03-22-2011, 02:02 AM
(03-21-2011, 07:32 PM)Etude in B Minor Wrote: Against the "gradual" awakening is the zen concept of Satori, where when you have experienced it there is a phase change, and things are never the same. You can't go back. Even if you try to go back to sleep you can't. The (rather technical and difficult to read) book "The Beacon of Certainty" by Mipham explains this from a Tibetan Buddhist viewpoint. At some point Faith is replaced by Certainty. To me, that's awakening.
And yet, as Ken Wilber says, "The ultimate injunction for the non-dual realization is not that you can get to a state where you have a non-dual awareness, but that there is something about your state right now that is already one hundred percent aware of it." Having a satori perspective, brief or otherwise, is like being handed a new tool - you simply 'know' that you are a co-creator in perhaps the deepest sense possible. However, there is still the development of personality, the balancing and the learning waiting.
Of course we can and do 'go back', some things are just not permanent until we own them. The purpose is development, with or without a satori experience.