Self-Awakened Beings and Roses by Any Other Name
There is a doctrine in orthodox Buddhism that states that self-awakened beings (pratyeka buddha) cannot instruct other beings on the causes and conditions of awakening. Taking this out of the realm of the abstract and quasi-mythic, it seems to me that the easier one comes to awakening the more difficulty they have relating to the experiences and assumptions of others who don’t arrive at the proverbial other shore quite so easily.
Pratyeka buddhas are said to lack the omniscience of samyaksam buddhas (complete buddhas) and the experience of arhats (beings awakened through the instruction of samyaksam buddhas). In this, their awakening is quite literally idiopathic. Beings who arrive at liberation with relative ease according to their own experiential conditions must strive to cultivate insight into the human condition beyond their own experience which is atypical. This is undoubtedly elective, post-awakening training, but teaching too is elective for pratyeka buddhas, who through the mysterious arising of bodhicitta find themselves unable to fully enter nirvana alone.
I am taken up with the assertion that there are now and have been throughout the history of humanity a number of beings awakened with relative ease through attending to the relatively common experiences intrinsic to a human course of life. Some have proven themselves successful wayshowers, and many others barely leave a perceptible trace of their existence. Students encountering such persons would do well to remember that a teacher is only ever as good as the questions their students bring to them, and that their own lives elicit.
A rose wild or cultivated still carries the scent of a rose. The scent of awakening can be picked up in either case, just mind the thorns which may be more or less curated!
~Sunyananda
