Mastering the Core Teachings of Buddha - An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book

Models of the Stages of Enlightenment these reforms despite the economic and social pressures to do otherwise. One of the issues holding this back is that unfortunately only a few have gone far enough to see how the vast majority of the golden dreams of enlightenment do not hold up to reality testing. Another is that putting one’s self on an artificial pedestal can be rewarding in many ways. One way or another, the number of voices trying to bring things back in line with what can actually be done is small in comparison to the forces that want to make it into something grand and thus largely unattainable.

Before I get too far into the details, I should explain that the most essential principle I wish to drive home is that THIS IS IT, meaning that this moment contains the truth. Any model that tries to drive a wedge between the specifics of what is happening in your world right now and what awakening entails needs to be considered with great skepticism. With the simple exception of the fact of poorly perceiving the sensations occurring now and habitually coming up with the illusion of a separate, continuous individual, nearly all of the rest of the dreams are problematic to some degree. This basic principle is essential to practice, as it focuses things on the here and now, and also happens to be true. Back to the complexities…

The mental models we use when on the spiritual path can have a profound effect on our journey and its outcome. Most spiritual practitioners have never really done a hard-hitting look at their deepest beliefs about what “enlightenment” means or what they imagine will be different when they get enlightened. Many probably have subconscious ideals that may have come from sources as diverse as cartoons, TV

shows (Kung Fu comes to mind), movies, legends, 60’s gurus, popular music, popular magazines, and other aspects of popular culture in general. More formal and traditional sources include the ancient texts and traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Sufism, Kabbala (however you spell it), Christianity, Western Mystical Traditions (Alchemy, Theosophy, Golden Dawn related traditions, etc.), the ancient Greek mystery schools (including the fragmentary writings of those like Heraclites), and the non-aligned or ambiguously aligned teachers such as Kabir, Khalil Gibran, J. Krishnamurti, and many others.

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Models of the Stages of Enlightenment

Modern fusion traditions, such as the various new versions of Buddhism and other traditions that are present in the West, also have a wide range of explicit and implied ideals about awakening. Plenty of people also seem to take their own inborn higher ideals for themselves or others that have arisen from sources hard to define and made these a part of their working if usually poorly-defined models of enlightenment.

There is also a strong tradition in the West of believing that enlightenment involves perfecting ourselves in some psychological sense, though this is also prominent in certain Eastern and traditional models as well in slightly different forms.

Just about all of these sources contain some aspects that may at times be useful and other aspects that at times may be useless or even send people in the wrong direction. The number of contradictions that can be found even within each specific tradition on the subject is much larger than I think most people imagine. For instance, those who attempt a systematic review of the dogmas of enlightenment within the Pali Canon will find themselves tangled in a mass of widely divergent doctrines, myths, stories and ideals, and this is only one tradition.

Thus, to take on the subject of the models of the stages of

enlightenment is a daunting task, but by breaking it down into simplified categories, some discussion of this wide mass of dogma and half-truth is possible. I will use both simple, broadly applicable models and also discuss specific models that come from some of the traditions and try to relate these to reality. In the end, relating them to reality is essentially the practice, and that falls to you.

I consider this attempt to be just one addition to an old tradition that attempts to reform the dogma and bring it back in line with verifiable truths, albeit one that is more specific and comprehensive than any that I have found. Each new culture, place, time and situation seems to need to do this again and again, as the forces within us and society that work to promote models that are out of touch with the truth of things are powerful and perennial, with money, power, fame, ideals of endless bliss and pleasure, the enticing power of the ideals of self-perfection and the pernicious inertia of tradition being chief among them.

In that same vein, this chapter is very much a situation in which I claim a very high level of realization, write as if what I have achieved is 264