The Path to Enlightenment: Fashions & Chronicles

Let’s speak in regards to the path to enlightenment, together with the frequent fashions for it, how it’s largely constant from one religious system to the following, and a bit about my very own path up to now, which entails almost a decade of meditation and instructing.

Discover that you should utilize any time period that you really want for enlightenment, from any religious system: awakening, union, God, grace, Nirvana, Heaven, moksha, cosmic consciousness, and so forth.

Frequent fashions typically current enlightenment as a course of that entails sure levels. We’ll additionally bear in mind the other perspective, held by a number of heavyweight faculties like Soto Zen and Dzogchen, the latter thought-about the top of all Buddhist instructing.

And undoubtedly, one’s personal religious path displays each of those fashions. Your innate enlightened thoughts is at all times already current, and at all times has been: “once I was enlightened, not one single factor was obtained that wasn’t already in me”, mentioned the Buddha within the Diamond Sutra.

However in actuality, individuals should stroll a path, getting nearer and nearer, then deeper and deeper, to aware recognition of this truth. I encourage you keep away from attempting to intellectually perceive how enlightenment is each a course of and an inherent state. It sounds paradoxical, however the two information help each other. Solely by strolling the trail to enlightenment are you able to realise that there was no path to stroll.

Frequent Fashions of the Path to Enlightenment

Let’s start with two extremely dependable fashions for the trail to enlightenment, seen as a journey with milestones alongside the best way. Be aware that there are a lot of, many such fashions from completely different programs East and West, trendy and historical.

The Ox-Herding Footage (Consultant of Mahayana View)

The ox-herding photos are just like the Zen model of the Hero’s Journey. They describe our journey from ignorance and struggling to everlasting enlightenment and its fruits. Because of Shinzen Younger for this illuminating presentation on these photos.

In these photos, the boy goes from trying to find one thing, to discovering the ox’s footprints, to glimpsing, to catching, then to driving, after which to driving the ox again to the place he lives. This story represents each the method of understanding consciousness, and of enlightenment, since they’re the identical. After all, that is all metaphorical. Let’s not fall into mythic interpretation.

We cowl the primary seven, as a result of they describe the trail itself. There are three additional ones that describe the shape, look and objective of enlightenment.

1. Looking for the Ox: The ox doesn’t seem within the image: the boy is seen looking round him, searching for one thing. This characterize our state of being misplaced in appearances, in Samsara, within the unenlightened thoughts. “Everyone’s searching for one thing,” and failing to search out something completely satisfying.
2. Seeing The Ox’s Footprints: The boy sees the ox’s footprints on the bottom. This represents one’s first encounters with religious apply, once we hear about the opportunity of enlightenment.
3. Seeing the Ox’s Tail: Within the photos, the boy sees the ox’s bottom and tail. That is when we have now an instinct or transient glimpse of nature of consciousness, of what lies past our ordinary self-identity.
4. Catching the Ox: The boy catches the ox, although it nonetheless runs wild on a rope, and the boy struggles to manage it. This represents our first deep perception into no-self and “no-thingness”. Enlightenment is now inside attain.
5. Taming the Ox: The ox now walks behind the boy. That is when the perception follows you and doesn’t slip away.
6. Driving the Ox: The boy mounts the ox and calmly rides it backwards whereas taking part in his flute. As Shinzen Younger says, “Enlightenment is like frequently falling off a cliff, and being fully snug with that. A terrific and highly effective beast carries you… It’s a falling, but it surely’s a falling up.”
7. Carrying the Ox Dwelling: On this image, the boy is mendacity down at dwelling. The ox is gone. That is full enlightenment, or last repose. All that continues to be is who you actually are.

The State-Levels (Additionally Consultant of Mahayana View)

I discovered these state-stages from Ken Wilber, who in flip adopted them from Daniel P Brown’s work. Brown extensively studied main meditative traditions the world over (together with however not restricted to Buddhism) and deduced a sequence of 5 levels frequent to all of them.

1. Gross Waking: Within the Waking state, we’re solely recognized with the bodily physique, the rambling thoughts and our feelings: “I’m hungry,” “I’m unhappy,” “I’m drained”. Buddhists use the time period “Monkey Thoughts” to explain the chaotic psychological chatter from this degree – we’re misplaced prior to now and future, worries, desires, regrets, thought patterns, catchy tunes and crazed monologues. Observe your individual thoughts rigorously. You’ll discover all it’s involved with is the bodily world and all of the drama that being a self entails.
2. Delicate: After some expertise with meditation, our sense of self expands from the Waking self into the Delicate self. The monkey thoughts calms down, making approach for deeper insights, intuitions, knowledge and loving-kindness. You could expertise spells of profound psychological quiet, expertise much less struggling and torment, and sense that previous and future are however a dream.
3. Causal: As we additional establish with the Causal, our attachment to the Gross body-mind weakens, and Delicate options, akin to instinct, perception, connection and bliss, improve. Psychological calm turns into extra fixed, as we might anticipate. The Causal is dwelling to the subtlest objects we will pay attention to: refined sounds, lights and shapes that seem in our consciousness.
4. Witness: The Witness state is dwelling to the realisation of Vacancy and Nothingness: the pure, featureless consciousness that grounds every little thing we expertise within the senses. It has no color, no form, no sides, no boundaries, no time, no inside and outdoors. As a substitute, it effortlessly Witnesses all of those options. We stay, unshaken, grounded on this pure Seer.
5. Non-Twin: At non-duality, there is no such thing as a sense of a separate Seer witnessing ideas, feelings and sensations. That Seer collapses into the circulation of our senses. We’re now not on the financial institution of the river – we’re within the river. We realise we’re not separate from something in our consciousness. There may be each the radical freedom from the Witness stage and a Single Style of not being separate from something.

Dzogchen (Represents the Vajrayana View, or the Pathless View)

Dzogchen is the top of Tibetan Buddhism, and sometimes thought-about the best set of Buddhist teachings. It’s a direct non-dual pithy path that works top-down, swooping down from above, somewhat than build up from the bottom like most different Buddhist traditions.

Because it’s a Vajrayana faculty and a part of the Third or Fourth Turning of the Wheel of Buddhism, it views the trail to enlightenment not as creating by way of levels, however as recognising our inherent pure presence and Buddhaness. It’s typically known as “the top of all autos”. It’s the sister apply of Mahamudra, which is a down-up method.

My Dzogchen trainer, Lama Surya Das, says that enlightenment is each a course of and an inherent state. It’s about going from right here to actually and fully right here; we’re there whereas we get there. We awaken from the dreamlike daze of the Default Mode Community and our restricted, selfish notion. We go from attachment, aversion and blindness to true imaginative and prescient.

My Path to Enlightenment

I discover the ox-herding photos to be a very good mannequin for my very own path to enlightenment. After I began meditation, I felt unhappy with my life, and had for some time. I’d been by way of a tough interval not lengthy earlier than I began, and had at all times been caught up in addictions of various varieties, at all times searching for one thing, at all times searching for the following factor, at all times looking for and at all times needing extra.

Fairly rapidly after taking on meditation, I knew that I’d discovered one thing highly effective and that I used to be prepared for it. I felt that I used to be coming dwelling, in a approach, even when I didn’t perceive the depth of what I used to be glimpsing on the time..

And fairly rapidly I began having glimpses into the character of thoughts and into my true self, my true being. Within the first couple of years I had many such glimpses, and so they have stayed with me. After getting a glimpse or two, you may’t overlook.

I truly had just a few very deep experiences early on. They weren’t everlasting, however they have been very highly effective, and looking out again, these experiences have guided me and proven me the potential for this work.

They’ve jogged my memory to not get fixated in a sure place, to not assume that I’ve accomplished the trail to enlightenment. I need to hold going and hold immersing myself within the teachings.

And within the final two or three years, it has all began to stabilize. I don’t need to say I can’t reside with out meditation, as a result of that doesn’t actually sound correct. It’s extra that life and meditation appear completely intertwined: I can’t have one with out the opposite.

Even within the final couple of weeks, I really feel like I’ve gone into a brand new state of consciousness. After I remind myself very briefly to see by way of the phantasm of separation and of being trapped in my body-mind, I instantly faucet into who I actually am. Then I simply relaxation in that, and it’s so scrumptious and so fulfilling.

I’ve additionally realised that that is what the trail to enlightenment is all about. It’s about resting on this place and forgetting in regards to the looking for and wanting one thing else. That is actually what we wish. We would like this deep sense of inside peace.

And it’s not sugary or New-agey, however very tangible, very embodied. It’s realising that it doesn’t matter what’s occurring in your life, you already are this pure beingness that you simply can not grasp or maintain on to in any approach.

You can not comprise it. And but on the identical time, it fully overpowers any phantasm or any sense of greedy or any need you would have for anything. By resting in that place, you relaxation in inside peace and contentment it doesn’t matter what’s occurring.

And actually within the final couple of weeks, I really feel like my connection to that has gone to a brand new degree. When it comes to the ox herding, I’m most likely about to trip the ox backwards. I typically do, however actually not on a regular basis.

And I believe my Dzogchen meditation has been a giant a part of that. I’ve been practising this type of meditation since January this 12 months, and it factors on to who you might be, to this data as finest as it might probably. It factors you proper there. And the extra I apply it, the extra I can relaxation in who I actually am.

You would possibly like my video on why enlightenment shouldn’t be severe.

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