Its extremely common to think an enlightened being is beautiful, healthy, and mentally and physically untroubled.
But actually no none of this is true. An enlightened being faces the exact same world as an unenlightened being. They have karmas that create existences the same as anyone. Those karmas may manifest as physical and mental ailments as much as anyone. Buddha had headaches and gut pains his whole life. He died from a mesenteric infarction; an incredibly painful rupturing of the gut and resulting blood poisoning. His mother died in child birth so he never knew her, and he went through a lot of struggles both to finally arrive at enlightenment and afterwards also. There was nothing exceptional or unpainful about his life.
The enlightenment comes from not involving a self with these karmas. Good and bad things happen all the time in this world. They always have, they always will. But they are acute when they appear to happen to "us". As explored a lot over the last year this makes no sense. Things either happen or they don't; what is this "happening to me" thing that makes one event more important to "me" than another?
As explored the "self" does not inhabit us anywhere. Things are simply not like the way we think about them.
If we watch closely we can see that "self" trying to pounce on things all the time. Trying to make this mine, or not mine. I notice it with thoughts about the world. Something happens or we see someone do something or even just see someone and before we know it our "self" is trying to stamp its view of the world on the situation. It shouldn't be like this, I know how the world is. Our "self" tries to slip under the situation to say that "it knows reality better than reality" and this event or person is now a fraud. I had that today. A kid started crying on a rush hour train and I was tired and wanted quiet and I caught myself grasping that "quiet" and using it like a stick to beat up the situation that was now "wrong." Why bring kids on rush hour trains anyway etc etc. Actually it was quiet and now it wasn't. So what! It is just a sound and if you don't grasp it with a self, its a sound that isn't even happening to "you" it is just happening. Big deal, so what! And once freed from fighting an imposing reality with a fake version that you own, you can see it as it is. Obviously a kid crying is not an annoying noise really its a sign of distress, and if we access that distress as it is then we see the compassion in there and the wish for it to end. Not so "I" can have quiet, but so the person is no longer in distress. This is how dangerous the grasping to a self is, it can blind us to the suffering in the world and that can only actually make for more unwelcome karmas. If we thought we couldn't handle the noise of the kid when we were tired this time, think how much worse the distraction next time created by whatever karma we just caused by not letting go this time!
So an enlightened being is faced with the exact same troubles as an unenlightened being. The difference is just that these troubles are not in-bound on a "self" they are just where they are and they come and go in their own time. There is no "self" to get overwhelmed or burdened or under-pressure. Things are being thrown at "us" and pass straight through. In fact if there is no "us" in the room then there is no sense of them being thrown at anyone. They just pass through. That apparent "us" is simply a grasping, or an attachment. Its a simple as that.
Now this does avoid a whole load of effects that together make up what is called "suffering." Once we grasp and make things "ours" then there is a target for the world to attack. We start to gain and lose. We start to notice when things are going well or badly. The world now has an accountant adding everything up. There is no rest as we start to struggle to keep the balance. I need to work to make my life better. I am a bad or failed person and need to get better and improve. I have made a mistake that I want to cover up to protect the image of a perfect self. Or I don't want to accept the reality that I have made a mistake so I work frantically to reverse that. I end up living a lie some "self" image, and my life gets filled with unnecessary debt to this fake image and fake self. A crazy whirling world starts to grow out of this simple grasping. And before long that world starts to defend itself and become its own justification. I have worked so hard to achieve this that I can't quit now. I am so lucky to have this that I can't let it go. Even more crazy I have suffered so much for this that I don't want to let it go and realise the suffering was pointless! We don't even want to stop grasping and suffering!
SO the difference between an enlightened being and an unenlightened being cannot be measured by any phenomenon. It is simply that an unenlightened being doesn't habitually measure! They can, but they know when to stop measuring. It's not actually real. Peace and the Unmeasured: that is real. They can always let go when what they are doing leads to suffering.
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