Hardcore Zen_ Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality - Brad Warner [41]
A lot of Soto school Zen teachers refuse to even talk about “enlightenment.” It’s pointless, they’ll tell you. All it does is muddle the issue. The Soto view is that these so-called enlightenment experiences just aren’t really all that and a bag o’ chips. And yet Soto teachers do acknowledge there is something, a kind of experience that eventually occurs and that has been mistakenly and misleadingly called “enlightenment.” Nishijima likes to call it “solving the philosophical problems.” Sometimes, if you catch him in a good mood, he’ll call it “second enlightenment.” The first enlightenment is, of course, zazen.
The experience that Nishijima calls solving the philosophical problems is undeniably real—but it should not be overemphasized or overvalued. A lot of people have the idea that enlightenment will be a kind of retirement from life. They figure that once they get it, everything will just flow easily and they’ll never have to make any more effort. They look at the Zen life like a kind of marathon race. You have to run real hard for a real long time but once you cross the finish line, you’re done. You win. You can sit back and sip lemonade for the rest of your life. It really isn’t like that at all. If anything, the opposite is true. Once you’ve solved those philosophical problems it’s your duty to put those solutions into effect. It doesn’t get easier, it gets harder.
The good news is that one of the biggest philosophical problems you clear up is the confused belief that being lazy is somehow better than working hard. Being saddled with the whole universe to take care of is better than winning the lottery or having Miss November or Mister Universe knock on your bedroom door one morning and flash you their goods when you open it. Solving those philosophical problems does mean you’ve won—but nothing so piddling as the marathon race of life. You’ve won all creation. It’s yours to do with as you please—and you discover what pleases you most is doing the right thing for all creation in moment after moment.
As I’ve said, talking about enlightenment is risky—and leaving it to people’s imaginations is equally risky. So nonetheless, leaving the e-word aside, I’ll tell you about my own experience of solving the philosophical problems. I GUESS IT WAS EARLY FALL, maybe five years after my encounter with Farting Man. I was walking to work alongside the Sengawa River, just like I did every day, when in an instant everything changed. In old Buddhist stories there’s always some catalyst, like that guy who heard the pebble strike the piece of bamboo, or else someone reading a certain verse, or getting whacked by some teacher’s stick. But I really can’t recall anything unusual. I was just walking to work.
About a week earlier I’d finished yet another summer zazen retreat, so my brain was maybe a bit quieter than usual. Although I can’t recall what I was thinking about at the time, I’m sure I was thinking, and probably about what I needed to do at the office that day or some similarly banal thing. I wasn’t worrying or mulling over anything very deeply—just the usual stream of images bouncing around up in my head.
What I do recall very clearly is the geographical spot where it started to happen. There’s a narrow road along the Sengawa River and in order to get to where I work I need to cross the river on one of the many small bridges built over it. The shortcut I like to take has me crossing one particular little bridge every morning. I was walking along the road and just about to cross that bridge when all my problems, all my complaints, all my confusions and misunderstandings just kind of untwisted themselves from each other and went plop on the ground. I’m not talking some of my problems, I’m talking about all of them, every last one. Plop!
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