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you can think of enlightenment as a kind of permanent shift in perspective that comes about through direct realization that there is no thing called “self” inside you.
When the sensory experience of the mind-body becomes sufficiently clear and uninhibited, it ceases to be a rigid thing that imprisons your identity. The sensory self becomes a comfortable home, not a jail cell. That’s why enlightenment is sometimes referred to as liberation.
People wish they were at some other place on the path, and they struggle to get there. When we think about spirituality as a path, we create the idea of enlightenment as an object out there in the future, separate from ourselves.
equanimity. Equanimity is the ability to allow sensory experience to well up without suppression and to pass away without identifying with it.
Enlightenment is not a peak from which you descend over time. It is a plateau from which you ascend, further and further as the months, years, and decades pass.
For me, this cold-water purification was a horrific ordeal. Maybe being a thin-skinned Californian had something to do with it. I did notice, however, that if I stayed in a state of high concentration while I did it, my distress was noticeably lessened. On the other hand, as soon as my attention wandered, the suffering became unbearable. I could see that this whole training situation was a giant biofeedback device designed to keep a person in some degree of samadhi at all times.
Meditation is the key to this kind of nonmythical life extension. The central feature of any meditation system from anywhere around the world is that, by developing an extraordinary degree of focus and presence, it allows you to live your life two or three hundred percent “bigger.”
Rigorous research by people in the positive psychology movement has shown that a concentrated state is intrinsically rewarding, and that reward is independent of the content of one’s experience.
life. Common Misconceptions about Concentration
Experience Very broadly, there are three aspects to religious or spiritual
AI Summary
The Science of Enlightenment by Shinzen Young presents key insights from the Zen tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
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Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.
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