• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

The Path of Curiosity

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Please Note: This is a discussion thread, not a debate thread. If you are unsure of the difference, then please refer to this thread for further information: "Debate vs Discussion: What's the Difference?"


This is not something I am currently prepared to swear by, but it is rather a provisional belief or -- if you wish -- a "working hypothesis". Thus, it is my hunch that enlightenment simply cannot be attained to by accumulating beliefs.

Again, no matter how truthful, accurate, or profound one's beliefs are, they are at best pointers that head you off in the right direction. Once you have used them as such, you should discard them, for they easily become walls between you and enlightenment when clung to. Treat beliefs like a Zen monk: As fingers pointing to the moon, but do not treat them as the moon.

Beyond that, the desire for enlightenment works against you just as much or even more than do beliefs. Desire strengthens the walls between you and enlightenment. Paradoxically, the more you desire enlightenment, the less likely you are to find it. Or if you find something, it will be a delusion you have created for yourself, and which will not have the same consequences for you as genuine enlightenment.

Perhaps the most fruitful attitude or spirit in which to seek enlightenment is not to seek it at all. Rather, treat it like Rumi treats love. “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

Failing that -- or perhaps in conjunction with it -- cultivate your curiosity about enlightenment. Not your beliefs, but your curiosity. The two things are often incompatible. The more firmly you believe something, the less genuinely curious you are about it. The more your curiosity is confined to a box by your belief, rather than being allowed to roam and wander freely, the less effective and efficacious it is. As Jiddu Krishnamurti said, "You cannot inquire if you are anchored in a belief."

There are no guaranteed paths to enlightenment, but the path of curiosity, the path of free-spirited inquiry -- is perhaps the surest.

All that I have said above is provisional, tentative, uncertain.





 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Well yes, examining things for oneself is always a good start.

I can agree with you to a point, but whereas you see it as a start, I see curiosity as a path. However, I do not wish to suggest one of us is right and the other is wrong. Determining such a thing is way above my pay grade, and besides, this in not a debate thread.
 

rational experiences

Veteran Member
If a human says I am curious, then they own a pre existing purpose or want to define being curious.

When a human is just born a human in human conditions, by parents who have sex...and then you know that the 2 human parents keep you safe as you grow, the little baby toddler/child is curious of its gain of life.

And the parents keep that child safe in its curiosity.

Therefore as we are all taught that we are just a child as a human on a planet that other humans said was a Creator entity by a description. Then they did.

To be curious of that teaching, is what curiosity is. Why parent did you teach me that story? And the answer is simple.

We know that our planet in a huge space body is self owned. It is as a planet owner of creating its owned atmosphere and if that atmosphere did not exist as a natural atmosphere then we would not exist.

So the curiosity of the child is overcome by a verbal story to enable them to be safe.

Curiosity that owns a pre motivated reason beyond parental advice is how you get destroyed in reality.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
Again, no matter how truthful, accurate, or profound one's beliefs are, they are at best pointers that head you off in the right direction. Once you have used them as such, you should discard them, for they easily become walls between you and enlightenment when clung to. Treat beliefs like a Zen monk: As fingers pointing to the moon, but do not treat them as the moon.

I've been spending time recently reading the words of Kabbalah. One quote I read echoes the OP:

“Aren’t all religions equally true? No, all religions are equally false. The relationship of religion to truth is like that of a menu to a meal. The menu describes the meal as best it can. It points to something beyond itself. As long as we use the menu as a guide we do it honor. When we mistake the menu for the meal, we do it and ourselves a grave injustice.”Rabbi Rami Shapiro

 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
There are no guaranteed paths to enlightenment, but the path of curiosity, the path of free-spirited inquiry -- is perhaps the surest.

The path I follow is to try (fail and try again) to live up to my highest understanding of what life is asking of me. For you, that is the path of curiousity. For me, it's the path of action. All paths lead to the ocean (or the mountain top if you prefer).
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
I've been spending time recently reading the words of Kabbalah. One quote I read echoes the OP:

“Aren’t all religions equally true? No, all religions are equally false. The relationship of religion to truth is like that of a menu to a meal. The menu describes the meal as best it can. It points to something beyond itself. As long as we use the menu as a guide we do it honor. When we mistake the menu for the meal, we do it and ourselves a grave injustice.”Rabbi Rami Shapiro

That's an excellent quote! Thanks for sharing that! Very appropriate.
 

Electra

Active Member
th
*accidentally gets enlightened while searching* lol
 

crossfire

LHP Mercuræn Feminist Heretic ☿
Premium Member
I can agree with you to a point, but whereas you see it as a start, I see curiosity as a path. However, I do not wish to suggest one of us is right and the other is wrong. Determining such a thing is way above my pay grade, and besides, this in not a debate thread.
Curiosity being the motivation behind examining things for yourself, rather than enlightenment being the motivation behind examining things for yourself.
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Curiosity being the motivation behind examining things for yourself, rather than enlightenment being the motivation behind examining things for yourself.

I'm not sure I follow you. Are you saying that in your view, enlightenment should be the motive behind examining things for yourself?
 

crossfire

LHP Mercuræn Feminist Heretic ☿
Premium Member
I'm not sure I follow you. Are you saying that in your view, enlightenment should be the motive behind examining things for yourself?
No, enlightenment is not the motivation, rather curiosity is the motivation. If enlightenment is the motivation, then you will only see what you think you should see, and screen out what you need to see.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
There's enlightenment in the Rousseauian sense, then there's enlightenment in the mystical sense. One's intellectual, the other, neurological.

Mix 'em up here and we'll all end up talking past each other.
 

crossfire

LHP Mercuræn Feminist Heretic ☿
Premium Member
Would you agree that, by definition, enlightenment is not what you think it is? If you knew what it was, then you would already be enlightened (to that aspect, at least.) There are plenty of opportunities for those surprising **doh** moments all the time. If you go around looking to be surprised, are you really going to be surprised?
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
There's enlightenment in the Rousseauian sense, then there's enlightenment in the mystical sense. One's intellectual, the other, neurological.

Mix 'em up here and we'll all end up talking past each other.

Spot on! That's an excellent thing to mention.
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Would you agree that, by definition, enlightenment is not what you think it is? If you knew what it was, then you would already be enlightened (to that aspect, at least.)

I have a bit different take on it. So far as I can see, definitions are to enlightenment like maps are to their terrain. The map can be excellent. It can be spot on accurate. But it still won't be the terrain. In a similar way, if someone were to come up with a sterling definition of enlightenment, an absolutely spot on definition, it still would not be enlightenment.

Consequently, such a definition would be -- at its theoretical best -- only about as useful to attaining enlightenment as a map of Colorado hiking trails is useful to actually hiking those trails. You an stare at map of hiking trails from now until the end, and still be no closer to hiking one than when you started. You can ponder a definition of enlightenment all your life and be no closer to enlightenment at the end than you were at the beginning.

So it seems we have a bit different take on it, but this is not the place to discuss whether one, the other, or both of us are wrong or right.
 

crossfire

LHP Mercuræn Feminist Heretic ☿
Premium Member
I have a bit different take on it. So far as I can see, definitions are to enlightenment like maps are to their terrain. The map can be excellent. It can be spot on accurate. But it still won't be the terrain. In a similar way, if someone were to come up with a sterling definition of enlightenment, an absolutely spot on definition, it still would not be enlightenment.

Consequently, such a definition would be -- at its theoretical best -- only about as useful to attaining enlightenment as a map of Colorado hiking trails is useful to actually hiking those trails. You an stare at map of hiking trails from now until the end, and still be no closer to hiking one than when you started. You can ponder a definition of enlightenment all your life and be no closer to enlightenment at the end than you were at the beginning.

So it seems we have a bit different take on it, but this is not the place to discuss whether one, the other, or both of us are wrong or right.
Just looking for similarities and differences as to how we each came to our individual perspectives--curiosity.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
First, be clear where you're coming from. Define your terms.

For me, enlightenment is rather like a persistent left temporal seizure. Enlightenment can be seen on various types of brain scan. It's alters the way the person perceives world and self.
 
Top