"There's nothing to do"

I just had a lengthy conversation with a friend about how I think practice is real (with the goal of SE, ext), and how he thinks I was fabricating extra layers that are taking me away from enlightenment.

So, sort of the school that we are already there. How do you guys address this when it comes up?

Nope!!!

How do you mean that anyway. This silly dogma that there is no self, you can't say that to people who aren't even A&P, and even people are in the DN. There definitely is a self then - if you do inquiry, things will definitely come up that are you. Maybe if you do it for years you'll see through that but for that duration, those things are you. So it helps to proceed in a technically aggressive but not dogmatic way, because there are definitely levels to the 'you' illusion.

I said that I thought enlightenment is a real change. This reminds of something Shargroll recently just said in another thread. Awakening works like psychology works, that people need to be thrown into a situation a few levels above their current level. Only then is serious insight made.

How do you bridge the gulf between them in talking about it? To me it seems like one won't get you over the A&P, unless you're lucky. It also won't represent the positive changes that come from practice.

I've been thinking there's a difference where one is more like a description of the way things are, and the other is a practice instruction about how to deal with bad shit, dukkha and the like.

The tricky thing about life and meditation practice is there is no safe place to stand back and judge what is best.

Life and meditation practice is like a rushing stream that can only be crossed by getting into it.

EDIT: there isn't a need to be a meditator in life, but you still need to enter into the stream of life.

If it is just another path, can it not be charted?

Not every path can be mapped by the same co-ordinates. This is not a problem.

The point is not to proclaim The One Highest Truth: the point is to practice and discover your path, "to learn by going, where I need to go."

For myself, not to speak for others, the map-- or anything one could say about it-- came AFTER. So I'm not super convinced of the utility of having an elaborate, detailed chart beforehand.

This I get, but I'm not talking about mapping it by the same coordinates. I am talking about talking about them in ways that pertain to them working, to really seeing through fabrications/illusions.

Have you read Kenneth's three speed transmission idea?

kennethfolkdharma.com/2009/07/the-three-speed-transmission/

The point is that there are many paths up the mountain. "Nothing to do" is the third gear practice. "Something to do" is the first gear practice. "A little to do" is the second gear practice. They all have value and can be useful in different contexts and for different people. So it really comes back down to the individual person, what they believe will work and what they are >willing< to do.

If you want to just learn about different options, there is Daniel's book of course. There is also "Wake Up to your Life" by Ken McLeod, which talks very straightforwardly about Mahayana practices, including mahamudra which is the essence of "no distraction, no practice, no work". There is also Peter Fenner's book on "Essential Wisdom Teachings" which uses adult development psychology as a scaffold for arriving at a state of presence. There is Mario Martinez's "Mind - Body Code" work that uses a second gear "watcher" type approach to dissolve reactive patterns.

Lots of methods out there, so it is impossible to really talk about in the abstract. It's all about what an individual is motivated to work on.