ENLIGHTENMENT

ENLIGHTENMENT:

RELEASING THE SELF, ONE FINDS THE NO-SELF

Ozmo Piedmont, Ph.D.

Enlightenment is not the goal of Zen, but rather the by-product resulting from the work of solving the koan of our lives.  A koan is a spiritual riddle that is solved by way of meditation, spiritual practice, and contemplation.  The koan must be solved by intuition, not by intellect or reason.  The Buddha left his royal palace not to reach Enlightenment.  He left looking for a solution to the principle koan of his life: How to escape the suffering caused by old age, sickness, and death? Wandering about for several years in his spiritual search, he discovered that one cannot escape this suffering through either asceticism nor through the distractions of sensual indulgence.  First, one must confront life, accept it as it is, and then transcend it.  The Buddha found the answer to his koan upon discovering his intimate connection to the Eternal.  Sitting under a tree, he became very still, moving neither his mind nor his body. In this way, he discovered the true origin and end of suffering.  It became apparent that while he clung to the idea of a self, with its desires, insecurities, fears, and delusions, he suffered.  However, his liberation from suffering could be found in the no-self, that which is not based in desire.  In the same way, we are all entering into the spiritual path looking for a solution to the difficulties of life, which are all variations of this basic koan of the Buddha, in which we are all suffering while looking for unsatisfactory external solutions based on a permanent self and its desires.  When finally we have had enough of ourselves, when we have tried everything and nothing solves the problem, when we just give up the old outworn attempts at solution, that is when we are ready to release the self, with all its fears, its doubts, and it criticisms.  We leave all of it behind in order to find our true identity.  That is when we begin to now solve our koan.    So we sit down in meditation, calming our minds, in order to bring down the interior barriers, and we confront what we used to believe was who we are, a small self, and we begin to find that which we are, the no-self.  Thus we begin the spiritual work of purification or our karma in so to discover the fullness, the unity, of the no-self.  In the scripture The Most Excellent Mirror – Samadhi one reads: “You are not Him, He is all of you.”  This means that our true identity is found in the no-self, beyond the ego.  The self is lost in delusion while it believes itself to be separate, permanent, and the center of the universe.  But low and behold, it finds out that its just not true.  It was this belief all along that created so much suffering.  It is our responsibility, the real goal of all religions, to abandon the ego of our delusions based on separation, to reconnect ourselves with the no-self, the Eternal.  Upon solving the koan of life, the by-product is Enlightenment.  In other words, Enlightenment is our capacity to see the Eternal everywhere, including ourselves.  For this reason, one reads in The Most Excellent Mirror – Samadhi “In this superior activity of no-mind, See, the wooden figure sings – and the stone maiden dances.”  The no-mind is synonymous with the no-self, that which transcends the limits of the ego, which is our Buddha Nature, the Eternal, giving us a wider perspective, and allowing us to see that everything is the Eternal expressing itself in everything at every moment.  Everything is celebrating this connection because everything is literally the Eternal.  When we become quiet in the seated meditation of Zen, the mind ceases to be so agitated, allowing us to see beyond the distractions of thoughts and sensations, experiencing directly that which has no words, that which is not an object of thought, that which has no beginning or end.  It is that which we experience as a Presence, an interior peace, an unending joy, in spite of the seeming appearance, duration, and passing of all things.  Something in us reaffirms that all this change is exactly as it should be, and that nothing really dies, because all is an aspect of the Infinite.  All is Buddha, including the challenges, the thoughts, and the mistakes we make, because all is the universal Buddha teaching us of our connection and our basic unity with Him.  Our practice reveals this to us in every moment, since the Infinite is manifesting itself in our very lives, revealing itself constantly in the particularities of our actions.  Our ego, our little self, begins to release the reigns of control, allowing us to flow with in the eternal river of the no-self, which is perceived as change, being the second law of the universe, called “anicca”: All things flow because nothing is permanent.  Accepting this reality of how things really are, we are able to transcend them.  In this way the Buddha solved his koan, discovering the end of suffering that comes from our experience of old age, disease, and death.  In the Eternal, there is no birth nor death, no beginning nor end.  Everything just IS, here and now.  Everything expresses the reality of that which is always present.  This realization, when experienced directly, inspires us to dance and sing with the rocks, the plants, the animals, and all the being everywhere, because “all is One, and at the same time all is different.”  There is no need to suffer, escape, fear, or hate because we trust in the fact that all is actually the Eternal expressing itself in the temporal, experienced as peace and joy…Enlightenment.

Bibliography:

Jiyu-Kennett, R. M.  Roar of the Tigress, Vol. 1.  Shasta Abbey Press: Mount Shasta, California, 2000.