enlightenment

[Myoku]

Re: enlightenment

+1 for Hans ;-) However, finally it really doesnt matter how we call it. Practice is enlightment is awakening is forgetting the self, just dont care anymore, or just sit with the question. The question will vanish eventually, and as Nishijima said, sitting zazen is the first enlightment. Not a bad statement.
_()_
Peter

[Taigu]

Re: enlightenment

Peter...gassho


T.

[Seiryu]

Re: enlightenment

wandering around in circles
I see the wall but turn away,
why am I still afraid when the door is no longer there...

[louis]

Re: enlightenment

Hello Tetsu!

A slightly different perspective. We all have had moments were the thought was this is something special. I think it is useful if it serves to motivate one to sit and sit again. Much like reading an inspirational book about football, it will not turn us into Messi or Ronaldo only practicing kicking over and over can make you a better player. And if there is something that initially will get you to "Just do it" then good.

Now that being said, letting go of ones preconceived notions of being a zen master (I personally equated with being a Jedi :roll: ), or gaining or winning is something that is good to let go. Taigu speaks of unpacking and making yourself lighter. Morelos aka Chocobuda left a nice thead The little team, about a kids soccer team that has never scored a goal but approach their endeavor with the right effort.

Lucky is the person who starts this practice not expecting anything! For the rest of us, learning to fail and failing better, approaching the cushion again and again with the right attitude and effort. Nothing special, ordinary. Like that.

_()_
Louis

[disastermouse]

Re: enlightenment

You'll have insights beyond doubt, but enlightenment is in the doing-being.

IMHO.

Chet

[JohnsonCM]

Re: enlightenment

Perhaps the truest "test" of enlightenment can be found when you no longer think about enlightenment in any way shape or form, but instead are overcome with the 'suchness' of each moment of life.

I don't know what enlightenment would look like, and I don't know that there is a set "this is what it looks like when you get there" type of thing. Two people standing side by side at the summit of the same mountain, looking in the same direction, at the same time - two different views.

[Taigu]

Re: enlightenment

Christopher,

Please, listen and take things in...Enlightenment CANNOT BE SEEN, it doesn't have a look, doesn't look like anything. Open your eyes.
And yes, I cannot agree more with the first part of your post:

Perhaps the truest "test" of enlightenment can be found when you no longer think about enlightenment in any way shape or form, but instead are overcome with the 'suchness' of each moment of life.

Overcome is too much too, and each moment is idealistic. Nevertheless, not to care about the Ox is what is taking place after a while.
By the way, you could dig the vids on the Ten oxherding pictures, they might help you to refresh your vision and let go of the old man and his habits that lives very close, so close to where you stand.

viewforum.php?f=25

gassho


Taigu

[ChrisA]

Re: enlightenment

This topic should be required reading for all new Treeleafers. Gassho!

[Taigu]

Re: enlightenment

Lucky is the person who starts this practice not expecting anything! For the rest of us, learning to fail and failing better, approaching the cushion again and again with the right attitude and effort. Nothing special, ordinary. Like that.

This very person would not practice...In other words, this path is a necessary fiction, an incredible narrative that we are gradually invited to let go of, we have to expect to generate a field of no expecation, we have to talk about the ego to eventually realize that it did not exist, ever...

It is a very cunning process, extremely intelligent and sharp. Remember: Gautama has to taste the palace to meet suffering, has to meeet suffering to let go of it.

People come with expectations and twisted minds. They do because otherwise there would be nothing to practice. They will come full circle to the original simplicity once they crossed the bouncing field of emptiness. Rivers and mountains being rivers and mountains by themselves.

gassho


Taigu

[disastermouse]

Re: enlightenment

Enlightenment? Get out of the picture.

Get. Out. Of. The. Picture. (You're blocking the view - you are the view! The view is you!).

Groking enlightenment isn't difficult because it's complicated - it's difficult because it's not difficult but we insist it must be. We insist on a lack that isn't.

IMHO. Gassho. Oh no!

Chet

[JohnsonCM]

Re: enlightenment

Christopher,

Please, listen and take things in...Enlightenment CANNOT BE SEEN, it doesn't have a look, doesn't look like anything. Open your eyes.
And yes, I cannot agree more with the first part of your post:

Perhaps the truest "test" of enlightenment can be found when you no longer think about enlightenment in any way shape or form, but instead are overcome with the 'suchness' of each moment of life.

Overcome is too much too, and each moment is idealistic. Nevertheless, not to care about the Ox is what is taking place after a while.
By the way, you could dig the vids on the Ten oxherding pictures, they might help you to refresh your vision and let go of the old man and his habits that lives very close, so close to where you stand.

viewforum.php?f=25

gassho


Taigu

Taigu,

Thank you. Metaphors are often dangerous in this practice, because they are subjective, so your post reminded me to choose what I say more carefully. As always, I try to keep my eyes open, but sometimes the view is obscured by my eyelids!!! Please allow me to try again.

The thing I was poorly trying to say was that, there is no set scale for enlightenment. No one can sit off to the side and judge you as to whether or not you “got it”. The Path we are on leads to all places, all times, for all people – that being so, no one can look at you as you walk on the Path and tell you what your destination is, or even whether or not you got there – especially since ours is the Path Never-ending, the Walk Never-beginning. We travel our entire existence on the Path, where every step we take is our home. I said “overcome” previously, I now see that that was too much, as Taigu said. Not to be overcome or overtaken by it, but rather, to let the “suchness” of life soak into your bones like sandalwood oil in rice paper, to allow “your life” and “suchness” to become “life-suchness” It is only when you see life as it is, in its ‘suchness’ without the filter of attachments, delusions and desires mucking up the view, that you could say that you have attained enlightenment .

Now let me qualify that last statement. “Enlightenment” is just a word. As far as I believe, I don’t think enlightenment comes with a thunderclap and a certificate. Granted, I personally do not know what “enlightenment” is, I don’t think I’m anywhere near it. At that same time, I’ve never been without it, since all beings have Buddha nature. There isn’t, I don’t believe, a situation where “enlightenment” can possibly be quantified. Rather the word is used by those who need words and who need labels to apply to others who have come to a place of balance and clarity in their existence, so much so that there appears to be some sort of transformation. If I had to, absolutely had to, put a description to what enlightenment might possibly be, it would be the person who supposedly “attained” it reaching a point in their life where they can clearly see life in such a way that they ask themselves, “How is it that I could have ever missed THIS. Nothing is different from my old life, and yet everything has changed.” Like a person, blind from birth, suddenly waking up one day and SEEING. The world has not changed; fundamentally there is no difference between the world-with-your-eyes-open and the world-with-your-eyes-closed, except that now you SEE it. A blind man knows what a door is, can feel its shape with his hands, knows its parts, knows how to operate one, what its function is, the reason for it to exist. But with the ability to open his eyes and see it, now he can SEE it. No one else will be able to explain what a door is, as well as if the blind man could see it for himself, and likely, even if he explained it perfectly, when the blind man could finally see the door, he’d see something a little different or in a different way than the person who tried to explain it to him, spend hours just staring at the symphony of curves and swirls in the wood’s grain. As for another being able to say whether or not you reached enlightenment, that’s like a person who can see saying that the blind man knows what a door is because he can feel one, operate it, and can tell, “This is a door.” But no matter all that, he is still unable to SEE the door.

Something like that, though in truth that’s probably a poor description as well. The limitations of words, no?

[Taigu]

Re: enlightenment

Hi Christopher,

Now let me qualify that last statement. “Enlightenment” is just a word. As far as I believe, I don’t think enlightenment comes with a thunderclap and a certificate. Granted, I personally do not know what “enlightenment” is, I don’t think I’m anywhere near it. At that same time, I’ve never been without it, since all beings have Buddha nature.

I just posted the following a few days ago:

When he is in Koshoji, Dogen writes almost all his Shobogenzo. And one of the talks he gives to priests and lay people can be read as a chapter: Bussho, Buddha nature. This is one of the 10 or 15 chapters that one should read, study, drink, eat, swallow, sweat, piss, do, undo, wieve, sew, bake, plow etc. More than a key chapter, it offers the most extraodinary journey through this all thing-non-thing that we are.
To start with, Dogen picks up this sentence:

The Buddha ??kyamuni said, “All living beings in their entirety have the buddha nature. The tath?gata always abides, without any change.”


And the rest of the talk is going to take it apart, take me and you apart,deconstruct view after view of the self, the Buddha and all the rest of it.
We don't have Buddha nature says Dogen, we are. And this is big. When the young Dogen was in Kyoto before his trip to China, he was puzzled by the simple question: if we already have it, why should we practice then? And of course, having a treasure, no need to look for it. As you operate a little shift of preception , it is not having Buddha nature but being Buddha nature, then, well, things get pretty clear, a Buddha practices a Buddha. Practice is not seen as a mean to get something you haven't got or you have forgotten you already had, it is about being who you are. And there is no other way to be a Buddha than being a Buddha.
Give it a go. And again and again. This chapter has treasures to reveal because you are the living revealed treasure!!!

Defending one's a.... is hopeless. Diving into IT and IT swallowing you. That's what it is about.
Everything else is blablabla and metaphors don't operate here.

take care


gassho


Taigu

[Graceleejenkins]

Re: enlightenment

Would an enlightened person ever say they were enlightened? Just curious for a variety of reasons. Gassho, Grace.

[jlewis]

Re: enlightenment

This has been a very interesting topic to follow and it has me wondering if anybody has ever thought that the idea of becoming "enlightened" is more or less a motivational tool used for beginners to continue with their zazen and Buddhist practice; kind of like a carrot (or Twinkie) on a stick that is always just out of our grasp - "If I just sit zazen a little bit longer, if I chant a little more louder, etc... then I can become Enlightened!"

But I feel that it is only when we come to the absolute realization that there is no such thing as enlightenment - that we truly become enlightened beings .

Gassho,

Josh

[ChrisA]

Re: enlightenment

What do you mean by "no such thing as enlightenment"? No awakening? And thus nothing to which one could be awakened?