miércoles, 5 de junio de 2013

What is Enlightenment?

The wait is almost over. The new book, "What is Enlightenment?" is almost done its proof check, and when that happens it will finally be available for sale. I expect that to happen sometime next week. Why did it take so long to  edit this text? Because it's over 550 pages in length, which is a gigantic book, and the rare contents are like four or five books in one. The editors agree that this will probably be an “underground classic” because it finally brings together various enlightenment and samadhi teachings from various traditions. After reading it, you WILL KNOW what is and is not spiritual enlightenment. Hopefully the information will spread like wildfire.

One set of materials within this book is a new translation of a section of the Surangama Sutra, with commentary, that should revolutionize people's understanding of the strange spiritual phenomena that typically appear during spiritual cultivation. No longer will Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Taoists, Sufis or members of any other tradition be lost when they encounter strange experiences on the spiritual path and wonder what they mean. This material is worth the price of the book alone in clearing away illusions and delusions, and should be studied by members of all religions because they all go through these strange phenomena and then mistakenly think they are enlightened.

A second set of materials, which is also like a book in itself, details the stages of the spiritual path according to different descriptive schemes from separate spiritual traditions. It compares all these step-by-step sequences of progress and shows that everyone is talking about the very same stages of accomplishment but just using different names. Imagine that!  It covers much of the materials in the first lesson of my Stages course, and therefore links stages of spiritual progress from Buddhism with those of Christianity (via purgative, via contemplative, via illuminativa), Judaism (the three stages of Moses meeting God), Taoism (jing, chi, shen transformations), Islam, Confucianism, Nath Yoga, … It was hard to find and then link all these schemes! There are also rare timetables for how long it takes to attain spiritual gong-fu which, all in all, usually amounts to about twelve years of practice.

You’d have to collect a bunch of rare books from many traditions to find this material so I brought it all together in one place so it isn’t lost to future generations. The key is to give you the information so you can guide yourself. I am tired of expensive Tibetan texts, for instance, that don’t give me any guidance so the book gives you exactly what you need to know to guide you regardless of religion or tradition or stage of progress. You will clearly see they ALL say the same thing and have you attaining the same stages of progress that produce the same body-mind phenomena, which is what you SHOULD EXPECT if it were all real, correct?

A third set of materials is the most interesting to me personally. It collects “first person” enlightenment stories of individuals from different religious traditions, and after reading their accounts you will quickly realize that everyone is talking about the same thing we call enlightenment or self-realization. What is it actually like to be enlightened? You will now find out!  There are the enlightenment accounts from Rumi, al-Bistami, Meister Eckhart, Adi Shankara, Nisargadatta, Ramana Maharshi, Padmasambhava, Hui-neng, Pseudo-Dionysis, and many others – the exact words they used to describe what enlightenment is like. There are a lot of traditions in just that short list of names there, and yet they (and all the others in the book) describe the very same awakening.  

It would take you  years  to collect these rare biographical and autobiographical accounts from Christianity,   Buddhism, Tantra, Taoism, Vedanta, Confucianism, Neo-platonism, Islam, Zen, … which is why I'm excited to be able to put them in one place. Furthermore – and this is a biggie - it gives a detailed analysis on the “nature of God” from  the theologies of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and shows beyond the shadow of a doubt that the God of the West is the same original nature, or Tao or the East. No one wants to show you this because false theologies start to crumble.

There is no sectarianism involved with these comparisons. Once you place everyone's claims of the characteristics of God side-by-side with one another, you will find that they are all describing the True Self  (sat, chit, ananda) of Hinduism, fundamental nature of Buddhism (True Self, purity, eternity, bliss), God of Christianity, Allah of Islam, and so on.

There are also accounts from more than a dozen Christians who achieved enlightenment  and by their words anyone can also see that their spiritual states of achievement are EXACTLY the same as those in the East. “Union with God” is actually the stage of initial enlightenment of the East, and Christians and Jews will finally what this means and entails because of all the explanations.

Another set of materials contains numerous old Zen stories that have new translations and interpretations, and stories from other traditions that reveal what enlightenment is NOT. It especially hammers home the idea that enlightenment is NOT a samadhi attainment, which many mistakenly take for self-realization, and yet you need to attain the first dhyana (and open all your chi channels) before you can possibly become enlightened. I get over a dozen letters per year from individuals who mistakenly think they are enlightened, and my teacher got even more. After this material is out, I believe people will finally be able to correct themselves.

There are many mistakes of individuals cultivating spiritual practice incorrectly until an enlightened master comes along to correct them, sometimes leading them to enlightenment because they had already put in countless hours of meditation practice and laid a sufficient foundation for the breakthrough. Superpowers are not the Tao, intellectual understanding is not he Tao, and experience  is not the Tao, … these are just some of the common mistakes individuals make.

What Else?

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The Taihu School: A New Model of Education that Brings Culture and Values Back into Schools
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At the same time this book comes out, I will also be releasing our first   book on elementary school education for children. In this case, we profile the teaching methods and educational philosophy at the Taihu School in China, run by Principal Sami Kuo, that focuses on teaching virtue and values to young children in grades one through six.

Sami runs an international boarding school, based on the teachings of Nan Huai-chin and the best of Chinese and Western cultures, and it has become known as a miracle school throughout China because of the wonderful changes often seen in the behavior of children who attend the school. The waiting list for admissions is a mile long, and there will soon be nearly 400 students at the school.

If you have young children of elementary school age yourself and wondering how to teach them values, or an educator interested in the concept of how to teach virtue in schools,  or interested in how to give children a non-religious foundation for self-cultivation so that they might pick it up later in life, you might want to see how this unique school combines the works of the Chinese sages and Chinese culture with the teachings of Nan Huai-chin and best of Western civilization to produce radical transformations in its students.

It doesn’t just describe the going-ons at the school teaches the correct way to praise children to bring about behavioral change, how to teach them respect, why skills training and outdoor nature education is so important, the benefits of martial arts training over P.E., and also provides various educational thoughts for policymakers in a number of fields.

Sami discusses her philosophy of “smoking” or “perfuming” environmental influences for teaching children, and reveals how she integrates the best Chinese and Western philosophies at her school (Such as by mixing traditional Chinese medical concepts with western science ideas on nutrition). If you are interested in insights on how to teach and manage hundreds of children at a boarding school and wondering what and how they choose to teach them, this is right for you. Yes, it is relevant if you have your own young children because you will be sure to pick up several methods on how to instruct them and guide them to better pathways in life while laying a foundation of good character and life skills they can always depend upon as their spiritual core.

And by the way, if you are interested in teaching at the school for a semester or two, where you can also learn Chinese language and culture at the same time, you can contact Sami about a special English speakers program they are creating (contact information is in the book).

Hope you pick up both books at the introductory discount price. You should hear of their release in a week or so.

Regards,
Bill Bodri

TopShape Publishing, LLC
1135 Terminal Way Reno, NV 89502