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Eckhart Tolle, excerpt from The Power Of Now
“The majority of Buddhists believe that enlightenment was only for the Buddha, not for them; at least, not in this lifetime.”
Editor's note: Many people believe that Buddhists are experts on the subject of “R,” having promulgated this doctrine for a couple thousand years. But let’s take special note of Tolle’s comment. It seems that modern Buddhists believe that to be a follower of the Buddha is a spectator sport, and nothing to get involved in personally.
If you believe that enlightenment – that is, an accessing of the “true self” – is not possible and only for an elite, then your belief system will devolve to a form of materialism. This means that your life will be run by the “voice in the head,” the “false self.”
And if “The Little Me” controls one’s world paradigm, then one will be plagued by feelings of “the spoiled self,” perceptions of self-loathing, which means that, overtly or subliminally, one will seek for ways to be rid of oneself. You won’t be able to shut down this hidden engine of “I am not enough,” this under-the-radar wish for self-annihilation.
Some will claim that I exaggerate. But I invite you to review the lengthy research-article, “500 Testimonies from the Other Side.” You will discover that there is an entire class of dysfunctional persons, vast in numbers, over there who, like the modern Buddhists, do not believe in the “true self.”
As such, driven by perceptions of ‘I am not enough,” they desperately seek for opportunities to be rid of themselves. I list eight different ways in which they attempt to accomplish this death wish – one of these is “R.”
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