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The real work begins with your first glimpse of enlightenment
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
I was reading today, and came across a passage which said that enlightenment when it first appears needs to be nurtured, that at the outset it is fragile and easily crushed by the weight of your past. That in fact your past is your enemy in this process. That you need to let it develop and grow.
I thought it was quite a beautiful passage, it put me in mind of Eckhart Tolle’s experience, where he spent two whole years sitting on park benches after his enlightenment before he was ready to start speaking to people.
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Comments
From what I gather one nurtures enlightenment through one's Dharma practice.. In other words Dharma practice nurtures enlightenment and enlightenment nurtures Dharma practice...
"Don't practice to become Enlightened Let your practice be the natural expression of Enlightenment"
~Dogen~
@Kerome
Quote...
"The real work begins with your first glimpse of enlightenment", is a good example of a teaching that depends on skillful means to truly be helpful.
This statement is a valid teaching for anyone currently amidst such a glimpse because of the common temptation of most folks to try to dine out on such an experience. Without such a timely teaching, the indulging of such a temptation can prematurely move such a glimpse from a current movement of fluidity into the static state of a memory now past. The fragility of that glimpse (for the unfolding state of selflessness that it is), means that it only remains so long as the ego/identity doesn't grasp after it.
The second positive attribute of this teaching is that such glimpses can also be one of the more dangerously delusional times in a practice where students experiencing it can easily anoint themselves with a misplaced spiritual confidence that often tramples over precepts, vows and the refuges.
The less helpful side of
the statement "The real work begins with your first glimpse of enlightenment" is that for those who think they have not yet experienced such a glimpse, it can just be another bit of evidence corroborating their own inadequacy, can encourage states of spiritual envy or avarice when in fact....the real work can only begin in this current moment.
So the real worth of this teaching is actually about the timing of it's delivery.
Great advisement from @how
Enlightenment is always amongst us. It has components of extreme ordinariness and also skilful potential.
Imbalance, human aggrandisement, trump style humility and our core karma will drag us into zzz ... as usual ...
What we can do to discipline the ever fleeting body/mind/emotional aggregates:
One example of this kind which occurs to me is that for a while now I have been having certain body energy sensations around meditation, but for my mind it hasn’t felt real, and in discussions online and in person I have held to a very sceptical position that it’s all in the mind, whereas I can feel that my mind is largely inactive when I feel these things.
Its the kind of experience that should modify ones core beliefs, but on the level of mind I haven’t found a worldview that would fit. There is still work to be done.
On one occasion a monk asked the zen master Issan about the necessity for practice after enlightenment. Issan replied, it is needed because of the inertia of habit. He then went on to say, what you hear must first be accepted by your reason, and when your rational understanding is deepened and made more subtle by the ineffable way, your mind will become bright, never to relapse.
I like the term 'Buddha nurture/nature' that @Shoshin1 mentions.
Something like my sweet pea that may have started sprouting. Something fragile from seeds but through the right conditions flourishes through the fragility,
climbs and grows, flowers fragrance ...
In this sense we are Bodhi gardeners.
I think we might need to agree on a definition of Enlightenment...🙂
Ok...I'll go first....no wait....mine's an oxymoron.
Sorry...I didn’t intend derailing the discussion🙁 l just meant that “Enlightenment” does a lot of heavy lifting in Buddhist discussions. It covers a whole spectrum from ‘Realising Original Mind’ in Dzogchen, and Satori in Zen, right up to Sammasambuddhasa..’complete unexcelled awakening’ Teacher Of Gods And Men......
Ah seems like a plan. Sit to ready oneself to not speak ...
I loves a good plan