WHAT CONSTITUTES AWAKENING & SELF-REALIZATION? RICK ARCHER: But then you have to wonder among the group of people who are actually interested in this stuff, and even claiming to have awakenings, it would be interesting if there were a clearer understanding – or a charting – of the degrees of awakenings that they are having. For instance, I heard an interesting quote from an old Zen master recently – I don’t remember his name – and he said, “Well, I’ve had 17 major awakenings and countless minor ones.” You don’t usually hear that kind of talk among contemporary spirituality, there is not the sort of fine discrimination about degrees of awakening, and so on - it’s usually just “awakening.” IGOR KUFAYEV: Let’s face it, that the New Age and perhaps the currently prevalent Nondualist tendency is to view self-realization as something which is already a given, so there is really no need to self-realize yourself. RICK: Because you are already realized. IGOR: Exactly! You are already realized because nothing is separate from Consciousness, hence all there is, is That. RICK: That’s just an understanding. IGOR: Exactly.That still vibrates on the level of dichotomized thought; it belongs to the domain of the language, and language is the greatest limitation. RICK: A lot of people seem to be assuming that that is what realization is – just this intuitive, familiarity with the essential non-dual nature of life. And in many cases, when that becomes clear to them, in many cases they assume that that is what is meant by liberation. IGOR: Yes, as I said, this is normal because when certain teachings are basically watered down, when a lot of nuances and subtleties are being removed or brushed aside as not so important, let’s face it, the western approach tends to extract everything very quickly; and the intellectual penetration into the essence, it is because we have a long history of science which is still there on a genetic level. There is this tendency to go to the core, cut through what have you in order to say, “Okay, I’ve got it!” But it’s not like that with spiritual knowledge; if you remove something, you remove a very important layer which vibrates on its own, and has value of its own. So this is why - the example of the Zen master, the Buddhist practitioner with 17 awakenings which he described as major and minor - because there is this subtlety, and there are those nuances that exist in their culture that cannot be just brushed off as irrelevant because all of this constitutes part of the greater whole, and every part of that greater whole cannot be neglected on the basis that it is less relevant because the greater is still greater, because it is applicable to that particular situation. There still are beings who are contained within the bound physiology in space-time convention. So in my view, that is the beauty of journey of it all if you will; it is a pathless path – we agree on that, but the journey is that at the same time we are realizing our essential nature and yet we are constantly embodying – living from moment-to-moment within this physiology, within this human body, experiencing it – all the register of emotions and feelings, interactions with each other, and what have you. So this kind of clinical approach, “Okay, I’ve figured it all out,” only creates a mood, and that mood can take you just that far – but not further. And you are bound to fall on your butt sooner or later... Excerpt from the 2nd interview with Rick Archer for the Buddha at the Gas Pump Transcribed by Sita (Daria Schneidman-Fernandez)
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 20:41:43 +0000
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