Below is an excerpt from the first online satsang broadcast live on June 20, 2010. In it, I speak about the meaning of the word satsang and its relationship to truth. I will be making excerpts available from time to time from the satsangs as I record each one. Within 2-3 months, full satsangs will be available either by subscription or by download for a small fee. Enjoy! And feel free to leave comments if you wish.
Greetings everyone. The next online, live satsang will be broadcast on Saturday, July 3 at 5:00 pm Eastern/2:00 pm Pacific. For those of you in other lands, that will be 21:00 GMT. (I recommend The World Clock for converting time zones. Very handy.) Satsang will last 60-90 minutes depending upon the volume of questions. As with the last one, please feel free to email questions to me at live@tomstine.com before or during the broadcast.
The last satsang went extremely well. I had a very nice turnout, with an average of 25-30 people throughout the entire broadcast with close to 100 dropping in to check it out. I would have been happy with 5 people showing-up, so I’m very pleased. The questions asked were great, and I think, all in all, I enjoyed answering questions as much as talking.
I did have one technical snafu, namely, my phone service crapped out on me right before the broadcast. I’ve still not unraveled the glitch keeping me from taking phone calls, but I’m confident I will have it resolved soon, hopefully by this weekend’s satsang.
I recorded the last satsang, and hopefully this week I’ll be posting a short excerpt or two. The equipment I’m using is producing beautiful video and audio, and I’m really pleased with the quality of the recording. You may or may not care for the content of the video and audio, but damn if it doesn’t look good! *grins* See below for a still shot from the video.
To those of you who attended last week’s satsang, I’m grateful and honored to have had you present. For those of you who attended in spirit, I’m grateful for you, too. I look forward to your presence again. Until then, be well. Namaste.
It is my pleasure to announce my first live satsang, broadcast online, on June 20, 2010, at 5:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time in the United States. For those of you in other parts of the world who would like to watch, the time is 21:00 GMT.
Once you reach that page, you’ll find some additional information on the broadcast, plus the option of watching a higher definition version for those of you with very fast Internet connections.
The format will be: a talk by me for 20-40 minutes followed by questions from the audience. I’ll be taking questions via email before and during the broadcast at the following address:
I’ll also be taking phone calls during the question portion of the satsang. I’ll have the phone number posted during the broadcast. If you do call-in, please note that this is a time to ask whatever questions are on the forefront of your mind or are of greatest concern. It isn’t open mic night.
The broadcast will be recorded and eventually made available on my website via subscription. More on that in the future.
For now, I look forward to having you “attend” satsang this Sunday, June 20, at 5:00 pm EDT. Namaste.
I feel like some sort of strange math problem, in which there is a constant dividing, subtracting, square rooting, you name it, and the answer keeps getting closer and closer to some limit. And the limit is somewhere between 1 and 0. Or maybe the problem simply ends up with no solution. Yes, that’s about right. No solution.
Buddhism has a problem, an unfortunate one, but such is life. And that problem is: there is no way to know for certain what the Buddha said. It is a problem with any spiritual teaching more than a thousand years old, or any history for that matter. It has to do with written texts and oral transmission.
The first written Buddhist texts are in the Pali language and are based upon 400 years of oral tradition. That means that whatever the Buddha said 2500 years ago was repeated generation after generation, from one man to the next, for four centuries. Even if the monks who recited the Dharma for 400 years didn’t add a single thing to the words they were taught, not a single new interpretation or correction or improvement, the chance for inaccuracy is huge. Remember playing telephone in elementary school?
When you consider that the Buddha’s followers were about as likely to be enlightened as Saint Peter was to have understood Jesus’ teachings (sorry, but Simon called Peter had no clue what Jesus was talking about!) then, well, the odds are really good that there are major errors. In other words, we have no real idea what the Buddha actually said. I can’t see any way around it.
It’s the Jesus problem. The earliest Christian texts were written about 40-60 years after Jesus’ death. We don’t have any of those. We have fragments of texts that were produced 300-400 years after the actual documents were supposedly written. And we don’t have all that was written in those early years, just the stuff that the early church wanted to keep plus a bit of other stuff. So, we have oral tradition problems, interpretation problems, etc. At least Theraveda Buddhism attempted to preserve the Buddha’s words, something that Christians didn’t even really try to do, except with sayings gospels like the Gospel of Thomas. (Note: contemporary Jesus scholarship is a fascinating subject, worthy of a bit of study. I strongly suggest Marcus Borg. Needless to say, what modern Jesus scholars have to say is not what you are likely to hear in most churches today.)
So, when I started reading Buddhism a bit a few years ago, I was like most people are: confused. My question was: how do I get to the words of the Buddha? And after a while, I knew the answer was the same one I had discovered years before with Jesus: you don’t. You can’t. We will quite likely never know what he really said. And the most likely reason is that his followers didn’t have the slightest idea what he meant by the things he said.
Think about it: the average follower of the Buddha was like most spiritual seekers today. He kinda, sorta, maybe had a sense of what the Master was saying, but he wasn’t so sure. If suddenly things got clear and he experienced some sense of awakening, would he then really care if the Buddha’s words got accurately transmitted to the next generation? Probably not. He might have gone on and done other things with his life, or he might have started teaching others using his words and thoughts.
No, unfortunately, the folks most likely to have been sticklers for repeating the Buddha’s words were quite likely not completely understanding everything he said but were hoping that the Master’s words would enlighten them some day. As time went on, not only did error creep into the transmission but so did interpretations and “improvements” and “he must have meant something else when he said that.”
I know, there is no way to prove such a thing, but it is pretty obvious that in many traditions other than Buddhism that the interpretations became more important than the original words. Just look at Christianity. Go to any modern church and count the number of times the minister quotes a passage from the New Testament that has something in it that Jesus supposedly said. Then compare that to the number of quoted passages from the Hebrew Bible and St. Paul. You will be astounded! St. Paul and the Prophets win by a landslide. Yes, I did this experiment personally years ago. I was shocked. They never, ever quote The Sermon on the Mount in fundamentalist Christian churches.
And so I have adopted a very dishonest method of “scholarship” when it comes to the Buddha and Jesus: I look for the common threads in them that fit with contemporary “enlightened guys” and keep that and discard the rest. As a matter of fact, that’s how I approach all spiritual literature. I only look for the common thread. I’m only really interested in what I find in common between Zen, Advaita, Buddhism, mystical Christianity, channeled material, etc. And then I compare it with my experience. The thread of commonality seems to be what matters and what helps with my personal experience always as the final arbiter.
I know, I would never make a good scholar. But good scholarship has nothing to do with awakening. At least, it hasn’t done me a damn bit of good.
So, for the most part, I much prefer to read enlightenment literature that was actually written down and transmitted fairly intact. There is so much rich, wonderful stuff from Zen and Advaita that I don’t have much need for the old Buddhist texts. I’d much rather read Nisargadatta Maharaj.
I know many people don’t care for Advaita, but I find the best spiritual writings in people who are labelled Advaita. Not that these writings necessarily came out of that school of thought, but their teachings are so similar to true Advaita that they are usually pigeon-holed there. That’s the story with Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta. And even Adyashanti.
I have to admit that most of what passes for Advaita these days is like Zen: pure crap. Both schools of thought get too hung up on the nothing part of awakening. That’s why Nisargadatta is so cool: in his talks, he made it clear that nondual (which is what Advaita means) means NON-DUAL, as in not 2. There isn’t nothingness or everything. There isn’t all and nothing. There’s just One. You look at it one way, and you find nothing. Absolutely nothing. And then you open your eyes, and you see a rich world of form. And the everything that you see is filled with the nothing that you see. And out of the nothing arises form. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.
Now don’t get me wrong: there are some wonderful Buddhist texts to read. The Dhammapada is excellent, and whoever said those words knew up from down. But on the whole, I don’t have much time for all the -ism that arose around a quite awake guy who might have been called Siddhartha and we now know as The Buddha.
A big theme in spirituality: we’re all one! No matter what the flavor of spiritual discussion, you’ll bump into something about oneness. And you know, if you are going to believe in something, you might as well believe in oneness. It’s a pretty good concept, as concepts go.
But if we are all one, then who are you? I mean that literally. If there is just The One, as in One Spirit or One Consciousness, no second, no sense of two-ness (that’s what nonduality means, by the way), then is there any sense in which I can talk about a “you” that is not me?
I do see other bodies walking around the world. I talk to other bodies. I have interactions with other bodies. But who is the “you” with whom I am interacting? If there is only One, then you are me. Your consciousness is my consciousness. Your Self is my Self. We are the same. I can even go so far as to say that your thoughts arise from the same place mine do, your body arises from the same place mine does, everything about “you” is the same as “me.” Whatever it is that I am, you are, too.
One means One. I like to call this “radical oneness.” It isn’t a bunch of individuals joined in some collective consciousness or collective state. We aren’t all one in just some special sense. We are One. Same, same, same.
The only question that really matters, then, is if you know this Oneness, through and through, bones to bones. Not think it. Not believe it. But know it. Do you? If not, keep going. You will. It is inevitable because it is the Truth.
Namaste.
P.S. I guess a blog without comments isn’t much of a blog. Feel free to leave your comments below.
My friend Takuin Minamoto recently answered this question on his blog, and I was thrilled by his response. Takuin defined enlightenment as follows:
Enlightenment is limitless expansion within a limited field.
I love this definition because Takuin masterfully dropped all the centuries of spiritual baggage attached to this one simple word and took it directly to the heart of the matter. As he further explained, the limited field he is referring to is the world we find ourselves living in, the experiences that pass through our awareness moment to moment. It is a limited field, isn’t it? While it arises from the infinite, in and of itself it will always be contained, confined, bounded, limited. No question, our world is a limited field.
But enlightenment is the infinite, the limitless, expanding through the world of limitation. When we awaken, one of the first things we know is that what we thought we were isn’t. We get a taste for the aspects of limitlessness: nothingness and everything-ness. We know ourselves to be limitless, empty of all form and yet all form. Beyond, within, a part of and not a part of.
And as this limitlessness expands through the point in the limited field that we refer to as you, interesting and miraculous things begin to happen. As the false identity is shed, what is left in its place is nothing but this limitless expansion.
As a businessman once said, “Good ideas are borrowed, the best ideas are stolen.” Well, this is one case where I will merely borrow the best. My hat is off to Takuin for his excellent definition of enlightenment.
Takuin has comments ongoing on this post, so feel free to leave comments for him. I think I’ll open comments here, too, so I can see what’s on your mind. Namaste.
What I’m wondering is in the phrase, “…after enlightment, chop wood, carry water”. The thing is, I’ve lost my zest for my career which I must recapture in order to find work (was laid-off) and to pay my mortgage. In the absolute, I understand there’s no one here. In the relative, I need to find the energy, but I’m no longer interested in the Game–the whole illusion thing. What to do?
I love this question and the entire subject it represents. It gets right to the heart of the seeming paradox between awakening/enlightenment and the world we find ourselves in. What to do about this paradox?
Awakening to the truth of what we are, that there is no separate self, no “me,” is to barely scratch the surface of what enlightenment truly is. Enlightenment includes in it a process that is often termed “embodiment” because it is a process of the awakened realization penetrating all of the body-mind and undoing all remaining traces of identity. This embodiment results in what I often call a “house cleaning” of the body-mind. All beliefs are undone, thoughts and feelings become transformed, and the mind drifts into the background of experience.
Sometimes an awakening is full and complete, and then with it goes all sense of identity as a self. But these full and complete, total awakenings are rare. Typically, most of us experience an initial awakening to the truth, but then discover that we still feel like a “me” even though we’ve seen, truly seen, that we are not. And so, now we get to deal with all kinds of mental-emotional “stuff” that will be (often) slowly be seen through piece by piece. It can be a difficult time, but also immensely enjoyable.
Embodiment is a major part of the state I have been referring to as half-awake. It is the post initial awakening, pre full “enlightenment” state. These are somewhat arbitrary distinctions I’m making, and there really aren’t such things as these states. But, well, there sort of are. I’ll use these terms as if they mean something simply because it helps to make some distinctions that will be helpful to most people.
So, with that overview, let me look at my reader’s question more clearly. Let me start with “after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” Quite simply, this old Zen saying is clear: after enlightenment. Until embodiment has occurred, after enlightenment is not the state “you” are in. If my reader has had a true, real awakening to the truth of his being (”there’s no one here”), then the thing to do at this point is to work through the embodiment process.
I would contend that the very situation he finds himself in, laid off with a need for a job and very real financial obligations, is exactly what embodiment is all about. You see, what we are, as Nisargadatta called it “The Supreme Reality,” is not content to simply wake-up and sit in a cave staring at “its” navel. It is All of Life, everything in existence, including jobs, bodies, careers, mortgages, houses, dollar bills, etc. It is everything. It has manifested itself as all of form. Including, as my reader puts it, “the Game-the whole illusion thing.” The Supreme Reality has manifested itself as the Game of Human Life, and it is going to play it to the fullest!
Therefore, what I would suggest to my reader, and to everyone, is play the Game of Human Life as best you can. Not the way you did ten years ago, not the way you did before you realized a bit of the truth of your being, but instead from that realization. Instead of having as your motivation for playing the Game the usual motivations such as money, sex, fame, all those things, you now have a much more interesting motivation for playing the Game of Human Life. And the new motivation is freedom. Freedom from all that seemed to keep you stuck in the belief in limitation. You now seek nothing less that the limitlessness that you are.
Everything in your world becomes about freedom, about being free of all the beliefs, fears, etc, that drive the body-mind. You use things like finding a job, paying a mortgage, having a relationship, etc, as a way to discover freedom. You spend some time taking a good hard look at the contents of your consciousness. You see through illusion after illusion after illusion. You develop a relentless drive to be free, to see everything for what it truly is: the divine, the Supreme Reality manifest. You know everything as you. Not think it, not believe it, but know it, truly, wonderfully know it. That’s enlightenment.
And in the process of doing all the above, you gain a love for the Game of Human Life. It may be, in one sense, illusory, but it is the only game in town! It is Your Game, too. What you are is the creator of this odd game, and why on earth wouldn’t you want to play it? It’s your game!
I’ll write some more at a later date about embodiment and “how to do it,” as if there really is such a thing as a prescription for embodiment. There isn’t, but there are some things worth doing. In the meantime, get a book by Byron Katie and do some digging into your beliefs. It will help. Namaste.
What does it mean to be infinite? The answer seems obvious, straight out of high school math: infinite means without limits. We could even say something like “it goes on forever.” Okay, that’s infinite.
But does that have any meaning for us? Spirit, God, the Divine, Consciousness, these are often called “the infinite.” If any of these words have some relationship to what we really are, then that would make what I am and what you are infinite.
But still, the question is begging to be answered: does this have any meaning for us? I would say yes, it certainly does. In a very real sense, I am infinite. And anything that seems to be finite, or not-infinite, would therefore be a false appearance. Because all that I am is infinite.
Infinite. Everything. Everywhere. Without limit.
Therefore:
I extend in all directions.
I have no boundaries.
I have no end point.
I contain everything. And more.
All things are what I am.
There is no limit to me, no end.
All past, all future, Now, these are a within me because I extend forever.
If this body dies, a new one will follow.
If this planet dies, a new one will follow.
If this galaxy is consumed by a black hole, a new galaxy will be born.
If this universe collapses, a new one will expand.
If awareness ceases, a new awareness will arise.
I would suggest that you take a look at something “finite.” If you look closely, you will find that everything in your life that seems to be a problem is a perfect example of a finite thing. If you look even more closely, really look, you will start to see the infinite in your problem. If what you see is not infinite, then it is a false appearance. Behind the seemingly finite is the infinite.
Pick something in your life with which you struggle. It could be money, relationships, health, your job, you name it. Just pick something. Sit for 10 minutes with it. Look at all the ways this thing you are struggling with seems to be composed of limits, of boundaries, of edges, of blocks to clarity. Really look! Now feel into it. Feel the edges, the limits, the aspects of it that say “impossible” or “can’t” or “shouldn’t.” Now look past these limits to the infinite beyond. There, you see it? Yes.
This, then, is the infinite nature of everything. Namaste.
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The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it’s just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into brief existence. Enlightenment isn’t in the character, it’s in the underlying truth. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a dream character, of course, unless it’s your goal to wake up, in which case the dream character must be ruthlessly annihilated. If your desire is to experience transcendental bliss or supreme love or altered states of consciousness or awakened kundalini, or to quality for heaven, or to liberate all sentient beings, or simply to become the best dang person you can be, then rejoice!, you’re in the right place: the dream state, the dualistic universe. However, if your interest is to cut the crap and figure out what’s true, then you’re in the wrong place and you’ve got a very messy fight ahead and there’s no point in pretending otherwise.
But beauty, real beauty, ends where intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of a face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful.
Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not. And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that.
Q: Since all is pre-ordained, is our self-realization also pre-ordained? Or are we free there at least?
A: Destiny refers only to name and shape. Since you are neither body nor mind, destiny has no control over you. You are completely free. The cup is conditioned by its shape, material, use and so on. But the space within the cup is free. It happens to be in the cup only when viewed in connection with the cup. Otherwise, it is just space. As long as there is a body, you appear to be embodied. Without the body you are not disembodied — you just are.
So the most important thing to realize is this: Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary…. Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that. You share that purpose with every other person on the planet – because it is the purpose of humanity. Your inner purpose is an essential part of the purpose of the whole, the universe and its emerging intelligence.
Buddhism stands unique in the history of human thought in denying the existence of a Soul, Self or Atman. According to the teachings of the Buddha, the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the source of all troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.
Same is true of mind, "I", self, consciousness, etc. :-) || RT @Kalieezchild RT @Jyakunen: you will never find an "ego" -- absurd concept. 2 weeks ago
RT @Takuin If someone is hateful to you, or if you have been insulted, you may feel some kind of pain. But who, exactly, is being hurt? 2010-08-05
Spirituality: 6.7 billion caterpillars insisting they know what it's like to be a butterfly. Why not just become a butterfly and find out? 2010-07-27
If everything you thought was true turns out to be nothing but smoke and mirrors, what then? 2010-07-25
RT @Takuin What if you woke up tomorrow and the search was gone? If nothing were left, what would you do? || Eat ice cream. Duh. :-) 2010-07-25
RT @AkebonoJishi Objective fact is just a notion -- like "Emptiness." || Beautiful, isn't it? 2010-07-23
RT @Takuin packing it in @ 3250 meters. || Very cool! I can't wait to see it next summer. Definitely coming to Japan. No climbing, tho. :-) 2010-07-16
Why is everyone so intent on silencing the mind? Just leave the damn thing alone and it shuts up all by itself! Make some tea, sit, and rest 2010-07-16
RT @noah8423 Either Truth is awake in you, or not. ... the thinking must stop to make room for that light. || Why MUST thinking stop? 2010-07-16
So many people know. Yet how many know that they don't know? ☺ 2010-07-14
Feel free to leave your comments below. 
and do some digging into your beliefs. It will help. Namaste.
