The thing about Buddhism is that it stresses attainment of something ineffable, and I think this is where it differs from other religions in that it's more correct. We live in a world with promises of paradise. Everyone is telling us that if we will only have a certain experience, amass a certain amount of belongings, become rich and famous, whatever it is, we will be happy. And there are people who tell us that just the opposite is true -- if we give up all that and we live a life of chastity, simplicity, poverty -- sort of doing penance -- that creates happiness. Those two schools of thought are very prevalent. But Buddhism endorses both of those schools and says, sure, you can go through that path of giving things up, and it will create a certain momentum and discipline for you to go beyond the limited perceptions that you currently have or, you can have it all and go beyond the limited perceptions that you now have.

Buddhism's focus, in other words, if it's advanced Buddhism, is really not on how to live.

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Tantric Buddhism - Buddhism

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Enlightenment is the complete awareness of life without any mental modifications. It is perfect light, light that has always existed, exists now and will always exist. It's the light that exists beyond darkness. It's the core and the center of all things, and it's in all things and beyond all things. 

Enlightenment is a state of consciousness, I suppose. It's a way of talking about it. It's something that we attain -- if we attain things. 

There's a mountain. I'd like to climb to the top of it. There's something very beautiful, very wonderful on top of it -- so I hope. So I climb up the mountain and when I reach the top, I have a view. If there's something wonderful there, I've found it -- if that's what attainment is. The mountain of enlightenment, of course, is inside of us. It's inside of our mind. And we're climbing that mountain every day. Our life is that mountain. 

The mountain is complicated. It has a lot of sides, a lot of paths. We can traverse them. We can go up the mountain, down the mountain, around the mountain forever and never reach the top. The top is enlightenment -- the complete awareness of life without any mental modifications, the highest viewpoint--not the best, but the highest unobstructed view. And if that's your interest, if you seek enlightenment, then the practice of meditation is the pathway to enlightenment, along with the practice of mindfulness. These are the two things that we do in Buddhism to become enlightened. 

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The Enlightenment Cycle - The Enlightenment Cycle

Meditation is concentration in the beginning. It's a focus. Then, in the intermediate stage, it's an opening, a deepening of one's awareness but with a focus towards the planes of light. In intermediate meditation, you're touching light more deeply than in introductory meditation. In advanced meditation, you become light. You transcend self, ego, time, space, dimensionality. You merge with the clear light of reality or return to samadhi, and you go beyond this world. 

Your ideas, your feelings, your needs, your wants, your loves, your hates, your ups, your downs-you go beyond it all and you become God. You become nirvana. You become enlightenment, for a while, for a timeless time. You merge with the ecstasy of the clear light of reality. And it changes you. It remakes you. It reforms you. It shifts you, and then you're that. 

Your awareness returns to the world brighter, different, less solidified. And repeating this process endlessly or in many years and many lifetimes eventually will culminate in the experience of enlightenment where you will always be in a state of light, in a condition of limitless awareness. It goes on forever. As Bilbo tells us in his story in The Hobbit, in his little song he sings, the road leads on forever. That's the good news. There's no end to enlightenment. There's no end to incarnation. There's no end to infinity. 

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The Enlightenment Cycle - Intermediate Meditation

Enlightenment initially appears to be subtle, it's just out of your field of vision. If you're meditating, if you're practicing every day, you don't necessarily see the changes that are taking place in your life because you're so close to them. You don't remember how limited your awareness field was 6 months ago or a year ago, let alone yesterday, before this mornings meditation. The real miracle, obviously, is the transformation of consciousness from limitation and pain to enlightenment and ecstasy.

But in order to get to a appreciation, a belief, in order to inspire practice, teachers sometimes do miracles, or sometimes they just enjoy doing them. A miracle, a siddha power, is part and parcel of infinity and I suppose you can use them to be egotistical and show off, but somebody enlightened wouldn't do that. They just have fun with it, an innocent play. An Enlightened person lacks self consciousness, in the sense that there's no ego valuation for what they do. They just do things because it's fun, because it's beautiful, or because that's how life flows through them. So it's inspiring when you see a miracle. Miracles cause you to believe.

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The Enlightenment Cycle - Miracles

Reincarnation is a dance. Its a movement of life to the rhythm of the universe. The idea is simple. There is spirit and there is matter. And they join together; one as one dancing partner and one as the other. The two together make a partner. They're together for a time while they're on the dance floor and then they separate and go their individual ways for a while and then they come together once again. And it goes on forever.

Spirit, the eternal part of our being is indescribable and limitless. We are eternal spirits. As spirits, we have always existed and in a generalized form, since we are all part of the universe, the spirit of the universe. As individual spirits, we have existed for a timeless time. And in that time, we have participated in the dance of reincarnation. Reincarnation means simply that we have lived before, we live now, we'll live again. That there is no end to life. That death is only a brief pause in our journey. It's a rest.

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The Enlightenment Cycle - Reincarnation

Happiness is the most elusive thing, it seems, for human beings to find. Happiness is something that everybody wants, or professes to want, so it must be a very difficult thing since so few people, relatively few people, seem to ever experience it. And if they do experience it, they sure don't seem to experience it for long. I'm the happiest person I've ever met. Plain and simple.

The reason I'm happy is because I have a very good relationship with life. My happiness is not dependent upon what happens to me, today or tomorrow or what happened yesterday. My happiness is dependent upon light. And since light is endless, since light is infinite, since light, the inner light, of course, of self discovery, of enlightenment, is happiness in itself, then if I can make myself available to light, which I certainly do, then I'm bound to be happy, always.

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Tantric Buddhism - Buddhism

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