Functional to what end?
Meditation
- Thread starter Bowser
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spidergoat
Valued Senior Member
Up to you.
By Jessie Eastland - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61912268
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spidergoat
Valued Senior Member
Once you say that enlightenment should lead to some specific thing then it's an ideology, and screw that.
If you kick out the legs from under an idea--any idea--what remains?
spidergoat
Valued Senior Member
Freedom.
Then we're in agreement.
Freedom is a nice idea.
But is it real?
The problem with freedom is not so much whether it is real or not ... but rather whether it is persistent.
In otherwords, once one is "free", what does one do? Often its the case that one goes and enters problems.
The example is there of an elephant that cleanses itself if all dirt by entering a river. But immediately upon exiting the river, they throw dirt and dust all over their body.
spidergoat
Valued Senior Member
We aren't talking about ideas, but freedom from thought.
Depends on how you define your freedom. If we cling to those things that are illusory, are we not slaves to our desires?
I would agree. Accepting that life involves problems might be the first step in accepting one's freedom. Death can be looked at as a problem, or just the flip side of life.
Which serves a purpose.
Hence the pursuit of illusory desires renders freedom non-persistent.
Yes, if one cannot recognize the inherent problems of a situation, at the very onset, they lack the tools to solve it. Death is the ultimate level playing field of everyone ... so for those who's primary goals lie in honours, wealth, fame etc (ie, the standard means by which the playing field is rendered unleveled), death becomes the ultimate, irreconcilable problem.
The point is not to suggest that elephants would stand to benefit by not dusting themselves off in such a manner. Rather its a metaphor for habitually seeking a degraded state after striving for a higher state. The idea is that a properly acquired higher taste should render the need to go back to a lower taste obsolete.
spidergoat
Valued Senior Member
Go higher or go lower, you're still on shaky ground.
Only inasmuch as the endeavour to go higher also requires that one go lower afterwards.
Okay.
Or possibly we see a problem where none exist.
The degraded state is possibly where we find our freedom. Should I judge the state of the beggar in relation to my own? Who's right?
spidergoat
Valued Senior Member
Compared to what? If there is no ground, there is no altitude.
If we are attached to something that will shortly cease to exist, we have a problem
Degraded states (states where we are attached to things that will inevitably cease to exist) are not conducive to freedom. Given that material things (like wealth) will inevitably cease to exist, being a (material) beggar is not a degraded (nor an elevated) material position. It is merely a material position. If someone is described as a spiritual beggar (ie, bereft of any clue in spiritual life), that case may be different.
If one is not constantly returning to lower states, the altitude is self evident.
Which would lend itself to the illusion of security. Equally to the illusion of danger. What's your point?
Okay. I don't believe we are in disagreement here.
The Spiritual Life and the Spiritual Beggar defined by who? It sounds like you have an idea what those two might be.