(For Podcast, click here. For ITunes version, click here.)
Today we continue our book series on Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor. This book was written in 1997, and it continues
to be somewhat controversial among Buddhist teachers and practitioners, as it
attacks many of the Buddhist institutions that are the backbone of much of
Buddhism today. So, we’re going to go
back to the Buddha’s original teachings, and what has been proven to work. Today we are explorers, willing to take a
look at what was taught and decide for ourselves what has value.
This morning, specifically, I
want to talk about this idea of enlightenment. Don’t we all want be enlightened? Isn’t that what Buddhism is all about? But what is enlightenment? When the Buddha was asked what or who
he was, he replied that he was NOT a god, or a prophet or a messiah, or
anything extraordinary, but simply he said he was awake. Even the name The Buddha means awakened
one. The words enlightenment and
awakened are often used interchangeably, but it can still sometimes be
confusing. Is there a difference between
enlightenment and being awake? I ask you
to consider in this moment, what exactly is enlightenment is? What does being
awake mean? What might it feel like to
be fully awake or enlightened moment-by-moment?
What words would you use to describe that state?
The story is told that Buddha
sat under the tree and boom! He was enlightened/ awakened, and spent the rest
of his life in this state. Stephen
Batchelor challenges these accounts of the Buddha’s awakening. First, he had been exploring different
spiritual practices for several years, so he had been preparing for a new
discovery. Then, he was able to put it
all together based on this experience of
the power of his mind to control his experience moment-by-moment. This seems to be a key to his discovery—we
may not have the ability to control what happens to us in life, but we always have control over how we respond to it. If someone dear to us passes away, we get to
choose how we respond to this sadness, to the process of grieving. The Buddha
taught a set of practices that enables us
to create a gap between stimulus and response, and that gap gives us the
power to choose how we respond to any experience—whether it’s a situation, a
thought or an emotion. Creating a gap
between stimulus and response might not sound as sexy as “enlightenment” but I
would offer that it just as powerful, and maybe even the same thing. My Buddhist teacher jokingly says, “You must
be present to win!” You must be fully
aware in each moment to understand how best to respond, how best to relieve
suffering and maintain a sense of well-being.
Buddha discovered something
new about how to relieve suffering—this practice of being awake, being aware
moment-by-moment, which enables us to stop before we respond in habitual,
unskillful ways. I have a great deal of
difficulty believing that once you “get it”, that you never “forget it”. Most likely, he too went through this process
of awakening, getting it, then falling back asleep a bit, then remembering again. He and his followers spent nine months
wandering and teaching, then spent the three months of the rainy season on
retreat. In contemporary life, most of
us can’t afford the time or money to simply go on retreat for three months each
year, but we can look for ways to incorporate these practices of
awakening into our everyday lives, and these little things that we do can transform
our experience of living.
What happened after the Buddha
passed away is that the elders kept moving the enlightenment “carrot” to
further away. When he was alive, it was
written that many people heard him speak and “got it” right then, became
awakened immediately. They understood
the cause of their suffering. Then,
after he passed away, this hierarchy of elders and the systems for monks and
nuns were constructed, and this enlightenment thing, the possibility of awakening,
became more illusive. It began to be
said that it required more and more practice--you might have to practice for
many lifetimes to get to the point of enlightenment. I think even using the
term enlightenment instead of awakening makes its seem more mysterious, more
complicated, more not-quite-within-our-reach.
When we look back at the
Buddha’s original teachings, he said that being awake can happen to anyone; it
wasn’t something set aside for only the few.
You can become awake right now in this moment. It might not last forever, but you might have
an experience of awakening right now that enables you to realize the
possibility of living life in a completely different state.
Lastly, let’s talk about nirvana
(no, not the 90’s Seattle
Stephen Batchelor encourages
us that we can make our enlightenment bite-size—the moment you don’t habitually
bark back at your partner when they push your buttons, the moment you find a state
of peace amidst a traffic jam, the moment you silently and sincerely wish for your
boss, “may you be happy”, when you previously would have felt frustration and
irritation. These are moments of nirvana
and awakening, and these practices-of mindfulness, meditation and visualization
of positive qualities--enable more and more of those moments to occur. Isn’t that amazing?
“Yes, there is Nirvana;
it is in leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to bed,
and in writing the last line of your poem.”
-Kahlil Gibran (a Lebanese-American Poet)
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