My biggest source of frustration with Already Free is Tift saying that the developmental and fruitional views “create a rich friction that’s never resolvable”, and how, similarly, you can’t resolve two concepts like connection and separateness, or have one without the other. These parts of the book feel like mysterious answers to mysterious questions.
Alas, this is true. You can resolve the great matter, see through the illusion of the separate self, enter PNSE, and be an enlightened being, but with the seeming exception of a handful of people, it’s the work of a lifetime to deal with the habits of mind that make us who we are and adjust them when we discover that they’ve become maladaptive (why? because everything is always changing!).
Sorry, I’m having trouble understanding. If you’d like to give more detail, I’d appreciate it! Are you saying it’s true that these views/concepts aren’t resolvable? Or that it takes a lifetime of work to resolve them?
It also sounds like you’re saying that, even after reaching enlightenment, you’ll still have mental habits that become maladaptive over time. That’s interesting, it wasn’t my impression of what enlightenment was like.
I’m saying he’s right to say that the friction is unresolvable. I’m sure it does feel mysterious, but it’s actually very straightforward in a way that’s difficult to explain unless you can already see it. I wish it wasn’t like this. But it’s true that you both keep developing and that you’ve attained something (and the thing you attain is, in part, realizing there was nothing to attain in the first place!). Steve Byrnes has done a decent job of trying to explain it as well as anyone has.
It also sounds like you’re saying that, even after reaching enlightenment, you’ll still have mental habits that become maladaptive over time. That’s interesting, it wasn’t my impression of what enlightenment was like.
“Enlightenment” is a rather slippery word, and I’ve of the opinion that some people are intentionally slippery about it because it benefits them. So some people use the word to mean both that you’ve had a persistent realization of non-duality (that’s what PNSE is about) and that you are free of all preconditioned reactions (you’re liberated). But almost no one is fully liberated (and to stay that way you seemingly have to live a very constrained life that protects you from interacting with the world), and lots of people are in PNSE, so it’s probably more useful for “enlightenment” to be about PNSE than it is for it to be about a state of PNSE plus zero reactivity.
(Policing who can claim to be “enlightened” is a centuries old issue in Buddhism, and many lineages have developed social systems to deal with it.)
Alas, this is true. You can resolve the great matter, see through the illusion of the separate self, enter PNSE, and be an enlightened being, but with the seeming exception of a handful of people, it’s the work of a lifetime to deal with the habits of mind that make us who we are and adjust them when we discover that they’ve become maladaptive (why? because everything is always changing!).
Sorry, I’m having trouble understanding. If you’d like to give more detail, I’d appreciate it! Are you saying it’s true that these views/concepts aren’t resolvable? Or that it takes a lifetime of work to resolve them?
It also sounds like you’re saying that, even after reaching enlightenment, you’ll still have mental habits that become maladaptive over time. That’s interesting, it wasn’t my impression of what enlightenment was like.
I’m saying he’s right to say that the friction is unresolvable. I’m sure it does feel mysterious, but it’s actually very straightforward in a way that’s difficult to explain unless you can already see it. I wish it wasn’t like this. But it’s true that you both keep developing and that you’ve attained something (and the thing you attain is, in part, realizing there was nothing to attain in the first place!). Steve Byrnes has done a decent job of trying to explain it as well as anyone has.
“Enlightenment” is a rather slippery word, and I’ve of the opinion that some people are intentionally slippery about it because it benefits them. So some people use the word to mean both that you’ve had a persistent realization of non-duality (that’s what PNSE is about) and that you are free of all preconditioned reactions (you’re liberated). But almost no one is fully liberated (and to stay that way you seemingly have to live a very constrained life that protects you from interacting with the world), and lots of people are in PNSE, so it’s probably more useful for “enlightenment” to be about PNSE than it is for it to be about a state of PNSE plus zero reactivity.
(Policing who can claim to be “enlightened” is a centuries old issue in Buddhism, and many lineages have developed social systems to deal with it.)