Had to shorten the title from original words due to title limits
Anyway there's this new article I just noticed today, in Dharma
Dan's website, written by him. I think this problem isn't very
common among forummers here, though I have seen this problem very
prevalent in many other places, and thought it's worth sharing so
that we all can be clear about this point and not get confused by
what might be said by others.
About this article which I shared with Thusness, Thusness thinks
that it is a very very good article though it missed out certain
great practitioners who realised self-liberation* with no prior
practices (very rare, cream of the enlightened, manifests of great
bodhisattvas/practitioners/buddhas, etc), or certain
pratyekabuddhas, a.k.a those of direct path (which btw, would mean
that the person had done lots of practices in previous lifetimes as
well) and therefore is able to attain great awakening in no time.
For most of us, the following article is going to contain a lot of
good info that cuts through all the bullshit that is taught in many
places.
*Note for readers: Self-liberation does not mean that a self
liberates himself or herself from delusorily valued thoughts or
delusory experiences; what it means is that delusorily valued
thoughts and delusory experiences liberate themselves spontaneously
(which may take place in three main ways). (Source: http://eliascapriles.dzogchen.ru/self-liberation.pdf)
------------------------
Source: http://www.interactivebuddha.com/bullshit.shtml
Why The Notion That You Cannot Become What You Already Are
is Such Bullshit
(by Dharma Dan, Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH, Arahat)
There was a guy on a blogsite to which I sometimes post who kept
inserting comments in our discussion such as you can not become
what you already are, awakening is not about more knowledge but
instead about less knowledge, and that awakening happens regardless
of study and meditation. I have encountered this vile point of view
and its variants before, and so replied as follows, in slightly
edited form:
Dear [delusional view-poster],
Somehow I just cannot resist countering your point of view with
every bit of rhetorical force I have despite the fact that I am
afraid the number who listen will be few.
Here is a detailed analysis of what is wrong with that perspective
on a number of fronts:
The notion that you cannot become what you already are implies a
whole host of conceptual problems that I will claim do not lead to
much that is good that cannot be attained by conceptual frameworks
that are not so problematic. Here is a list of the problems:
1) This notion encourages people to not practice. You can say what
you like, but again and again I see people who subscribe to this
and similar notions resting on their cleverness and grand
posteriors and not actually getting it in the same way that my
accomplished meditator friends get it. It seems so comforting, this
notion that you are already something that you, in fact, are not.
This brings us to the question of what you are and are not.
2) This notion solidifies a True Self teaching almost by
definition. From any cursory analysis, what we are from an insight
point of view is an extrapolation of continuity from a pattern of
utterly fresh, transient, ephemeral, causal sensations. Anything
added to this is extraneous from an insight point of view. Try as
people might, a True Self in an experiential sense cannot be found.
Thus, the notion that people already are something begs the
question: What are they? It tends to imply that they are already
something such as perfect, enlightened, realized, awakened, or
something even worse such as Awareness, Cosmic Consciousness, The
Atman, an aspect of The Divine, etc. all of which cannot actually
be found. While Buddhism does sometimes go there, such as using
terms such as Dharmakaya and Buddha Nature, these are very
slippery, high concepts that were added later and require a ton of
explanation and practice experience to keep them from becoming the
monsters they nearly always become in less experienced hands.
3) Awakening involves clearly perceiving universal characteristics
of phenomena. While one can attempt to rest comfortably in the
notion that as these universal characteristics are there anyway,
the whole, core, essential, root point of all this is that there is
something to be gained by becoming one of the people that can
actually directly perceive this clearly enough to fundamentally
change the way reality is perceived in real-time. The straight
truth is that the vast majority of people do not start out being
able to do this at all. The notion that everyone already is someone
who can perceive reality this way without effort in real-time is a
fantastic falsehood, lie, untruth, and in short, one great load of
apathy-creating bullshit. Said another say, your notion, namely
that one cannot become one of the people who can perceive this
because everyone already is a clear perceiver of highest caliber,
is a profound delusion and simply does not hold up to reality
testing.
If one goes around asking people without very good insight into
these things, i.e. the unenlightened, about basic dharma points,
points that are obvious to those who have learned to pay attention
well, one does not find that everyone already is a person who is
perceiving things at the level that makes the difference the dharma
promises. Further, even those of lower levels of enlightenment
generally have a hard time saying they really are able to perceive
the emptiness, luminosity, selflessness, causality, transience,
ephemerality, etc. of reality in real-time at all times without
having to really do anything. In short, your notion that this is as
easy as just being what you already are is wildly off the mark, as
the vast majority of people are woefully underdeveloped on the
perceptual front in question.
Thus, all reality testing reveals that your notion is missing a
very fundamental point: while the universal characteristics are
always manifesting in all things and at all times, there are those
that can perceive this well and those that cannot, and meditative
training, conceptual frameworks, techniques, teachers, texts,
discussions and the like can all contribute to developing the
internal skills and wiring to be able to fully realize what is
possible, as thousands of practitioners throughout the ages have
noticed.
I have no idea where you are getting this bizarre notion, except
that perhaps you are reading The Power of Now, following
Adiashanti, or some other tradition that for reasons completely
beyond me assumes that everyone already has the powers of
perception of the rarest perceptual superstars.
I myself have known before and after, meaning that I know what I
was capable of perceiving and understanding before I underwent
meditative training and after, and no amount of being fed the
concept that I was already as developed as I could be, was already
enlightened, was already there, had nothing to do, nothing to
develop, was already as clear as I could be, was already perfectly
awake, etc. was going to make the difference that the thousands of
hours over years of increasing my ability to perceive things
clearly did.
