Dysfunctional Behavior After Awakening

This is an excerpt from a 3-week retreat which Stephen led in Pine Valley, Utah - October 8th, 2024.
This was during the Q&A after this talk,
• Journeying into Cessat...
To learn more see Stephen's book, "Demystifying Awakening",
amzn.to/3L5RXh4
For upcoming retreats and Zoom offerings please see,
awakeningdharm...
Stephen Mugen Snyder, Sensei began practicing daily meditation in 1976. Since then, he has studied Buddhism extensively-investigating and engaging in Zen, Tibetan, Theravada, and Western non-dual traditions. He was authorized to teach in the Theravada Buddhist tradition in 2007 and the Zen Buddhist schools of Soto and Rinzai in 2022. Stephen is a senior student of Roshi Mark Sando Mininberg.
#zenbuddhism #awakeningjourney #spiritualawakening

[@stephensnyderdharma]

FYI: I'm leading a Zen Peacemakers event, which is free and coming up soon. Title: Meeting Life's Challenges with Equanimity & Compassion Date: January 15th, 2025 hive.zenpeacemakers.org/events/159992

[@bulkeh]

I think this was what I needed to hear today. Thank you.

[@stephensnyderdharma]

Glad it was helpful!

[@ablanccanvas]

“… dragging some cans behind them”… love that image/sentiment. 😌✨♥️✨👍🏽✨🇨🇦

[@greggorgone5324]

Thank you for this message. For me, the key to awakening is mindfulness and gratitude. When I feel an emotion or observe a behavior I can see is not resulting in growth and expansion, I reflect on it and make a course correction. We are all a work in progress.

[@stephensnyderdharma]

Wonderful!

[@makifouchechanner7594]

What an important video. So often spiritual spaces and unpacking personal trauma/disfunctions aren't spoken about in tandem. I feel like there's often an idea that you can escape having to face your shadow by diving into the spiritual. Facing your shadow only helps in one's journey towards enlightenment and vice versa.

[@stephensnyderdharma]

I wholeheartedly agree!

[@wthomas5697]

Truth. Thank you for your honesty. Seems like we get more and more sensitive to the mechanism of suffering. It's never eliminated. It's how we evolved to be. Our response time simply lessens.

[@alanlopez3070]

A well spoken balanced answer to a critical problem. The most vital response I have received in an interview with a teacher was an answer to the question: "How after an awakening moment can I stll act like a jerk?"

[@nik.olas328]

What did the teacher respond? ❤

[@Always-There]

In my experience it took time for Awakening to unfold and settle. Some 5 & a half years on and the journey continues. Much smoother now though. Ever opening and becoming more integrated, more comfortable, living within what was revealed. Certainly appears to be endless.

[@Jukau]

Can you Go into Detail?

[@Always-There]

@ Hello, yes sure. I experienced a Realisation after around 5 years of ardent seeking. Seeking was my entire life and once Seen, the lifestyle dropped away. When the window closed again there was no more questions & no more seeking and this left quite a void in everyday human life. Things get tough in many ways for a time (2 years for me) while what’s left of the ego adjusts and desperately clings. More understanding gradually enters though, like incremental downloads and this slowly overcomes the obstacles bit by bit. Each day a little something new is revealed and understood, God’s presence growing inside. All the doubts eventually dissolve, you see the common link between everything and it does indeed feel like an ever unfolding flower. Beautiful but not without struggle for those who didn’t completely lose their ego in a single moment. Hope this helps.

[@rashkehof2458]

I like: "We get less run by our disfunctions" Very eloquently spoken!

[@EmpireSelfBuilding]

Well said! It starts by awakening to the fact that we have been conditioned in a twisted way and there is still a lot of job to do!

[@cheyennealvis8284]

Always a student. I like it

[@websurfer5772]

"Less run by our dysfunctions" - That's a good thing to strive for. Even NDErs carry the Love and Peace from the other side for about 4 months or so and then it slowly dissipates and it's replaced with the day-to-day reality of low vibrations that we're all familiar with here.

[@gabrielhill1725]

Thanks for speaking on this.

[@jamilarazam]

very true, you can be awake and still have inappropriate behavior, and make mistakes, it's quite surprising chogyam trungpa and sogyal rinpoche accused for example

[@jamiemills2645]

That's some mighty fancy Zen ☯️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[@freedudegratitude3230]

thank you

[@stephensnyderdharma]

You're welcome

[@rapidstable]

Yea if you are stepping on my Ego. My Ego is the one hurting. Pride!

[@dameerdj5403]

There’s no one to teach and no one to learn/awake. No one but the false self.

[@brushstroke3733]

True, but the false self cannot realize that, and even if it does understand it, the false self still appears as real to itself. The false self must exhaust itself seeking.

[@dameerdj5403]

​@@brushstroke3733 There's no self at all, only the mind that creates false self. If you were alone, without the option to match the self against the other/others, the self dissolves. So all that crap on the relation of a student-teacher-apprentice-whatever is nothing but the mind activity. Everything just happens on its own without any control, and the mind takes a credit/ownership saying that this is my life, my awakening, my enlightenment, my body, my whatever. There's nothing appearing as everything, and it just is, without any purpose or sense or control. Nothing has a built-in meaning, only the mind that creates the meaning... but that's futile anyway. Cheers!

[@beyondstars-s9h]

We are eternal individuals , sparks of God and the purpose is love. Love means two, the lover and the beloved. You and God. United in love and will. That is the goal of life.

[@brucelawrence3036]

Diamond sutra

[@siewkonsum7291]

Stephen Mugen Synder 🙏 Self Awakening is not dependent on judging good or bad, polite or rude. No Masters had ever said an awaken person has fully discarded the ego. Without which, that person is unable to function in his/her worldly life. Thus an awaken person still has residual ego in his/her personality. 😊🙏🙇‍♂️🌷

[@gideonros2705]

You can't discard somthing that has never existed. Fundamentally, an ego is dyad, a relationship between self and nonself. Besides, you NEED a self to navigate physical reality. Don't you know that??

[@siewkonsum7291]

@gideonros2705 Yes, a 'self' is needed to function to live in the worldly plane. And that 'self' is One's egoic or conceptual self. As long as a person is alive in a body & mind, the ego is there, it cannot be discarded completely. However many Masters said - even if a person is awaken he/she still carries some residual egoic tendencies but not so much as before. Because residual egoic tendencies are still required to enable him/her to live & function the life on Earth.

[@metalchemy]

Yes, I can so relate. With the first kensho I did saw and realized this, and as I was "coming back" from the Void = I saw all the karmic data, patterns, addictions, behaviors etc and all the inner work I had before me; to face myself and clean up, and it felt so heavy haha - I didnt want to go through and face everything that I had accepted and allowed myself to become. There's 3 Pillars to grow and evolve seperately. Just because you can access high states of Awakening or Consciousness doesnt mean you have cleaned up! 1. Pillar of Stages of Awakening. 2nd Pillar the Cleaning Up. 3rd. Spiritual Maturity from ego-centric or group centered truth (like many religions) into global and then Universal Truth. Just because you know yourself as Pure Consciousness doesnt mean you will automatically have cleaned up, for example: if you are a Criminal and have an Awakening experience and know yourself as Consciousness - you are now a criminal that knows itself as Consciousness, many of your patterns or karmic data is definitely "dragging along" as you said. Indeed, there are many traps on the path and the Ego is a great shapeshifter, it has no problem going into higher states and justify anything. Vigilance to the very last breath lets say that much. And yet we are here to play as egos to transcend egos. Id say intimate relationships is the ultimate testing ground for where we are at. Its super wholistic also, not only psychological but all 12 aspects of Being. The mind and body needs to be tuned into sync and alignment - to be Divine Instrument. Broad interesting topic🙏

[@hilpei3675]

After The Ecstasy, The Laundry: Jack Kornfield

[@Greengate777]

Sometimes, one has an experience. Someone who hasn't searched for it, hasn't done any serious seeking, and hardly ever meditates. For such a person, the experience is hard to define. There is nothing to compare it to. An understanding comes, a silent understanding... but is this Enlightenment? How would one know? Who is it that would know what? Anyway, the quiet "Bliss" remains, but the noises of life push it to the background. You have to go back to chop wood and carry water. Why? Because you are still alive in this Maya. And that's when one meets what Prof. Jung calls The Shadow. All the crap that was hidden in your subconscious will reach up and grab you. If you are "Enlightened" you have to know personally the ugly side of you... look into those mirrors you covered and never want to look into.... (lol, they say in Zen that there is no mirror... but they have means to skilfully say a lot of things in Zen, don't they?)

[@michaelmcclure3383]

I'm not a Zennist, my background is more in Advaita Vedanta and meditation. But its interesting what the Vedanta tradition says about all this. For example there is a famous text called Tripura Rahasya titled 'the variety of sages'. In it it says that there are three basic categories of sages.. one is a case in which there is realization.. but the fruits don't fully manifest in this life. Another case would be where awakening or realization happens and then they continue to practice and eventually all the fruits of realization are revealed..over time.. The final case is one that has already done all the practice so when realization/awakening comes there is nothing further, the fruits of moksha are there. One of my favorite quotes from that chapter says "109-12. The vasanas not inimical to realisation are not weeded out by the best class of Jnanis because they cannot seek new ones to crowd the old out. Therefore the old ones continue until they are exhausted and thus you find among them some highly irritable, some lustful and others pious and dutiful, and so on" I think it explains a lot. It's also interesting that he includes piousness dutifulnese along with lust and irritation.. I mean they are all just habits and habits that aren't inimical to realization meaning they don't prevent realization occurring., this surely explains why they are seen to continue to manifest after realization in most cases!. Some right till the end of life apparently.. look at Sasaki Roshi a woman found his sexual advances disagreeable even at 105 haha. But most say he was deeply awakened.. In the Advaita Vedanta tradition these three categories are all sages by the way. They differ only in their parabdha karma. To your point about the shadow, its a fair point. If a person is addicted to seeing themselves only in a positive light it's somewhat unbearable.. that toxic positivity about the self.. I suppose the advice then is if you think you're enlightened go and live with your parents haha. The biggest delusion in that situation it would seem is associating behaviors with enlightenment. As if enlightenment is just being a really good and positive person, so any negative pattern is just instantly disowned... projected on an other or as the fault of an other. A good medicine in my opinion would be to make that distinction between the vasanas and the reality revealed by awakening. Then they are just residual vasanas and in most cases they are gonna be there its no big deal.

[@karakim9213]

Hey! Ur 21 day retreat has a 6day prior silent stay requisite and im not able to find information on how to join those

[@stephensnyderdharma]

The prior experience with silent, residential, Buddhist meditation retreats can be fulfilled with other teachers. I'm not currently offering any retreats shorter than 2-weeks.

[@vvv11193]

The Self is not looking for enlightement. It's not done or not done. If we are talking about us having something more to experience, we are not talking about the Self. All this play of "me seeking liberation" happens in the space of Self, while the Self is untouched by all of that.

[@brushstroke3733]

Sure, but the knowledge of that doesn't end the small "me" self's illusion.

[@trufflez266]

Can you please clarify the difference between the concepts "awakened" or "awakening" and "enlightened"?

[@stephensnyderdharma]

Here is a video that explains how I define awakening, kzbin.info/www/bejne/i6jYapKXqLKIldE I don't typically use the term "enlightened" but I would say it is the ability to be present with whatever arises.

[@atomusbliss]

Awakening happens first, then the Dark Night of the Soul, then integration, and then Enlightenment. 🎉

[@ushojedi]

Awakening is a direct experience of emptiness, predominately attained in meditation, in which one never falls back into believing in dualistic appearances. Enlightenment is the end of dualistic appearance.

[@anthonypanneton923]

Is there some symbolism or meaning to the design of the apron worn - with the little ring on one side, etc.? Is it a functional piece of clothing? And if so, what is the function? Is it just something similar to an apron worn by a kitchen worker - just something to catch drips and splatters? Or does it have no meaning, and is just meant to weed out people like me who would ask such a question? And if it has no meaning or symbolism, then why do Zen teachers wear them? Is it (in the immortal words of Mick Jagger) some kind of fashion?

[@MagoMenla-ne8hb]

Because it’s not awakening You had an awakening experience Don’t confuse understanding with experience Don’t confuse experience with realisation Don’t confuse realisation with liberation

[@martinlavagnino]

Don’t confuse anything, they’re just concepts

[@siewkonsum7291]

And don't use concepts to explain concepts which will get yourself & others further & further away from the True Dharma/Truth.

[@eikeksi11]

When i go lay in bed and experience this weird dream stuff, its like i feel ok there, maybe thats what they call enlightement, as its like ok to be there, maybe its dreamstate?

[@tr7b410]

As Swami Vivekananda said:85% of those people who have had a kundalini awakening experience will force the ego back to the surface/into the lower chakras. 10% will go insane & 5% will have an ego shattering experience so profound the ego never resurfaces. As a footnote:As we move further into the Dwarpara yuga & Treta yuga in 3k years this dynamic will change.

[@davidr-c8s]

I'm so glad he has a shaved head, is wearing his expensive Zen uniform, is sitting in a cross legged posture, is surrounded by flowers, a staute and other "spiritual" accoutrements, makes money off of retreats, and includes "Sensei" after his name, just like Zen Masters of old did. Now I know he is deeply enlightened and everything he says is true. Gasho! Be sure and hit that like and subscribe button!

[@S.G.W.Verbeek]

I wouldn't want to have it any other way😌

[@gabrielhill1725]

Settle down

[@Sagepond7]

What happens if by not hurting another your not accepting the whole?

[@stephensnyderdharma]

Does Mother Nature intend to harm?

[@Sagepond7]

@ out of love I’d say yes. The wind nocks down trees. Decay follows. It’s part of the whole

[@extavwudda]

I suppose this is the difference between knowing and being.

[@rapidstable]

Why does a mother slap a child that calls her own mother by mean names? So the child doesnt suffer in regret when he grows up and realizes what he has done. The mother doesnt take the perspective of a victim. That will only hurt the child once he learns what he has done. Thank you mother for the lessons only a higher understanding of compassion can bring. Poor little us and our fragile egos.... a symbol of a living being is not the true form of the being. We bellieve the symbol is us.

[@daviddyster8539]

😊🙏

[@o.g717]

Does masturbation hinder awakening?

[@felice9907]

once you´re done you will not be able to say "i´m done" because you´re done!

[@stephensnyderdharma]

Exactly

[@mikehardy3823]

💚🙏

[@WanderingYogiThailand]

Compassion + Emptiness 🪷 Bodhicitta + Wisdom.

[@theonethatisallnoneandone]

It's a totally relative and subjective viewpoint mired in duality & delusion. No such thing as nice person or good guy or bad or evil guy or right or wrong after awakening...these are just measurements according to the era or the time frame or the nation or culture or race or gender so these labels are always shifting and morphing due to variables surrounding them. Can an enlightened person be considered rude? Of course he can in the mind of the person that is offended by him or the numbers of people that think he is rude or bad or wrong or whatever but in reality he is no label and ultimate reality is nothing is happening snd nothing exists. People never get tired of playing bullsh!t mind games with words

[@piehound]

None of what he said conflicts with the Christian walk. That's my opinion. I mean the daily walk. I'm not referring to all the religious frills such as church attendance, public kneeling, public hymn singing and prayer. All that is mere cosmetic and public relations. The universe despises hypocrisy.

[@Deucely]

Well, the nature of the Universe is infinity and within infinity, you are always in the center, and any finite amount is rounded down to the infinitely small and the infinitely small is zero, because it's 0.0 infinity 0 then a 1 that you can never reach, so it's zero. Meaning nothing finite matters, nothing finite has any weight. No bad behavior is ever bad, it's a zero. No good behavior is ever good, it's a zero. It's trippy that way. So when you awaken and you realize this age has a lot of stupidity in it, and we are all playing the game of life with a seemingly absurd level of it within us, it's still zero. It's fine, whatever, let's all be stupid. Plus, if you were the supreme intelligence, so smart it defy belief, what would you do with it? The only answer I get is: A lot of stupid stuff. I'd be ridiculous, I would be an absolute buffoon. Then I look back on my life and I'm like, oh I get it now, that's funny. No worries, even though I still carry a lot of negativity, a lot of stupidity, a lot of hurt, it's all still zero, because the entire finite scale from negative to positive and anything in between, is all zeroes. You navigate an ocean of zeroes in every direction, no big deal, they go up and down, some big some small, it's all just for a laugh, for the infinite, the supreme, the perfect, the only thing left to do is to create limits and play within them. Think how every single game worth playing has rules, boundaries and within them, the infinite is still there dancing, there is infinite possibilities within those boundaries. Life is no different. A fun game of hide and seek with yourself. Aight, that's it from me, cheerio!

[@sophiafakevirus-ro8cc]

You might start dressing like a monk 😂

[@georgewahl2498]

Gifted teachers will vex the nicest students as these students have real potential to recognize and let go of the "I" that is vexed. Are not the most difficult people in our lives, the cruelest, the most demeaning, the most disparaging , our best Zen Masters? One may only know this from direct experience of facing darkness, seeing the self that is vexed and finally tasting what true equanimity means. Most of us go out of our way to avoid those that vex us and find ourselves with the same types of individuals and vexations again and again until one day we get it intellectually. When we face it with much inner work, stillness and compassion, a transformation can occur through our own direct experience - never to be vexed again. Definitely something that can happen long after initial enlightenment experiences. Everything is empty.

[@stephensnyderdharma]

That’s one approach. Everything is empty and everything is full of Presence and Love.

[@yoya4766]

that's a long ramble, what are you saying?

[@Alex722]

@@yoya4766It makes perfect sense if you pay attention while reading…

[@brushstroke3733]

​@@yoya4766Maybe he was saying that for some people, they must become extremely frustrated from seeking to change their state or experience or conditions of their life before they will finally let go and surrender to what is.

[@websurfer5772]

Thank you for explaining my life to me. Namaste.

[@petersalmon3908]

what is he wearing ?? can he no longer dress like a normal person? Is he Now SO special he must wear something special ...

[@wonder1908]

Lost in his own story… 😂

[@siewkonsum7291]

Stephen Mugen Synder 🙏 A practitioner might experience a wake-up or awakening, after, he or she is back to his/her normal self. That person may now has lesser or residual egoic tendencies, so at certain instances may act unskilfully or rudely. However an awaken Master should not judge or particularize about it. Regardless, if the person does things which are not aligned to his /her True Nature Self, will feel uneasy, or suffer from it. If the person does things that are aligned to his/her True Nature Self, he/she loves it or finds love in it. The most noble cause of any human being is to wake-up or awaken to 'realize & see' One's True Self Nature or the Tathagata. Other things are secondary in spiritual practice & journey. 😊🙏🙇‍♂️🌷