After Enlightenment, Chop Wood Carry Water

Prajna prods me all day: "Just tell them you crossed off Enlightenment on the life goals list, but making love in the rain is still up for grabs."

She's a witty one, that Perfect Wisdom. I'd prefer to simply quote Japan's first female Zen master, Chiyono: "The bottom fell out of the bucket." But she's having nothing of it, so she wrote the lead, okay, just so you know.

I'm not sure if nothing happened when I listened to Adyashanti at satsang Wednesday speak of saving us time: "No waiting for an event to happen." Or if Jack the Beat Bodhisattva's "diamond sound of rich shh" revealed its utter vastness when the hum found no edges to bounce back from as I lay down that evening. Or if the dream that woke me up in the dead of night literally woke me up. But I knew that I knew the next day as I absorbed the Prajnaparamita Sutra at Peet's Coffee.

The sacred spot was a strip mall in Silicon Valley rather than Shangri-La waterfall with a pool of a thousand rose-colored lotus blossoms. It was more akin to stepping onto a banana peel, tottering for quite a while, then sliding off onto your butt than a thunderbolt from on high. The more you hope that your awakening will be so spectacular that it'll set off rainbows on a mist-enshrouded day atop Machu Picchu which will then clinch your bestselling memoir, I'll almost guarantee that the Vastness will eclipse your finite mind while sipping the house blend in a noisy cafe in suburbia.

I'd like to normalize enlightenment, so ho-hum stories like that are perfect. Simple, yes, yet profound:

Can you count, compare, measure, conceive, imagine, perceive or feel the expanse of open space? Can you approach, reach or attain open space? Can open space even be described as infinite? - from the Prajnaparamita Sutra in 8,000 Lines quoted in Mother of the Buddhas

Actually, the entire body of the world literature that was accumulated in thousands of years of written history looks like no more than twenty six letters of the alphabet when compared to the richness of the experience of Enlightenment. Learning and mastering the entire human thought, as it is recorded in the world, would amount to no more than grasping the alphabet. From there on, you'd have to learn to form the words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books. Immeasurably much more work lies ahead [to embody It and play out the formless in human form]. - How to Recognize Enlightenment

I speak in the interest of transparency. Apt word, eh? Transparency.

And I speak because Something asks and the only answer is okay, okay, and the deepest okay already. (Another mantra: Thy will be done, Thy will be done.)

"Congratulations!" they gather round to hear the story as if I have come from a far-off expedition to exotic lands. "So did you find a navigable passage where so many have feared to tread and those that did came back empty-handed?"

I am speechless: Congratutions? To whom are they speaking?

"Aha, so it is possible!! You have obtained the secret elixir? Where fishness springs forth like fountains of gold?

I am bewildered. What can possibly be said?

The fish are looking at me so intently.

Buddha said, "Through the Consummation of Incomparable Enlightenment I acquired not even the least thing. This is altogether everywhere, without differentiation or degree." - Diamond Sutra 22-23 (Diamond Sutra is short form of the Prajnaparamita Sutra)

p.s. Serious about the chop wood, carry water thing. If you want virtual satsang, go to the Dwelve blog. I'll speak from truth, but not necessarily pointing to It in this blog.

Contrary to popular thought, no, this does not mean I am God. God is all there is and isn't. Again and again and again, this is no great personal achievement. This is not the first nor last blogger to know awakeness. Perhaps I can convince other ordinary beings to come forward and blow their cover (you're as apt to find them in your neighborhood, driving a taxi cab or at the office as in ministry or holding satsang, hmmm, maybe more so).

p.p.s. Prajna prods me because I'm a spoilt brat baby bodhisattva, in that "goo goo gaw gaw" phase. I am reluctant in posting this for sure: "There, that wasn't so bad... You're not going to make me eat more of that? Please, now, don't spit out the pea-mush." Btw, Bodhisattvas know "that universal enlightenment is already and always the plain fact. What the bodhisattva vows, with every fiber of his or her integrity, is that all precious and beloved living beings should awaken fully to this naked fact... The bodhisattva never indulges in imaging that full enlightenment can only occur in the distant future, for every single thought flash reveals the absence of limits, separation and distance." Um, so you wonder, if we are all already enlightened what's the f---ing big deal? Nibbana, or enlightenment, is the cessation of suffering. Are you content 24/7 no matter what? Knowing makes all the difference in the human form.

credits Hugh's cartoon (his) today "Till All Striving Ceases" is way too apropos. Slightly photoshopped.

Comments

[keith ray]

".... but making love in the rain is still up for grabs."

especially with the weather the Bay Area has been having lately.

:-)

(BTW, did you see this blog: http://www.adriansavage.com/blog/_archives/2006/4/8/1870376.html ?)

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Thanks Keith. Ha, very funny. Yep, this spring is a ripe opportunity to cross off those remaining goals. But 'goals' seem to have slipped away, it just seems more like asking what do I care about now and then doing that. But I notice the plate is now fuller as I see much I care about, and my energy is freed up.

I read Adrian's piece and I enjoy his blog. The biggest 'barrier' to awakening is thinking anything, including ego, needs to 'go' or needs to be abolished and then everything would be perfect. Trying to control your so-called ego into submission is just a more subversive ego-manager trick. The vastness of Tao (since he quotes it) is totally completely all-encompassing. What it means that the ego doesn't exist is it has no substance to it - try pointing to it. Where is it? Can you really find your ego?