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Comment by carrolldunham | Hacker News Reader

Check out the miserable fate of "Culadasa" (author of the Mind Illuminated) if you want to see what kind of Midas touch situation can come of meditation without the companion practise of virtue, particularly restraint. e: (Midas because the guy claimed to be so "enlightened" and "living in the moment" that he lost the ability to worry about say, other people's feelings, right and wrong, causing harm etc. Acted then in ways that caused his disgrace he is now isolated, leaving his very-much-extant sensual longings starved.)

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My take is that "enlightenment" is a real state the brain can be in, and it can be invoked by meditation, or even spontaneously in some cases. But that this state may not actually have the level of impact on human behavior as many think it should.

In the west we seem to correlate "enlightenment" with some level of "perfection", but I think that's actually pretty far removed from what many eastern traditions consider it. This results in us having weird expectations about how somebody who is "enlightened" should behave.

I think it's totally possible that Culadasa has had the experience of "enlightenment" (a certain state the brain can exist in). But it seems like this state may actually be morally neutral.

There's a reason the Eightfold Path in Buddhism isn't just "meditate really good until you reach enlightenment".

The behavioural expectations are explicit in all the Buddhist traditions. You're also mixing up a temporary state with what's supposed to be an irreversible permanent change of nature. Of course, the notion that the rigors of virtue are just part of 'social conditioning' that a meditator will slough off is deliciously tempting to people want to have their cake and eat it too. "Freedom from desire but oh, should one happen to come up - hey why not act on it - not because I want to, just, randomly? haha. because nothing has essence right? no harm done haha."

My point wasn't "the West has it wrong, you have to dive into the Eastern traditions for the real answers". It was more, "it's really complicated in Eastern traditions already, and we've muddied the water even further by adding our own expectations and biases on top of that".

So what I mean is that some people, like Culudasa, probably experienced a brain state that might be called "enlightenment" in some contexts. But either we've been way oversold what that actually means, or he only reached one of the lower "stages of awakening" and hadn't yet fully, and permanently, abandoned all the fetters.

(I tend to think it's probably the former.)

There are many states, of brain and matter. None of them - none, behavioural concerns or even desires or not, have anything to do with enlightenment. It's even meaningless to appoint so and so enlightened. In fact, stating such displays the ignorance.

No tradition have exclusive rights either.

What we can do is point the direction, what it is not, etc., when someone is seeking realization.

Can you link to this story?

I don't know if it's summarized somewhere because it is still unfurling over reddit and forum reactions (to the claim against him, then his admission, then his later attempt to back-pedal). I would warn you that there's a lot of time to be wasted addictively trying to unpack what exactly happened here because 1) it's all arguments and interpretation and 2) if you have any interest in using meditation to move toward freedom from desire, here's someone who claimed to spell out exactly how to do that, but then obviously it didn't actually happen because he admitted to acting in a way that implies a high level of sensual desire, grasping and craving etc. - so it brings the whole undertaking into question, right?

My eventual take loosely is that the guy was somewhat of a charlatan/double-minded from the start so, it's fine - it's still worth trying to free yourself of desire you can probably do something like that, and best to go on as if this guy never existed.

The tl;dr is that he was hiring prostitutes and lying to his wife about it.

EDIT: seems like there's a lot more to the story, and I think the poster you're replying to is assuming only the worst possible interpretation: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/comments/kw6wbl/...

Also, apparently he now has terminal cancer, and likely has less than a year to live. He's staying with family, which makes the above posters comment about "he is now isolated, leaving his very-much-extant sensual longings starved.)" seem untrue and unnecessarily cruel.

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