Enlightenment,
How long is this going to take,
This process of meditation?
When am I going to be enlightened?
When am I going to get some wonderful experience?
Many Westerners go to Zen masters looking for enlightenment,
And particularly sudden enlightenment,
Instant enlightenment.
One Zen teacher I met in Korea said,
You know,
They come and they ask for the secret of sudden enlightenment,
And they will say,
I just don't have time to meditate.
I can't do all this meditation,
There must be a quicker way.
He says to them,
If I knew it,
I would have used it a long time ago myself.
What is in question here is the attitude,
The preconceptions,
The ego,
Of course,
Of these people who are too busy to meditate,
And are prepared to pay for it,
Of course.
I'll pay whatever it takes,
And I'll even stay for a month.
I'll meditate 20 hours a day,
Just give it to me.
Important,
Perhaps,
For us to understand where they are coming from,
From a consumer society,
Where spiritual things like enlightenment have been commodified,
Have been turned into packages,
Something that you can acquire,
Something you can buy.
They just find meditation too long a process.
So is there a pill I can take that can enlighten me?
People are looking for the fastest technique.
This question of enlightenment is interesting,
And maybe a liberating one for us to explore.
This contrast between sudden and gradual enlightenment can be of some help to us in understanding what we're doing,
Understanding the nature of the journey,
Which is an important part of deepening our commitment to it.
We need to know what we are committing to.
The question of Peter.
Look,
We have left everything and followed you.
Peter is saying,
Very humanly,
Look,
We've given up everything,
We've become poor,
We've left everything for you.
So what are we going to get?
That's a reasonable question.
It's like asking,
How long is this process of meditation going to take?
Is this the quickest technique I can find?
And Jesus's reply is surprising.
Jesus said,
Truly I tell you,
There is no one who has left house,
Or brothers,
Or sisters,
Or mother,
Or father,
Or children,
Or fields.
For my sake,
And for the sake of the good news,
Who will not receive a hundredfold now in this life,
Houses,
Brothers,
Sisters,
Mothers,
Children,
Fields,
With persecutions,
And in the age to come,
Eternal life.
But many who are first will be last,
And the last will be first.
One major element of the essential teaching is the understanding of meditation as a journey.
Not as a technique that is in control of our ego,
But a journey in which we divest ourselves of our ego,
Where we lose our ego.
Very different concept.
We may be doing the same thing,
But you're doing it for a very different motivation.
And that understanding,
I think,
Is essential if we are to complete the journey,
Or to really be on the journey 100%.
He says,
You will get more than you can imagine.
You'll get everything you let go of a hundredfold now in this life.
Then he has this little small print,
Not without persecution,
So not without suffering.
So don't expect this to be some kind of garden of earthly delight.
But Jesus is saying the reward or the consequence of a complete commitment to absolute poverty,
Letting go,
Is going to be more than you can count,
More than you can imagine.
And in this life also,
And then in the age to come,
Eternal life,
Fullness of life.
John Main's essential teaching is an affirmation that we have an unlimited potential.
And our usual mistake is to underestimate that potential.
The church,
Conventionally,
Underestimates it as well.
It presents Christianity in terms of morality,
In terms of restrictions,
And in terms of duties,
And obligations,
And sin,
And so on,
All of which has a certain validity.
But it often fails to communicate this affirmation of the fullness of our potential.
And I think the reason for that is the failure to recognize the contemplative foundation of the gospel,
Failing to understand that what Jesus is saying here is not a materialistic contract,
But it is quite the reverse,
A contemplative vision of human life and the discovery of the underworld's life as we discover ourselves in God.
And then that final line,
Many who are first will be last,
And the last will be first.
So here is this disturbing paradox that Jesus brings into his teaching in the parables very often,
And also,
Of course,
In the Beatitudes.
So at the heart of this,
There is a perception of reality that is completely different from our usual,
Conventional,
Comfortable way of seeing the world.
So everything is turned upside down and inside out.
This is important because we teach meditation from a Christian mystical tradition,
And the mystical dimension is inherent in the gospel.
It's not something that developed later or something that we add on,
But it's essential to it if we fail to see this mystical contemplative paradox and understand that the kingdom is within us as well as among us,
Then we fail to understand the gospel.
This is why this question of enlightenment is a liberating one for us to explore.
Today,
When we use the word enlightenment,
We're thinking of oriental spiritual traditions,
Zen or Buddhism particularly,
And the modern sense,
Or the Western sense anyway,
Of Buddhism is that Buddhism is this scientific,
Objective method for achieving enlightenment.
Enlightenment as a term and as a concept is present,
Of course,
Within Christian mystical language as well.
This is a well-known distinction in Zen Buddhism between sudden enlightenment and gradual enlightenment.
There are many stories in the Zen tradition about monks,
Usually monks,
Who undergo a sudden enlightenment.
Instantly,
Everything becomes clear and sure.
For example,
Hearing the sound of a distant bell in the monastery,
One monk is suddenly enlightened.
In another story,
Another one is walking through a village and he kicks over something in front of a house by mistake,
And this old woman comes out with a broom and hits him with the broom,
And that's his moment of enlightenment.
Another story of reading the Diamond Sutra,
He's read it a million times,
But suddenly he's enlightened.
These experiences of enlightenment could be compared with many of the stories of conversion,
Of sudden conversion,
Which you find,
For example,
In William James's great work,
The Varieties of Religious Experience.
He put together a vast database in the 19th century of stories and descriptions of these conversion experiences in which a person's life suddenly and instantaneously was transformed,
Their life was changed afterwards.
But often,
Mostly,
This conversion experience,
Which I think could be described somewhat as an enlightenment experience,
Maybe there are distinctions to be made between them,
This conversion experience doesn't last permanently,
And it's very rare that it does.
One great example of that it does,
Of course,
Is Ramana Maharshi,
Who at the age of 14 went through an enlightenment experience of self-realization in which he understood,
Knew experientially himself,
His true self,
And his self just shone out like a bright sun.
But it took him 10 years to adapt to that,
To recover,
In a sense,
And to integrate it to the point where he could begin to communicate with people again normally.
And then,
Of course,
The rest of his life,
He radiated this vision of reality,
Great love,
And charm,
And wit as well.
So often,
This conversion experience or enlightenment experience lasts for a period of time.
After that,
It has changed your life.
But the old patterns,
Mental patterns,
And the old ways of perception come back,
But not exactly as they did before,
And maybe not as powerfully as they did before.
But you're no longer in that first fervor of conversion,
As Saint Benedict calls it,
And indeed,
Maybe it's similar to the experience of falling in love.
When you realize that the falling in love is mutual,
There is this explosion of a new way of being,
And seeing,
And feeling,
And an explosion of energy as well,
As many of the characteristics of enlightenment could be identified in falling in love.
