So, this particular guru has understood the structure of awakenings: how they happen, but does not understand how meditation, used properly, can prepare a person for awakenings, and how the structure of particular meditations make awakenings more likely.
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Replying to @iwelsh
I just wonder, if he doesn't think that practices can prepare a person for awakening, what does he actually teach his students? You can't just hand people enlightenment, even if you're enlightened yourself. Presumably he must be instructing people to do *something*.
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Replying to @Failed_Buddhist
contemplate certain facts about the human condition, like the fact that seeking happiness leads to sorrow (very Buddhist). He's trying to get them to a Satori moment. In some ways his method is very similar to what J. Krishnamurit suggested.
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Replying to @iwelsh @Failed_Buddhist
if you genuinely see, with enough of your mind, that something is a poison, you get an awakening. It can be small or big, and it may not stick, but it can happen. These aren't all mystical, now that I know how it works, I know I had one about alcohol, for example.
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Replying to @iwelsh @Failed_Buddhist
(terrible, terrible hangover. Nauseous, painful, went on for ages. I've never over-drunk since. Believe it or not, this is basically an awakening, just not about anything fundamental to the structure of reality.)
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Replying to @iwelsh @Failed_Buddhist
(doesn't have to be "that something is a poison"), it's just a FACT (to you) that is undeniable, which hits enough of your mind hard enough. "attachment is suffering", "I'm not the body", whatever... The founders of AA had genuine awakenings.
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Replying to @iwelsh @Failed_Buddhist
after my little alcohol awakening I just didn't want to drink at all, and even now, years later, I have almost no desire for drink, though I'll drink occasionally, and socially. It was "knowledge" of the "a man will not do something he truly knows to be bad" variety.
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Replying to @iwelsh @Failed_Buddhist
So you can have this about all sorts of things. If you clearly see that anger is a poison, that will end a lot, maybe all, anger for you. And so on. But you must know it directly, not anger as a symbol, because you were told, but because you saw it without any denial.
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This is totally spot on. Awakening is what happens when a fact about experience just clicks. An instant of directly seeing "oh shit, this is how things are" that you don't forget and doesn't need to be reinforced conceptually. Nothing mystical about it.
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Replying to @Failed_Buddhist
Well, I think some mystical stuff can help. Not just pointing in the right direction, though that can be useful, but also certain energetic stuff. Also, you can have awakenings that are almost anything. I can "realize" I'm God, and it can be undeniable to me.
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Replying to @iwelsh @Failed_Buddhist
Once you understand how it works you see that it's totally abusable.
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