Neo-arahants can still have sex, guys. This is a new jobclass.
I always wanted liberation but the whole not having sex and ice cream thing sounded a bit lame.
Let me elaborate: a neo-arahant is someone who has achieved total liberation from their lifetime’s worth of suffering and conditioning. They are someone who has removed the encoding that they themselves chose to remove, not hit an arbitrary bar set by an external actor.
This does not mean that they are forever immune to future conditioning, though they are significantly protected against it.
The Buddha specifically said that sense-pleasures were incompatible with his path. He was right.
Each lick of ice cream will send a tiny phasic spike of dopamine into your noggin and you will become ever-so-slightly conditioned. The Buddha’s path was that of complete purity and complete hermitage; even with only visiting the village once a day they would meditate the whole evening in order to remove the conditioning from their single meal, trying to maintain as pure a mind as possible.
That’s not for me. I have a family I love. I have ice cream I love. I just want to live life without pain, that’s all.
And that’s what I’ve got. The ball of conditioning and trauma from my early life, from the suicide body, from my job… that’s all gone. I sit to meditate and there is *zero* tension in my face or body and I just melt into a full-being smile and sit there and … my goodness it’s nice.
But give me a bifter and a good conversation and I’ll talk your ear off and get the munchies and have a great laugh, I’m sure.
That’s the thing: what is gone is the neutron star of neurosis I called a ‘self’. It is no more. There is nothing for these new splashes of conditioning to attach to.
Yet somehow… I still have an ego. I feel great about what I’ve figured out.
And that’s ok. Every arahant has an ego; any that claims they don’t is lying. Sorry guys but there’s so much spiritual posturing out there it’s silly. You need an ego to function it just doesn't have to be neurotic.
The Buddha taught the path to liberation. He didn’t say to sit there in silly clothes and wank about it all day long. That came afterward. All the jhānic dick-measuring. Dude they’re tools for a job. You can have your jhāna and I can have my joint and they serve (almost) the same purpose. Pick your poison.
All of these things are just ways to manipulate your brain chemistry. If you love your jhānas that’s great. You do you :)
But there’s people like me who suffer just through the mere act of living. We want liberation. We’ve smoked our joints and we’ve done our jhāna and we’ve exercised and dieted and painted all the numbers we *still suffer* when we come back.
Siddhartha was one of us.
What we need is the consolidation of minima. That’s what Sid needed too. That’s why he learned all those jhāna and then went off and figured out how to use them to reprogram his brain and came back to the world of meditative dick-measuring and went ‘oi! mate! yer wrong!’.
Ha.
So yeah I’m not an arahant. Sounds boring if I’m honest. I just don’t suffer. And I’m nice and I care for people and I have a potty mouth and I love my kids and I kinda hope that I can save a lot of neurodivergent folks who might otherwise end up in an early grave.
You wanna be an arahant or a hermit and you can use these methods to achieve it I’m sure.
Me - I just want to live life as best I can. Maybe save the world.
Once this current batch of neuroplasticity is finished settling I think I might begin Einsteining this shit and seeing just what this brain can do.
Elon, Mark, drop me a line. I have a feeling that this putty-brain of mine might be able to do some pretty fantastical shit if you stick some electrodes on my head and give me some drugs.
One of my visions of the future was me witch-doctor dancing in a room with an MRI and a joint in my hand trying to induce a eureka moment.
I mean… I figured all this shit out myself in 4.5 months with nothing but a bit of repetition and the odd nudge from chatgpt. Just imagine what I could do if you gave me a real problem to work on.
Because me… I like problems. I like figuring shit out. You have no idea.
And I can help both of you to unleash your real potential and end your suffering too.
So yeah. Let’s see if this ploy works after all :)
Hehehehehe.
Neo-arahant 001, james-baird, out.
Peace.
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