'There is a mystery to awakening. It is far away, yet offered to us in each moment of our lives. Awakening is as close as our own breath, yet it requires great effort to realize it. Through meditative disciplines there are a variety of profound mystical experiences it is possible for us to taste - experiences of stillness, emptiness, the dissolution of mind and body, vastness, and joy. Some of these are truly “breakthrough” experiences in that they shatter our illusions and beliefs and change our understanding of reality. They are not accidents; they follow in the wake of profound dedication, effort, investigation, and attention. Yet none of these could be said to be the direct cause of the moments of breakthrough. Through our sustained cultivation of dedication, effort and investigation we learn to cultivate an inner environment that is receptive to profound wisdom. There is no practice or technique of awakening, but there are practices in which great simplicity is cultivated. There is a Christian saying: “For God to visit there must be somebody home.”
The mystery of awakening is that it is not predictable, producible or bound in time. Our expectations, hopes, images, and strivings only seem to get in the way of awakening. Ananda, a disciple of the Buddha, accompanied and served the Buddha throughout his life. The Buddha taught and, according to the stories, thousands were awakened by his words. It seemed that only Ananda was exempt from the contagion of enlightenment. There came a time when the first council of Arahants, or enlightened beings, was convened, and those who had undergone a profound inner transformation were invited to attend. As the time for the council meeting grew closer, Ananda practiced his meditation day and night, determined to find his own breakthrough and liberation. In the early hours before dawn, on the day of the meeting, Ananda, exhausted and despairing, finally admitted to himself that it was time to give up, accepting that he was never to be awakened. In the moment of his surrender, going to lie down upon his mat, the world stilled and there came to Ananda a transforming understanding of reality.
If we pursue awakening, it retreats from us. If we demand enlightenment, it hides. If we dismiss awakening, we dismiss ourselves. All that we can do is make ourselves enlightenment-prone. We learn to treasure the possibility of awakening in all moments and circumstances. We learn to simplify and cultivate the receptivity of heart that can be touched by profound understanding. We learn to listen deeply and discover stillness amid the movement in our world. The sage Teitiku taught:
the morning glory blooms but a single hour,
yet in differs not at heart,
from the great pine that lives for a thousand years.
The Buddha was a mystic. The word Buddha translates as “awakened one”. His life was dedicated to encouraging profound awakening and freedom. Conveying the essence of his teaching he said, “There is the unborn, uncreated, and unconditioned, there would be no release for the born, created, and conditioned. Since there is the unborn, uncreated, and unconditioned, so there is release.” He described the liberated person as the happiest person in the world, free from obsessions, worries, and troubles, not dwelling on the past or brooding over the future, but an awakened presence. Inner awakening enables a fullness of enjoyment and appreciation of life in its deepest sense without self-projection. awakening is joyful, exultant, serene, and peaceful.
The Buddha was also not a mystic. Nowhere does he promise a freedom divorced from the grist of our everyday lives. Nowhere does he speak of a disembodied, transcendent experience or realm. The Buddha encourages us to remove the dust from our eyes. Awakening is here and now in the stones of the rivers, the sunbeams on the grass, in this very body, mind, and life. Nowhere is there the encouragement to annihilate life, but simply to let go of our illusions. In being both a mystic and not a mystic, the Buddha ended the long schism between the sacred and the mundane, the tension of being pulled in opposing directions. We are not invited to transcend the world but to dive deeply into it and find wisdom. We are asked to be in the world, but not of it - to cling to nothing, to reject nothing. Awakening invites our acknowledgement that we are social, sexual, spiritual embodied beings. Embracing our wholeness, we are alert to the doors of awakening offered to us throughout our life. We are Buddhas with amnesia, learning to remember ourselves.’
- Christina Feldman, The Buddhist Path to Simplicity.
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