35 - Awakening & Enlightenment

To carry the self forward and realize the ten thousand dharmas is delusion; that the ten thousand dharmas advance and realize the self, is enlightenment.

Zen Master Eihei Dogen's Genjo koan

Attaining this way in one's daily life is the realization of ultimate reality. Attaining this place in daily life is the realization of the ultimate reality.

What does one mean by awakening?  What does one mean by illumination?  Are they the same?  How does one attain these?  The paradox is that when one tries to define these, one cannot but confuse their meaning, like explaining non-Euclidian geometry to a person locked into the thinking of Euclidian geometry, or again, one distorts an electron by trying to observe it. Therefore, Zen masters consider a koan, a riddle one needs to decipher or unhoax.

Do not think that realization must become the object of one's knowledge and vision and be practiced conceptually. When Buddhas are truly Buddhas, one need not be aware of being Buddha. Realization is, therefore, something one needs to experience before one can know what it is, while one would normally expect that one would need to have an idea as to what we are talking about in order to try to practice it.

Awakening is a term used by Vedanta and Sufism and stands for a sudden switch over from one's commonplace perspective of things as they appear to our senses and the interpretation that we make from our personal vantage point to an impersonal overview. This shifts the notion of ourselves from an individual to identifying oneself with the totality, not just of the universe, but the thinking and feeling of which the universe is a projection or manifestation.

Enlightenment, the term consecrated by Buddhists, signifies precisely the same, except that the clarity that ensues is so reminiscent of one's physical experience of luminosity that one feels like a being of light and everything seems translucid and radiant. Hence the term, "the clear light of bliss" coined by the Tibetans. Note the inclusion of the emotional overtone that is unleashed by that sudden quantum leap of perspective: bliss beyond joy.

The Sufis draw one's attention so that one has not only shifted one's sense of identity to an impersonal cosmic dimension of one's being, but has also shifted one's sense of identity transcendentally so that one thinks of oneself now as pure, luminous intelligence. The body and psyche are looked upon as the support system. The important issue is that when one is observing, experiencing, one envisions oneself as a consciousness, the same as the reality behind the appearance of the universe. There is no more duality, therefore, there is no observation, no experience. Consciousness has withdrawn into its ground, which is pure transcending consciousness, reaching beyond the ego transcendentally (one thinks upwards). This is only the first step and actually proves misleading because it revolves around the personal vantage point which is a very limited vantage point.
