User:Visarga/Theosis and Uncreated Light

Atman

• unseen, unspoken
• eternal center
• real
• inner essence
• life
• unborn, undying
• independent
• freedom
• general awareness
• never dies
• inner god
• like the King
• familiarity
• universal centre and supreme power
• supreme reality
• indestructible
• pure cosmic energy
• spiritual existence
• without any characteristic
• neither male or female
• superior
• embodiment of ananda

Dzogchen

• unmoving nature of the reality-field
• recognizing what is clear and unmoving
• unmoving action
• spontaneity
• pervasive foundational awareness
• stability
• directly revealed
• peaceful
• self-void
• clarity
• uncreated and self-existing
• single awareness that illuminates al
• pristine awareness
• timelessly empty
• inseparable luminosity
• the recognition that both the quiet, calm abiding state as found in samatha and the movement or arising of phenomena as found in vipassana are not separate
• unimpeded
• effortless unveiled
• non-dual awareness of our every moment of experience
• reflection like in a mirror, though there is no mirror
• Realizing Rigpa is Easy Living Rigpa is Hard
• mental activity devoid of all fleeting stains of obscuration
• wholistic, naked awareness
• rigpa is subject to obscurations of two type: obscurations of knowledge (marigpa) and obscurations to freedom
• it ends solidity
• conception dissolves
• relaxed on all the levels of being
• to see into the pure phenomena
• Simple it is. Easy it is not
• "rainbow body" - is a body not made of flesh, but consists of pure light
• Tantrism: "vajra body", or the "adamantine body"
• Christian tradition "resurrection body" and "glorified body"
• Sambhogakaya or “enjoyment body” is constituted entirely of light

Christianity

Uncreated Light Tabor Light the light revealed on Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration of Jesus, identified with the light seen by Paul at his conversion

Jesus becomes radiant -> Transfiguration of Jesus

Orthodox tradition likewise holds that this light may be seen during prayer (Hesychasm) by particularly devout individuals, such as the saints.

Hesychasm ("stillness, rest, quiet, silence") is an eremitic tradition of prayer in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and some other Eastern Churches of the Byzantine Rite, practised ("to keep stillness")

The Uncreated Light that the Hesychast experiences is identified with the Holy Spirit.

that the light of God's Grace is uncreated; that it is a divine energy. That, in fact, deified men see this light as the ultimate, the highest experience of deification (gr. theosis), and that they are seen within this light of God. This is the glory of God, His splendour, the light of Mount Tabor, the light of Christ's Resurrection and of Pentecost, and the bright cloud of the Old Testament

deified men see this light as the ultimate, the highest experience of deification (gr. theosis), and that they are seen within this light of God. This is the glory of God, His splendour, the light of Mount Tabor, the light of Christ's Resurrection and of Pentecost, and the bright cloud of the Old Testament. It is the real uncreated light of God

Subsequently, in three great Synods at Constantinople, the whole Church justified St. Gregory Palamas, declaring that life in Christ is not simply the moral edification of man, but deification (gr. theosis), and that this means participation in God’s glory, a vision of God, of His Grace and His uncreated light

experience of theosis: the unearthly light which emanated from Christ's body

There are two basic kinds of experience of theosis while in mortality: the more ordinary one, the experience of the companionship of the Holy Spirit, and a rarer, more infrequent one, the vision of uncreated light.

For this Spirit, when He descends on you, becomes like a pool of light to you, which encompasses you completely in an unutterable manner. As it regenerates you it changes you from corruptible to incorruptible, from mortal to immortal, from sons of men into sons of God -> http://farms.byu.edu/publications/paperschapter.php?chapid=61

Dzogchen

• Dzogchen
• Buddha-nature / tathagatagarbha / "ground of Buddha"
  • innate mind of clear light (Dalai Lama)
  • original clear light of mind (14th Dalai Lama)
• rigpa = turya from Kashmir Shaivism
• on emptyness
  • Professor Paul Williams puts forward the Madhyamaka interpretation of the Buddha Nature as Emptiness in the following terms: "… if one is a Madhyamika then that which enables sentient beings to become buddhas must be the very factor that enables the minds of sentient beings to change into the minds of Buddhas. That which enables things to change is their simple absence of inherent existence, their emptiness. Thus the tathagatagarbha becomes emptiness itself, but specifically emptiness when applied to the mental continuum.”
  • then emptiness is just emptiness of attributes, emptiness of differentiation, not a lack of anything; in emptiness there is still the buddha-nature, which is something
• Buddha on Atman
  • Buddha states (in the Tibetan version of the Sutra): "all phenomena (dharmas) are not non-Self: the Self is Reality (tattva), the Self is eternal (nitya), the Self is virtue (guna)", the Self is everlasting (shasvata), the Self is unshakeable (dhruva), and the Self is peace (siva)."[22] In the Chinese versions of the Sutra, the Self is also characterised as autonomous or sovereign (aishvarya).

Shentong

• Shentong
• emptiness of mind's ultimate nature
  • "luminous clarity"
  • "luminous awareness"
  • "the clear light nature of mind"
  • "clear light mind/heart" = prabhasvarachitta
• critiqued by other Buddhist schools as "inconsistent with the basic mahayana teaching of emptiness (shunyata)"

Jamais vu

• the realization of the Self is accompanied by a feeling of Jamais vu