Enlightenment?

“Enlightenment is a state of perfect knowledge or wisdom, combined with infinite compassion.”

Mattieu Ricard,

http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/blog/posts/what-does-buddhism-mean-by-enlightenment

It’s not clear that there’s any point at all in having a chapter on enlightenment in a book like this, but it is clear that, in the popular mind, lots of people associate Buddhism with something called “enlightenment.” Brad Warner is very clear that he thinks modern Americans have a badly mistaken understanding of “enlightenment.” He points out that, in the original stories, Mara, whom I describe as attacking Shakyamuni on the night of his becoming the Buddha via enlightenment, visited the Buddha repeatedly even after his enlightenment. As another teacher put it, enlightenment is not something one is, but something one does. It is an on-going process, not a stable state of being. Although we tend to speak of the Buddha as having “achieved enlightenment,” Warner notes that sustaining his enlightened state required continual effort by the Buddha for the rest of his life. Another prominent Buddhist teacher, Jack Kornfield, says “enlightenment” is not the best translation of the original term. He prefers “awakening,” which has the virtue of offering an obvious verb, “to awaken,” that is in common usage in modern English.

There is a famous zen saying: before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. I take this to mean that becoming enlightened, awakening, will not suddenly transform the concrete circumstances of your existence, magically transporting you to some cosmic Cancun where it’s always sunny and 80 degrees and you have not a care in the world. It certainly did not have that effect on the Buddha. After his enlightenment, his awakening, he was still sitting under the same tree in the same place where he had sat down the night before.

Despite his own misgivings, Warner does describe the moment in Tokyo when he was walking to work, an ordinary, boring day full of ordinary, boring thoughts when “all my confusions and misunderstandings just kind of untwisted themselves from each other and went plop on the ground.” (Hardcore Zen, p. 94) He then goes on to write “Every damned thing I’d ever read in the Buddhist sutras was confirmed in a single instant. The universe was me and I was it.” (95) Everywhere he looked, he saw himself looking back at him.