Hello again
There is so very little to say about enlightenment. Its not found anywhere
no matter how we might look. Some go so far as to say there is no
enlightenment at all, which reminds me of Pirsig's quest for Quality. I am
reticent to go that far but I will add that we cannot have our cake and eat
it too. We do not find enlightenment; enlightenment finds us. We have all
experienced enlightenment already, to this reality we inhabit now, through
no effort of our own. It just happened of its own accord.
Look behind the face you wear now and you will find many faces. In that we
are trapped in this life experience, in this face we wear now, all those
other faces fade into the obfuscation of now and we come to believe that
this face we wear is really real. That there really is a 'me' typing these
words, reading these words.
We forget.
There is so much to share if we can find someone to listen but everyone is
wrapped up in their own face of life; wrapped up in forgetting the immensity
of who and what we really are. We cheat ourselves over and over again
without ever even realizing we are being cheated. We ask why and gnash our
teeth over answers that never seem to satisfy the questions we ask. As John
said (which I am still chuckling over) we are like cavemen irritated at the
words on the paper we wipe our butts with. All of us here, without
exception.
We neither want or need enlightenment beyond which we already have. We may
kid ourselves that we do but such enlightenment necessarily means the death
of everything we know and love. Everything. Only driven by desperate straits
would anyone choose such a path. We are all involved in karmic garbage
grubbing but to let go of that means the death of self and of the universe
itself.
The man who came to be known as the Buddha was a prince from a very wealthy
family with a young family of his own. He walked away when he was 29. What
would drive such a man to walk away from his family, from everything he knew
and loved, never to return? Wild horses couldn't have dragged me away from
my family when I was that age. And he ended up a homeless shiftless beggar,
traveling from town to town and talking to whoever would listen to him. For
51 years! I can't begin to fathom why anyone would willingly chose such a
path. But that is not for me to know, it's as simple as that.
All I can believe is that we each have a path to walk and we should all do
our best not to judge another's path too harshly. For it seems to me that in
the act of judging does all suffering arise. Joy is not found in judgment,
nor is enlightenment. We all will find answers to the questions we ask but
they might not always be the answers we hoped for.
Thank you all for reading and for sharing your own thoughts.
Cory
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