Enlightenment

Enlightenment is already pure, the thought of it is a delusion. 

~Hui-neng

The Path of Awakening

The nun Mahapajapati [Siddhartha's maternal aunt and stepmother] said to the Buddha, "Lord, please show compassion and explain how I may best make quick progress on the path of liberation."

The Buddha answered, "Nun Mahapajapati, the most important thing is to take hold of your own mind. Practice observing the breath and meditate on the body, feelings, mind, and objects of mind. Practicing like that, each day you will experience a deepening of humility, ease, detachment, peace, and joy. When those qualities arise, you can be sure you are on the correct path, the path of awakening and enlightenment."

The Avatamsaka Sutra

As to the Avatamsaka-Sutra, it is really the consummation of Buddhist thought, Buddhist sentiment, and experience. To my mind, no religious literature in the world can ever approach the grandeur of conception, the depth of feeling, and the gigantic scale of composition, as attained by the sutra. Here not only deeply speculative minds find satisfaction. but humble spirits and heavily oppressed hearts, too, will have their burdens lightened. Abstract truths are so concretely, so symbolically represented here that one will finally come to a realization of the truth that even in a particle of dust the whole universe is seen reflected—not this visible universe only, but a vast system of universes, conceivable by the highest minds only.

~D. T. Suzuki

Perfecting Ourselves

When Siddhartha was meditating under the tree, no god or angel came to him to reveal any hidden secrets of spiritual power. No one one gave him any religious laws or doctrines to teach.

After his Awakening, the Buddha said, "I never had any teacher, human or divine, teach me or tell me how to gain Enlightenment. I achieved Supreme Wisdom by my own effort, energy, knowledge, and purity."

As the Buddha, we too can attain the highest goal through perseverance in perfecting ourselves.

Enlightenment

A student asked his teacher, “Master, what is the way to Enlightenment?”

The Teacher answered, “There is no way to Enlightenment, for Enlightenment is not other than here and now.”

“Please, Master, tell me the essence of Enlightenment.”

“There is no essence of Enlightenment, for Enlightenment is all and nothing.”

“Please, Master, tell me the secret that I might know that Enlightenment is all.”

“Dear student,” the Master said, “there is no way, there is no essence, there is no secret. The truth you seek is not hidden from you. You are hiding form it.”

Enlightenment

Nobody can live for us or die for us. And nobody can realize enlightenment for us. We have to drink the water if we want to know what it tastes like.

~Red Pine, in his commentary on The Platform Sutra

The Seven Factors of Enlightenment

1 . . . Mindfulness
2 . . . Investigation of Phenomena
3 . . . Energy
4 . . . Rapture
5 . . . Tranquility
6 . . . Concentration
7 . . . Equanimity

The way to enlightenment starts with mindfulness. Mindfulness clears the ground for insight into the nature of things by bringing to light phenomena in the now, the present moment, stripped of all subjective commentary, interpretations, and projections. Then, when mindfulness has brought the bare phenomena into focus, the factor of investigation steps in to search out their characteristics, conditions, and consequences. Whereas mindfulness is basically receptive, investigation is an active factor which unflinchingly probes, analyzes, and dissects phenomena to uncover their fundamental structures.

The work of investigation requires energy, the third factor of enlightenment, which mounts in three stages. The first, inceptive energy, shakes of lethargy and arouses initial enthusiasm. As the work of contemplation advances, energy gathers momentum and enters the second stage, perseverance, wherein it propels the practice without slackening. Finally, at the peak, energy reaches the third stage, invincibility, where it drives contemplation forward leaving the hindrances powerless to stop it.

As energy increases, the fourth factor of enlightenment is quickened. This is rapture, a pleasurable interest in the object. Rapture gradually builds up, ascending to ecstatic heights: waves of bliss run through the body, the mind glows with joy, fervor and confidence intensify. But these experiences, as encouraging as they are, still contain a flaw: they create an excitation verging on restlessness. With further practice, however, rapture subsides and a tone of quietness sets in signalling the rise of the fifth factor, tranquility. Rapture remains present, but it is now subdued, and the work of contemplation proceeds with self-possessed serenity.

Tranquility brings to ripeness concentration, the sixth factor, one-pointed unification of mind. Then, with the deepening of concentration, the last enlightenment factor comes into dominance. This is equanimity, inward poise and balance free from the two defects of excitement and inertia. When inertia prevails, energy must be aroused; when excitement prevails, it is necessary to exercise restraint. But when both defects have been vanquished the practice can unfold evenly without need for concern. The mind of equanimity is compared to the driver of a chariot when the horses are moving at a steady pace: he neither has to urge them forward nor to hold them back, but can just sit comfortably and watch the scenery go by.  Equanimity has the same "on-looking" quality. When the other factors are balanced the mind remains poised watching the play of phenomena.

Bhikkhu Bodhi, in The Noble Eightfold Path

Absolute Perfect Enlightenment

When I attained Absolute Perfect Enlightenment, I attained absolutely nothing. That is why it is called Absolute Perfect Enlightenment.

~The Diamond Sutra

Enlightenment

Before you attain enlightenment, enlightenment is there. It is not because one attains enlightenment that enlightenment appears. Enlightenment is always there and if you realize this, that is enlightenment. If you think, however, that enlightenment is some particular thing you can reach, which you can attain sometime, you will be discouraged because you are seeking for it.

But if you feel that it is not possible to attain enlightenment, you will also be discouraged . . . . Whether or not you realize your true nature, or attain enlightenment, is a minor problem and not the big one. It is all the better if you do, but even if you don't there is no need to seek for some other special teaching, because the teaching is always right here.

~Suzuki Roshi

Enlightenment

Delusion and faults do not have to be eradicated. They cease to be the moment they are realized. And enlightenment is not gaining something that from that moment onward becomes one's possession but is rather the shedding of all delusions, errors, and notions. As that, it is the voiding of everything that obscures truth and prevents it from revealing itself.

~Soko Morinaga

Knowing Enlightenment

If we were to divide zazen into two parts, practice and experience, we could consider each part separately. We could say that we practice in order to achieve enlightenment. But your perceptions cannot be the standard of enlightenment, because deluded human sentiment cannot reach the standard of enlightenment. Basically, you cannot know your own enlightenment because whatever you call enlightenment can't be enlightenment.

~Master Dogen, as translated (paraphrased) by Brad Warner

A Practitioner of the Buddha-Dharma

Budai

A Practitioner of the Buddha-Dharma does not retire from life.
A Practitioner of the Buddha-Dharma retires from unhappiness.

Awakening/Enlightenment

Awakening/Enlightenment is not about becoming a better or happier person. Awakening/Enlightenment is the removal of untruth, the eradication of non-Reality. It's about seeing through the fantasy. It's the complete erasure of everything we think, hope, or imagine to be true. Awakening/Enlightenment is coming face-to-face with Reality.

Mind

If you wish to move in the One Way
do not dislike the worlds of senses and ideas.
Indeed, to embrace them fully
is identical with true Enlightenment.

                                     ~The Hsin Hsin Ming

Mind

If you wish to move in the One Way
do not dislike the worlds of senses and ideas.
Indeed, to embrace them fully
is identical with true Enlightenment.
The wise person attaches to no goals
but the foolish person fetters himself or herself.
There is one Dharma, without differentiation.
Distinctions arise from the clinging needs of the ignorant.
To seek Mind with the discriminating mind
is the greatest of mistakes.

                                     ~The Hsin Hsin Ming

The Simplicity of the Enlightened Person

When it gets cold,

                 put on more clothes;

when it gets hot,

                  use your fan.

                                              ~Confucian Wisdom

Enlightenment

Enlightenment is not a transcendent mystical rapture but an ethical experience that reveals the nature of the existential dilemma and the way to its resolution.

~Stephen Batchelor, in Secular Buddhism

The Dharma and the West

Toward the end of his life Nanavira was convinced that the Dhamma was "very far from being understood in the West." For whether aware of it or not, Europeans were still fundamentally preoccupied with the question of God, the very idea of a "moral but Godless universe" being utterly alien. Yet behind the belief in God lies the even more deeply entrenched sense that the universe has a meaning or purpose. He approvingly quotes Nietzsche: "Has existence then a significance at all?—the question that will require a couple of centuries even to be heard in all its profundity."

Nietzsche's question disturbs in the same was as Nanavira's suicide. For such statements challenge those collectively held, Christian-based views about the nature of life which still dominate our instinctive moral sense of good and evil. For Buddhism to penetrate deeply into the European psyche it will have to reach such pre-articulate strata of experience. Otherwise it is liable to become merely a consoling set of beliefs and views still founded on a theistic ethos. Enlightenment is not a transcendent mystical rapture but an ethical experience that reveals the nature of the existential dilemma and the way to its resolution.

~Stephen Batchelor, in Secular Buddhism

Freedom From Superstitious Escapism

Two and a half thousand years ago, in norther India, the tradition we refer to as Buddhism was born. The new socio-religious movement spread rapidly in its early days and has become one of the most enduring and successful of such movements in history. It's older than Christianity or Islam and more international than Judaism, Hinduism, or Confucianism.

Why did the Practice and the Teaching spread so? Because of the depth of inspiration of its founder, the clarity of his message, and the personal and social implications of the Teaching.

Buddhism was an inspired protest against of the oppressive conservatism, the superstition, the greed, the racism, and the belligerence of the world into which it was born.

The word Buddha means "awakened one." Buddhism can therefore be said to mean "the way of awakening." You may call it a religion, a way of life, or a vision of human perfectibility. For twenty-five hundred years it has been a light for those who would live the better life and create a better world with resort neither to superstitious escapism on the one hand nor violent coercion on the other.

To be awakened, or enlightened as some say, is to be compassionate, tolerant, reasonable, moral and engaged in a life that benefits humankind and all life—that contributes to the emancipation of all sentient beings from avoidable stress and exploitation.

Awakening

Awakening (or Enlightenment) is essentially knowing things in accordance with reality. When one sees in this manner there are no misconceptions or mental projections about the appearance of a thing or a course of events. The seeing is entirely clear and according to reality.