Enlightment, different from all subjective things that human beings ever experienced : dreaming , subconscious of , thinking , feeling...etc , its initial stage ,can be called "mindless awakening ".

Mindlessness , like a pool of still water without any ripples, is not a state we should pursue . It is mindless then awakening that is something we are eager to attain.


Only after Enlightenment appeared , do we get meta-qi , a dose that can really stop aging , or even reverse it. Of course , it also implies the possiblility of getting rid of physical death..... however, anything physical is limited and unreliable , so, the taoists ,just like any human beings , are also eager to attain spiritual eternity .

Needless to say, in this way , chasing after afterlife eternity, which is common among most religions , is never the aim of taoism .

hmm i would not be so adamand about that


funny thing is that most practitioners now pursue something that resembles water that both still and muddy, hurting themselves eventually

What do you mean by muddy?

....................

yang is clear yin is opaque, when yin is not differentiated from yang then yang is muddy
when its muddy the sickness sets in - several posters exibit clear symptoms of "zen disease" and "leackage"


gesundheit



...

------------------

here is my old post.


""""""16 2008, 06:57 PM

on the second or third day of dry-fasting correctly I invariably experience two symptoms: 1. elimination of thirst .2 even a small sip of water causes physical revulsion, sharp pain in the kidneys and nausea.""""""

...............

hugh?


I would be much more of help if you bother to speak in complete sentences without sneezing.

Understand what ? Why did you have these symptoms?

Simple – tobacco ruins kidneys, kidneys process water. When they process water in ruined condition – they hurt.

If given a choice between a million dollars and achieving enlightenment: Choose the million dollars, because you will be there to enjoy it. If you achieve enlightenment, there will be no one there, to enjoy anything.

Bad choice. A million dollars is nothing these days.
If you achieve enlightenement you won't need the million dollars. You will enjoy anything and everything.
If you choose the million dollars what will you have when it's gone.
Will you worry about keeping it - losing it.
A million dollars wouldn't help you with fear of death, relationships with people, relationship with yourself.
What would you do with the million dollars if you had it.

Those who know don't speak, those who speak don't know. That said, I'm clearly part of the second category. Even the Buddha didn't describe enlightenment, he described the path to enlightenment. Enlightenment, non-duality, union, these are necessarily beyond words. Why? Words define, separate, and then you're back to duality.

On muddy water: there's a lot of talk in Buddhism and Daoism about attaining a state of mindless attention. Mind being ego chatter and attention being consciousness. In vipassana meditation (the meditation Buddha developed) the mind chatter stops and you, the observer, strive to increase awareness. To be aware of every small detail in the entire field of awareness. To observe with ever increasing clarity. This is mindless, but not muddy. It is completely different than "dead sitting", letting the mind turn to mush, or going on ego fantasy escapades. Muddy mush or pretty pictures, both consume the light of awareness.

Enlightenment is awareness of and connection to everything without attachment to anything.



I'd choose enlightenment any day of the week precisely because everyone will be there.

Afterlife eternity, although a spiritual one , is a yin way full of uncertainties and submit-to-destiny character , which is not what we should pursue . Contrary to it is a yang way : by obtaining complete , pure qi in the yang form , another way of eternity is possible . Taoism never worships death or transmigration of soul as some elements in Tibetan culture.

I think you guys missed the point of the parable, but thats ok too. I'm personally not in favor of the million dollars myself either.

You are everyone,,,

................

Take the million dollars, spread it under those who need it for survival. Dont choose the instantenlightenment option, smells poisonous !

You can work step by step towards enlightenment afterwords wich sounds more natural and in the meanwhile youve been of help to people who need.

shrug/ whatev. its back to ignore list for you.

Dude, you ignore people even as you write to them.

.................

From mindlessness to awakening , there is a big leap .But how? Of course, when talking about leap ,it means some "energy "is needed to apply .

Maybe mindlessness is a state you can maintain for hours, but the arrival of awakening does need endless patience , it depends...

Enlightenment can never be the research target of psychology as some people may try to do . Any such an attempt will be futile .

How can a big Wisdom be studied and sliced by a limited, trivial discipline ?

Science is indeed a limited form of gaining knowledge and psychology more limited still...but just because something is limited does that necessarily make it futile and trivial? The life of a human being is limited, it begins one second and ends another. The human being while alive suffers greatly due to its own limitations. Does this make the life of a human being-the futile experience of a trivial existence?

If we accept the possibility of enlightenment-then it appears that life does have some purpose (to gain enlightenment) therefore it is not futile and being a human has some value (humans can become enlightened) therefore it is not trivial.

If you examine your initial statement you will find that it contradicts itself. Enlightenment has been the subject of psychological research (as some people may try to do) which negates your previous assertion that enlightenment could never be "the research target of psychology." You qualify that any such attempts (though impossible according to your first statement) will be futile.

I am not tearing your words apart to pick on you, I am merely pointing out that you are not expressing what I think you wish to express. I think you want to say that psychology (or any science for that matter) can never fully understand enlightenment from its own limited perspective. This is a statement that I can agree with-however I must point out that the scientific method is designed to collect data objectively...understanding is not part of the method. Understanding may never come but this does not in any way hinder the process of observation.

Having been one of those misguided individuals who studied and sliced, I thought perhaps I could give you some idea of how we went about doing what we did. First of all, in psychology (or should I say psychophysiology since that is what we were doing) we take this concept of enlightenment that pervades human culture and say, "What is enlightenment and can be objectively verified?"

History is full of examples of enlightened individuals, as well as detailed descriptions of the enlightened state. Based on these many individuals in the current era assert that enlightenment does exist and that there are various means of attaining this state. The world today is a supermarket of enlightenment, with teachers on every aisle who are ready to show you the way to get there.

One of our psychological methodologies was to find individuals who self-report being enlightened (a difficult task to say the least) and then interview them to find out what experiences they have had which leads them to conclude that they have achieved enlightenment. We compare the interviews of these individuals with each other and determine the most commonly reported experiences. This process does not allow us to assess in an objective way the concept of enlightenment but it does allow us to find out more about people who report being enlightened.

This is an extremely subjective approach that is fraught with problems. The first of these being that the most commonly reported experiences of enlightenment are identical to historical descriptions of enlightenment. While many self reporters would see this condition as adding validity to their claims, the argument could be made that people desire this enlightened state-which is described by their tradition-and then shape their own experiences to fit the mold (or better yet, shape their description of their experiences to fit the mold since there is no way to verify whether or not they had the experience at all)

The question then becomes, "How do we overcome the subjective nature of human experience to verify that enlightenment is more than just a myth?" Most spiritual seekers would say, "By knowing it for ourselves and feeling it in our own mind and heart." This view embraces subjectivity but does not overcome it.

The source of subjectivity is the brain. All functions of the body correspond to functions of the brain. All sensory and cognative functions correspond to functions of the brain. What neuroscience has also found is that different subjective states of consciousness are characterized by different patterns of neural functioning. Until the 20th Century the ability to measure the electrical activity of the brain (EEG) was unavailable and no method for objective verification of consciousness existed. Now with this technology (combined with Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Positronic Emission Tomography) not only can we observe how the brain functions but the specific structures involved with that function as it happens.

That's pretty cool...but how does it relate to enlightenment? By our thinking, the subjective experience of enlightenment if it is not a myth must have some neurological component that differentiates it from the common experience. We compare the brain activity of our self-reported enlightened people with the brain activity of people that we find on the street (who neither claim to be enlightened nor have any knowledge of what our study is about) and we find some interesting things. The findings are not conclusive nor do they confirm or deny that our self-reportering enlightened people are actually enlightened.

We have found that different forms of meditation have specific effects on the brain...you are not wasting your time meditating; something is really happening neurologically-and from what we know about the brain-the effects are good. We have also found that the brains of long-term meditators operate differently than non-meditators during activity-which seems to indicate that you carry the good neurological effects of meditation with you into the rest of your day. The longer that you meditate (in years) the more similar your brain function during tasks is to your brain function during meditation. This observation alone is objective evidence that a state of enlightenment could possibly exist. (Brain functioning during tasks could be identical to brain functioning during meditation)

I said all of this just to say: If you accept that science has limitations and work within the boundries of those limitations then there is no reason whatsoever that a scientific examination of enlightenment cannot be attempted. There is also no reason that such an examination should be deemed futile. It is easy for the scientist to dismiss the spiritual path as pure hocus-pocus and goobledegook. It is just as easy for the spiritual seeker to scoff at the arrogant ideology of empiricism at the basis of the scientific method. For the seeker and the scientist to meet on a common ground and view each other with equal dignity is difficult for both to do but I think it is a beautiful thing.

I have always thought that "mindlessness" meant "awareness" and once the awareness is linked to the present then you have "awakened"... Is this too simple..???

Aimee

.......................

[quote name='rain' date='Apr 2 2008, 02:23 AM' post='58473']
[i]Hi Old Baby 108
excuse me for cutting and pasting some, but I even after your experienced reflection, I am still confused about whether or not enligtenment is being scientifically researhced. We are aware of the scientific research done on buddhist monks during meditation though.


To answer your question: yes, scientific research is being done on enlightenment (or higher states of consciousness) but our research is in its pilot phase and the research model is subject to bias in support of enlightenment (meaning that the organization who funds the research is convinced that states of enlightenment exist-they just want to know about the neurophysiological correlates of these states) We draw our self-reporting enlightened people from members of this organization and present our findings in the terminology of that organization...so in terms of scientific veracity-the study suffers...but where else are we going to get the money to even investigate this kind of stuff. There is no profit potential in researching enlightenment
-----------------------------------
If we accept the possibility of enlightenment-then it appears that life does have some purpose.
Is this your scientific angle?

No-this was actually just an excercise in rhetoric-

"What is enlightenment and can it be objectively verified?"

Still working on this one

History[u] (define history, sounds like you equal it to past stories...) is full of examples of enlightened individuals, as well as detailed descriptions of the enlightened state.

Well, yeah...you have thousands of years worth of stories with this concept of enlightenment at the heart of the story-people would love to believe that history is like a solid piece of granite with events as they actually happened chisled on the side but it is just not that way-as far as I can tell history is just stories.

One of our psychological methodologies was to find individuals who self report being enlightened (a difficult task to say the least) and then interview them to find out what experiences they have had which leads them to conclude that they have achieved enlightenment. We compare the interviews of these individuals with each other and determine the most commonly reported experiences. [u]This process does not allow us to assess in an objective way the concept of enlightenment but it does allow us to find out more about people who report being enlightened.[b]
[/b]AD HOC?

Exactly-I hope you might understand a little bit more about the limitations of this study from what I have written above.

"How do we overcome the subjective nature of human experience to verify that enlightenment is more than just a myth?"

problem 1 and 2.
How can you talk about [u]verifying Enlightenment?
Isnt it too early to include yet another wide subject such as Myths?

I think you are a little confused by the connotation of the word "myth" in this context. Most people use myth differently than I use it here...like, "Oh, that's just a myth," which actually means, "Oh, that's not real."
I am using the word myth to describe a story that has persisted from the past...without regard for the truth value of that story. We know the story of enlightenment exists both in the past and in the present-that much is firmly established-what is not firmly established is the physiological basis for the subjective experience of enlightenment.

.................

Can Enlightenment be an object /target studied by science or psychology ?

Let me raise a metaphor :

A 2D " creature" once discovered that a strange object appeared in its 2D world , which was in fact a cross-section of a 3D creature as it was passing through it . Although this is a phenomenon happens repeatedly and can be observed from time to time , do you think , the 2D "creature" can understand what happens before its eyes ? It seems , no matter how hard the 2D " creature " thinks , how much data it collects , how many instruments from its world it uses , its effort is doomed to be fruitless .

And, can you say the 3D creature ( in fact, only its cross- section) is being studied and understand ?

Once the 2D creature has become a 3D creature itself , then everything about it will become very simple, any
expanation seems superfluous.

And, can you say the 3D creature ( in fact, only its cross-section) is being studied and understand ?
Once the 2D creature has become a 3D creature itself, then everything about it will become very simple, any expanation seems superfluous.
[/quote]


Consider this in terms of your metaphor: What if the goal of the 2D creature is not to understand the nature of the 3D creature (which is unfathomable from its own level of observation) but through its studies to better understand its own 2D nature and open its awareness to the existence of dimensions outside of its own?

To me, Awakening is a status different from just being mindless. It is an abrupt change , a jump from one status to another status, like there is a door suddenly open in your mind leading to some arena new...some people even find such a jump/change accompanied with some kind of sound....

Thinking it in terms of taoist qi gong practice, the quality of qi you experience in Awakening is totally different from what you experience under mindlessness or ordinary mental status . I call qi arising under Enlightenment , a deeper state of Awakening , as meta-qi ( just a translation ,other people may have better terms than mine) ; Kinds of diseases it can cure are also different from those you can cure by just applying ordinary qi . For example ,diseases such as Cancer and AIDS , can hardly be cured by qi you initiate under ordinary mental condition or just being mindless.

Of course, I do not say mindlessness is meaningless; absolutely not .Contrary to many people's thinking that concentrating of our mind on certain spot of our body or imagining something wonderful , in fact ,getting rid of mental interference , is a precondition of the appearance of qi . So, mindlessness is really an achievement provided that you are not trapped in it .

Some people may use whether there is an appearance of a "pearl" or "ball " before us as the proof of Enlightenment ; by observing its size ( at first may just look like a small bean ) and color , you know where you reach . However, although in most cases it is true, the shortcoming of such proof is that you are using a subjective thing to prove another subjective thing ; doubt still exists .

It is worse for people who adopt imagination as a method right from the beginning of their practice. At this stage , they will be puzzled by whether it is an illusory ball , imaginary ball or a real one ?

To solve the problem , Taoism cleverly adopts a way to prove it indirectly on the opposite side : as human beings , we are an unity of spirit and body, and ,Awakening and Enlightenment , as some kinds of huge accomplishment in our spirit, they must also generate deep impact on our physical body . So, why not proving it by seeing whether your cancer is cured, white hair disappear , fallen teeth re-grown ,wrinkles recede or sleeping becomes unnecessary ?