“Enlightenment is already right here … there is no need to search for liberation outside.”
Some people strive to take personal responsibility for their own awakening but get caught up in an endless search for a teacher or the newest meditation method. Eventually they find that their latest endeavor “isn’t working” as promised, so they move on to the next class or guru, still searching for enlightenment. Gary Michael Durst, an American trainer and speaker, warns against becoming disempowered by dependency on systems, practitioners and gurus. “Many become addicted to Transactional Analysis, Est, Gestalt, Rolfing, psychoanalysis, transcendental meditation, assertiveness training, and primal scream therapy.”[i] To name a few.
Enlightenment is considered by Buddhists to be the ultimate awakening to the truth, and by Hindus a transcendent divine experience. But if we’re searching and working hard to attain enlightenment, that is a Paradigm-B effort.
Nisargadatta tells us that “To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. Discover all that you are not—body, feelings thoughts, time, space, this or that—nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. The clearer you understand on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realise that you are the limitless being.[ii]
Enlightenment is not something to search for, to wish for, or hope to attain with hours and hours of practice and renunciation. We already are “enlightened” beings we simply need to awaken to this Truth by letting go of our false-self identity.
Insight # 108 comes to us from Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche (b. 1965). He is the founder and spiritual director of Nalandabodhi, founder of Nītārtha Institute for Higher Buddhist Studies, a leading Buddhist scholar and a meditation master.
“Therefore, in order to find enlightenment, it is not necessary to renounce the world (the outer body) or one’s own body and mind, and leave them behind, as practiced in the Hinayana vehicle, or to seal all appearances with the theoretical view of emptiness, as in the Mahayana. Enlightenment is already right here, within our subtle mind and body, and there is no need to search for liberation outside. We do not have to wait for eons in order to experience a pure Buddha realm [Buddha Nature or True Self]. In one moment, we can directly cut through all our clinging and enter the vajira world.”[iii]
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Additional Reading:
- Enlightenment, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 1
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[i] Warren, Tish Harrison, “Before Christmas, Face the Darkness.” New York Times Sunday. December 1, 2019, p. x.
[ii] Maharaj, Sri Nisargadatta. I Am That. Durham, NC: The Acorn Press, 1973, pp. 59-60.
[iii] Rinpoche, Dzogchen Ponlop. “What the Buddha Taught.” Shambhala Sun. Boulder, Colorado, May 2006, p. 58.
