An Absolute Relationship to Life: A Talk on Enlightenment and the Human Condition - Softcover

Cohen, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1883929199 ISBN 13: 9781883929190

Publisher: Enlightennext Media, 1997

Synopsis

What would it mean to have an absolute relationship to the entire experience of being alive? In this unique teaching, Andrew asks us to consider this challenging yet profoundly freeing possibility. He initiates this inquiry by dividing our experience of life into its three most fundamentaland confusingcomponents: our relationship to time, our relationship to thought and our relationship to feeling. In our relationship to time, he asks, What if we were no longer waiting to let go and began giving ourselves completely to life? In our relationship to thought, What would it mean to know beyond any doubt that thought has no inherent significance whatsoever? And finally, What would happen if the presence of any particular feelingno matter how terrible or sublimedidn't mean anything at all about who we really are? Only through the one-pointed contemplation of these fundamental aspects of our experience, Andrew states, will it be possible to "create the powerful foundation upon which discriminating wisdom -- the wisdom that liberates -- becomes manifest."

About this title

From the Publisher

This talk was given without premeditation in Amsterdam, Holland in July 1996 and was edited for clarity the following December.

From the Author

I began teaching in 1986 and in the ten years that have passed since that time, I have learned something very important. Spiritual experiences, as profound as they may appear to be, usually do not in and of themselves lastingly enlighten. Nor do they, it seems in most cases, deeply transform the individual's relationship to the three most confusing aspects of the human experience: the movement of time, the presence of thought and the arising of feeling. Indeed, the movement of time, the presence of thought and the arising of feeling, for all but a very few, seem to instantly obscure the awareness of an absolute depth without which the direct perception of the true and right relationship of all things is impossible. It has become very clear to me that it is the one-pointed contemplation of our actual relationship to these most fundamental aspects of our experience, rather than brief interludes of nondual perception, that in the long run creates the powerful foundation upon which discriminating wisdom -- the wisdom that liberates -- can become manifest.

About this edition

• Publisher: Enlightennext Media
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1883929199
• ISBN 13: 9781883929190
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 37