Awakening
I'm on various discussion lists on the
Internet. There are times when I seriously wonder what for, 'cause the
participants are always the same, and some do tend towards the
'one-track-mindedness'. But sometimes, I get echoes from people who
never intervene, the so-called 'lurkers', but who seem to take benefit
from the interventions, mine among others. Thus, of late, on a Spanish
list, someone did an untimely intervention on Awakening, bringing it
back once more to the legendary and the marvelous. So I'd like here to
throw a bucket of cold water on that eagerness.
In that intervention indeed, that person
started with saying that a monk, once he had got the Illumination,
became a roshi. I couldn't therefore restrain myself from quoting
Philip Kapleau's, "a roshi is anyone who can convince others to call
him that." Nothing to do with awakening. which doesn't mean that those
who are given the title are all unworthy of it . After all, it only
means 'Old Teacher'. That only means that the cloak doesn't make the
monk and that a title does not make the merits.
There was also some delirium about Awakening
and the virtues which it gives. To which I replied with that phrase of
some Zen teacher (I just can't seem to remember whom), where it's said,
"Before one sets forth on the Way, mountains are only mountains and
rivers are only rivers. After one has set forth on the Way, mountains
are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers. Once one has
realised the Way, mountains are once more mountains, and rivers rivers."
I'd like to comment this passage. It is very
easy, much too easy, to rave on some "Illumination" which would
transform its lucky beneficiary into some superman with superpowers and
a transcendental and sublime resplendence. I myself could hear people
declare that a realised master benefited, just like the Pope, of the
doctrinal infallibility. As for myself, just to read the Pali Canon
Sutras I know it couldn't be, if even the historical Buddha didn't have
that. Even though some might judge this as being sacrilegious.For
instance, when the Buddha's aunt and wife insisted that he admit women
in the sangha, his initial refusal and the fact that Sariputra
succeeded into convincing him to change his mind. You don't change your
mind if you're infallible. Just the same, the harshness of his tone
when a monk was mistaken about his teachings and had sustained his
misunderstandings in public, and his colleagues had convinced him to
have the Buddha judge of his ideas, and the Buddha corrected him
doesn't fit with our conceptions of the meekness and gentleness of the
Buddha who tells his how stupid he is and leaves him obviously
annihilated by shame.
But to get back to our comment. I'd say that,
indeed, someone who knows not of the Way, be it through ignorance or
rejection will see only mountains in mountains and rivers in rivers.
That's pretty down to earth and factual, without any imagination. For
such people, things are just the way they are, and it doesn't get any
further. Materialists see only geological accidents made of various
types of minerals, while idealists see them only as concepts.
(Obviously, this is an exaggeration. Is anybody that radical? But it's
the general idea.
A person who has set forth on the Way might
tend to play him/herself movies on Awakening, to expect something else
that everyday's dull reality, to screw one's head with magical powers
and the sublime and obviously paranormal state which ensue. Those might
tend to fantasise and get lost in conjectures about what might happen
when the Glorious Day finally comes. They might as much as stray
totally with the ambition to be 'recognised' by others and the whole of
Humanity, starting with that blessed day. Or yet, might have a
relatively correct idea about it, but entirely intellectual, and not at
all founded upon the psycho-physical experience.
But those who realise the Way see once more
mountains as mountains and rivers as rivers, for what they are, but in
a way different to whatever used to be previously. They undestand what
they are quite intimately, in the same way that when we understand what
it needs to flip a pancake or be successful with omelets, or yet rub
your left hand in circles on your belly while tapping the head with the
other, or any other such thing where, when you do understand, the only
thing that comes to mind is, "Goodness! But of course, that's it!"
So, only one thing left to do: because, if
you want to succeed in one of those feats which I just mentioned,
you've got to train and train without rest until you succeed. So, just
the same, in the Way, you've got to train and train without rest until
ytou succeed. To sit, day after dayn without any preocupation about the
apparent failure(s), some daily, at times, without ever ever neglecting
ethics, since meditation without ethics and wisdom is a waste of time,
since wisdom without ethics, is equal to our good old catholic saying
"Science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul"; and that the
same wisdom without meditation is but a litterary , intellectual
wisdom, of dubious efficiency, since it is neither founded upon
experience nor intuition; and finally, that ethics without meditation
and without wisdom is but a rigid conventional morals, which leads to
mental rigidity.
Mxl
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