AWAKENING 101




YAHOO Answers, like Reddit and Quora, is an online internet question answer forum. Sometime back the following question was asked on YAHOO: Answers:


Are there any online Buddhist teachers?


Not long after the question was posted on the Yahoo site, one Arjuna Ranatunga replied. Arjuna, who goes by the screen name Goodfella, and who holds an earned Master's Degree in Buddhist Studies with Merit from the University of Sunderland, North-east England (2011) as well as a YAHOO: Answers respondent for over 15 years offered the following:


The most famous site with perhaps the most integrity is "Awakening 101", authored by "the Wanderling". I met an Enlightened person who'd used it in His approach / initial studies / on His journey.

It has facilities to ask questions of the Wanderling, too.



Best Wishes in your Quest, Friend,

Arjuna


Please note the second of the two links above has been sub-planted from the original post with two additional albeit equivalent links. The site initially
so cited by Arjuna had not been kept current within it's own links.by the site originator, although a recent check has shown otherwise, hence it's return.


SEE ALSO:

THE WANDERLING: UNKNOWN ZEN MASTER



AWAKENING 101 is, or was at one time as the case may be, a FREE, self-paced online Dharma course arranged in such a way as to assist in easing the Dharma Gate for spiritual explorers, seekers along the path, wanderlings, the simply curious, and others who may be so interested. AWAKENING 101 was originally thought up, assembled, put together, invented and maintained on a variety of mostly free websites prior to migrating to the Blackboard platform by the Wanderling. AWAKENING 101 had always been offered totally free to all comers so interested. Because of a number of mitigating circumstances it is no longer available in its original form. HOWEVER, the main aspects of the course have been revamped and updated with new pages being composed, links being reconnected, and lost pages being restored. It will just take awhile as there are hundreds of links and pages to sort through.


AWAKENING 101 UPDATE:

Nearly all the pages used in AWAKENING 101 have been edited, rewritten, or updated along with almost all of the links. The links giving trouble are mostly third party links usually related in some fashion to confirmations of my sources. Pages just disappear, change URLs, and some authors, tired of being bothered by people contacting them after running into their pages linked on AWAKENING 101 ask me to stop linking --- in turn requiring me to find alternative sources --- sometimes difficult if a specific quote or a specific author's idea is used in my pages to back-up some thesis or the other I am presenting.

However, so said, my intention is to have AWAKENING 101 back and up and running no later than the end of summer 2012 turned into a big fat NEVER a long time ago.


So said, at this point I have no real plans for putting AWAKENING 101 back online. Even though I cannot seem to emphasize enough that one's mind must be ripe, I get no end of discontent from people over the fact that after reading a few pages of AWAKENING 101, Enlightenment failed to manifest itself in an easy unimpeded fashion. To ease the path and smooth the way beyond the impediments towards the right frame, that is striving towards your mind being ripe, please see the following, preferably for better understanding, in numerical order:


  1. ZEN ENLIGHTENMENT: The Path Unfolds
    A seeker along the path writes of things Zen and his spiritual mentor who was neither teacher nor guru, but the real life person W. Somerset Maugham wrote about in "The Razor's Edge."

  2. THE MENTOR: From William Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge
    Explores who W. Somerset Maugham's main character Larry Darrell in "The Razor's Edge" was in real life and what happened to him post novel.

  3. SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI: The Last American Darshan
    Recounting a young boy's nearly instant transformation into the Absolute during his only darshan with the Maharshi

  4. THE MEETING: An Untold Story of Sri Ramana
    Putting into place the super-normal perceptual state called Siddhis in Sanskrit, Sri Ramana meets a former disciple thousands of miles away from the ashrama.

  5. DOING HARD TIME IN A ZEN MONASTERY
    An American Zen adept ends up high in the mountains in an ancient Chinese Zen monastery, faced with stark, unfettered study-practice that harkened back to Bodhidharma, Hui Neng and the Buddha.

  6. RETURN TO THE MONASTERY
    Describes the events incurred as two monks are sent by the monastery's master to retrieve a lost member of their own, requiring invoking the supernormal perceptual states known as Siddhis to do so.

  7. DARK LUMINOSITY
    An Enlightenment experience in the Zen tradition.



THE ZEN-MAN FLIES

Let Me Travel Through the Air Like a Winged Bird


AWAKENING 101 sites that had been moved from their original platform to free internet sites years ago to ensure the information would still be available to all along the path who may have been so interested when hit with huge costs to continue, has been impacted adversely a second time. Now, with a variety of new rules, major search engines, where never before, sites are now somehow being overlooked, blocked, ignored to death, made unreachable, or just plain invisible by being basically reduced to persona non grata. Pages that used to get 1500 hits a day now receive only 20 or 30 if lucky, some times even zero. To me that means a lot of people are missing out of all of that word of the Dharma that was once available on Awakening 101. If you don't know where to look for it you won't find it, yet the links below and the links within their texts still call up if you click them.

The freely accessible pages related to meditation, Enlightenment, and things Zen covered the meaning behind the words such as the three S's:

As well as words and meanings behind such as:

And a variety of "number" concepts such as


For those who continue to be interested in an assist along the path from Awakening 101 and additional insights into how Enlightenment may or may not come about, it is suggested you go to Google and type in any Buddhist name, word or term or Zen name, word, or term you can think of in any area of concern and type it in along with the word 'wanderling.' By doing so, as the new pages by me related to Awakening 101 are revamped, put under new URLs, or recaptured, you should be able to get the most recent or lost pages. The click through links below will also allow you to reach the most recent pages and updated links:


ZEN BUDDHISM, ZEN ENLIGHTENMENT


HOW TO ACHIEVE ENLIGHTENMENT


At this point in time, 2015 to 2021 and possibly onward, the most important of my writings with the most updated links et al, has to do with my revealing of reaching and/or going to the mysterious Himalayan hermitage of Shambhala, otherwise known as Shangri-La or Gyanganj.

Reaching Shambhala is a classic example in Buddhist lore requiring a high state of spiritual attainment. Even though it is said the texts imply flying over the snow covered mountains via spiritual means is the only way, and it has been told by some to be so otherwise, there is still a strong general consensus, and most accurately so, that the only way to Shambhala, implementing the ability to fly or not, is through spiritual powers and spiritual powers only, and not by material means. See:


THE CODE MAKER, THE ZEN MAKER
SHANGRI-LA, SHAMBHALA, GYANGANJ, BUDDHISM AND ZEN

SEE ALSO:

OM MANI PADME HUM


SHAMBHALA, TIME, AND THE LANGOLIERS


KUAN YIN, SHAMBHALA, AND OM MANI PADME HUM


See also DREW HEMPEL AND THE WANDERLING where the following is found:


I do not claim to be a teacher, if anything I just shovel piles of shit out of the barn so the cows can have more space to move around in. After I have shoveled it out, that same shit so shoveled, if used the right way by the right people and in the right places as manure, can contribute toward making flowers bloom or nourishment to be consumed. As chronicled in Riding The Cab Forwards I tell about me as a young boy being on a remote dirt landing strip in the desert along the east side of the High Sierras during the middle of the night waiting with my uncle and the pilot to transport a mysterious woman from Reno to Las Vegas. When she showed up the pilot had the vehicle that brought her swing around behind the plane and shine the headlights down the strip. Then, just before he got in the plane, fired up the engine and we took off, he walked the landing strip one more time kicking rocks out of the way he didn't like. Like the pilot I kick rocks out of the way so the path can be made clear making it easier --- for those who may be so interested --- to soar.(see)



CRITICAL CONCERNS WITH AWAKENING 101


MORE CRITICAL CONCERNS WITH AWAKENING 101


HEADSPACE OR CALM FOR MEDITATION: NEEDED OR NOT NEEDED?


A CHILD OF THE CYBER-SANGHA: ENLIGHTENMENT FROM THE INTERNET?



Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where
we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience
and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in and of itself.


(PLEASE CLICK)


HOW TO ACHIEVE ENLIGHTENMENT


ZEN ENLIGHTENMENT IN A NUTSHELL


30 MINUTES TO ENLIGHTENMENT



"I would take the information so provided by the Wanderling with a grain of salt."

REALLY?

-------------AS SO GRACIOUSLY OFFERED BY
-------------A READER OF MY WORKS


(please click image)


CODE OF ETHICS FOR SPIRITUAL GUIDES


SPIRITUAL GUIDES: PASS OR FAIL?


FALSE GURU TEST




CLICK
HERE FOR
ENLIGHTENMENT

ON THE RAZOR'S
EDGE



E-MAIL
THE WANDERLING
(please click)



As to the subject of donations, for those of you who may be interested in doing so as it applies to the gratefulness of my works, I invariably suggest any funds be directed toward THE WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT and/or THE AMERICAN RED CROSS.