A language issue , and inventing words

august

Hello again everyone. For those posting replies in my thread about Lovingmind I thank you dearly, and want to get back to continuing that discussion soon.

One thing I noticed last night is that there is a really big problem in English. We use the word "enlightenment" as a destination. But in the original Pali bodhi is a verb. Waking/awakening.

So rather than call it "meditating" I was brainstorming some new terminology. I love inventing words, I hope it does not rub you the wrong way.

Aware-ing
Awakening
Consciousing
Ongoing Wakefulness
Upwaking [rather than waking up]
Truthwaking
Truthbreathing
Relaxedly Alertly Being
Enlightenedbeing
Wakefulbeing
gatheredbeing
collectedbeing

I want the word to descibe an ongoing activity, not an action with a finishing

If you think of a river, a river ceaselessly pours into the ocean. It's this very pouring that defines the river. If the river stops flowing to the ocean, it is no longer a river. Just like how meditation is the flowing toward Awakening.

Or another way of considering it, when a bell is struck and resonating, the sound IS the ringing. Without the ongoing vibration , there would be no sound.

This makes me really wonder about not just how language can be an impediment or obstacle, but also about the absolute nature of reality, and how we are closer to it / closer in it / more closely embodying it when we are in meditation posture and in a state of samadhi. Like, what does that say about the self-reflexive comprehension of the moment? Almost as if our inherent natural luminosity-awareness-wakefulness is in a constant state of dispersion and only by recollecting it into the sacred posture and cultivating that abiding can we progress toward embodying the resonation that is Awaking. Bodhing.

Do you get what I mean? It's not a finished point at the end of a long process we're targeting, it's an ongoing abiding , rather ceaseless in nature , that is only accessible through acclimating to the poise of gathering. Entering the poise of gathering is what unleashes the enlightened nature through you. The vibration, the resonation, the frequency-ing is there but the vessel needs to be embodied. But even more than that, it's not like we become the vessel once and then we're done, the whole point is that the re-poise is closer to Truth because the actual nature is beyond a fixed contortion or fixed expression. You want to be on the edge of the tsunami, you need to be as edgefull and shapeless as the wavebreak itself. And the only way to enter that shapeless wavebreak on the edge of the now is to re-poise into gathering posture, because gathering posture is the nexus , is the node that enables reality with a capital R to flow through you.

It's almost like a lightning rod [I love spelling this term lightening but people always point it out so I'll spell it the modern way]
A lightning rod is a firm shape, but it enables the flow of an intense, dynamical, electrical charge from the heavens to the earth. In a very similar way, the enlightened potential is present like storm clouds above us, waiting for our re-poise to enable the flow of electricity on the brink of presence.

What is the shape of the moment? Of all the awareness of the moment? We must adjust our "lens" like the lens of a camera to get an in-focus symbolic representation of what "is" and in this case the adjustment of the lens is an active process that requires gentle and pointed micromovements to keep what is meaningful visible, legible.

Enlightenment is not a traincar, or a railway track, or a destination city on the west coast that you get to after riding the train for long enough. Enlightenment is joyful re-poise into the shapefulness that opens us up to shapelessness

When Dogen said "Zazen is Enlightenment," that the meditation posture IS enlightenment itself, he was indicating this. You enter the waves of reality's ocean by gathering and re-poise [samadhi]

When Phagmodrugpa said "meditation is the way to enlightenment", he was indicating this

Sitting, breathing, being,
it's not eating for the goal of becoming full
it's gathering for the sake of gathering, because all is dispersed already

And in the battle against dispersion, we must gather, gather, gather.

It seems like the very fact that we are even in samsara implies that our inner-psyche habit of dispersion is very strong. Which means we must apply ourselves to gathering , gathering , gathering. First, to stem the tide, and eventually, to turn the tide the other way.

And what does success look like? Again, it does not look like we reach an end state that looks like every other sentient being in samsara subject to dispersion. No, it looks like gathering and re-poise, which is none other than the posture of meditation.