Reply To: Felt Like a Jhāna

#53850
Christian
Participant

This also is out of context. Are you saying monks at Jethavaranama can transport people into deva worlds to show him things, and they correlate their cravings with Dhamma? Of course not. Every modern Sangha has flaws, positives, and negatives because they are not conducted with living Buddha or (probably) living Arahant. We need to be critical of every one of them and learn what works.

Using examples of monks from suttas like that and comparing it to modern monks is untruthful. I’m not trying to take away anything from the real extent of any Sangha work but this is clearly sugarcoating and sugarcoating is always harmful in the long term. Being enamored with anything leads to blindness. You also using other stories of monks that have much deeper meaning in their Path – they are not applicable for what we have now and the level of people we have. Unless somebody comes and claims Arahantship – you need to scale down your expectations.

Real Dhamma is on the comeback for sure, but it will take either like 10-20 years more or we will need to wait for the next Buddha to have Arahants again. (which will be a sign that all teachings are gone anyway)

What we need is monks (who see the truth) to challenge people and “wake up desire” to know what is real, and true in existential matter beyond religions. Not just sugarcoating them into accepting that Dhamma is something true using their religion as a bridge and trying to say it is the same thing that Buddha did which is a misunderstanding. 

Teaching Dhamma must be done in a pure way with logic, facts, truths, heart, and discipline. It includes seeing things as they are and disregarding what is not true. Doing too much will just harm people in the long term and harm Dhamma because it leaves a bad/wrong impression and when a person comes to the point of “getting something” (and they will not) they will lose faith because they started on the wrong foot, views and expectations towards Dhamma.