What Is This Thing We Call Enlightenment?

In this talk, we explore how our preconceived ideas about enlightenment differ from the reality of how meditation practice helps us grow and develop. I discuss the fantasies we have about awakening, and how that can get in the way of appreciating moments of waking up that we experience every day.

Transcript

Tonight,

I'd like to continue with our discussion from last week because it stimulated a lot of questions for me about what actually we're doing here and what we mean by awakening,

What we mean by enlightenment.

I think that the story that Robert Aitken told about these sailors feeling that they were dying of thirst and then messaging another ship saying that they needed water and then the people on the other ship said,

Just let down your buckets,

You're in the midst of fresh water,

That that is such a familiar image in Zen and that's the image that Hakuin offers us in the Song of Zazen when he says how sad that people ignore the near and search for truth afar,

Like someone in the midst of water crying out in thirst,

Like a child of a wealthy home wandering among the poor.

And that sounds so promising.

That means that here I am,

In the midst of nirvana,

In the midst of enlightenment,

And I just have to see it.

But that's not my experience.

And I would wager for most of us,

Most of the time,

It's not our experience that we sit here thinking,

Oh,

Yes,

I'll just look at things correctly.

And everything will be perfect.

Nirvana is right here.

And,

Of course,

We yearn for awakening,

We yearn for an end to the suffering that we all experience.

We yearn for an end to the doubts and the ups and downs of our life.

We want to get to a place where it's all good and it's all peaceful.

And I don't know about you,

But I have not found that place.

So then we keep coming back to what are we yearning for?

And what actually is this thing called nirvana,

Or awakening,

Or enlightenment?

In the Zen tradition,

There is something of a debate about the nature of enlightenment.

There's sudden realization and gradual realization.

And sudden realization is when suddenly the world looks completely different,

Feels completely different,

And our relationship to it feels different.

And it happens often in a moment.

It's referred to as Kensho,

Sometimes Maha Kensho,

Meaning great Kensho,

Great awakening.

And then there is gradual enlightenment.

That image that we sometimes hear of being out in a fine mist and feeling like nothing is happening,

And then eventually you realize that you are completely soaking wet,

That you are soaking in enlightenment.

And people go back and forth,

Which is it?

What's the real thing?

And in fact,

I publish a newsletter every two weeks,

And often they are about my understanding of Zen.

And last month,

A Zen teacher wrote a long comment in response saying that I was not paying enough attention to sudden awakening,

To great Kensho,

And that American Zen was not paying enough attention to great Kensho.

And my first thought was,

Well,

He's probably right.

Maybe that's really what we're all striving for,

What we should be striving for,

And that everything else is not the real thing.

But of course,

I've come to understand that there are many,

Many ways to wake up,

To acquire wisdom,

To know the truth of just this,

Just this life.

And so there will be people who make their passionate cases for sudden awakenings,

And there will be other people who quietly go about the business of waking up slowly,

Almost imperceptibly.

And that brought me to the question of,

Well,

What do we wake up to?

How can we know whether we are enlightened,

Whether we are awakened?

And there,

I think,

We do know more than it feels like we do.

It feels like we are in the midst of water crying out in thirst.

But in fact,

We all get tastes of the basic,

Basic truths of the enlightened being.

We teach them to each other over and over again.

And what Hakuin is saying is that we experience these basic truths every time we sit on the that this is coming home to this true nature that we're all discovering.

These truths,

For example,

Of no separation,

That that could be a sudden experience of oneness,

Almost psychedelic in nature,

But it could be the subtle experience of the mind quieting and there being nothing but the breath,

Going in and out,

Or the sound of the birds,

Where all experience of I,

Me,

And mine falls away.

And there is just awareness and just sensations,

Thoughts,

Reaching awareness,

No separation of self from everything else.

Dogen talks about body and mind falling away.

Sometimes there's no dramatic falling away.

It's just an easing up of the preoccupation with me and a loosening of the sense of boundaries where I end and everything else begins.

It's really knowing in our bones that every breath we take is a moment of boundlessness,

No boundary between this body and everything else in the universe.

And in this way,

We come to know that,

Yes,

There is me,

This form that I call my body,

Bob.

There is this cushion that I'm sitting on and there is complete oneness and that they are both equally true in every moment so that there is Bob and there is no such thing as Bob.

All true,

Equally true,

Equally powerful in each moment.

And,

Of course,

The most fundamental truth that we can know every moment is impermanence,

That no moment hinders another,

In Dogen's words,

That every moment arises and passes away,

Unable to be grasped,

And that all the things we think of as permanent,

Me and this computer screen and the air I breathe,

None of it is permanent.

Everything is a process of ceaseless change.

This is not mystical.

It takes very little discernment to see the truth of this every time we step and pay attention.

And the difficulty of holding out the prospect of sudden enlightenment is that we can miss our gradual waking up in the process of waiting for some powerful,

Overwhelming experience.

We can miss the fine mist as we become soaking wet in the truth of our lives.

The ancient masters tell us that even sudden awakening is just a beginning.

And we know that to be true,

That there are people who have powerful,

Overwhelming experiences of Kensho and then go on to do nothing with it or to get lost in it or go on to commit terrible deeds.

And so really,

Awakening has to include a long process of integration or what I call knowing in our bones the truth of impermanence,

Of non-duality,

Of no fixed separate self.

And this process of integration is something we do for our whole lives.

We don't stop practicing because we're always losing the insights that we gain.

The mind is always carrying us away into delusions of separateness,

Into greed and hatred and ignorance.

And so what we do here with each other is remind each other over and over again of these insights,

Which otherwise slip away,

Slip away even among Zen masters,

Even among the most enlightened beings.

And so we need each other in order to continue this process of awakening.

We live in this paradox where we teach that there's nothing to attain and yet we're constantly yearning for some final place to land.

But as Hakuin tells us,

There is no final place to land.

Just each moment sitting Zazen or walking in the woods or driving in the car,

Where we get that recognition of how boundless and free is the sky of Samadhi.

That in those moments nirvana really is right here before our eyes.

And that's what we continue to remind each other of as a Sangha.

That this really is the land,

This very life,

And this body,

My body,

Your body,

These are the bodies of the Buddha.

Thank you.