Screaming Ganto

[Guest guest]

S: What a story!

 

P: Welcome, welcome back, Stefanopolis!

Absence makes the heart grow fonder! )

 

S: Dear Pete, like always I am missing the point :-)

But this is not meant as an offence. It is my adolescent nature that

always misses the obvious and looks for the obscure instead.

 

P: Trying your hand atsarcasm, or being defensive?

Either way, no longer needed. We can now talk as men who

share the desire to understand beyond any loyalty to

preconceptions. At least that is what I think you want.

 

S: Enlightenement... is the most ordinary no-state. It means to be as you

are without making concepts about what you are.

 

P: Enlightenment is the original nature, but it is not ordinary,

in the sense of being easily found everywhere. I'm sure you had

moments of it, as most people have without given it that name.

They would say of those moments: " I was just happy in an unself-

conscious way, I felt completely free, as if I were not there, "

or words to that effect. It's actually " the me feeling " which

comes and goes, almost like still pictures flickering in a movie

screen and giving the illusion of continuity.

 

S: How could this be recognized? Maybe by someone who has gone through

exactly the same hoobatooba. But who cares.

 

P: Tremendous presence, real benevolence is not hard to recognize.

Unfortunately, some people hate goodness.

 

S: For shure, if I were a real professional robber, enlightened or not, I

would not care.

 

P: It's possible that Ganto tried to preach to the robbers. If that

was the case, that could have made the robbers mad. But that's

just a possibility. No one knows why.

 

S: But the screaming: blessed be the screamer who is not only heard one

mile away but even still today. Such are the screams of the masters to

wake up everybody, in the middle of the night.

 

P: Yes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Hello Pete,

 

no sarcasm was intended. Defensive... yes, I wanted to avoid that you

feel attacked by the mere fact that I am commenting one of your

stories.

 

But now, since we have touched this subject, I feel that I would like

to explain why I have used the word " ordinary " in conjunction with

Enlightenment. I called it so because it does not provide any

" special " state, reputation or image. It takes all such requirements

away and leaves you as it is, as it always has been. I have been

seeking the extraordinary, but the ordinary has been found.

 

What is left here to be recognised?

 

>P: Tremendous presence, real benevolence is not hard to recognize.

>Unfortunately, some people hate goodness.

 

Those are ideal adjectives that can come and go, they can be seeked,

achieved and they can be lost, they can be pretended, believed or

doubted. But enlightenment is not of this kind. It is not recognized

as long as the focus is on the extraordinary. And, is it not so,

everybody is interested in the excitingly special only ...

 

Krishna says to Arjuna: " What is day for me is night for all beings,

and what is night for me is day for all beings. "

 

And there is a story of Buddha (from the ARIYA-PARIYESANA sutra):

 

" In the eighth week after the Enlightenment, the Buddha took leave of

the area of the Enlightenment to make his way to the Deer Park at

Benares. On the way the Buddha met a matted-hair ascetic by the name

of Upaka coming the opposite way. Upaka was said to be an Ajivaka,

one of the kinds of ascetics who were common in the Buddha's time and

a Digambara. As the Buddha drew nearer, the ascetic asked him who his

teacher was. When the Buddha answered that he had no teacher, that he

was a ayambhu, fully self-Enlightened, the ascetic Upaka muttered: " It

may be so, friend, " shook his head and giving way to the Blessed One,

went on his journey. "

 

Thank you for letting me share this

Stefanopoulos