Jim_Smith
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No self is as misunderstood as oneness. It doesn't cause indifference.
When someone realizes "I AM Everything", oneness, he feels a connectedness to all things. It produces compassion. After he realizes no-self, the understanding of connectedness of all things remains, and so the compassion remains. In fact, the connectedness and compassion, if anything, increases because then there is nothing that is considered self for even the tiniest infinitesimal of selfishness to grow out of.
You have to experience it to understand it.
https://enlightenmentward.wordpress...shodo-harada-roshi-segment-4-of-7-transcript/
https://enlightenmentward.wordpress...shodo-harada-roshi-segment-5-of-7-transcript/
When someone realizes "I AM Everything", oneness, he feels a connectedness to all things. It produces compassion. After he realizes no-self, the understanding of connectedness of all things remains, and so the compassion remains. In fact, the connectedness and compassion, if anything, increases because then there is nothing that is considered self for even the tiniest infinitesimal of selfishness to grow out of.
You have to experience it to understand it.
https://enlightenmentward.wordpress...shodo-harada-roshi-segment-4-of-7-transcript/
I took everything out of the monastery. I left prepared for never coming back and I headed for the mountains. And I went here and there in the mountains sitting by myself, sitting as hard as I could. Not even knowing what day it was Not even knowing how much time I was spending there. I just went and sat and sat and sat in various places in the mountains.
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And I realized right then the mistake I was making and I went right back to the monastery. I knew what I had to do now And at that moment it was like all of my burdens dropped off, as if someone had hit me on the back and everything was awakened within. I realized there was nothing I needed to do for myself in the first place. If every moment that came along I just took it as it was then there was nothing that could be a problem to me any more.
That small narrow way in which I had been looking at my enlightenment, my thing to have to do. I have to do this for myself. That is what had been bothering me all along from the very beginning. Through that day on the mountain when I realized that there was no self to be bothered with it.
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Often enlightenment or kensho or satori is considered to be some kind of unusual experience or something external or some kind of special phenomenon. But it’s not like that. There may be some kind of sudden revelation or some kind of sudden perception, but its not something that is that unusual or that strange or foreign that we come upon or that comes upon us. What it is, is the ability to see without any interruption of the ego, without any filtering of the ego. And since we are all walking around seeing things through our ego filter almost all the time, to suddenly be able to see without that filter is a surprise. But it is nothing that we have ever not had.
They say that the mind of a baby is something that we can compare this to. A baby isn’t seeing things from an egoistic place. It is seeing directly and clear. It is the exact same kind of thing when we are seeing without the ego filter. We see that there is nothing to be analyzed in it. When you are seeing a flower you are not thinking that it is red or seeing a bird you are not thinking what its name is. You are just seeing directly. When we talk about enlightenment we are talking about that mind which is perceive at every moment without the obstruction of an egoistic filter. The experience of that mind and realizing where it is and realizing where it is coming from is what is called enlightenment or kensho or satori. It is not some kind of supernatural state of mind that we are able to enter or that comes upon us. It is not like some kind of altered state of consciousness to think that we are trying to do this practice for some kind of narrow experience for the individual. Thinking that we are going to come upon some big experience some day. This is a very low level understanding of what this enlightenment is.
https://enlightenmentward.wordpress...shodo-harada-roshi-segment-5-of-7-transcript/
...
And I realized right then the mistake I was making and I went right back to the monastery. I knew what I had to do now And at that moment it was like all of my burdens dropped off, as if someone had hit me on the back and everything was awakened within. I realized there was nothing I needed to do for myself in the first place.
...
When I came back from the mountain I knew from what had happened there exactly what I had to do. I understood that until that time I had been sitting and living with a very small egoistic idea of what it was I was doing all this for. It had been an egoistic urge that had carried me to the mountains in the first place even though what I was trying to do was to reach a deep enlightenment experience. So when I came back to the monastery I didn’t have that sense any more. I knew then that my life wasn’t about my own problems. Those problems didn’t exist. What I had to do with my life was to live it totally with the purpose of bringing this crystal awareness to other people. That’s all I really wanted to do.
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This expansive mind, this mind that sees directly knows the all inclusiveness, is aware of the connection between everything. Because when you get rid of that ego that’s all you see is one unified whole. That connection of everything in one’s being is what is apparent when that ego is gone away. But as long as we all hold onto our ego because we are forced to by what society demands of us, unless we free ourselves from that and return to that clear mind, we will never be able to solve that suffering, that deep anguish that comes from our separation from everything including each other. For this reason this possibility of a way to get out of that ego bind to relieve ourselves of that and get back to that true mind which is clear and huge and all embracing is very, very important right now
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