1
WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT?
A spiritual seeker asked Zen master Zoketsu
“Is there a fully enlightened master here?”“
I sure hope not” the Zen master replied without
missing a beat. “We have enough trouble already.”
– A ZEN STORY
The Sanskrit word Bodhi, often translated as “enlightenment”, actually means “awakened”. Awakened from what? In essence, from the trance of believing that we are separate individuals, apart from all that is. It is clearly seeing who and what we truly are, and what we are not.
Another word for enlightenment or awakening is “awareness”. Not awareness of something in particular, but an awakening to pure awareness itself.
It has been said that after the Buddha attained enlightenment, a man passing him on the road was stunned by his magnificent radiance and peaceful countenance. Stopping before the Buddha the man asked, “You are surely a God?”
The Buddha answered, “No.”
“Then you must be a magician? A sorcerer? A wizard?”
“No.”
“You must be some kind of celestial being then? Are you an angel?”
Again, the Buddha simply said, “No.”
“So, what are you then?” the man asked.
“I am awake,” the Buddha replied.
The word Buddha, in fact, means “the one who is awake”. The term applies not just to Siddhārtha Gautama, but also to all other Buddhas (awakened human beings) who have realized this awakeness.
Dōgen, in the “Genjōkōan”, said, “To carry oneself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.”
The first phrase, “To carry oneself forward and experience myriad things is delusion” is about seeing things from our own individual point of view. If I’m “here” watching and interpreting things “out there”, then this is delusion.
The next phrase, “That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening”, is about everything, including the body–mind, being a part of this great painting, arising and dissolving every moment. This is awakening.
Typically, we go looking “out there”. We are like the farmer who owns a horse, yet forgets that the horse is already in its stable, so he goes off searching for it.
We look outside ourselves because we imagine that there is some great cosmic experience to be found out there, somewhere in the “sacred” world. We feel that our normal ordinary consciousness is too simple and too mundane to be meaningful. Just seeing a bird or a tree in our backyard is too ordinary to mean much.
So maybe we go searching in India, or in the Himalayas, or in caves and monasteries, or endless selfhelp workshops and spiritual retreats. And while we may find other awakened people in these places, we won’t necessarily find our own enlightened nature.
Why? Because, like the horse that is already in its stable, our own enlightened nature has never gone anywhere; we just continue to miss it, to overlook it, simply because we are looking everywhere except in the most obvious place; right at home, right here in this present ordinary moment.
Those who are actively seeking enlightenment will not find it because the act of looking for it is the distraction from it.
The idea that we can become enlightened implies that this is not already so, that we are not free enough or complete enough, that we are a limited being with a problem, and that problem is that we are not enlightened.
This is in complete contradiction to the basic position of the great non-duality traditions that say that there is a reality and “thou art that”. I invite you to search long and hard in these traditions to try to find anything suggesting that we need to “become” that or even to “deepen into that”.
All of the world’s greatest spiritual teachings say the same thing:
“I and the Father are One.”
“You are That.”
“Your own mind is Buddha Mind.”
“The eye by which I see God is the eye by which God sees me.”
Do you recognize these phrases?
Many people expend much effort trying to remove what they believe to be obstacles to enlightenment, all the while never realizing that the first and largest obstacle is the belief that there is an obstacle. The second largest obstacle is the belief that it’s difficult and you have to struggle to reach it.
What is needed is to take all the energy and attention that goes into maintaining those beliefs and shift it to turning the attention back toward itself. This means we can simply stop, pause and be still, not entertaining any thoughts or beliefs. We can actually turn the energy around, turn it inward and be present with ourselves.
Just by stopping all those cluttering thoughts and ideas, we begin to tap into that stillness and into what is here and now in the present moment.
Truly, we don’t need to pack our bags and go searching for ourselves in a monastery or in someone else’s backyard. What we are looking for is always already here, looking through our eyes, hearing through our ears and feeling through our hearts. It can only be found right where we are, as our own perceiving awareness, not separate from what is perceived.
What we are is not an altered state, but an innocent, original, unmodified stateless state. Many of us are trying to get enlightened and have ideas of merging with the cosmos or experiencing great energetic states, but those are altered states.
Many seekers are searching, purifying, growing and so on. Years later, they are still doing the same thing because they do not realize that they have bought into a conceptual prison with no exit.
If we have never left our true home, why do we forget and struggle to find our way back in?
Who can say for sure? Some traditions say that God is playing games with Itself just for the fun of losing and finding Itself. Others say that being born in this human form causes us to lose touch with who we are.
Many years ago, the Persian mystic poet, Rumi, described in one of his poems his own realization with this paradox of searching for the place we already stand in: “I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside.”
This poem mirrors the surprise and delight that many seekers feel when they discover after years of desperate searching that they have never been apart, even for an instant, from the home they have been seeking for so long.
Rumi describes this realization as “the door opening”. This “opening” is the recognition that “It’s always me, interacting with me.” The freedom that comes with the opening of the door is the freedom of recognition (which in Latin means to know again – to re-cognate).
Keep searching if you must, keep enquiring, but knock only once. Then open up and notice. Not only does the door open, but you open the door to yourself.
Are you enlightened and how do you know that you have realized? How can you be sure of it?
It may sound contradictory, but I can’t say I’m enlightened or unenlightened. Neither statement is a lie. Nobody arrived and yet something did. What did? Nothing!
Being enlightened ironically means realizing that there is no separate entity that can be enlightened or unenlightened. This is a realization that cannot be laid claim to by a specific individual because in that moment the individual is no longer there.
At the moment of enlightenment, everything is dropped – body, mind, all states, all things – everything. At that moment, there is no separate entity that can become enlightened, because there is no “I” that can experience it.
How do you know when you have had a good meal? You know because your stomach is full and you are satisfied. Realization is similar to that. You have swallowed everything. You have swallowed the entire world. Everything is in your own consciousness now.
You don’t need others to tell you this fact, or for others to recognize this fact, or even to approve it. Whether others believe you or not, it doesn’t matter, because your stomach is full and you need nothing else.
Can a teacher or guru help me to realize my true nature? And how would I go about choosing one?
There is only one teacher, your inner teacher, and that is awareness. My suggestion is that you stay with that one. The true guru is a manifestation of your true nature, as it exists internally and appears to exist externally. The true guru is actually you made manifest, not the you that you think you are but the real you, awareness itself. Since who you truly are is the totality of being, you are capable of generating many forms, both human and nonhuman, to bring the focus of the illusionary seeker back to itself.
“Guru” is really another word for awareness.
In regard to the human teacher, be guided, first of all, by love. Follow your heart and see where it takes you. If one day you meet someone in whose company you find you can be yourself, and if you feel clear, peaceful, happy, and your mind becomes calm for no apparent reason, you may like to keep his or her company from time to time.
Jean Klein, a well-known speaker and author on the subject of non-duality, said, “You will know a true teacher because you will feel yourself, in your autonomy, in his or her presence.” With the true teacher you are free to be yourself rather than bound by rules and agendas. The true teacher doesn’t take the identity and role of the teacher seriously and has no need for his/her students to feel complete.
The greatness of a teacher is not in psychic powers, lineages, credentials, in the number of followers, eloquence, intellect or charisma. Greatness is the extent to which the vehicle has been taken over by the realization and has ceased grasping.
When you meet such a teacher, there is actually nobody there. Apart from thoughts and concepts of a separate self, there is nobody there in you either.
In reality there is no difference between you and the guru, as there is no difference between the space in this cup and the space in that cup. The cup cannot limit the all-pervasive space.
Ultimately, there are no teachers or teachings because there aren’t any students. There is only ever unconditional awareness – Oneness meeting Itself as That.