What is Enlightenment?

Famously the mind is often likened to a cup. The point of this metaphor is many fold but in particular a cup works because it is not the same as its contents. A cup can hold many drinks again and again over the course of its lifetime, and the Mind similarly will hold many experiences again and again over its lifetime.

The unenlightened mind confuses the experiences with itself. So when that mind experiences sadness or happiness it thinks it really is happiness or sadness. This is typified by liking and disliking experiences and then grasping for what it likes and rejecting what it does not like.

In contrast the enlightened Mind never confuses itself with its contents and regardless whether it likes the drink it currently holds or not, it lets it be drunk, allows itself to empty and be ready for the next drink.

We know we lose awareness of our true nature when we start to linger in experiences, or start to fear them arising. In Buddhism Causation is a central idea, and the enlightened Mind starts to accept the coming and going of mental states as simply waves on an ocean, things stirred up by the winds of the world acting upon us. No wave is too big for the Mind as it is in fact infinite. The only finite thing is our weakness and attachment to particular states.

Cup is a good metaphor because it also captures the idea that the mind is only able to experience because it is itself empty of experience. Like a full cup we know the cup is empty because it has drink within it. This is why the Heart Sutra begins: Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form. The Mind is never actually empty, a drink leaves as another comes so unless we meditate extremely deeply we will never experience its emptiness. But we know from the changing drinks that the cup is not the same as the drinks. The presence of each drink, reminds us that we are actually empty.

Cup is a good metaphor because we need to pick up a cup to drink. But when we have drunk we put the cup down again. If we keep holding onto the cup after the drink has gone in memory of something we enjoyed, or grip the cup in expectation of the same drink then we start to experience Tanha. This is the source of suffering, it is when things start to stick and cause suffering. After we confuse mind with its experiences, we start to grasp at mind in the hope of getting those experiences again, or we start to reject mind in the hope of avoiding experiences. We turn against our self. Mind is always unaffected by what happens, and when enlightened we let what happens simply come and go, picking up what we need, and setting it down again afterwards.

It is such a common mistake to think that Enlightenment is some kind of positive experience. Ironically this is what unenlightenment is. It is often said that it is not what happens to you that matters, but how you handle it. The enlightened mind does not care what happens to it, because it knows how to be filled and emptied.

However I have made the mistake of thinking, that in which case we do not care what happens to us. We can be lazy in our spiritual affairs and know that nothing matters. This is nihilism, one of the extremes that Buddha warns us against. Enlightened Mind does not deliberately ignore its contents. Being free to receive experiences and let them go does not mean we are dulled to them. Such a mind is no-mind. We may as well be dead with this mind. Enlightenment mind does not dull itself in order to tolerate unpleasant experiences. It is more profound than that. How can it be empty if it refuses to be filled? An enlightened mind is able to accept all experiences as they are, and see its empty nature in so doing.

Another mistake is to take Enlightened Mind to mean some impartial, aloof, cool and unemotional mind that does not engage deeply with the world. We think I am not emotionally affected by that, therefore I must be indifferent from it, therefore I am unattached and therefore I have attained liberation. How wrong this is! As in the previous paragraph the Enlightened Mind is a large cup that wishes to be filled. The difference is that the cup always sees itself in the drink that it holds. Like the mirror of the Shenxiu or better the Huineng's no-mirror we see the mind in the world around us. When we feel, we also see the world around us. Dulling our emotions to attain some fake indifference is simply developing no-mind. If we allow the cup to fill and empty with freedom, we will begin to see ourselves more clearly. What is the problem with anger anyway? It is either not wanting to fill our cup with anger, or getting stuck with anger in our cup. The unenlightened mind panics when it sees anger arise because it doesn't like it. It starts all kinds of activities to avoid the anger, like throwing the hurt out in aggressive behaviour to other people. It may become violent in a desperate attempt to dissipate this unpleasant energy in the world around it. Conversely it may be passive and hold onto the pain feeling it burn over a long period of time. Enlightened mind can just let the anger come, feel the burn and pour it out again as it subsides. And enlightened mind can even see itself in the anger as it fills and empties. Unenlightened Mind does not see itself as a condition of the arising of the anger, it rather see the anger as a part of it. Unenlightened mind believes it is of the same type as anger. "You have made me angry" the Unenlightened Mind says to another, and this fuels even more anger as the Mind feels the pain of this anger burn. Unenlightened Mind is the stage upon which anger can come and strut around. The Enlightened Person is no more angry than a theatre is Macbeth. "I have become angry" means no more than "I am staging Macbeth tonight." Tomorrow we have a new show. This is enlightenment.