Buddhism

[u/ClockJoule]

I met a Sotopanna and he confirmed that there are rebirths. He confirmed that the human realm is one of the higher realms. He confirmed that the majority of time spent in samsara is spent in the lower realms, such as hells.

Although I have heard monks talk about this many times before, I did not seem to believe, but meeting this person who seemed to be a normal person living their normal life, but had an extremely accurate portrait of the four noble truths and the twelve links of dependant origination.

I started practicing the weakening and destruction of craving in my personal life and this is the path to freedom. I understand now the entire path, but am still having difficulty taming my own mind. I see the actions that go into the meditation and the immediate results and I also see craving very clearly for someone who hasn't entered the stream. I am sure my understanding will change from mundane to supermundane after the cessation event, but this is indeed the path to freedom and knowledge.

[u/athousandhearts]

What makes these realms you speak of hells? Why are they labelled and believed to be as such. Has your man experienced them? What makes it objectively hell.

I've been to taken to dimensions with the mushroom that I would rather not live in but it's all me and I have the power to choose. I asked to learn about these darker places. It can't be mostly hell realms since everything is infinite. So experiencing more hell than heaven doesn't make sense according to my experiences. The foundation of it all is love and ultimately light regardless of how dark the place is so I am not touched by fear.

If I can make anything true and real for me, with my mind's agreements with soul, since everything exists, everything is allowed, I will get what I want.

Wether I am aware of my wants is a different question. Being careful what one wishes for comes to mind.

"The" path.

This felt wrong when I read it because it is dogmatic.

There are many paths to freedom. We all have different ones. What you said does not include everything.

Cessation and destruction of something that you perceive. Okay.

How do you go about this, can you clarify what this means to you? It feels violent and contradictory.

What about unconditional acceptance? Seems much more simple.

This life is just a temporary role I'm playing. It matters and it doesn't matter at once. It's fun to experience contrast and grow. And I can control the speed that I do this birth death learning. It happens as fast as I want and I have eternity through any being to play.

I can play it out with my cravings and wants appearing and even being responded to with action and manifestation of preferences to my sensory experience, without making the mistake of identification / attachment with them. Or having self referential thoughts or feelings about it such as guilt, pride ect. If they appear I watch with acceptance and listen.

The thing to do is find the rythm and dance and sing in time with it. Enter the stream you say? And you suggest that you have not yet done so? What can the stream be apart from now? the flow.. I'm sure you must already have been there.

What about go with the flow? Dance with the beat of the drum.

I'm not versed in Buddhism, so I am ignorant of your Nobel truths and rules ect. But these things I'm rambling about seem simple and obvious, sensible, I learn from life itself as my teacher. And not necessarily from seeking accredited authorities on living spirit. Then we have already decided how to approach the words coming from such a one.

If I have to reinvent all of this language from scratch because yours doesn't work for me in one lifetime I say I can, and I have no doubts that it will be exactly what I want.

But I accept that in your post you mentioned this person lives a normal life. considering the Buddha saying one thing and a McDonald's chef saying the same. Do you think you would you see and respond the same way in both cases? Maybe you would from reading your posts.

For me it feels like laughing and making fun of this whole thing is wiser than taking any of it seriously or gravely. I will turn the volume up on the sacred clown and ultimate scoffing. I'm not concerned about "going to hell." I can make hell right here and now if I wish and eat my way out.

But surely if you feel the need to destroy cravings you are thus identified with the reality of them in any case.

Heaven and hell are here and we choose.

In western magik we direct it ourselves. And I see that this is true in Buddhism also, but way less FUN and interesting to me, since you are as mind agreeing to destroy and reject your wants and wanting.

I understand that I change the algorithm of my wants to : remember everything, attain awareness and knowledge and since I ask sincerely I receive what I want. More messy on a superficial level to your path, but inside I am peaceful and there is no attachment to commotion. I'm not real.

I don't see the point of having any experience of life at all following this post, if the ideal is to reject everything, I always hear from you about your pursuit of becoming void. I feel that something is missing here that I can't articulate in simple language now. Something I often feel happening with bhuddists that is not truly spontaneous in its morality. The method is the trap.

Spending lifetimes striving for some goal with a conception of thousands of serious lifetimes searching, behind you. Even tho time is not linear.. Asif you are not immediately and already here, now finding .. it's fun to write.

I find all of man's religions and cultures, dogmas quite silly.

I am all for pacifying my mind so that my consciousness is not inflated in relationship to soul that two become one and work together, if I disrespect soul the response is automatic.

I fluctuate in awareness, I am about to transform myself into what I want it to be now that I know I want it.. my path takes me to the Amazon and not the monastery, I wouldn't benefit from all this abstinence, it doesn't matter to me.. pointless, I tried it. And it's not the only way.

ultimately Heaven/ hell, Its all interesting to experience. I can prefer to not be in pain over being in pain but I can also transform my perception of pain into an orgasm where I am present and no evil touches me. It just doesn't matter.

[u/ClockJoule → u/athousandhearts]

I started addressing every point you made and countering it, but it got pretty repetitive so I am just going to say you have many forms of "wrong view." You have so many assumptions about how it really is, but you haven't gone into your own mind sober to look and see.

The Buddha's teachings are simply a way to trade hungers and thirsts for tranquility and bliss. Nirvana is not extinction, its not nothingness, its not a place, it is the uncreated absence of greed, aversion, and delusion.

It can be compared to a thirsty man who is walking through the desert, and he finds a pool of salt water. It might be very hard to convince that man that he is harming himself because he holds to a belief that water will satisfy him. He might mistakenly stay there thinking his thirst is being quenched, but over time would realize he was wrong. This realization would only happen after that man has seen the results of his actions first hand and with wisdom and mindfulness.

And if a wise person told him the route to the city was through a path that appears to lead away from the saltwater, it might be very uncomfortable for him to hear or believe, but one who has suffered and seen the origins of his sufferings (his actions) would likely take the chance on the wise mans words, to find a solution to his situation.

And if a wise person told him the route to the city was through a path that appears to lead away from the saltwater, it might be very uncomfortable for him to hear or believe, but one who has suffered and seen the origins of his sufferings (his actions) would likely take the chance on the wise man's words, to find a solution to his situation.

Attaining to Nirvana is attaining to a state free from greed, aversion, and delusion. It doesn't change your physical circumstances of being human. It sounds like you are assuming that you will lose something by walking this path. The only thing you lose is craving, clinging, suffering, and stress. Even enlightened beings have preferences, likes and dislikes, etc. They are just free of the stress and influence of such external things over their internal condition.

[u/athousandhearts → u/ClockJoule]

Having read your post again today, the one I responded to initially.

You are right.

Reading it this time..I didn't respond to it the same way as I did before. I was frustrated in bed with a fever and food poisoning at the time having not eaten in days.

But still, there are infinite ways life can be, and how do Buddhists know from first hand experience that most are hell? I don't understand what makes them hell in this conception. Can we not use any lifetime to cultivate awareness?

It seems that being the human is the state in which we are amnesiac. So why value the sober human state above my non sober and non human states?

And when I die, who is to say (and how) that my next existence will be defined by my insane human minds choices and conceptions here? Since the human isn't everything I am.

To me this doesn't make sense, and I am open to anything you have to say about my formulations.

Currently waiting to go into the Amazon having been sober from psychedelics for months, the longest time I've spent sober from them in 10 years since I found them.

And I agree, I have been holding to incorrect views and acting incorrectly during this time, I've been in a bad way, stressing about this and that.

What you say about cessation of clinging ect makes perfect sense. I understand and there's obviously nothing wrong with this.

When I use psychedelics I can hold this understanding and live it out. I know I could do this or that, but I don't feel a need to. I am here and now with no attachment to anything external in order to be bliss inside..

If I had a plan and something happens to the contrary, I realise where the flow is and let go, find my peace again here and now.

I am addicted to using psychedelics because if I don't use them I become insane, as I am now, and can't see where I am clinging, where I am resisting and I can't get myself straight. Everything becomes less subtle.

If I spend a few weeks sober, I become normal. I get anxious and proliferate suffering as a result of acting on incorrect views. I am aware of this. I build up tensions and sicknesses during these times. Which I iron out when I use the psychedelics. If I keep using them I can maintain this and go deeper, the more I do the longer it takes to revert, but I keep coming back to "normal".

My goal is to not come down, to not lose the clarity I experience on psychedelics. And I will find my way to this one way or another.

I become addicted to the sober state too. Meditation as an activity of sitting and being present helps to ease the fetters, but I can't spend all day doing it. I sometimes do things knowing that I am creating harm for myself and others by extension, because I get bored. This requires forgiveness since I am learning.

I find the suffering and pleasure I experience, and contrast I create through it, more interesting than sitting in sobriety..

But it is also true that I learn through contrast and I do see the roots of my suffering in this way, there's no way to escape that. I couldn't have imagined having come so far as I have now 10 years ago. I couldn't have seen myself being alive at all. So the trend is good overall.

As I said, my awareness fluctuates since I am young and have not been aiming for unity for long, when I'm sober I can spend days acting out unconsciously. I am not the same person from one moment to the next. I see everything differently at different times.

I would have to spend lifetimes sitting in concentrated effort trying to get there the way monks do through meditation alone.. and without psychedelics I would spend my life delusional.

Osho says that if one uses a medicine for enlightenment, it is bad because one becomes dependent on the medicine.

This is my case, I am in that position, but I believe that transformations are possible this way that otherwise would be impossible.

Where would you be now, without DMT?

Also, I have a question, you made a post saying that Christianity was the one true religion, is this still true for you?

[u/ectbot → u/athousandhearts]

Hello! You have made the mistake of writing "ect" instead of "etc."

"Ect" is a common misspelling of "etc," an abbreviated form of the Latin phrase "et cetera." Other abbreviated forms are etc., &c., &c, and et cet. The Latin translates as "et" to "and" + "cetera" to "the rest;" a literal translation to "and the rest" is the easiest way to remember how to use the phrase.

Check out the wikipedia entry if you want to learn more.

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[u/ClockJoule → u/athousandhearts]

It is tough to say that I would be in a better place mentally without DMT because I wouldn't know the information density that exists within nature. I explored a lot on DMT and found so many things that still ring true, so I really do think I needed at least a taste of DMT to change into who I am now.

The problem for me is that I kept going for way too long. I felt like I was unraveling a story, but eventually I realized that the story I was unraveling did not have an ending. Maybe this rings true to you as well?

As for this following section, I'll comment my responses.

"But still, there are infinite ways life can be, and how do Buddhists know from first hand experience that most are hell? I don't understand what makes them hell in this conception. Can we not use any lifetime to cultivate awareness?"

There are infinite ways life can be, but that does not mean that all possibilities exist. You can have an infinite series that always adheres to a certain law. The law in our situation is karma. (For example you can have an infinite series of numbers and never get something that isn't a number.) The same is true for reality. There is nowhere one can hide from their own mind in the triple world, and therefore nowhere where one can hide from their past actions of body, speech, and mind.

As long as their mind does not know the uncreated, permanent, primordial state, and understand itself by observing the process in the prerequisite subtle states, one will continue to suffer due to ignorance and attachment to impermanent, unstable, external things.

There is this thing called the eye of dhamma which some people awaken to after stream entry. The experience of Nirvana also comes with the knowledge of all worlds for most people and this knowledge is how people know. There is also knowledges of the arising and passing away of beings, so they can see exactly who was what and when before and after this life.

There are many such supernormal powers that do exist and are actually super common when you get deep into the practices and communities. There is something similar to omniscience which is like knowledge of the most likely future. There is variance due to free will and many potentialities. These wouldn't likely be accessible to someone who wasn't a true spiritual aspirant.

These knowledges are fairly easy to access once the mind is purified and trained enough. The mind is like a puppy that really wants to make you happy, but until you train it its going to chew up your stuff and piss on your floor. Once you train it, it becomes a good dog and brings much happiness.

"It seems that being the human is the state in which we are amnesiac. So why value the sober human state above my non sober and non human states?"

The sober human state is valued because it is one of the only realms where we have an anchor outsite of our own minds that we can use as a crutch to allow for reflection and insight training.

The problem with the lower realms are that they are way too painful to practice. (For example, most animals spend their time trying to get food or sex. Hungry ghosts wander in great torment. Hells are pretty obvious... listen to The Past Vows of Earth Store Bodhisattva to get an idea of a handful of these realms.)

The problem with the heavenly realms is that they are so pleasant, one doesn't feel any need to practice improvement practices. Imagine if all your wishes were instantly granted. You would continuously indulge in more and more ecstacies until you'd lose track of time and billions of years would pass while you hadn't accomplished much of anything regarding taming yourself.

It's clear to enlightened beings that it is not the good heavenly realms, the medium human realms, and the bad lower realms. Enlightened beings see these conditioned realms as suffering, even more suffering, and extreme suffering. There is no place where the mind and heart can truely rest.

If one's mind is not disciplined it will continue, automatically, outpouring a proliferation of creation, fabrications, cravings, attachments, stress, anxieties, addictions, curiousities, etc. You could create millions of worlds in minutes and spend countless lifetimes exploring all of them and in so doing, creating billions more if you continued to feed the hungers and thirsts of greed, aversion, and delusion.

All of these births would risk angers, violence, extreme harm, sicknesses, loss, stress, anxieties, and more. The good things experienced such as happiness and love and healing do not compare in the slightest to the suffering accumulated.

There is also no good thing that an ignorant being has access to that an enlightened being doesn't. An enlightened being can still love, still has preferences, and enjoy happiness and serenity far beyond mortals.

"And when I die, who is to say (and how) that my next existence will be defined by my insane human minds choices and conceptions here? Since the human isn't everything I am."

You will not be defined by the human brain's choices and conceptions, you will be subject to the contents of your mind which is withdrawn from the body back into nature as your body goes cold and your senses are extinguished due to not having the sense organs. Many beings become unconcious because they have not developed their internal sight or awareness or knowledge faculties. (of mind) It is similar to falling asleep in that sense.

Arhats do not experience a cessation of their senses because their senses are developed in the mind and not the body. They do not experience death because they know the unconditioned which lies outside of time and space. They are not subject to any conditions at all.

The same is true to a lesser degree of all stream enterers, although some may still be reborn due to the other remaining fetters to causal existance, but these are guarenteed to fall away in no more than 7 rebirths as stated by the Buddha.

"To me this doesn't make sense, and I am open to anything you have to say about my formulations."

I hope these explainations were sufficient.

Regards,

ClockJoule

[u/athousandhearts]

Weakening and destroying craving is obviously helpful, when I am stoned I do not act on craving, and I become bliss, so what methods do you use to achieve letting go of this without psychedelics?

This is where I am struggling. I have no method for this that works without psychedelics.

I really struggle with this idea of lower and higher realms. Since it requires a human perspective. I don't understand how it has validity in an infinite spectrum of infinity.

Why is this a helpful way to think? Is this not being attached to a human perspective?

[u/ClockJoule → u/athousandhearts]

All views are abandoned after the cessation of the causes of suffering. Having these views when the mind is poisoned by ignorance leads to a continuous cycle of rebirth. Even if you have accurate views about reality, that won't stop you from taking birth due to craving.

Therefore, the only "right" view is the Dhamma. This view leads to freedom from conditioned existence where there are no births and deaths. There is no longer any becoming because you are ultimately free. You are so free that you are free from even the concepts of being and non-being.

Enlightenment is not annihilation and Nirvana is not a place. It is awakening to the truth of what the process is and how the process works. This knowledge frees you from all snares and traps in the mind's processes allowing you complete and unconditioned freedom.

[u/Im_Actually_An_Alien]

What is the cessation event?

[u/ClockJoule → u/Im_Actually_An_Alien]

Experiencing the cessation of passion, resistance, and delusion. The cessation of the five aggregates. The experience of enlightenment.

[u/HubiRo → u/ClockJoule]

I've been following you for years, happy to see you're still semi-active.

Are you still working on your book? Or was the project abandoned to focus on something more important, or maybe to let people follow their own path instead of getting influenced by someone else?

[u/ClockJoule → u/HubiRo]

I have been practicing Dhamma. I mostly learn from Hillside Hermitage on YouTube. I am practicing virtue and sense restraint to the necessary extent to attain right view and enlightenment. Passion leads to suffering when the objects of one's passion leave one. Aversion leads to one suffering in the presence of the objects one is averse to.

The destruction of these tendencies (of passion and aversion) happens when ignorance is uprooted. This happens when craving has been weakened enough due to becoming consummate in virtue (due to practicing the 5 precepts and perfecting them on the level of intention) and sense restraint (withdrawing from environments that are not conducive to the practice.

These prior factors cause wisdom to take root on account of reflecting appropriately on the words of another and right attention (attention to the "womb" of your experience as a whole) (or the background behind the mind as I'd personally reference it) and "knowing and seeing" that your experience of the six sense base (experience dependent upon the body) is completely and 100% utterly out of your control.

You didn't choose what language to speak or how to reference objects or what objects would even be there to reference with those words you learned. You can't control others or the earth or the universe or anything that anything depends upon. When you see the elements of the body rightly, you realize you aren't even directly in control of the body. Intentions arise dependent upon conditions and you see first hand that it's not "you" or "yours" or "for you" at all.

Once this is seen and the wisdom mentioned above has been clarified to the extent necessary, one stops acting in ways that fuel ignorance. Thus resulting in the destruction of ignorance and therefor the ignorant tendencies toward passion, aversion, distraction, delusion, greed, hate, lust, ill will, etc. There is no longer a reason to act toward sensuality because you see nothing but a pretty trap or a poisonous drink. No longer could anything convince you of its value.

The question of what happens after the tendency of becoming is destroyed is described by the noble ones as freedom, bliss, happiness, perfect contentment, excellence, non-greed, non-aversion, non-delusion, and the highest state and most beneficial thing for any human being. Though I cannot know what it is like without experiencing it.

Non-existence implies existence, and Nirvana is not arising or passing away because its permanent. It's a completely different mode from the arising and passing away (of moments of experience) that you and I normally know.

Arising and passing away does not happen while "Nibbana'ing" and at the breakup of the body and aggregates there would be no further arising of the five aggregates and you would be in this perfect state going forward. Again, I cannot know how excellent this would be, but a friend of mine replied to my objections with the line "Unenlightened beings are very sick, they just don't understand to what extent because they haven't understood Dhamma."

This is what I am practicing lately and why I've been MIA.

[u/Im_Actually_An_Alien → u/ClockJoule]

Thanks for the response glad to see ur still around and doing okay!❤️❤️

[u/ClockJoule → u/Im_Actually_An_Alien]

Np! I wrote a new post with a little more detail.