Is enlightenment an illusion?

Booda did something for me. He made me understand that we should not blindly believe books or gurus. We must think for ourselves and be brave enough to accept our conclusions even if they differ from the majority. The rest was done by Sankara who said 'Brahma satyam, jagan-mithya; jeevo ..'.

:booda smile:

Sorry, you are speaking a language I don't know.

I think that you confuse J. Krishnamurti's method with the subject itself. His method of explaining the path to realization or rather refusal to accept any concepts was derived from Buddha's method in which the truth can be only described in negative terms. Nirvana is a negative term. And when you advance in practice you don't accumulate knowledge, you rather learn how to cut off and discern what is false.

I find Krishnamurti unoriginal. There is nothing new in his teachings. What makes him standout is his many works/books on one idea. While the same idea was expressed in small doses elsewhere.

Leo Tolstoy wrote many books on humbleness. He was a champion on this subject. Nobody before him dared to be such a parrot. But there was nothing new in his writings. He just expressed old ideas at another Tolstovian angle.

My favorite eastern text is "Yoga Sutras" by Patanjali.

I think following anyone's 'path' including our own, always leads back to the structure of the mind, which is put together through experience and memory. All teachings are learned and put to memory just like the name you were given by your parents. What people call a path is going from one place to another. A progression where you feel you are getting/going somewhere. Of course, you try, and there are insights that happen. Those insights, no matter how deep we feel them to be, I think are still part of the mind's struggle to free itself. The whole search has to lose steam somehow. Some people can point to this and explain it more clearly than others, be it booda or the Krishnamurti tag team. All of these teachers or philosophers don't have to say anything original because none of it is original. It's all inherited within the human framework and rehashed over and over again, presented in slightly different ways according to one's background.

The point is we are all dealing with the memory and thought process which we are interpreting every moment with. It is the sense of self or I. We think there is a progression. This I goes from ignorance to enlightenment. It's never going to happen. This I is only the structure of thought and memory and there is nothing you have in your toolbox to change this. Discerning what is false is necessary. But, to mistake this as a progression is also false, another case of I becoming in a negative sense. It is inescapable as the structure of thought struggles to live on. Your will or whatever tool you bring out, cannot put an end to this. Those in which this structure has collapsed, the 'enlightened', have never been able to put forth a path or instruction that has led to this. Whether it's grace or ET that tips the scale, it's not you who can do anything. And, in the words of UG, 'you' will not be there to experience this.

Sorry for the long winded spiel.

I experience it, now as before. The path is to collect knowledge and analyse on your own. As you said, many are good at long winded spiels that get you nowhere.

How is collecting knowledge and analyzing going to help you with this matter? All knowledge is memory, it is not alive. All analysis uses this memory which is dead. The idea of path is mind-created, a sequence leading to a goal. Everything within that structure is dead. Seeing what is, is the first and only step you need to take.

Here is a voice a friend sent to me which points at this very point and for which the writer was burned at the stake for. A 14th century Christian in France wrote:

The best [...] is this, that you should fully realize your nothingness. Then you will do nothing, and that nothingness will help you attain everything

[Such a soul] has [...] no hope in what she can do, but solely in the goodness of God. And by the hidden treasure of this quality alone she has been inwardly destroyed to such a degree that all her emotions [...] are dead. So much so that such a soul no longer performs any deeds, neither for God nor for herself.

This soul is aware of only one thing, namely, of the fact that she knows nothing. And that is why she wants only one thing, namely this, that she does not want anything. And this non-knowing and non-wanting give her everything.

This then is how this soul sees without seeing [by means of] the depth of humility [...] But it is this very non-seeing which enables her to know herself completely.

It is the pretentious sense of nature by which the lost ones allow themselves to be guided, satisfying themselves by themselves, which bars them from their abyss. This means that they are neither capable of realizing the nakedness of this abyss, nor do they have full confidence in God's goodness. And so they remain with their deeds.

[Marguerite Porete]

Sounds more like Sankara's Advaita Vedanta to me,probably because they are all trying to point to the same thing.KK

Oh you were doing so well until you slipped in the quote of your old favourite with his no method method just like JK's.

"You can't do it" this sums up JK's teaching for me,but to understand this & realise it are two different things.KK

You are sounding very JKish Scando. (which i don't have a problem with!)KK

This sounds just like my "Knowing the unknowable through unknowing the knowable" which i mentioned to you in another thread & you poo pooed it & said it was nonsense. KK

The Krishnamurti tag team are part of my background, KK. Can't get away from them. It's like Laurel & Hardy.

Didn't you like that other quote I slipped in? I figured it was time to unleash the feminine spirit in here.

Can I change my mind?

I get it, KK. Just keeping you honest. Isn't contradiction part of the whole dialog?

Very much so

Thank you, sir!

Hmm, another fine mess!KK