In an interview, On Enlightenment – An Interview with Shinzen Young, Shinzen Young discusses the difference between an enlightened person and non-enlightened person. He says the difference is that during moments when a person is entirely focused on a sensation, the enlightened person recognizes them as moments when there is no self. Shinzen says that non-enlightened people have these moments hundreds of times a day but don't recognize them for what they are.
If you are interested in understanding what enlightenment is, you may find it very instructive to learn to notice these no-self moments - moments when something you percieve with your senses such as seeing or hearing catches your attention and you are aware of it without thinking about anything else.
Going out for a walk is a good activity to do when trying to notice no-self moments. When you are walking outdoors, you are moving through the environment, things in the environment maybe moving around you, there are various sounds, and maybe smells, and also various weather phenomnea are possible, so there are many opportunities for sensations to catch your attention.
It will also help if your mind is quiet from practicing relaxation exercises and mindfulness. Relaxation exercises activate the parasympathetic nervous system which turns off the body's stress response. Mindfulness will deactivate the default mode network in the brain which will greatly reduce mental chatter and the strength of emotions.
While walking, try to relax and practice mindfulness by noticing the sights, sounds, and sensations that come to your attention and also try to notice what happens when something catches your attention fully so that in that moment you are not thinking about anything else except the sensation. If you plan to try this, please be sure to read this warning about the dangers of meditation first.
https://www.lionsroar.com/on-enlightenment-an-interview-with-shinzen-young/
On Enlightenment – An Interview with Shinzen YoungBY ANDREA MILLER| SEPTEMBER 10, 2009
...
The only difference between an enlightened person and a non-enlightened person is that when the feel-image-talk self doesn’t arise during the day, the enlightened person notices that and knows that to be a clear experience of no-self. The non-enlightened person actually has that experience hundreds of times a day, when they’re briefly pulled to a physical-type touch or an external sight or sound. For just a moment there is just the world of touch-sight-sound. For just a moment there is no self inside that person but they don’t notice it! But just because they don’t notice it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.
An enlightened person sees everyone as constantly experiencing brief moments of enlightenment during the day. So paradoxically being an enlightened person doesn’t make you that special. Now you can say, “Well, but they don’t realize it,” that’s one way to look at it, but it’s also undeniable that they are. From that perspective it’s very misleading to separate enlightened people from non-enlightened people.
Copyright © 2020 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.