Adyashanti - Good Karma? Bad Karma?

[@skedi33]

this is the deepest talk he ever gave and the only talk anybody will need. I come back to this video every few years, and it seems to get clearer everytime.

[@eternalnectar]

Great that you like it!

[@elenip]

same here

[@KimL101]

Agreed. I have it on repeat at the moment. 👏🏼👏🏼

[@macparker3549]

Agreed!

[@2671ajim]

Yess same here 🫶

[@sunshinecompany1]

This is such a fantastic talk...never heard this one before. If this was 12 yrs ago, WHY doesn't he talk about this more often??

[@patriciazimbres]

This might be the most powerful talk by Adyashanti ever. He says it all. And he warns at the beginning that it might blow your mind to shreds.

[@ashleymarie9035]

This was the most profound video I've seen in a long time.

[@2671ajim]

I would say ever 😊

[@Simon0]

13 minutes in.. i dont usually hear Adya talk like this! seems like there is just no control or choice whatsoever.. which is actually a huge relief.

[@denise.findlay]

Adya is an incredible teacher. My mind is able to come to rest when I listen.

[@gavinduggan1147]

Adya is really the best. Each talk blows me away.

[@CappnRock]

Adya layin the smackdown on my ego

[@Molumba]

Who's ego? 😉

[@MrBreadisawesome]

@@Molumba we have to use language

[@pamelajonesmd]

Bravo!!!! Thank you Adya for your gift of putting the inexplicable into spoken word.

[@boddhitara730]

Amazing, thank you. I just love you so much, Adya.

[@anotherwavehere9621]

"It can't be otherwise. It couldn't be otherwise." Very powerful to see that life is living us.

[@shriram2455]

I have heard this video so many times now but this one statement that "Life is living us" seems to confuse me everytime. If the concept of good/bad karma doesn't exist then why do some people tend to experience good karma and some don't.? Why do only a few get to experience awakening and majority of others misery and suffering? Why are some people kind/compassionate while others full of hatred/greed? IF everything was predermined human beings would not strive to find the inner self within or do good deeds to help mankind.. right?

[@theself5738]

Shri Ram the words “predetermined” and “fatalistic” imply the existence of linear time and an existence of a future. There’s no such thing as future. In the ultimate reality, there is no time and past present and future are all happening at the same time. It’s all happening now. Do you know which way life will go? It just unfolds like an improvised dance. No prewritten script. Life/the divine is infinite beyond our mind’s comprehension and it knows what it’s doing. But we are also “it.” There’s no “plan” or predetermination. It all just happens now and we we are various expressions of the grand happening.

[@squamish4244]

@@theself5738 That's all well and good, but there is still this thing called enlightenment, so we still have to DO something to get there.

[@squamish4244]

@@shriram2455 Yes, it's the paradox that Adya skips over here - this 'nowhere to go and nothing to do' is all well and good, but still we and other people are suffering terribly, so we have to DO something about it. We have to DO something to move forward to this thing called enlightenment, feed people who are starving etc. I think 25 years of teaching upper-middle-class white people who are shielded to a great extent from life's mundane miseries like trying to pay the bills has really affected Adya's teaching and made it pretty elitist.

[@treasurechest2951]

Tbf he did say this was the crash course version and he was addressing a questioner who clearly had the “what can my ego do to get good karma” energy. If this were a six hour lecture I would have loved it but it was maybe 25 min

[@biancaInTheOcean]

This talk brings me right to the center.

[@CMCA79]

@eternalnectar: deep gratitude for posting all these talks from Adyashanti -- SO precious, THANK YOU!!! love.

[@charlheynike9619]

Good talk. Much wisdom.

[@vikrant-ahuja]

god is great

[@gavinduggan199]

I actually had my first and only awakening experience after listening to this. It was unexplainable.

[@antoniofranciscogarcia1707]

This is what a great master can do, when the student is ready

[@foogentog]

It always is unexplainable

[@katebeatham333]

Brilliant, thank you. Love and blessings to all of us.❤

[@martins8761]

mind bender

[@whitenoise5856]

I come back to this video when I feel stuck 😂 Thanks for making it available

[@BlessingsBobMatongo]

How's it going now😂😂

[@kerrykavita]

Adya has had a profound impact on my spirit. So thankful to have discovered his teachings

[@anniehamman8892]

Hectic talk. Merciless. Aaaaah, very bad news for the ego. Brilliant teacher. 😊🙏🏼💗

[@RaraAvis42]

Correlation does not imply causation. Treating that insight like the Chinese farmer in the famous parable can open up a new world to participate in. Shine on all you crazy diamonds.

[@Butterflye9]

I love this teaching so much

[@EileenMMello]

This is excellent. Thank you for posting.

[@Itwasrealbutnotfun]

Omgosh I just love Adya! So relatable, simple, easy to understand

[@grants1954]

Experience the profound wisdom of no escape... Wow

[@robertleslie5741]

"A Spiritual Life is semicyclic like a spiral staircase. With every experience, our perception narrows upwards closer to Truth or downwards in Deception. Until in the end, the path disappears, and so do we. These are my thoughts and the way I live." r.l.l.

[@judysparx]

🤍Beautiful, simple, direct truth .. Thank you 🙏 for the wisdom 🌟

[@lynnemyers777]

Following Adya. Will go off a cliff if he leads the way! Wonderful human being!

[@Bestbeachesincalifornia]

Plz dont go off a cliff lynne ! Even If adyashanti is doing it ! Take care love

[@glittermuse-1]

Beautiful. Adya ♾

[@aleweickert]

This is so so so good omg 😂😂😂 there is no hope 😂except surrendering to what is❤blessings to all beings may we all surrender to being ❤

[@2671ajim]

This is timeless ❤

[@paramitabhattacharya496]

Thank you..

[@marklawson2871]

Adya bottom lining things for us. ❤

[@mikaylalalarose]

Thankyou 🙏💛

[@riccardoc1711]

And here we are. Again and again.. and

[@Dowlphin]

What he describes is a familiar experience I had with ayahusca once. Not really what I would call useful, because traumatizingly overwhelming. Although every now and then certain things like listening to this bring vague memories back for brief moments. I guess it's natural. I used a helper to get there, after all, so of course it wouldn't persist as a state of mind. I now do better understand why I am suppressing experience of that, though.

[@foogentog]

That’s what life is, suppressing that memory so we can have a dualistic experience with ourselves

[@squamish4244]

By this logic, what he is saying *also* means that all of our ignorance will be stripped away, and we will be left more enlightened than we could possibly imagine, as if nothing ever happened...

[@WhiteSugarFive]

Man, this is so true, it resonates with me perfectly.

[@bassaddict1988]

23:20 minutes “out of samsara, boom, like that!” ..great sample!

[@JensNote]

What an amazingly fresh breath of air!

[@theself5738]

Samsara IS nirvana. WHAT! My head almost exploded

[@CMCA79]

Germany/India/Scotland. Where are you? US? I was born in N.Y. Just watched a video which helped me a lot - I noticed after you had posted: by Ben Smythe on suicide. I woke up feeling suicidal this morning. I've been experiencing this recently - strangely often intensified after seeing great masters (I visited Mother Meera's Darshan yesterday). I know it is not my true Self that wants to die and Ben Smythe video confirmed that and made me relax a little more with it..thank you..again. :-) Hugs.

[@cdn20782]

Wonderful!!!!!!

[@ohmbhuma]

beautiful

[@crissymariez7737]

smart man!!! thank you!!!!! i admire you very much sir!

[@ollyburhouse2464]

Wow this is powerful

[@flyingpickle7]

24:00 you got me there so so HARD thansk ....love ya

[@AurelienCarnoy]

So good

[@kaspukas]

Stop fighting yourself,- the most profound path to go

[@Om-qq3oy]

If he only had this talk, it would've been enough.

[@rakshita72]

Excellent!

[@unicornlover5233]

Wow, just wow

[@eternalnectar]

Deep gratitude for you enjoying the vids :) Were do you live?

[@paramitabhattacharya496]

India..

[@alvinware1988]

We must have read the same Hindu classics. Good stuff.

[@vikrant-ahuja]

excellent

[@vikrant-ahuja]

good

[@willwittlin9911]

Brilliantly instructive but with a seductive and even cruelly egotistical undercurrent at times.

[@squamish4244]

+will wittlin I thought I was just being cynical, feeling that myself. Someone commented on another video that he feels Adya started teaching too soon, and has never really matured as a teacher because of it. He had a series of massive awakenings after an almost ludicrously easy period of practice - compared to the horrifying ordeals a lot of people go through - but he doesn't seem to be very conscious of that. So it is very easy for him to say, "There is nothing to do, you will never get enlightened, blah blah blah", while everyone else facing fearsome obstacles in life can just be made more confused. I often get the feeling that he had so little experience of fear in his life prior to awakening that he sometimes - such as here - has kind of a smarmy, subtly egotistical reaction to people who are going through a lot of fear, or any other deep shit for that matter. ("Ha ha, you're all so confused and afraid, but I'm doing just fine! Just to rub it in, I'll dump some more confusion on you and make you more afraid.")

[@kwixotic]

+valair You've got it all wrong in your assessment. True, Adya, the separate person, was blessed with a really enviable fate/destiny to become who he has, a fate that you could count on the fingers of one hand. This is an evaluation based on a consideration of the "Relative", in other words the appearance you perceive of a "real" or "substantive" Adya. In the Absolute sense though, there never was such an Adya just like you and I and Karma doesn't exist since it depends on the notion of there being "real" people.

[@squamish4244]

kwixotic Yet here we are, suffering.

[@kwixotic]

+valair Well yeah, of course, if your perceptions are tainted by the notion of everything being as real as you perceive it to be and then react to it as such.

[@squamish4244]

kwixotic My point to this last point is a purely pragmatic one. As you said, Adya the person was blessed with a very privileged fate to attain such a state as he has. If you read the work of Jeffery Martin, PhD, who has interviewed hundreds of enlightened people, he found that very few reach a state such as Adya claims to have reached. Therefore, us, as people, are very unlikely to share in his fate based on current approaches in spirituality. The great paradox of spirituality is that yes, we are already all enlightened, but what do we actually *do* to get there, because obviously, we are not. The conditioning that makes us believe everything is as real as we think it is is very deep and wired into our ancient brains. It is one tough SOB to remove that conditioning, it is not just a simple matter of changing our perception or we would all just change our perception after listening to an Adya or Eckhart Tolle talk. That's why I am committed to the research of neuroscientists and others into cracking the mystery of enlightenment (and of course the brain has a huge role to play in all of this). Why do some people bust their asses for 30 years and get nowhere and others, like Adya, meditate 4 hours a day for 5 years and have huge, life-changing shifts? We don't know. But we will one day.

[@banipalkorilseperghan4503]

1000 Calibration....

[@Itwasrealbutnotfun]

Gangaji said her teacher kept it very simple: Just stop. Stop it all.

[@lurrr217]

Oh wow.

[@squamish4244]

It's probably easy for Adya to talk about the concept of karma 'ripening' as something to let go of when his karma ripened and bore the fruit of enlightenment by the time he was 31 in this life (or 25 for his initial awakening). That is very rare.

[@BLCKSQR]

you didnt listen at all did you?

[@daisylovewilde]

ty

[@BLCKSQR]

he talks about acceptance, and going against the wheel of life at our own peril.. only to say that choice is an illusion. in which case going against the wheel of life *IS* also it, there is no choice. just life going against itself, perfectly. without rhyme or reason

[@kwixotic]

Yes, "The Wheel of Samsara". Boy, is that salient advice to greedy stock market investors(like myself at the time) who lost so much $$$ in the stock market crash back in 2001 with tech stocks that seemingly only thrived and never had a downturn.

[@williamolenchenko5772]

In the world of apparent separation and form, karma seems to be real. But according to "awakened" teachers, this is only part of the whole truth. Truth exists on different levels, just as dreams exist in the dream state, but not in the waking state. Ultimate truth can only be "seen" from a cosmic perspective, beyond any mental concepts, by allowing the flow of life.

[@markbrad123]

The wheel of operant conditioning in which praise or blame create personal delusions.

[@pretheeshgpresannan4172]

Whatever be the case we all will be dead , so is it possible to live right now without fear of being dead etc

[@Nrgheal]

In other words if you become totally liberated and merge back to Source, oil into oil, you cease to exist as a separate being. Do you want that or life as you are.

[@cizvi]

Can someone explain to me if our ego has no free will , what is the point, torture or be enlightened??

[@squamish4244]

It's important to note that Adya's view is one of a number of views about karma among realized teachers. There are major differences of opinion. Who is right? Is it important? I don't know.

[@junglejoy]

✨💫

[@owl6218]

drop by drop the bucket fills, little by little one becomes good, becomes bad...it says in the dhammapada, i think...

[@LoveAll369]

Which talk is this from so I can listen the whole thing? I’m in a hard place mentally after listening this

[@spiritualanarchist8162]

WARNING..THIS TALK CAN HURT...;))

[@helenormes404]

Oh, nothing to strive for then, I mean I heard this said also but, really, nothing to strive for then 🤣🤣🤣🙏🙃❤️ there is a fair amount of shock waves going on here but I'm still very grateful for the tell it how it is approach. Thank you Again Adya, I love you, not feeling it right now but I know that I do 😁 xx

[@jonathangreen6505]

Nothing you ever do will affect the good and bad things in your life, it's balanced. Read The Present at _TruthContest♥Com_

[@brianschultz7320]

Can someone share the link to the full talk?

[@Sidd880]

So similar to Alan Watts. Both these guys spoke the truth. Reminds me too much of Alan Watts's lectures

[@squamish4244]

Alan Watts does not have the saliva-filled, whispering talk, heavy breathing, sometimes slightly smarmy tone and long-winded explanations that go nowhere. He gets right to the point.

[@shawnstpeter6004]

Does anyone know what talk or retreat this is excerpted from? I’d like to hear the whole thing.

[@danielnilsson8881]

Late answer, but if you or anyone else wants to know it's from a 2005 retreat recording called "The five truths about truth".

[@citizent6999]

Don't you just wish explanations were clear-cut and unambiguous without all the poetic ooga-booga? Where do I go for that?

[@squamish4244]

Shinzen Young and Jack Kornfield are two who dispense with all the shit.

[@citizent6999]

@@squamish4244 Thank you. SY is on my list and I will explore a bit of JK. Francis Lucille seems to be interesting too.

[@antoniofranciscogarcia1707]

If you want enlightenment quickly, do what he did. Study under a Zen master and do koans. Meditate for hours everyday day facing the wall. Zen is famously concise and to the point. But it’s deceptively simple.

[@squamish4244]

@@citizent6999 Francis Lucille is also prone to the ooga-booga, however. So many of these teachers are mired in jaron and doublespeak that doesn't actually help anyone. Yes, it's all well and good, but what do we actually DO? Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche is another teacher who doesn't pull this shit either. I like teachers who are facing the challenges of the modern world head-on, like how AI and biotechnology are about to change everything. Dzongsar Khyentse says AI is the best thing to ever happen to us, because it is taking away the last thing we identify as special, as uniquely human - intelligence. Very soon, our machines will be smarter than us. So who are we then? How do we define ourselves then? Great, boots-on-the-ground stuff.

[@squamish4244]

@@antoniofranciscogarcia1707 It can also be a recipe for a psychotic break. I am not allowed to do retreats because of my history of mental health problems, and even at retreats someone gets taken away in an ambulance pretty regularly. We need better methods. In the age of AI and neuroscience, we sure as hell can develop better methods, and if we don't, we will be overwhelmed by the forces hitting society like tidal waves.

[@AurelienCarnoy]

I feel that Adyashanti has a taste for roman noir. The internal monologue of the police man.

[@saidas108]

The Laws of Karma don't "exist" to those who are fully Awakened. The Laws of Karma are relatively real not absolutely real. Natural and esoteric laws that apply in the waking dream state don't apply in the sleeping dream state and vice versa. A fully Awakened Self is so eternally and if is in a body, is free from the waking, dreaming and deep sleep states of consciousness; it is Consciousness itself. However, for the rest of us, these Laws of Karma do "exist" and are the cause of the cycle of birth and death and all that takes place in that. In Reality, all of that is no more real than that which takes place in our sleeping dreams, but until we are fully Awakened, it sure feels real!

[@edzardpiltz6348]

saidas108, what the hack is a fully awakened self? And how many of them are there in this world? If you take yourself to be a body mind roaming the gave of an earth that you have somehow taken upon, there will be three experience of karma as cause and effect applauds to all of creation. But there will be also the feeling of free will due to the innumerable number of courses that lead up to an experience that you believe to have brought about through a deliberate decision. But if you know yourself as the unborn primordial principal there will be no question of karma nor will there be any question at all.

[@ernestweber5207]

This "awakened" being you might refer would see and be the no-karma side of the coin and pay more detailed, fine attention to the karma on the other side of the coin in the play then people who merely pay lip service to the idea. What a mistake it would be to imagine some sort of carte blanche from being "Awakened". Quite the contrary. And that by no means suggests that karma is reality.

[@antoniofranciscogarcia1707]

@@ernestweber5207 From my admittedly limited understanding what Arya is teaching here is Mahayana Buddhism 101 - I hear echoes of the Heart Sutra - “no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path, no cognition, also no attainment. With nothing to attain the Bodhisattva depends on Prajna Paramita and mind is no hindrance.”

[@squamish4244]

It sure does feel real! Even the Dalai Lama says he is not entirely confident of his ability to implement his practices in the after-death states. But he also says he's not enlightened either. So. Yes. The number of truly enlightened beings out there is very rare.

[@foogentog]

@@squamish4244there’s no such thing as a fully enlightened being who is also a person. Those are two different realms. Feeding the love / spirit side can bring us further from identifying with this world though, which creates a state of being identification that is closer to enlightenment than to the hell of being fully dualistically (aka materialistically) identified (as a physical person, with a personality, in this physical world). If we were even 99% enlightened then we wouldn’t be able to communicate with people, or eat food. This happened to eckhart tolle for a while, people were feeding him on a park bench and he wasn’t communicating. But gradually reintegration will happen and the spirit awareness will become more focused on here, in the physical manifestation, in order to function in this world. It’s not important to try to be intensely close to full enlightenment all of the time. Balance is the important thing. Tipping the balance more towards spirit than towards physical. This eases suffering, and gives a heavenly perspective rather than a hellish one.

[@Alastair539]

I have pondered this for some time now. So if everything is predetermined and simply happens the way it does, out of our hands, does that include things like suicide? If someone consciously ends their own life does that mean it was meant to happen that way?

[@squamish4244]

+Alastair Wilson This. I've wondered this too. The problem is Adya is forgetting to remind people that life is a paradox. You have to make decisions in order to get to the place where you know there are no decisions to be made. Or something. Adya tells people to put their mind on hold, but then tries to get people to understand what he's saying. Ok...

[@radicalaccounting]

Yes, that's exactly what it means. But it doesn't mean we shouldn't do everything we can to help them not want to die, or find that place in ourself that doesn't want to die. He has a wonderful youtube video on suicide. But at some bigger level than we have access to, it's all perfect.

[@squamish4244]

He just doesn't provide enough practical advice for me. This is all great, Adya, but what do I actually DO? What meditation techniques do I use if the ones you provide are not enough? Why do you label your book "True Meditation"? Does that mean other forms of meditation are not "as true"?

[@theself5738]

valar your mind is twisting itself into a knot trying to figure out how to awaken. The mind wants to be in control. There’s nothing to do. Meditation, yoga etc can help to discipline the mind, but it doesn’t cause an awakening to happen. The universal life/divine must be ready to awaken through you. Then, you will be moved to do these practices anyway. Or maybe not. Life knows the way for you. He has talked about this before. The awakening happens in you, and a desire is put in you to awaken all by life. It’s not your choice. And you can’t DO anything to make it happen. It’s like a guest you are expecting that will come to your house. You don’t know when it will happen but you might as well clean your house (meditation etc) and keep it ready for when the guest (awakening) does come. Otherwise, it will be more of a shock to the system if it isn’t ready. Life decides when you are ready to awaken. You don’t. (By “you”, I mean your mind/identity which thinks it’s separate from life- another paradox there) Many monks meditate for decades without awakening. Other people who are in jail awaken spontaneously without doing a thing. Since life already knows everything, resisting it won’t really help (life even knows you’ll do that too!). That said, suicide is also part of life and life/divine orchestrates everything perfectly whether the mind judges it to be good or not.

[@squamish4244]

Yes, I've heard all of this many times before. So what. DO you know what I've also heard? This: people with terminal cancer who are in severe pain have been helped by deep brain stimulation that "winds down" activity in the area of their brain that is associated with mental commentary on pain. Their need for morphine is drastically reduced or even eliminated until at least the last few weeks of their lives. Pretty soon scientists will be able to do this for *everyone* using noninvasive techniques, with focused ultrasonic bursts directed at specific areas of the brain associated with self-referential talk and the construction of one's identity and sense of self, thereby raising the possibility that we will be able to 'engineer' enlightened people. No more sitting for hours a day in meditation. That's information that is tangible and that I can work with. I imagine it triggers your ego. Whoops :)

[@enyp6814]

Things happen on "THEIR TIME" .who are "they"??

[@ashlee7831]

Eny P the universe’s time

[@marcoscalifornio8766]

the things' time

[@squamish4244]

@@ashlee7831 So therefore our time, as we are the universe?

[@squamish4244]

Classic Adya mumbo-jumbo, is what "they" are.

[@mastermorphosis]

So we are gods puppets?

[@joluijten8935]

No

[@squamish4244]

@@joluijten8935 Sure sounds like it.

[@skedi33]

no, we are God and the puppet

[@foogentog]

God tries to lead us wherever we yearn to experience. If we desperately need relief from duality god will lead us to enlightenment. If we would like to relate to ourselves again with love, then god will lead us back into duality. That seems to be it to my mind at least.

[@zarismith293]

6:03 - 7:13 🤔🤯

[@doubledorje]

Well shit!

[@texan4548]

People here, you are overthinking and overanalyzing this.

[@squamish4244]

Perhaps, but if so, they why did Adya spend an incredibly long-winded half an hour going into all sorts of arcane metaphysical stuff? If he doesn't want us to think about it, he shouldn't give us a huge amount of information to...think about.

[@texan4548]

+valar To feel it.

[@squamish4244]

Texan Well it didn't work, at least for me, and judging by the comments, for others as well - TMI about stuff that has no relevance to my actual practice, so it went right to my head.

[@hear-and-know]

Seems different from most talks by him, he generally doesn't give a view to hold onto (like "you have no choice"). Gonna have to listen to it again :)

[@topherming6565]

Very strange.

[@Simon0]

yummy.. Eternal nectar. im gonna have some eternal nectar for supper.

[@MrGunwitch]

There are some suspect things in this video. If I understand the commentator correctly, he is stating that there is no such thing as good and bad action, and that life is worth experiencing (provided you are 'awake'). He also seems to be postulating a fatalism with his comments on personal agency. All three of these are miccha ditthi. As a final comment, Adyashanti is married which shows he's still tied to the world of sensuality, which caps his level of attainment at sakadegamin. For him to be an anagami or arahant is an impossibility. His website states that 'We are all pure consciousness and are already liberated' both of which are incorrect. Tread with caution my friends.

[@squamish4244]

Modern teachers such as Adyashanti are interpreting the Theravada and other Buddhist teachings through their own personal experience, devoid of the many cultural trappings of the Asian societies the teachings developed in. In this process, they are increasingly augmented by the vast learning of the other world spiritual traditions, as well as modern psychology, physics and neuroscience. This is a perfectly valid path, considering that Buddhism is at its best a scientific tradition open to revision, and has gone through many changes in its history in Asia. For instance, the teachings you are referring to were not written down until 400 years after the Buddha died, so how authentic are they, really? It's open to question.

[@MrGunwitch]

squamish4244 This man is typical of many bogus American pseudo-dhamma teachers who are co-opting Buddhism for their own selfish gain. The Pali Canon is authentic, and the Buddha's teachings are perfect and without need of revision nor interpretation. Your opinion, whilst commonly bandied about in lay circles, is rejected by serious practitioners.

[@squamish4244]

MrGunwitch My statement applies to 'bogus' teachers such as Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Ram Dass, Surya Das, Shinzen Young, and many other serious and respected teachers. “If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.” - Dalai Lama

[@SBCBears]

squamish4244 I like Adya and respect his insight, but I am uneasy about what he says here. I am even more uneasy with the argument that scientific concepts should be used to support the process of awakening. Awakening frees the mind from concepts and leads it to realize its own intrinsic unsupported awareness. Invoking concepts from any field may readily mislead an unawakened mind into yet another thicket of views. Letting go of concepts is letting go of self. The Pali Canon my have shortcomings, but it is sufficient and more profound and comprehensive than any other guide. It is unsurpassed, unequalled. Even tho it was held in a formalized and memorized oral tradition for centuries before it was written, it has been and continues to be successful as a guide to a moral life and, ultimately, to liberating the mind.

[@MrGunwitch]

squamish4244 None of those personalities you cited are serious practitioners. They are all lay people and hence not fully committed to the dhamma path, nor following the Buddha's instructions (the Buddha praised the monastic life not the lay-life). Additionally, the Dalai Lama, by his own admission, is not enlightened.

[@CerridwenAwel]

This is so depressing.

[@kneza96BG]

....to the mind :)

[@squamish4244]

@@kneza96BG Even so.

[@RippleDrop.]

Why?

[@Belleville197]

So..... There's no such thing as free will ?? No such thing as personal responsibility ?? Everything is predetermined ? Fuck that.

[@zsoltgalambos2009]

+Belleville197 Can you change your eye color by will? Can you grow 10 cm in a sec? No? So where's your free will? The more you listen and follow your consciousness, the real You, the more "free will" you'll have.

[@MajorCulturalDivide]

+Belleville197 You think you're making choices. There's your free will.

[@Janu_Curado]

+Belleville197 There is no free will outside of you. You ARE free will.

[@squamish4244]

+MajorCulturalDivide You don't think you have free will. What then?

[@MajorCulturalDivide]

+valinor Because I look back at my life and realize that in my circumstances I couldn't have made any other choice than I did. So it wasn't really a choice in that there was some other parallel universe where a different choice could have been made. So I don't take the credit when things go well and I don't take the blame when things fuck up. I look at free will as more of a feeling. If we feel like we have it that's just a feeling and if we feel like we don't have it, that's just a feeling too. But either way, the same choices would have been made. Even some scientists are concluding there is no free will. But I think that ultimately it's just a way of looking at things and not an objective thing in itself. I'm not saying I'm right or wrong. It's just a perspective.

[@squamish4244]

I don't know. Maybe nobody knows. Adya is constantly emphasizing how truth is relative and always changing on the level of form, which is where karma and reincarnation take place. So I'm confused as to how he can give an answer that seems to say, "This is how the world works" as if it is fixed. He also seems to say that the world is a paradox - there's nothing to be done, it's all happened before, there's no personal will, etc. - but the only way of realizing that is via doing something, or via the personal will. There's also the implication that his worldview appears to reinforce the 'do-nothing' neo-Advaita approach that he more or less teaches. The way he addresses the audience here too - it strains my tolerance for his overly delicate, whispering style of talking and it feels like he is patronizing his students with his 'wisdom', which is certainly not his conscious intent, but comes across as such nevertheless. This is a guy who woke up when he was all of 25 years old, after all, while still living with and working for his parents, and hadn't had the world beat the shit out of him beforehand.

[@squamish4244]

***** Okay, fair point. It feels more like he said nothing at all. But it was an incredibly long-winded way of saying that. I still have the same problem with Adya's teachings. He never really says anything of real practical benefit. There's an awful lot of 'nothing to do, just let go, relax into the infinite', etc. I have had to look elsewhere for more powerful tools than he provides. If I just listened to him it would be too much of an invitation to slack off and walk around believing I'm letting go and already free without that being the case in terms of my day-to-day experience.

[@gadidoron7301]

+valinor100 looking for more powerful tools is you saying i need to improve give me something more powerful but thats samsara, enlightment is letting go of all motivation you do live your life as you want but let go of the notion you do it, let go the notion you could have done it else then what you did, and totaly except this moment the more you seek the deeper you are in samsara but most people cant stop seeking , if i only had more money, power, woman, enlightment thats why most humanity is suffering

[@squamish4244]

gadi doron Okay, just let go...but we need better tools to "just let go". We have to work with samsara until we are free of it. Even talking and meditation are tools, and Adya does an awful lot of talking and teaches meditation. If "just stop" or "seek without seeking" really worked, then everyone who had never learned anything about spirituality would be enlightened, because they are not seeking enlightenment. Not looking for better tools will get us where spirituality has gotten us in the past, which is almost nowhere. Few people on the path are genuinely enlightened, and that number is not going up very quickly. Adyashanti is a rarity.

[@gadidoron7301]

yes i agree that for example meditation is a tool, but like they said in the past once the tool got you to where you need to be you can drop it, enlightment is very simple so simple most people miss it, its just the natural state of being, the problem is our mind is so full of rubbish we live in our heads instead of reallity, meditation is a must to quiet the mind and see its fullish games it plays

[@squamish4244]

@110161457167484561793 I agree. I have noticed that most enlightened teachers seem to have amnesia when it comes to their history prior to awakening. Adya puts his long quest down to "struggling too hard" and says that other people do not have to go through that. Although given it only took 6 years to get to his initial awakening and 6 more to his final one, most people would kill for that kind of success rate no matter the effort! But I don't see many of his students waking up using his "method of no method" techniques. He claims they work. Tami Simon once challenged him to provide actual numbers on how many of his students are waking up. He seemed mildly caught off guard at first, and tried to slip out of answering the question, but she pressed him on it and he said, "Hundreds." That may be true, but it is still a fraction of the thousands of students he'd met up until that point, and I doubt very many of those who did wake up have reached his level. Similar criticisms have been levelled at Mooji and other adherents of the neo-Advaita tradition. In fact, the entire Buddhist tradition has been subjected to some severe criticisms lately by second-generation Western students and teachers who are appalled at the lack of innovation and rather awful success rate of most practices. I myself am appalled at many of the stories I encounter, of people who spend 20 or 30 years in rigorous meditation and don't get enlightened, and how that is tolerated in Buddhism as one's karma or lack of sufficient effort or whatever, instead of the more obvious answer that Buddhism has gone through long periods of stagnation, decline and revival in its 2,500 years of history. Mindfulness teacher Shinzen Young once compared progress in Buddhism to what has happened in mathematics, for instance. Due to the refinements of about 20 brilliant mathematicians over the last 300 years, the average high school student can do calculus at a level *better* than Isaac Newton could, despite he being the genius who invented it. Can the average meditator practice better than the Buddha could, much further back in history? I don't think so.

[@samrt-boro]

I don’t get it why spiritual teachers always speaks in a paradoxical way, like dude what are you even trying to say, I didn’t understand anything at all.

[@squamish4244]

You know, it is rare for anyone to criticize Adyashanti on his own videos, but you nailed it. They would just claim it is the indescribable nature of reality or whatever, but I'm like, okay, fine, but none of that helped and what do I actually with the information?!? What. Do. I. Do?!?

[@warehousing2953]

You are too young, give yourself a few decades of suffering then come back to what he says 😄

[@squamish4244]

Your ego is showing, Adya. In a subtle way, you're getting off on scaring and confusing people here from the palace of your enlightenment.