Thursday 18 March 2010

Sobering Words

Japanese Zen master Sesso warned,
“There is little to choose between a man lying in the ditch heavily drunk on rice liquor, and a man heavily drunk on his own ‘enlightenment’!”

"If there were such a thing as personal enlightenment,
well,
then all those so called masters would be
enlightened individuals.
 ;-)
Fortunately enlightenment,
or
liberation,
is
impersonal,
which is the end of the conditioned personality
and
it's
divisive individuality."

1Sober-Yogi2Few!

4 comments:

  1. Hi Shinzen,

    The third Chinese Ch’an Patriarch, Seng-t’san (d.606) wrote in his little poetic treatise, Hsin Hsin Ming: “One in all, all in one—if only this is realized, no more worry about your not being ‘perfect!’” ;-)

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  2. It's a paradox indeed. To me, enlightenment is individual (since it's experienced individually), but enlightenment is also non-individual (since it's the end of divisive individuality). Nice...

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  3. Hi Rizal,

    Thank you for contributing once again.

    Enlightenment is the end of 'me' as an individual!

    Enlightenment is not simply the end of 'divisive individuality', it IS the end of ALL individuality!!

    Experience? Only the individual can experience. But enlightenment is the end of individuality, that is why it is described as Unity, Oneness, Wholeness, Beingness ... where there is no individual, and no duality!!

    The realization of enlightenment is the death of individuality on all levels, yes, including physical form, which is simultaneously realized as only being apparent! all form is nothingness unfolding as everything.

    Are you, the reader, an enlightened individual? Well, you can NOT be, that would be a complete contradiction. But you can realize what you were before you took on an individual identity, that is the death of individual enlightenment, and that is liberation. :-)

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