Basics of Awakening in Zen and Theravada Buddhism
Vložit
- čas přidán 1. 06. 2024
- This is an excerpt from Stephen's "Demystifying Awakening" mentoring group - May 11, 2024.
To learn more see Stephen's book, "Demystifying Awakening",
amzn.to/3L5RXh4
For upcoming retreats and Zoom offerings please see,
awakeningdharma.org/
Stephen Mugen Snyder, Sensei began practicing daily meditation in 1976. Since then, he has studied Buddhism extensively-investigating and engaging in Zen, Tibetan, Theravada, and Western non-dual traditions. He was authorized to teach in the Theravada Buddhist tradition in 2007 and the Zen Buddhist schools of Soto and Rinzai in 2022. Stephen is a senior student of Roshi Mark Sando Mininberg.
#spiritualawakening #zenbuddhism #nonduality - Jak na to + styl
3 components are: 1. a deep experience of the absence of self 2. nondual unity/love experience including pure awareness 3. recognition that this is my true identity
Question: do these realizations typically occur separately or as part of a single experience?
They normally come one piece at a time,, but can be an all inclusive wow moment of all of it,, or combined portions,,,
in example,,, during a near death experience,,, often times,, all of that is experienced at once,,, for myself,,, it was a combination and sequential of holy Shit/ wow moments that changed my world forever,,,,
@@ZenCloudsMeditation thank you for your very helpful responses. I would love to get your feedback on my own personal experiences. I had a striking unity/love experience where all I could see was perfection wherever I looked. It felt like everything was love solidified in the form of matter and all of us were still living in the garden of Eden. The original sin that kicked us out was merely allowing ourselves to have somehow forgotten or getting talked out of realizing the true situation and therefore believing that we had been kicked out.
My absence of self experience occurred while watching the scenery go by while riding in a car. I realized that the experience was of watching the world go by without having constructed a “self” that was doing the watching and I was reminded of the Bahiya Sutta. The experience was like being in a flow state or getting lost in a book. It made me realize that my sense of self comes and goes. For example, make a mistake in front of a crowd and the feeling of self becomes very strong. The realization made me focus on and trust my sensory experience much more than my thoughts, which is the opposite of my previous life experience. I had an intellectual understanding of emptiness from reading examples like King Milinda’s chariot and Theseus’s ship, so I knew that I couldn’t find a self when I searched for one in the five aggregates, but now I saw that even the felt sense of self was transient rather than a fixed, unchanging thing. I’d always had a type A personality, but these realizations changed me into being much more relaxed and much slower to getting upset or angry, as I saw that getting upset about the state of the universe didn’t make sense and wasn’t helpful. You can still recognize things that could be better and do something about them, but getting upset has no value. Also, other people are also a bunch of processes already set in motion (and many if not all of those processes were not chosen by the people) instead of “selves” making conscious decisions about their actions. So getting upset at them is like getting mad at a tree for falling on your house. The tree didn’t make that choice.
The experience of my true identity is much more difficult for me to explain. If I had to describe my true identity, I guess I would say that I’m an ever-changing set of sometimes conflicting processes set in motion by nature and nurture (causes and conditions). My identity subjectively feels like my current awareness overlaid with memories that influence my preferences, but I don’t feel the senses of striving and desire for control anywhere nearly as strongly as I used to. I like the analogy of an eddy in a river. The eddy exists due to the motion of the water, but it can’t exist apart from that motion. So really I feel like I’m the universe in motion using the atoms of this body. Libet’s experiments and the subsequent reproductions of the effect show that our conscious minds have the feeling of making choices about half a second after our subconscious has already made the decision. So really, I feel like a consciousness that was put into a bodily avatar in order to have an earthly experience. It’s like I’m living the experience of a character in a story, but I frequently forget and get caught up in the experience. It seems like everything that happens, happens out of love (though sometimes an unskillful form of love, like desire). I now feel unconditional love for everyone (including myself) because I see the same awareness plus processes in every person, so I feel a deep affinity for them.
Either is possible. I only confirm Kensho if all three are evident and impactful.
@@stephensnyderdharma thank you. That makes sense.