Attaining Enlightenment

Attaining Enlightenment

Attaining enlightenment, or any level of spiritual awakening can be a very confusing and contradictory path, which is actually very simple, if you can understand the path is not a path, the way is not a way, but you see it as a path or a way, because you use your mind.

Your mind is the vehicle which transports you, and limits you at the same time.

I would like to present you with a few Zen and Sufi stories for you to contemplate. Read them all now, then pick one to ponder for a week or two, or longer if you wish, until you change to another one. Ponder without trying to intellectually resolve the riddle or understand the deeper meaning.

These stories all tell us one thing. The more you think, I mean the use of the mind to think and try to analyse, the less you will understand. The reason is simple, because the mind can only refer to information it already has from past experience. Therefor, you cannot reach any epiphany or new discovery by thinking. To open the door to new realisations, you must ponder, which is to read and contemplate without intellectually trying to find the answer in a box of previously accumulated information from your past.

Ponder these stories, let the words repeat in your mind, looking without thinking, and eventually you will learn to see what is deeper than what is right in front of you because you will see what is behind the veil of material illusions. That is the cultivation of wisdom.

A man was looking for his keys in his front yard. It was row houses with a very small garden in front. As he was on his hands and knees looking in the grass, his neighbour came by and asked him what he was doing.

He said; "I lost my keys", and the neighbour joined to help him find the keys.

An hour passed, and not being able to find the keys, the neighbour asked if he was sure he lost them out here.

He replied; "No, I lost them in the house." The neighbour asked; "Why are we looking outside in the garden?" and he answered; "Because the light is much better out here."

"Huai-jang asked Ma-tsu: 'Why are you sitting in meditation?'

Ma-tsu replied: 'Because I want to become a Buddha.'

Thereupon Huai-jang took a brick and started to polish it in front of Ma-tsu's hermitage. Ma-tsu asked him, 'Why are you polishing that brick?'

Huai-jang replied, 'Because I want to make a mirror.'

Ma-tsu asked, 'How can you make a mirror by polishing a brick?'

Huai-jang said, 'If I cannot make a mirror by polishing a brick, how can you become a Buddha by sitting in meditation?'

Ma-tsu asked, 'Then what shall I do?'

Huai-jang asked, 'When an ox-carriage stops moving, do you hit the carriage or the ox?'"

"Even if Manjushri (the bodhisattva of transcendent wisdom) emits a golden light and rubs your head and lets you ride his lion, even if Guanyin (the bodhisattva of infinite compassion) reveals her thousand hands and eyes and lets you hold her oriole, all of this is pursuing "form" and "sound." What good does it do your true self?"

"Master Kyogen said, "It is like a man up a tree who hangs from a branch by his mouth; his hands cannot grasp a bough, his feet cannot touch the tree. Another man comes under the tree and asks him the meaning of Zen. If he does not answer, he does not meet the questioner's need. If he does answer, he will lose his life. At such a time, how should he answer?"

"I heard Abu Ali al-Rudhbari say: 'We have arrived at the point (in Sufism) to a place that is like the edge of a sword. If we say this (something), we fall into hell-fire, and if we say that (something else), we fall into hell fire."

The student sits with the Master. The master holds up a stick and asks; "What is this? But before you answer, if you say it is a stick, I will hit you 20 times. If you do not answer at all, I will hit you 20 times. If you say the wrong thing, I will hit you 20 times. What is this?"

A very devoted student who was totally obedient to everything his master told him to do, after 20 years of devotion and practice, still had not reached a state or an experience of enlightenment.

He went to his master one day and begged him to help him find and overcome the obstacle that prevents him from reaching his goal of spiritual awakening.

The master told him to take this bag of wheat seeds, which weighs 50 kg and carry it up to that mountain nearby, which is quite high to reach the peak, but do not stop for even one moment until you reach the peak of the mountain.

The student being so devoted and honouring and trusting his masters wisdom, did as he was told and carried that 50 kg bag for several hours without stopping until he reached the peak of the mountain where, totally exhausted, he put the bag down and sat on it, and at that moment achieved, his spiritual awakening and enlightenment.