Report 81
Table of contents
No headersEnlightenment
"The Buddha didn't describe his awakening as an awakening to some absolute truth or reality. What he woke up to is the unfolding of the phenomenal world itself. It doesn’t have to do with gaining some privileged access to a higher truth that somehow transcends the messiness of everyday life. Rather, it is an awakening to the flux and the flow, the pain, beauty, tragedy, and joy of life itself."
-Stephen Batchelor
To me enlightenment seems to be about seeing through the delusions caused by the three poisons, greed, hate and ignorance. But is it a one time complete experience? When you read about the Buddha's enlightenment under the Bodhi tree it sounds like that. And the sutras reinforce that idea. Perhaps it was for the Buddha - but he had spent six years in intense spiritual practice beforehand. So although it is our natural condition before we add on a protective shell of ego that only makes us suffer more, the shell is hard to pierce and might take us years of practice to crack through. This reminds me of koan about the hen tapping the outside of an egg shell at just the right moment as the chick also taps to get free of the egg.