enlightened beings of our time

[VancitySean]

i like to know who are all the humans in our time that are enlightened.

some names that comes to my mind are

ekhar tollie ( author of power of now )
david hawkins ( power vs force )
mooji

[Morning Dew]

Go back to meditating! Let the past be in the past!

Remain relaxed

[mik1e]

 
Guys who are really enlightened are not well known. They are not interested in going public and printing books for dummies. There are exceptions (e.g. Swami Rama), but they are really rare. So, any name put in such list is not the name of really enlightened person.

[rideforever]

I have been interested to understand how many have attained.  It seems like a tremendously difficult task to communicate something to a human being, and I am sure that of those who attain only a few do so.

Also, people generally seem extremely confused/distracted/uninterested.  But most people - I think - have had mystical experiences ... but they just have not admitted that fact to themselves or have really looked at it - but it has happened to most people.  The fact that most people do not discuss it, shows the degree or repression that society is.

But for sure this is a distraction from attaining.  There is only now, here, one.

[Morning Dew]

Little mind worm drilling through the conciousness;
"i want to be sure this meditation thingy is going to be worthwhile, otherwise i might end up feeling like an ars meditating for 20 years without attaining the thingy called enlightenment, i might end up being such a looser " lol

If you desire enlightenment there are folks selling it on e-bay as we speak!
Krishna conciousness 12$
Jesus conciousness 7$ + bonus CD with betta waves to help you fall a sleep
LoL

Excuse my French remain relaxed

[Matthew]

Enlightened is a messed up translation. Awake or aware are better ones.

I don't see evidence of any fully awake persons in our time. Tolle has a better grip than most westerners but I haven't met him so can't give a definitive answer, however, the manifestation of his teachings is too weak for me to suspect he is fully awake.

[boe]

"who's enlightened?"
- this is gossipping!



i will join  
i think bruce lee had a pretty good grip on things.

besides being an artial martist and actor, he was very interested in philosophy (meditation).
he believed that practicing martial arts, pushing your body to new limits can be a way to help
you transcend the identification with the body. but he didn't say that physical sports is a requirement.

below are some quotes by bruce lee.



“Let the spirit out - Discard all thoughts of reward, all hopes of praise and fears of blame, all awareness of one's bodily self. And, finally closing the avenues of sense perception, let the spirit out, as it will.” - Bruce lee

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” Bruce lee

my idea about e. tolle:
i have suspected of him in the past,
that he is one of those "teachers" that makes his teaching abstract and vague on purpose.
so that people would be reliant on him
to make themselves feel good. to keep buying his books or attending his "satsangs".

i am not sure if this suspicion was/is true

[kidnovice]

Hi all,

I hope you don't mind that I make the following suggestion.  This conversation will be meaningless unless we clearly define what we understand as "enlightenment."  Granted, that would be a really challenging thing to do, and would spark all kinds of debate. But if you don't have THAT discussion, then realistically,you can't have a conversation about who may or may not be enlightened (and maybe you shouldn't!?).  

After all, if we haven't agreed on what we're measuring, how are we going to agree that a person measures up?

Metta,
KN

[boe]

for me the word enlightened means:
someone who has attained the mental ability to transcend the principle of "craving" and "aversion",
and who can be very very happy at all times just by using his mind.

better word than enlightenment might be:
"mastery"...

some people master meditation,
other people master sports or sciences.

so buddha might not have been enlightened, he was just a master in meditation.

[kidnovice]

I think Boe's definition is a great start. I might quibble over the word "transcend," and opt for saying "absolutely completely and utterly free from."  But we're on the same page. We are essentially talking about Arhants. And since I buy into the Theravadan model, here is what Wikipedia has to say about that   

An arahant is a person who has destroyed greed, hatred, and delusion  - the unwholesome roots which underlie all fetters - who upon decease will not be reborn in any world, having wholly cut off all fetters that bind a person to the samsara. In the Pali Canon, the word is sometimes used as a synonym for tathagata.

In Theravada  Buddhism the Buddha himself is first identified as an arahant, as are his enlightened followers, because they are free from all defilements, without greed, hatred, delusion, ignorance and craving, lacking "assets" which will lead to future birth, the arahant knows and sees the real here and now. This virtue shows stainless purity, true worth, and the accomplishment of the end, nibbana.[9]

In the Pali canon, Ānanda states that he knows monastics to achieve nibbana in one of four ways:[original research?]

    * one develops insight preceded by serenity (Pali: samatha-pubbaṇgamaṃ vipassanaṃ),
    * one develops serenity preceded by insight (vipassanā-pubbaṇgamaṃ samathaṃ),
    * one develops serenity and insight in a stepwise fashion (samatha-vipassanaṃ yuganaddhaṃ),
    * one's mind becomes seized by excitation about the dhamma and, as a consequence, develops serenity and abandons the fetters (dhamma-uddhacca-viggahitaṃ mānasaṃ hoti).[10][11]

[Matthew]

I hope you don't mind that I make the following suggestion.  This conversation will be meaningless unless we clearly define what we understand as "enlightenment."  ...

Enlightened is a messed up translation. Awake or aware are better ones.
....

[joy]

I hope you don't mind that I make the following suggestion.  This conversation will be meaningless unless we clearly define what we understand as "enlightenment."  ...

Enlightened is a messed up translation. Awake or aware are better ones.
....

And unless one is awake/aware how one can decide?
As you correctly say 99.9.. % have little or no chance to awake!
Isn't like blind men's description of elephant or person wants to decide who is awake while he himself is fast asleep?

[mik1e]

I hope you don't mind that I make the following suggestion.  This conversation will be meaningless unless we clearly define what we understand as "enlightenment."  

I am used to think that "enlightenment" is equivalent of entering the bodhi plane (becoming a buddha). This is well defined state. Energies of this plane are bright and shining, so, seers see such a person as shining being (enlightened). On the other hand, these energies are tightly related to high level of consciousness, so the person in this state becomes "awaken".

[Morning Dew]

I hope you lads dont mind me saying it but we are all full of s..t how do i know this ? It usualy starts to smell bad!

Remain relaxed ... unless you cant

[joy]

I hope you lads dont mind me saying it but we are all full of s..t how do i know this ? It usualy starts to smell bad!

Remain relaxed ... unless you cant

It has certain smell! It is we who label it bad. Accept it as it is. Relax

[Matthew]

I hope you lads dont mind me saying it but we are all full of s..t how do i know this ? It usualy starts to smell bad!

Remain relaxed ... unless you cant

Hahahhahaha

So true. This is why we stay focussed on the practice questions here. As soon as one enters intellectual debate ego takes over in most cases.

[Crystal Palace]

I think we all need to relax now.


hehehehehe

[Morning Dew]

I am getting better at taking shit withot reacting to it, but yes i do label it still

[boe]

I checked Swami Rama, and he's not bad indeed.
Are you familiar with Nisargadatta? He's helped me muchos. (EDIT: SEE BELOW)

Some of the most helpful stuff i've read lately has been "Autogenic training in six easy steps".
It's a PDF you can easily find on google. I believe that autosuggestion and meditation are very similar.

You just have to "be" what you want to be.
If you want to be "the all enlightening awareness", then be that!

[Morning Dew]

So do you want to be boe?

[Inner Peace]

Yep, thoughts hooked, become aware of the topic, let it go, time to bring back the focus...


meditate.

[Joe]

Most of us on this forum are probably awake at some point during the day? As I see it, an enlightened mind just stays in that state. I.e it doesn't flip back to "conceptual mind".

[mik1e]

Are you familiar with Nisargadatta? He's helped me muchos.

I respect any advanced practitioner, but I myself don't think that Advaita is really true. I prefer Samkhya, as the point of view which is closer to modern science. Actually, the difference is that Samkhya teaches that the world is created due to two independent "cosmic forces" (Purusha and Prakriti), while Advaita tries to postulate that these forces (or fields of energy) are, actually, the emanations of some single "ultraforce" (Atman/Brahman). The rest is essentially the same.

"Dualistic" approach of Samkhya is more preferable from the point of view of modern science, because it allows (at least in principle) investigation of these forces or, at least, principles of their interaction. In this picture of world Atman/Brahman is simply unnecessary object. As for me, Atman/Brahman resembles very much "human matrix" described in Castaneda's book.

The root of Advaita theory, as I understand, is in the question: "What is the One, knowing which you will know everything?"

Ancient Indian philosophers understood that, despite the complexity of the world, there are very few driving forces behind it. But their mistake was the idea that there is only one force behind the whole world. This idea is natural, but misleading.

[boe]

i don't think it's true either, actually there's not a whole lot that i do really believe,
it just happens to be so that there are many different ways to explain someone in words how to get into a state of meditative enlightenment.

for some vipassana school is best, for others it might be a modern western approach like "autogenic training" by that german psychiatristtist guy, while for others it might be yoga.

myself, i've always been the skeptic who could never really give himself 100% to something
unless he knew exactly how it works. comparing different kinds of meditation has lead me to suspect that they probably all work, as long as you believe in it. (because that is what get the subconscious to either agree or disagree)

[rideforever]

If you believe in it or believe it not it, it's all the same it's all mind.

Can you have an experience of the world beyond mind.  Where questions of belief do not arise.