Eckhart Tolle and the Pain-Body

[Jenny]

Re: Eckhart Tolle and the Pain-Body

Chet, I really appreciate your last two posts. Such down-to-earth common sense regarding meditation,
why we meditate and why we feel there is something missing that we have to attain.
It will be interesting to see what other responses arise.
Jenny

[Rich]

Re: Eckhart Tolle and the Pain-Body

The best thing to do, IMHO, is forget about enlightenment or realization as an idea and simply attend to the present moment with an attitude of curious vividness.
Chet

I agree with your statement above but when you say 'meditation isn't required' I would ask that you consider that sitting zazen is actually just attending to the present moment and the posture with its maintenance is the balanced state itself.

Do you think that this attitude is only expressed through sitting?

Chet

No, this attitude is all the time. For years I didn't sit but still tried to maintain 'this attitude'. I don't know why sitting makes a difference but it did and does.

I'm just popping in for a second to clarify something:

When I say 'meditation isn't technically necessary' - notice the 'technically'. What I mean by that is that spontaneous awakening is possible - if a smidge unlikely. But then again, how many people do you know who meditate and are not yet awake? Meditation can be used for all sorts of wrong-view type pseudo-spiritual excursions. In fact, MOST meditation is used this way because most people aren't really all that interested in waking up - they're interested in the idea of being a person who is awake. These are totally different things. Heck, a lot of people in Soto Zen aren't interested in either. It's considered a bit gauche or in bad taste to even admit an interest in awakening. So they become control freaks, posture-Nazis, and spiritual athletes instead. I think a lot of this is the slightly off-the-mark advice of teachers who want to STRONGLY discourage the second idea (the idea of becoming a self who has achieved 'awakeness') and end up discouraging both waking up AND the misunderstood drive to become one who is awake.

Then again, there is also the richness of the dream properly participated in - and yet oddly, you cannot truly participate in the theater of life if you have no inkling that it is indeed a bit of theater.

IMHE, IMHO

Chet

What I think of as dream and reality is not it. I just can't rely on anything.

[Rich]

Re: Eckhart Tolle and the Pain-Body

Actually, I say I rely on intuition or wisdom but I don't really know what it is.

[disastermouse]

Re: Eckhart Tolle and the Pain-Body

Sitting usually does make a difference, yes. That's certainly not an atypical experience, I don't think. Trying to maintain that awareness without meditative practice is like I said earlier - asking toddlers to learn aviation. It's just a huge leap to go from running our conditioning - barely aware of our inner state - to actually seeing what your mind is doing without having any experience of meditation.

Chet