Phone: 510-845-8565

Email: hdt@emptygatezen.com

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Our awakening appears in this very moment. Buddha’s enlightenment, Buddha’s awakening was about waking up to the moment that we are actually in. We say very often, before this moment is a memory; after this moment is a dream. Right now, we are alive. Right now, Buddha is born. Not 2,500 years ago. Right now is the awakening of Buddha. Zen can seem esoteric, but it’s not about some strange thing. It’s about finding our true self and manifesting it right now in the moment we live in.

So already, we’re starting to wonder what is this thing we call enlightenment? There is this concept. There is this idea. It’s been talked about for 2,500 years.  In America, we’ve been practicing Buddhism for 50 or 60 years. Everybody wants enlightenment. I want enlightenment, so I’ll do these difficult practices because I’ll get something.  But there’s a big problem with that.  Who gets it? And what is it you want?  And if I want something, maybe that gets in the way of getting it. Because the Buddha’s enlightenment was about the recognition of the emptiness of this sense of self.

Our conventional view is that I am here, I have this life, I can get something. But the Buddha in his enlightenment realized that himself and the whole universe were not separate. There is no separate self. Each thing in the universe is connected and a part of the whole. So to say “I separate from You” creates this false dichotomy. And out of this false dichotomy, all suffering grows.  So if Buddha got enlightenment, he already lost it. Because there’s no Buddha to begin with. There’s no Buddha separate from anything else.

Each one of us brings all of our conditioning right into this moment, but we don’t see it.  We see a reflection of it in the world around us, so we judge, and we try to fit the world into our image.  What doesn’t fit, we don’t like, and what does fit, we like.

So in that sense, we make our own suffering.  Or in that sense of urgency, you might say we make our own hell.  We think of hell as something that comes to us after we die, but really we’re making our own hell right here, right now. We are all guilty of it, nobody escapes.  Through practice, we can find our way through it.  Through practice, through wisdom, through our own experience, we can begin to break out of the hell that we make when our conditions make the hell of our lives.

What are we going to do along the way?  That’s the realm of practice.  Do we keep sticking our feet into the realm of suffering?  Or do we connect with our practice center, really wonder about who we are and how to live in this world and find a way.  ”Enlightenment” is a beautiful word. Buddhism loves to throw it around, and nobody knows what it means.  We all have some idea of what it would be if we were enlightened, but that’s just our idea.  Anything we think about it makes it too small, too limited, and too much just a creation of our human mind. Return to the practice, come back to this moment.  What am I doing right now?  And how is it possible to help the situation?

Phone: 510-845-8565
Email: hdt@emptygatezen.com