment and that no truly enlightened being would teach that it does, is the simple fact that meditation has a certain effect (result) on human beings (which sometimes differs slightly within small boundaries depending on individual, unless the person is already enlightened himself), and that effect on human beings is orthogonal to that of enlightenment as well as nirvana. Meditation will never be able to produce an Enlightened Being, and no one who had Supreme Enlightenment came out of any schools or religions, because they are trying to go in opposite directions - practicing meditation can create karma, but you have to remove all your karma to experience nirvana and have the possibility of being Enlightened. That is to say that Enlightenment (also known as salvation), as well as nirvana (liberation) are in the opposite direction of the goals of meditation (no suffering, darkness/closing your eyes, stopping the flow of your mind/one-pointed concentration, letting external spirits come in or practicing compassion for them, abandoning oneself, not having any attachments, and practicing not to be reborn again). The result of Enlightenment is that you save yourself, and can begin to save others. The result of meditation is that you kill your soul and die forever. So there are some basic things you've learned from others about Buddha's teaching that don't match the reality of life, and that in itself lets me know it's not the teaching of a real Buddha. Do you yourself honestly believe that a living Buddha would teach people the way to die forever? The point of him coming to the world was to show us that we are our own saviors and are capable of saving ourselves.

[gnaritas]

Your reply is so full of wowo nonsense that I won't bother to rebut it piece by piece but I'll end with this. You completely fail to understand evidence based thinking and falsifiability and thus your opinions are not remotely rational, they are emotional. You need to learn to stop trying to explain yourself, and start providing evidence that anything you say is true. You just look like a crazy person to me; I doubt I'm alone in this assessment.

I'm not interested in your opinions of why you're right, I'm interested in evidence of your claims. If you don't have that, you aren't worth my time.

[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?

[blueprint]

I only try to report exactly what I've learned directly from a living Enlightened Being - I'm not claiming qualification to see and teach the Truth. I've been studying this for a while, so I get better and better at recognizing people's questions when I encounter the particular cases, but always make sure to tell them that this is what I learned from the master. Monks in today's world never wanted to learn from a living Buddha, because he never lets people tell even a little lie in front of him. Instead, the monks stay with the dead Buddha because he never scolds them and just smiles..

So, about the period that an Enlightened Being comes to the world, there are a couple things you need to know.

The first thing is that an Enlightened being only comes to the world in certain circumstances. The last one we know about is Gautama Buddha. There was no one among the religious practitioners of his day who knew the correct teaching and right way to attain Enlightenment. They all had quite varied practices and did some strange stuff. Because nobody knew, that was why he had to come teach and search on foot for 45 years for someone wanted to listen to him.

Gautama Buddha, after he taught, said that his teaching would stay and brighten the world for about a thousand years. The period after that thousand years is when his teaching begins to disappear. And finally, the third 'ending' period after that is when his teaching has disappeared completely. It's only when Buddha's teaching has disappeared that an Enlightened being comes to the world again to reveal the truth.

[lobo_tuerto]

How did you realize that your master was a living Enlightened Being? can you give the specific questions and answers that you used to recognize him as such?