Wednesday, January 14, 2009

What Does It Mean To Be Enlightened?


Today's Buddhist thought is a good one....

To study the Buddha is to study oneself. To study oneself is to forget oneself. To forget oneself is to be enlightened by the myriad dharmas. To be enlightened by the myriad dharmas is to bring about the dropping away of body and mind of both oneself and others. The traces of enlightenment come to an end, and this traceless enlightenment is continued endlessly.
-Dôgen, "Flowers Fall"

I don't know if I have any idea what Dogen is trying to tell us here. Some of it is easy. Forgetting oneself is surely the first step towards enlightenment. I struggle with "to be enlightened by the myriad dharmas is to bring about the dropping away of body and mind of both oneself and others". The really hard part for me is the reference to others. In Christianity it's all about selflessness and reaching out to others. Certainly enlightenment in the Buddhist tradition is more than a state where we are "dropping away" to the point where we become unaware, not only of ourselves, but of others. It's got to be more than a blissful state of being unaware and completely detached. I would think enlightenment is more about a greater awareness and connection to all of life. The last sentence, "The traces of enlightenment come to an end, and this traceless enlightenment is continued endlessly", is also intriguing. I think this may mean that the more we become enlightened, the less we realize that we are enlightened. True enlightenment would be transparent to us. As far as my own continued journey towards enlightenment, the last few mornings while I drink my first cup of coffee and before I leave my home for the office I have been reading the last section of Thomas Merton's The Sign of Jonas entitled "Fire Watch July 4th, 1952". This was the first Merton book that I read. It is difficult to articulate how much this book enlightened my spiritual journal. Up until that point I was attracted to spiritual things and I wanted to be enlightened even though I had no idea what that meant. After reading this book with its blend of Merton's experiences in the monastery and the poetic and spiritual way he saw those experiences, I think I began the real journey of enlightenment. It put me on a path that I am still walking today. Am I enlightened? I can't tell because it is transparent to me. Much of the time I feel I have achieved the opposite of enlightenment. Much of the journey has been in the dark without a flashlight. There's a reason I call my blog Stumbling along the Spiritual Path. Most of the time I am just grateful if I don't fall flat on my face.

Pictures of my granddaughter are always popular. I include one today as an example of a totally enlightened child. If she could only stay that way! I must be having some influence on her. Here she is jamming under the tree in my front yard with her Doodlebop keyboard.

1 comment:

Littlefair said...

Slightly off-topic for your post today but I saw this article and thought of you. You may have caught it yourself last Christmas but it didn't get any coverage here in the UK so I was quite tickled with it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arthur-rosenfeld/pay-it-backwards-an-act-o_b_151793.html

"Pay It Backwards: An Act Of Coffee Kindness"