What is spirituality

[Guest]

i thought of that, but i imagined that if you meet buddha on the road...how can you know it is buddha ? you would have to ask him first, and the quote does not mention any form of talk.
i have now understood, it is zen. so simplistic and at the same time so beautiful. thank you very much for teaching me something today, spice. i'm affraid i cannot do the same thing for you.

 

[spice]

I learn from you all the time, daytripper.




edit......If YOU think he is the buddha, kill him....then you defeat your own concepts of buddha...

Its easy to overanalyze it, and try to hang too many words on it...simply

'drop as many preconcieved ideas as possible'


In the ancient writings of Carlos Castenada, Don Juan Matus always berated Carlos for not being able to 'shut off the internal monologue'

Same thing...Don Juan was VERRRY Zen.

 

[st.bot.32]

When I was incredibly religous, spiritual was my relationship with what I believed was the spirit realm of God, angels and the whole kit and caboodle. When you are deeply religious, you BELIEVE. You FEEL it. And because your belief is the filter or lens through which you see the world, you continuously find reasons to believe, and it becomes a cyclical feedback system.

After the threads of my belief tore apart, I had no real spirituality for some time and probably had an incredible distrust of spirituality in general. At some point in getting away from my past I had to reject god, abandon god, even hate god (or what i had been taught was god). The proverbial "Bhudda on the road."

Eventually I reflected that the recipe for life is practically encoded into the universe. That if the universe collapsed and was reborn, life would resume again.

That the universe is capable of containing such phenomenon as self-awareness, creativity and curiosity leads me to believe that there is something greater going on than the reality I see in front of me. Perhaps this will become more clear with time, if we survive our gradual awakening to the grandeur of the universe without destroying ourselves in the process.

 

[buffachino]

That the universe is capable of containing such phenomenon as self-awareness, creativity and curiosity leads me to believe that there is something greater going on than the reality I see in front of me.

It’s not really greater than any reality, only the idea of reality (again, the conceptualisation of terminology),
for within everything we can observe lies the same essence of all things.
A perceptual mannerism symbolic of experience it may be, but the understanding is still the same.
The nature of existence resides in all, even the most mundane elements of what we call reality.

A mirror, a window, into ourselves. This is what we are.

 

[magickmumu]

The Way that can be told of is not an unvarying way;
The names that can be named are not unvarying names.
It was from the Nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang;
The named is but the mother that rears the ten thousand creatures, each after its kind.
(from the tao te ching chapter 1)

Knowing others is wisdom;
Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force;
Mastering the self requires strength;
He who knows he has enough is rich.
Perseverance is a sign of will power.
He who stays where he is endures.
To die but not to perish is to be eternally present. (chap. 33 tao te ching)

The game is not about becoming somebody, it's about becoming nobody

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

What is spirituality ? What does it mean to be spiritual ? What do i have to do , or what strategy do i have to follow to live a spiritual life?

short and sweet please

I would answer by first defining spirit. You may have another definition of spirit, and thus another understanding of what spirituality means.

Spirit is commonly understood to be the opposite of matter. But as we learn more about this universe, the boundaries between matter and spirit seem to dissolve. The splitting up of the world into matter and spirit is typical of many religions, which say that only God and the soul are spiritual, and all else (including nature) is matter. To be involved with God is to be spiritual, and to be involved with the flesh is material, they say. 19th and 20th century scientists similarly divided the world into what is real (matter) and what is unreal (whatever cannot be grasped by the current tools available to science).

I used to have all kinds of ideas about the spiritual world, and how to get there permanently, but I've given up on such wishful thinking. All I know for certain now is that I'm aware of things. I've come to identify myself with that awareness. I don't identify myself, or try not to, with anything else: body, name, thoughts, wealth etc. So in that sense, for me to live a spiritual life means to detach myself cognitively from whatever is temporary and fleeting, to simply observe and be satisfied being an observer, in whatever body or dimension it may be.

Spiritual may also stand for one's psychological condition. Psychiatrist M.Scott Peck equates spiritual growth with psychological growth. I dig that.

Personally, I don't try to live a "spiritual" life, but a progressive life: constantly learning new information and, when I'm not too lazy, new skills. And with constantly I mean to the degree that it is possible. If one can obtain a job in which one can learn new things and share them with others, that is preferable over other types of work (to me that is). And to not be a burden to anyone else, or to the planet (this is where vegetarianism, recycling, not lying etc. come in).

So how do the psychedelics fit into all these aspects of spirituality? Well, they are great for practicing detached observation. They are known to aid people in their psychological growth. They flood the brain with visual information and new thoughts, teaching one new things, which can be shared with others. And tripping, in silent darkness, is never a burden to anyone.

 

[HeartCore]

Spiritual life suggests the possibility of the opposite. So what would that be? Non spiritual life? Spiritlless life? Non- entity?

To my mind, spirituality is a concept introduced in the western culture to enable the possibility of turning believe systems & ancient practices into commodity.

'Get this book to enhance your spiritual life'

It's a load of crap when you think about it really.

Questions like this become hopelessly irrelevant on five dried grams in my experience

 

[Guest]

Haha, good one HC! :thumbsup:

"Anybody who gives you a beliefsystem is your enemy."
Osho

 

[spice]

This is why zen can only be lived when the subject is not taken seriously. Once you begin to try to rigorously assert and apply the lessons of zen, you fall out of touch with it.

Your 'grasping' or 'clinging' to the subject ruins the zen, REGARDLESS of the depths of your understanding.

Masters frequently corrected each other, when one would stray from the tenets of zen.....the literature is rife with amusing stories.

A heavy handed, absolutist view of zen destroys its zen. Zen must be practiced with a light heart.

Zen is also a form of unrepressing feelings. True practitioners of zen do not bottle up their feelings, they express them, completely and fully...then they LET GO of it...they do not cling to it. they may return to it, but they do not hold it in.

Master 1 - " How can you tell if you are in touch with the Tao?
Master 2- " I am already out of touch with the Tao!!!"

 

[poisoninthestain]

...two zen monk students were standing atop a hillside by their temple staring at the leaves of a tree blowing in the wind...the one monk said to the other

"look at the leaves moving in the wind!"

to which the other replied "no it is the wind that moves, not the leaves!"

...they argued for hours over whether it was the wind or leaves that were moving the other...finally a zen master teacher overheard them talking and approached them saying...

"It is neither the wind nor leaves, but your mind which moves!"

-Huang Po(my fav. zen master and best IMO hands down)

 

[Forkbender]

Spirituality is unlearning.

 

[restin]

@ spice:

I am really impressed by the teachings of zen you quote here...can you tell me the name of a book or so where I can find the different teachings of zen?

and another question,not less important: how to understand it?

 

[spice]

'The Way of Zen'

by Alan Watts


you won't regret it.

 

[restin]

thanks a lot