Many people who claim to have no particular religious affiliation still talk about Enlightenment as though it exists and can be a life goal. I talk about Enlightenment, as if I know what it is I'm talking about, as if I know where it is, as if I know where I'm going, what I need to do to get there, and what it will be like when the Buddha Bus arrives at its destination. But I do not know this from my own first hand experience. I've read about it in Buddhist texts and commentaries, and that is all. And the more anyone talks about it in this way, the more this spreads a misapprehension of it as an easily verifiable state of being.
No one actually knows, and those who say they do are charlatans and liars. Enlightened beings apparently would always stay shtum about it. At least, so I have been told. I've only encountered one person who struck me as exuding an aura of being Enlightened. But how, as an un-Enlightened being how would I even know that? I just read the vibes, apparently. It might appear like I am propagating one un-substantiated assertion after another.
You can read the Buddha's discourses and the lives of sages and get the vaguest of whiffs of something that is at variance to life and reality as it is ordinarily lived. Unless you are Enlightened you cannot talk in any meaningful way about what that is or is not. Most likely Enlightened persons would refuse to talk about it, because you cannot put your state of being into words, because words are inherently inaccurate and misleading as a means of conveying what the state of Enlightenment is actually like. At least, so I have been told. Even the Buddha initially didn't know if he could, or should, attempt to teach what he knew. So the apocryphal story goes.
Where does that leave anyone as a spiritual practitioner? What the hell do we think we are doing when we meditate? Then you find this Zen story and all your worst fears become manifested in triplicate.
'One day Nangaku visited Baso's hut. Baso stood and greeted him. Nangaku asked, "What have you been doing recently?" Baso replied, "I've done nothing but sit in zazen." Then Nangaku asked, "Why do you continually sit in zazen?" Baso answered "I sit in zazen in order to become a Buddha." Nangaku picked up a tile he found by the side of Basos hut and started to polish it. Baso watched what he was doing and asked "Master, what are you doing?" Nangaku answered, "I'm polishing this tile." Baso asked "Why are you polishing the tile?" Nangaku answered, "To make a mirror." Baso said, "How can you make a mirror by polishing a tile?" And Nangaku replied, "How can you become a Buddha by doing zazen?'So, are we deludedly polishing a tile, thinking it will become a mirror through our efforts? It certainly feels like that. The more one examines meditation the more this apparent paradox resurfaces. Krishnamurti teased his followers by saying meditation was not a practice that was best served by you being conscious of a purpose at all. And when one looks at the way early Buddhist texts refer to the various levels of consciousness attainable - the four dhyanas of form ascending into the four formless dhyanas - none of these have a sign saying Here Be Enlightenment written next to them.
Meditation appears to be a spiritual skill akin to upgrading the quality of your mind from fuzzy Beta Max to the radiant clarity of a Blue Ray video player. Adjusting your receptivity, responses and ability to calmly reflect on the nature of reality. Meditation cannot of itself make you Enlightened. The Zen story is just trying to manage the rampant delusion of your expectations.
And, before you ask, I accidentally stumbled into what I've always interpreted as First Dhyana on three occasions, a long time ago. My ability as a meditator lets say, has exhibited its limits, as I'm most likely resentfully over aware of. Nevertheless - eight levels of dhyana - that could easily mislead anyone into thinking meditation practice was an elevation upward in the general direction of Enlightenment, wouldn't it? Say not so, well at least not so glibly. All these teachings are simply ways of modelling the territory, they are rarely literal descriptions of the territory itself. So we are told.
Once you encounter all these obstacles and inhibitors along the path of spiritual practice, it does cause you to question whether knowing of an idealised state of Enlightenment can serve any useful function at all. Tyler Staton, who admittedly is viewing things from a Christian perspective, does have some interesting things to say about the limitations, usefulness or otherwise of an 'impersonal force' to an individuals spiritual development.
'And the truth is I cannot love an impersonal force or be loved by one, I can't be loved by the universe and I certainly can't be loved by my own meditation practice. All I can do there is declutter my mind and slow down my internal world. Those are all good things, those are healthy habits, just like you should eat leafy greens and try to get some exercise and they will improve your life and help you become a healthier person and probably feel better. But they will not give you a life that is lived to the full, to fill your internal world with peace and will not offer you joy'
Well, I imagine a more experienced skilled meditator might want to question the assertions in that last sentence. I could only do so theoretically. Tyler does later assert you can only have a productive relationship with either Jesus, God or the Holy Spirit because they are all personified in a personal relatable way. Which no doubt makes logical sense if you approach things from his perspective, or any faith which embodies its Godhead to a degree. For me it does provoke a deeply furrowed brow, that says, yeah, how do you have any sort of meaningful helpful relationship interacting with an impersonal force, such as Enlightenment? Can Enlightenment even be fairly described as an impersonal force? And if not why not? - Discuss
In reality do we have to self consciously confect an indifference or dispassion towards the transcendental aspect of Buddhist faith, to sort of alienate ourselves from the stated objective of the whole of Buddhism ? What sort of twisted metaphysics is this? What in the end are we left to have faith in? In a man who reputedly died two and a half millenia ago, in ourselves, in our potential, in the spiritual process itself, in some sort of contemporary guru, in Beyonce?
That Buddhism did eventually succumb to introducing imagery of Enlightened archetypes, giving Buddhas and Bodhisatvas identifiable form and characteristics, was this in response to a difficulty they'd encountered in maintaining faith in what was in essence impersonal, and counterproductive to actively desire. Once the Buddha was no longer around as the founding exemplar, Buddhism resorted to symbolic structures or imagery to provide devotional focus. Did Buddhism simply find itself in such a metaphysical dead end, that the rise of the Mahayana and Vajrayana's innovations was an attempt at fixing? And so they provided something to worship the ideal through, to offer our ineffective practice and ourselves up too.
When the thing you are ostensibly aiming yourself towards is Enlightenment, this experience is as remote as it can get from ordinary human life. You are orientating yourself towards an empty imaginative space. We take it on faith that Enlightenment can exist at all. When we allow ourselves to imagine how we might get to be Enlightened, it tends to fall into either acquisitive progressive steps towards something that seems external to us, or resides like an incubus within our being just waiting for us to stumble upon it and release it. Both require a moment of Awakening. Whether Enlightenment exists, or where Enlightenment exists, until we reach that Awakening moment is a reasonable question to raise. The answer will no doubt turn out to be - unverifiable.If the spiritual life is only ever about the Sisyphean task of continuing to push the heavy boulder of your practice up a steep hill with no visible peak within sight, then its no wonder there is little room for a joyful engagement with daily life. When I doubt, I doubt the effectiveness of my practice first, and the truth or otherwise of whether Enlightenment exists or not remains curiously untouched. Probably because it has never felt that real in the first place. You can't be angry, disappointed or despairing towards a complete void - can you? Or has my feeling for Enlightenment just been slowly corroding?
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