Along the Way

     When I first began meditation I was eager to achieve enlightenment. I looked forward to the promise of transcendence, a release from the pain and difficulty associated with human existence. I was young and certain that I could reach this enlightened state - this mystical place where I would no longer ‘grasp at things’ and be able to ‘see’ the truth that liberates men and women from worldly concerns and the ever spinning wheel of “samsara” – and do so in record time. I studied. I read. I meditated. I purchased many books and tried “zazen,” both on my own and with others, and what I quickly found was that nothing happens quickly, especially when you are looking in the wrong place.
     I thought enlightenment was a place; a peaceful world outside myself, somewhere beyond this moment. And I figured that if I learned the necessary techniques I would be transported to this wonderland of tranquility. As happens to all good plans of mice and me, there were roadblocks, setbacks, and frustrations that interfered with my timetable for success and nearly caused me to conclude that I had been duped. I began to think that there really was in fact, no such thing as enlightenment. That it was all a sham, a ploy to sell books and….well, you know what I’m talking about ….if I don’t get it there must be something wrong with it.
     I continued to study and meditate however, and began to realize that I had not been studying correctly. I had been reading from a place of knowing something rather than from Suzuki’s Beginners Mind. I realized enlightenment and nirvana, like the truth I had been searching for, are available in each and every moment. Enlightenment is not a place to go, or a thing to get. It is being present to this moment, open to all that it contains without it being perceived as good or bad. No judgment; simply being present to it just “as it is”. Enlightenment, we might say, is with everyone at all times. 
     What does it mean to be enlightened? What was the nature of Shakyamuni’s enlightenment? How does human consciousness block us from experiencing enlightenment…from being enlightened? These were the new questions that rose to center stage.
      I have always been suspicious of one who professes to know what the long deceased author meant five centuries ago when he set to paper an idea that got him hung in the town square. I don’t want to repeat this act of self-aggrandizement. I write with the hope that by the time someone reads this sentence, I will have a clearer and perhaps quite different perspective than the one presented here. The lines representing the limits of my knowledge are the same as those representing the limits of my experience, and those limits are expanded by the force of time and the effort I expend to remain open amid the impermanence of life.