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Jana
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« on: May 09, 2007, 09:39:57 AM » |
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RENUCIATION AND CESSATION
Getting back to this idea of renunciation as a path to enlightenment...perhaps John was meaning "cessation."
Bodhichitta?enlightened, or completely "opened" Heart, awake.
Completely "opened" means to relax around and to not hold onto sticking points. The opened Heart or Bodhichitta is free of concept, opinion and caught-upness?it is the ability to keep our hearts open to suffering without closing down.
Perhaps through:
*Maitri, or complete acceptance,
*regarding all dharmas as dreams
*and self-liberating even the antidote.
Because we escape we keep missing the completely fresh unique moment. Thus we live once removed in the Matrix of conceptualization based on the past. This little self is deprivation consciousness, which only breeds more deprivation consciousness. And it is this lower self-esteem (or fundamental self non-acceptance) which can be triggered, stunned, caught-up and made to feel diminished. This kicks off the host of substitute gratifications that distract and reduce consciousness/Heart opening even further.
This entropic existence makes up the Matrix of master-slave materialism, in a vain attempt to achieve spiritual energy through worldly form, instead of going to the Source where it resides.
The process of turning the prima-materia into Gold is Bodhichitta.
Neurosis is resistance to unconditional opening of the Heart by encasing oneself in a cocoon of removal from Witness and Source.
The Third Noble Truth says that cessation of suffering is letting go of holding onto ourselves. By "cessation" we mean the cessation of hell, the cessation of this resistance. Cessation of the resentment and feeling completely trapped and caught-up, through trying to maintain the huge ME at all costs...as Pema Chodron says in Loving Kindness.
But?the Buddhists also say that our neurosis and our wisdom are made out of the same material, so if you throw out your neurosis you also throw out your wisdom. Thus we see that it is our "relationship" to our neurosis of the cocoon that is the cutting edge of spiritual practice.
The Tibetans call getting "hooked or stuck" in the Matrix of Maya "Shenpa."
"An urge comes up, we succumb to it, and it becomes stronger. We reinforce our cravings, habits and addictions by giving into them repeatedly...Recognizing, refraining, relaxing and resolving are the four R's of working with Shenpa.
I think John's renunciation was perhaps this "recognizing, refraining, relaxing and resolving" practice, was it not?
G:?Since we operate from an individuality that for better or worse engages its life in a series of choices, chosen as a means of enjoying that life.......
Why are we rarely completely happy? Why is everything like pulling teeth to get something accomplished? Or more importantly, for those who do get what they want......Why do we not want what we get when we get what we want??
If you read some of John Perkins work (Confessions of an Economic Hitman) he observed that Third World peoples were generally a lot happier and content with their lives because they were ignorant of what they didn?t have. Ie: their expectations and demands were lower, and they had greater acceptance of their family, conditions and limitations. The value system in the West is set toward the attainment of power, money, position and property?so that if we are to ?accept? our situation, we have to become transcendent of basing our own sense of self-worth on worldly signifiers, and also be transcendent of the opinion of others as to our worth also.
Thus self-esteem needs to be shifted into the spiritual domain to become Self-esteem in order to be happy and at peace with the way things are. When we are happy and at peace with the way things are, then we begin to live a truly unique life that is all our own, not driven around by external forces in an attempt to satisfy one deprivation after another.
You might say that Third Worlders? have a prepersonal level of equanimity and acceptance due to ignorance. We in the West are more in danger of losing our souls through the externalization of self-worth?However this really merely provides us with the opportunity to actually find ourselves ?within? the material wasteland. For the tension provided by externalization actually presents to us the absence within, which we can then fill with the power of Presence and mindfulness.
If we stop complaining for a second, we can see that wherever we are is perfect for the next stage of our growth?we cannot go back to the satiety of naivety. Instead we must plow forward to find the depths within the shallowness of present Western life. This is our test and our task, to find meaning through and in Flatland. And thus live in enchantment once more.
Broken Yogi: ?If we are talking about renunciation as a means to enlightenment, there are of course many different traditional approaches about this. The simplest approach I know of is simply the one that views renunciation as the natural path of letting go of everything but one's desire for enlightenment. It isn't an aggressive path of rejection, of neti-neti, but of moving towards the light, so to speak, and leaving the darkness behind. The aggressive path of rejection only reinforces that which is being rejected, since that is what we are putting our attention on. The simpler path puts attention on the goal, and lets the rest fall away if it is not compatible with the goal. And since the goal is our own self-nature, it isn't a distant, far-away goal, but one that is compatible with our present circumstances. Which is why Ramana, for example, cautioned against traditionally aggressive modes of renunciation, recommending instead a natural form of renunciation within one's present circumstance and obligations.?
That which forwards liberation is embraced, and that which hinders liberation is renounced.
Surely.
I do think that acceptance of the polar opposites is the key, as John says.
I think in stress and obligations of Western life we have lost the capacity to en-joy ourselves...that is to fill ourselves with joy simply through breathing and being alive. I notice that if you are mindful of the air atoms hitting the nostrals, you can actually generate en-joyment. Then once is the chemical state of en-joyment, then samsara is not as convincing, we do not get "stuck" so much. But at the same time we need boredom, desire, attraction, confusion, trouble and other forms of suffering in order to "manifest" Light. There is an Osho Youtube video where he states there is no light without shadow. There would be no Gandhi if there was not British colonization of India...
So in this sense we must accept the "hell" side of existence as being necessary for the creation of the "heaven" side.
John: ?Even renunciation itself must, in the end, be renounced. Because what you resist; you become. Everything comes back on itself. Ouroboros is biting it's tail.?
Ok so how does this renunciation of renunciation feel...can you describe the state and behavior of one in renounced renunciation...is that a flaccid neutral state of nonaction, a default on the game prior to playing, a giving up...that sounds like me already.
Lets take a scenario...say one wants "love" wants someone to love them...the first stage of this would be to reject the need for love (renunciation). Then the closed loop would be to reject the rejection of love....but does that get one any closer to the possibility of love, I doubt it. Rejecting rejection of love is still not love.
Of course we know the way to go about it is in the positive, that is to BE love and to love oneself then the possibility for others to love you is possible. Rather hard to spontaneously love oneself when no one else has tho.
John:?To renounce renunciation is to indulge your cravings. To get love we must give love. To give love we first must have love. To have love, someone has to give it to us first. So yes, there is a vicious cycle and a 'bootstrapping problem'. The only way that I know of to pull oneself up by the bootstraps is to feel the love. Feel it, give it, get it, repeat.?
The bootstrap problem applies to the whole of existence which is why the "As If" and transcendent principles actually work in maintaining a spiritual ethos.
Renunciation might be part of the cycle of catch and release, but without being "caught" in the first place that means we have nothing to renounce.
Andrew Cohen?s Second Tenet: The Law of Volitionality
?Most of us like to see ourselves as unconscious victims. But in fact, we all know exactly what we are doing.?
Yes I thought this one rather off, but then I realized that "unconsciously" we do know what we are doing. To really get into this tenet one has to have a "fighting" spirit. To see the weight of karmic oppressive forces as a "challenge" rather than as a burden or prison. Since that which has broken us is usually that which "makes" us...we must continue to fight against say being a female and the injustices of that, fight against economic and political, and religious oppression, then fight against the injustices of old age. Basically Andrew is saying with this tenet that we must fight against the way things are or admit we are victims of our own inability to fight. He of course wouldn't like to hear it put that way, but that is what this tenet implies.
The Second Tenet rewrit: The Law of Culpability
?Most of us like to see ourselves as unconscious victims. But in fact we create our own reality through our ability to fight or succomb to evil in the universe and by how we consciously adjust to the given karmic aspects of our incarnation."
The Secret "You create your own reality"... I have heard that described as the Victim was vibrating at the frequency of the event. As if evil could happen only if you choose it. It is one of those major fallacies that Ken likes to point out. The Jews were vibrating at the opposite frequency to the Nazi??
Lambs will tend to get eaten by wolves, but is that because lambs are inviting the wolf by vibrating in polar opposite to wolf energy. It is kind of funny and worth a full exploration in itself.
I think it is more a case of the inertia of unconscious force of primary-drives will tend to repeat itself in predictable "animal" behaviors unless greater consciousness, energy and love is brought to the equation to change happenstance into new patterns. If there was a Jesus alive at the time of the WW2 then perhaps the Jews would gone so dosilely to the gas chambers, but they, nor the majority of the German race knew how insane and evil Hitler was. They were caught-up in the murder without adequate self-development or leadership to fight.
And Gandhi wanted to give Hitler full powers to take all he wanted. An abstract leader such as Gandhi would have been even more fatal for the Jews at this time. The Jews should have been an armed fighting race, well now they are...but only through the "help" of Hitler.
An article "Peacock from Heaven" Parabola winter'05
"Since the earliest times we Kurds have lived in these hills, some on this side of the river, some on the other bank. We were even here before your Prophet Jesus came into the world. Our ancestors came from Iran, and their teacher was Master Zoroaster who said that Ormuzd and Ariman, the Spirit of Good and the Spirit of Evil, were the twin sons of the mighty fundamental principle called Zarvana Arakana or Limitless Time. It is the eternal conflict between these two Spirits in the Universe, and in the soul of Man, which creates life. Both are equally important. The Master said, "Without Good how can Evil be recognized? Without Evil how can we know what is Good? Each needs the other as the fire needs fuel..."
"Yes that is the way of it, sometimes the Good conquers, sometimes the Evil. So it has ever been and so it always must be: for these twin sons are truly the one double face of the God Yazdan. We believe that in recognizing, understanding and appeasing the Evil, we can better deal with its influence both within ourselves and in others. We do not like the legend of St. George perpetually spearing the Dragon. You will never find a Yezidi called George. The Dragon must be tamed not speared. One cannot kill such a Dragon with a man-made weapon. In this way we only anger him...To kiss the Beast, to realize, to accept completely the ugly and the hateful in life instead of eternally denying, resisting, fearing it, as we all do." Count Bobrinsky retelling the account of local tribesmen from the river Araxes which flows into the Caspian Sea between Russia and Persia
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