True Detachment

It’s a tricky one, and the reason why many seekers freak out when they hear sages (including the Buddha and certain contemporaries) say that no one ever gets enlightened. It’s interpreted that there is no enlightenment, which is clearly contrary to what the Buddha taught — i.e that there is enlightenment, yet no self that becomes enlightened. And that’s logically consistent with the Buddha’s teaching of anattā, or non-self.

I paraphrase, but in the Pali canon he says something like, “There is suffering, yet no one who suffers; there is The Path, yet no one who walks it; there is nibbāna (enlightenment), yet no one who realises it.” In short, he was in effect saying that the dichotomous construct that the historically, biologically evolved mind creates of subject and object, is erroneous. What the unenlightened consciousness sees/knows is not what it thinks it sees and ‘knows’ — i.e. separate ‘things’, coming in and out of existence and residing ‘here’ and ‘there’ — but is rather a unified awareness beyond spatial and temporal limit.

Sorry for the blather; I started so I thought I might as well finish. Hahahaha! H ❤

LikeLiked by 4 people