Here is a list of all my public writings and videos (from before February 2025).
lsusr
Karma: 18,633
This is a good idea for a separate post.
This is good advice, especially “pay attention for a feeling of coming home”.
I’m tempted to recommend books too, but all of them come with tradeoffs.
That looks to me like an accurate description of kensho, which is a taste of enlightenment. It indicates you’re going in the correct direction and is a good source of insight.
I haven’t asked.
There’s two people I know in meatspace that have been doing this stuff for decades and to whom I look up for inspiration and guidence. They’re super humble since they have no need to prove anything.
I’ve never seen them express the slightest stress or mental tension. Zuiko of them is an old woman who’s hands hurt and are failing due to arthritis and she seemed more concerned with just listening to me than talking about her problems. In fact, she barely mentions her health issues unless I specifically ask. I have a friend who didn’t even realize she was highly awakened until after I pointed it out to him.
To paraphrase Nick Cammarata: “If you want to be a billionaire, try getting enlightened first and then check to see how much you still care about becoming a billionaire.” This awakening stuff tends to disassemble the status-seeking and ladder climbing motivational systems that cause people to get famous. I’m a more empathetic dancer due to meditation, but I doubt that’ll make me world famous.
I got a few of these powers too. Specifically “a greatly increased ability to tolerate loud sounds” and “greatly improved cognitive empathy”. I might have “cured me of boredom” too, but it hasn’t been long enough to be sure yet—and I don’t know if this ability would withstand much worse life circumstances like prison.
In addition to that subset of Gordon’s powers, my anxiety has lowered enough I stopped biting my fingernails after a lifetime of doing so. (An older genetic relative of mine who bites her nails and doesn’t meditate has not experienced this.) This nailbiting thing is very recent—it started only about a month ago—so there is a chance it’ll revert.
I’ve also just chilled out, in a way that makes me a better listener and causes other people to like me better. This one is recent too, but it’s so common among meditators I’m not worried about it sticking.
Ah, I misunderstood your question about whether everybody can attain enlightenment. I take the modern perspective that most people can attain awakening, and there’s no such thing as reincarnation, since incorporeal souls are not real.
Could any “enlightened” person self-immolate with apparent equanimity?
Concentration and enlightenment are different things. Concentration lets you self-immolate with apparent equanimity while concentrating. Enlightenment lets you self-immolate with equanimity while not concentrating.
There are degrees to awakening. Few are at that level of enlightenment or concentration.
Could you?
Right now? No. Absolutely not. The closest I’ve gotten are “I once touched a hot lid while cooking and didn’t feel pain-as-suffering” and “I ate some very spicy food and sat in a chair unable to do anything useful, but felt no suffering from to the experience”. (Both were automatic, requiring no concentration.)
If not, how far are you from being able to...
It’s important to distinguish stage of awakening from pure concentration ability. If you want to self-immolate, that may require more concentration than mere awakening. I’m just guessing here, though. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to self-immolate with equanimity—merely apparent or not—and have no intention to do so. In any case, my practice is more insight and integration focused. I’m not maxing out my concentration stat—at least right now.
...and is it possible for everybody to reach that state?
Theoretically? More-or-less. In practice, no. In any case, I feel questions like this about whether “everybody can” do something are too philosophically messy to give a definite answer to.
Thanks!
You seem like you’re doing fine. There are many potentiallyl worthwhile things to do in the world, and sitting quietly with your eyes closed is just one of them.
I could be wrong, but your model tastes of dualism to me whereas enlightenment is non-dualistic.
Thank you for pointing out that the term “impulse” in physics has a very different meaning than in regular speech. A better example is the physicist’s use of the term “cold”, which intersects the layman’s intuition but is both more precise and general. To a layman, cold is just whatever causes that sensation you get when you touch ice. To a physicist, cold must ultimately be defined using ideas like entropy because (among other reasons) you can’t touch a Bose–Einstein condensate with your fingertips. The technical definition was arrived at after deep investigation into the fundamental nature of temperature.
I believe that my definition does overlap with the conventional kind in conventional circumstances, if you really pay attention to what’s going on in your brain, including disambiguating things like pain vs course suffering, desire vs motivation, etc. When you get to very low levels of mental anguish, precise definitions are necessary, because for unconventional circumstances the conventional intuition breaks.
Of course not. Lots of neural action beyond raw sensory inputs has a raw function.
This is true. After stream entry, you’re on the train and you’re not getting off; you’re going to have more insight cycles.
I’ve only read a little bit of your Multiagent Models of Mind series. None of what I read seemed wrong to me. Is there anything in particular you recommend I take a closer look at?
I’m using standard translations, like how a physicist’s meaning of the word “impulse” is different from the colloquial meaning of the word “impulse”. This has tradeoffs to this approach.
How are you so sure you don’t need to hear the message suffering was sending you?
Because suffering isn’t a raw sensory input. It’s downstream of raw sensory inputs. I still get the raw sensory inputs.
The situation is such a mess. When writing about this stuff, I’m forced to pick between using the standard translations vs making up my own terminology that breaks the conventions. The meaning of “emptiness” is so counterintuitive I don’t use that term at all.
It looks like you’ve had a taste of kensho.
unfortunately I have no idea…how to reproduce it
This state of consciousness can be reliably reproduced via shikantaza + ethical living.
Note: The Zen practice center I go to is officially listed on Google Maps as a “temple” even though it’s not really a temple (the way Gordon is using the word “temple”).