“Enlightenment is only a name… but truth is absolute.”
~ Zen Master Seung Sahn, “Wanting Enlightenment is a Big Mistake”
I’ve long held to the belief that a dedicated search for Truth would one day lead me to attain enlightenment – this mystical state of spiritual knowledge and insight that will allow me to understand all of the mysteries of life and the universe. To have that kind of transcendent wisdom and sagacity into spiritual matters is something that I’ve wanted for a long time… but now I’m starting to think that I’m missing the point.
The problem is that I don’t really know what enlightenment is. I can attach different values to it, like being able to speak words of wisdom to my students, or being able to stay calm and meditate in the midst of chaos, but even when I do these things I can’t honestly say that I’m enlightened. And if I did say that I had achieved enlightenment, I’d be wrong; it seems to me that anyone who made this claim wouldn’t be truly enlightened. True enlightenment, a state of complete spiritual understanding, is a state so perfect that I can’t even begin to conceptualize it at all.
Seeking enlightenment is, I suppose, something like trying to see your eyes. You can see what your eyes look like in a mirror or a photograph, but you can never actually see your own eyes – just an image or reflection of them. You can get close, but you just can’t define the indefinable. So in my desire to become enlightened, I pursue something that I think is enlightenment but is really something quite different – often something good in itself, but something other than enlightenment nevertheless.
It is gradually dawning on me that since I can’t adequately define that which I deeply desire, I should put the desire itself behind me and focus on those things that I can define. I don’t need to concern myself with ‘enlightenment’ – something that is, essentially, just a name, a way to label something that can’t be labeled. To an extent, wanting enlightenment is itself a hindrance to being enlightened. Instead, I should simply continue my search for Truth, for the absolutes that exist before thought or definition, and learning all that I can in the process.
Maybe enlightenment is not something you attain, but something you do… from one moment to the next.
4 comments:
Seems to me like, given this mindset, gaining enlightenment is a lot like trying to be perfect. One can never reach it and it causes, long-term, unhealthy outcomes.
Interesting perspective.
I don't believe that trying to be perfect leads to long-term and unhealthy outcomes... it's not the trying that hurts, it's the expectation that you'll reach it. As long as you accept the impossibility of the goal, you stand to gain so much more from striving for it regardless.
It's like realizing that the road is never-ending but continuing to walk it anyway, knowing that the journey will make you stronger no matter what happens along the way.
I don't think I was very clear. I'm actually agreeing with you and drawing a parallel to my own experience in an effort to show you looking at your thoughts from my lense.
You said "To an extent, wanting enlightenment is itself a hindrance to being enlightened"
So to with me. Wanting to be perfect is a hindrance to actually reaching perfection; Or even striving, for that matter.
Gotcha.
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