After enlightenment, what's left, what's the point? ~ Shinzen Young

Shinzen responds to the questions, "What's left after enlightenment? What's the point?" Filmed in April 2009, at Mt. Carmel Spiritual Centre in Niagara Falls.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Shinzen
• Young
• enlightenment
• mindfulness
• meditation
• zen
• liberation

[dreamtongue]

this guy definitely knows what he's talking about

[KrassiusCharr]

the point, is indescribable. It is not love for anything. thats the first thing the mind or ego will say. "well what do I love?"

The love spoken of is the experience of being loved. Feeling a love for yourself and all things. A love that is not attached to any thing but to nothing and makes all the things around this nothingness seem incredible. It's seeing the world as a child who has seen no evil and knows nothing, not even the difference between good and evil, but know everything as it is.

[anapanasati1970]

@Aezandar42 Agreed. Shinzen once quoted a teacher of his as saying "Enlightenment is the loss of the distinction between enlightened and non-enlightened."

[Aezandar42]

Permit me to answer this a little more succinctly. I don't want to step on your toes Teacher. But... what's left after enlightenment? Nonsense. There is no before and after to the enlightened. There is only being.

[stanmh1]

Shinzen realizes, after all his effort, that his achievement is not so amazing and personally life-changing as he imagined it would be, so he asks, "what's the point?", and unable to imagine a satisfactory answer, he falls back on a familiar old saw--Love. But there is no "THE point", only the next point, and those that follow, to be found only in the extended consciousnesses beyond his current conceptions or even dreams. Re-open Shinzen. You did before, do so again.

[flower1921]

I think I've had a "sudden" enlightenment sometime in april, but I have a long way to go. Being enlighten once doesn't mean you are tomorrow although it clearly does imply a total paradigme shift, at least it did for me. But I have to meditate every day in order to keep my mind quite, otherwise I easily fall to the thought of a separate self. And do I mediate everyday?? No, I don't. I tried to meditate in everything I do, but I feel I should meditate more. I just want to learn more about life

[authmaax]

what a brainwash

[TheLongHallway]

umm..Shinzen is 65(now 67)? WOW!

[szeleale]

@romentheposmen Does that make sense though? If only 1 out of 10,000,000 are at the level of peace, that means even less are enlightened. Are you sure all of these people are then enlightened?"

[szeleale]

@KrassiusCharr Everyone says it's like seeing the world through a childs eyes, but a child does not know what it's doing. It just does. this is just my opinion but, its the awareness of treating all things with unconditional love.

[Vapaavuori]

After enlightenment, left is left, and right is right.

The question itself - what's left? What remains? - implies that something vital is taken away by the experiment. But actually only delusion of self is taken away. Of course the delusion of self is basic human assumption and primitive motive for our biological needs. We need for us first. But after the "self" is let go, there still remains a whole world that we can be aware of and take care of. Old traits (and will) are part of the picture.