Better to practice and not attain full enlightenment?
Baba:
There is a weird fascination among practitioners of dharma about the
long duration of the practice process on the way to enlightenment. It
is as if it would be better to practice for several decades and not
attain full enlightenment instead of attaining enlightenment in just
few years and be done with it, to then be able to help others. True,
most methods are not designed to give the ultimate fruit in just few
years but it seems like the long time frame of commitment and ritual
really does distract people from cultivating wakefulness in a proper
manner. When I hear people say that ”I have practiced 30 years in
this or that lineage and am still practicing”, in my ears it sounds
like, ”I’ve practiced for all these decades not having a clue
what I’m doing and having no direction where I’m going”.
Joey: It all depends on where someone is in their journey in
this lifetime, when they start but generally speaking I fully agree
Amrita Baba - it is amazing and sad how folks with poor character
throw around the 30 years of supposedly amazing practice or a
teacher, they've engaged with, as some kind of badge of honour. It is
inconclusive at best.
Baba: I think all that waste of time is
the fault of few main issues such as,
1. most dharma pedagogy
is nightmarishly bad, so that
2. the view or the theoretical
understanding of the practices and the path is poorly or wrongly
understood, that is then
3. supported with practices that might be
only little relevant or completely irrelevant with the task at
hand.
Anyone who's had secular education can understand how
devastating any of these three factors would be, not to even
mentioned all three together.
I am a tantric and follow the
mahayana/vajrayana buddhist paradigm of buddhahood or full
enlightenment in this lifetime. Being an engineer I always questioned
that "where someone is in their journey" in the light of
our innate potential (we all have perfectly wakeful nature) in
relation to the above three points (and possibly others), plus the
whole karmic connection thing.
I don't think there is a way to
reach full enlightenment (i.e. immortality, lightbody, rainbow body)
except through tantric/esoteric methods (sorry because I'm sure it
sounds awfully sectarian in the ears of some) but having said that
there are countless really ready and mature seekers in the world who
are either seeking or already practicing tantric yoga, but whose
progress is then stumped by the above three points. It's a waste of
everything; time, energy, money, reincarnations and incredibly
precious opportunity.
Imagine what would be possible if all those fundamental errors were corrected.
