What is your motivation for enlightenment? I wish to attain enlightenment for all sentient beings, especially my boyfriend who is suffering greatly. I wish to relieve him of that suffering. I would like to hear why you are following the path that you are. Peace and love
I am on this path because that is where life has led. It just happened. I opened my eyes and there I was. As far as enlightenment goes, the process may be very painful (experiencing the ego dying, jumping into the crevice of no-mind) or as painless as apperceiving that consciousness is but a mirror of the Absolute Consciousness, one which is totally subjective with not a hint of objectivity. That apperceiving may cause a change in one's brain chemistry, thereby dissolving the ego and with it its delusion of duality. Then one is likely to realise that enlightenment is not something which you can willfully get, that it just happens, and that so long as you desire enlightenment you will never attain it because it is the ego which desires its own destruction; it can't be done.
I agree with you. Reaching enlightenment takes a lot of soul searching and confronting one's demons. Peace and love
One day I was walking along, minding my own business, unaware, when I happened to fall off a cliff. Down, down, down, I went. Tumbling, twisting, and swishing by rocks, dirt, and roots; infinite sky above, the sound of wind in my ears. On and on I fell, gathering speed further still in my headlong plunge into the unknown...... And as I travel on I watch and wait. (That's a picture of me over there to the left under my log in right before I fell into the old abyss.)
I came to the Dharma terrified of my death, After practicing and capturing the fortress of the deathless I learned that there is no death. O what a relief!
my goal isn't to achieve enlightenment because i personally don't believe in true enlightenment in the sense of reaching nirvana, or at least not without a lifetime of devotion, but i do wish to eliminate as much suffering in myself and others that i can. i might not agree with everything buddha spoke about, but i agree that those we must watch over one another and our(their) spiritual paths through guidance, teaching others, spreading love and cultivating good. true enlightenment, to me, is realizing true Love. and not only realizing, but acting on it.
Buddha has stated that desire is the cause of all suffering. This was one statement of the buddha which really helped me a lot, and to gain equanimity and peace of mind,by eradicating my desires and working on my goals without feverish desires. This helped me very much. Tell this to your boyfriend, and he too will benefit from it. Love, Niranjan.
It takes a lot of time but I just want to relax most of the time. My music helps zone me out from everything else around me, makes me feel at ease. A world without music is like a world without best friends, empty and incomplete. Without that missing piece nothing can go on.
When I was a kid I grew up on the streets of Hollywood and I was a punk rocker and erstwhile Satanist. After many LSD trips, some good, some bad, I knew my life was totally fucked! I also didn't have many goals beyond S, D, and RnR, and allied concerns. I knew I was going nowhere. So for me, finding liberation was about self-preservation. And then finding bliss in meditation after studying many years my desire was to spread that bliss to others of like-hopelessness. For me, I do not preach or teach Buddhist, but I do radiate a certain joy into the environment, which I still consider part of the Bodhisattva path, as without yogin, life would devolve into strictly material concerns and alot of the radiance and bliss we get in things comes from the excess from the spiritual and self reflexive.
my only motivation is for my awairness to not be robbed of calmness. i'm not seeking anything. i like mazes and find gratifiction in exploring them. also in creating. i am easily distracted and disappointed by people being aggressive and demanding. this is why agitation often leads me to concern myself with the kind of world we all have to live in, how it gets the way it is, how that mechanism works, how it can work differently with less unhappiness and suffering for everyone, even those who blindly cause it, often without awairness of doing so. i know we are borderless probablility lumps, contiguously connected with everything, though i'm not, and perhapse in this sense and because of it not buddhist, convinced of annialating that neuclius of my probability lump that makes it individual and unique, being any sort of all that good or bennificial of a concept. on the other hand, that nucleus, which i see as being me, recognizes that interconnectedness and the dependence of the well being of each, upon that of the all. so instead of being altruistically motivated, i have a very selfish desire for everyone to be able to be happy and at peace, so that i can be too. although to be perfectly honest, it isn't all that selfish either. i also enjoy the vibe of other people's peace and happiness too. =^^= .../\...
Outside of the suffering that all beings share in common, craving for forms, craving for feelings, craving for perceptions, craving for mental fabrications, and craving for consciousness, what sort of suffering is your boyfriend going through ... keep in mind that you too share the same kind of suffering as all beings ... that you need to relieve him of? When you said "attain enlightenment for all sentient beings" you spoke the Bodhisattva reason for continuing the round of samsara, but you also decided that your boyfriend was more important than "all beings". This was just an observation. Please do not become angry with me for stating this. One who decides to take the Bodhisattva path does so without favor or prejudice. One treats all [sentient] beings equally without the need to choose one as being more important than another. All beings, me and you inclusive, suffer from craving. Craving motivated by greed, ill-will and delusion. Non-stop craving. Endless craving. Ceasless craving. Craving motivated by greed, ill-will and delusion give rise to clinging, and clinging to self-identification. HTML:
He's now my fiance and he's plagued with bipolar disorder. He was hospitalized last Saturday and I just want him to suffer less from the infinite pain this disorder can cause. I'm not saying that I can heal him; I just hope he can find an end to his suffering with help because right now he is lost. Peace and love
