To Open Forth and Awaken

People who have never undergone Buddhist training or have never had a taste of “entering the gate” of Chan often like to speculate about enlightenment. But lacking a clear sense of what the dharma actually entails, they tend to delight in the exotic and cook up all kinds of strange fantasies. There is such a thing as “enlightenment,” or “awakening,” to be sure. The Chinese word for it is kaiwu, which means to “open forth and awaken,” or simply “to awaken.” This expression has been used in the Chinese Chan tradition for centuries—at least since the Tang Dynasty (618-907). But although it figures centrally in Chan tradition and its literature, enlightenment is not something that can be comprehended—let alone reached—by philosophical speculation or flights of the occult imagination. Should you even be tempted to conjecture or fantasize about it, you will actually be moving farther and farther away from it. You will be heading south when you should be going north!

---Master Sheng Yen---