AWAKENING 101 was originally a FREE, self-paced online college level 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 created, assembled, and maintained on a sign-in Blackboard platform, but when Blackboard started charging for use and what I was presenting was free, I and four others scrambled to save the contents using free a supported websights. We ended up with pages scattered up all over the net using 10 or 12 different free sites. The four people that assisted me, none of who I ever met personally, were for the most part graduate students. When they moved on, except for one, they turned over their saved websites, including passwords, to me to edit as I wished. The whole thing was a incoherent mess. Even so I started combining the pages into fewer and fewer websites, most of which I put into Geo Cities. Then Geo Cities shut down. I bought my own domain and moved lots of pages there, but never put AWAKENING 101 back online. Four or five free ad supported websights remain in use, albeit one is being paid for yearly by a benevolent benefactor to eliminate ads. I am no longer allowed to go into the free sites to edit or update any of them. I've listed quite a few of the important website pages at the bottom of the page by clicking HERE.
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 used to 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:
- 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."
- 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.
- THE CODE MAKER, THE ZEN MAKER
Inside a monastery infused with a spiritual timelessness, being there, the day-to-day grind, the treatment by the other monks as well by the temporal head of the monastery, i.e., the monastery Zen master and anything that happened thereof.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- DARK LUMINOSITY
An Enlightenment experience in the Zen tradition.
Are there any online Buddhist teachers?
Sometime back the above question was asked on YAHOO: Answers. YAHOO Answers, like Reddit and Quora, is an online internet question answer forum.
Not long after the question was posted on the Yahoo site, one Arjuna Ranatunga replied. Arjuna, who goes by the screen name Goodfella. Arjuna 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.
https://www.angelfire.com/electronic/awakening101/index.html
https://sped2work.tripod.com/web_ring_list.html
https://the-wanderling.com/zen_enlightenment5.html
https://wanderling.tripod.com/zenlinks.html
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.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION REGARDING ARJUNA:
As written by Google:
Arjuna C. B. Ranatunga is a Sri Lankan figure known for his deep engagement with Buddhism, particularly in making complex doctrines accessible through writing and commentary, focusing on concepts like Nirvana, Diligence (Appamada), and the Buddha's teachings, even drawing from personal spiritual experiences while also engaging in humanitarian aid. He is an author and scholar (M.A. Buddhist Studies) who interprets scriptures, sometimes offering unique perspectives on meditation and monastic life.
See also DREW HEMPEL AND THE WANDERLING where the following is found:
I, the Wanderling, 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)
AND NOW THIS:
Toward the end of the article WINDSWEPT, ZEN-SWEPT, MIND DUNES the Anonymous author writes:
"I can say one thing about the Wanderling though: It seems to me that he writes quite a lot about himself and his own history and that seems to be at odds with the Truth as it is related in eastern religions."
In a footnote to the article, the Wanderling responds speaking of similar concerns in relation to Awakening 101, referring to and using a quote by the venerated Zen master Dogen Zenji and used in context by the Wanderling on the onetime first page or opening page of Awakening 101, of which he has made available through a click-through link. For further elaboration, more in depth coverage, clarification, or to dispel any possible misconception that may arise, please go to the Zen Dune, Mind Dune link above.
"If the speaker brings no personal, egotistic delusions into this expression, the occasion speaks for itself, the total situation alone determines what is said or done. Thus, in the case of the Zen master, what-is-said is simply what-is. In the case of the deluded person, however, the 'what-is' includes his excess conceptual baggage with its affective components, the deluded ideas about the nature of 'self,' 'thing,' 'time,' and so on that constitute the person's own particular distortion of what actually is."
Dogen Zenji
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?
THE NECKLACE
UNDER THE PROTECTION OF
THE LORD BUDDHA
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)
CODE OF ETHICS FOR SPIRITUAL GUIDES
SPIRITUAL GUIDES: PASS OR FAIL?
THE FALSE GURU TEST
DID THE WANDERLING FLY?
(please click)
CLICK
HERE FOR
ENLIGHTENMENT
ON THE RAZOR'S
EDGE
E-MAIL
THE WANDERLING
(please click)
MAJOR HISTORICAL BUDDHIST MASTERS, ZEN ANCESTORS AND ZEN PATRIARCHS
Bodhidharma, Hui'ko, Hui Shen, Hui Neng, Shih-t'ou Hsi-ch'ien, Zhaozhou, Moshan Liaoran,
Mugai Nyodai,
Kuan Yin,
Tung-Shan, Te Shan, Dogen
"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
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(please click image)
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.
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
The same can be said about the free site links that show up in the below Althugh the content of the sites are not all Buddhist related per se' they do tie back and interrelated with most of the above sites and links:
You can also put any relevant word, term, phrase, or question into a search engine along with the words "the Wanderlng" in quotes as so presented and see what comes up. From there you can go on and on into infinity. Try it and see what happens.
