{"id":3486,"date":"2013-06-14T16:40:13","date_gmt":"2013-06-14T21:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=3486"},"modified":"2013-06-13T21:19:35","modified_gmt":"2013-06-14T02:19:35","slug":"zen-enlightenment-and-bugs-a-haiku","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=3486","title":{"rendered":"Zen, Enlightenment and Bugs — A Haiku"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the zendo the other day, our sensei gave a talk about enlightenment. He made the point that many people are attracted to Zen because they want and hope to achieve \u201cenlightenment\u201d, as a big whoop, a quasi-orgasmic experience of spiritual realization. Then he went on to say that \u201cit\u2019s not like that\u201d; you can\u2019t achieve enlightenment by work and study. It\u2019s not like getting in shape to do a triathlon or bench-press 300 pounds. Enlightenment is more of a \u201csurprise me\u201d thing. It will happen, or not, in its own way, at its own time.<\/p>\n

Our sensei took many of his thoughts from a book by Korean Zen teacher Zeung San, called “Wanting Enlightenment is a Big Mistake”<\/a>. I pretty much agreed with our local teacher (I don\u2019t always, read on) and with the title that Seung San chose for his book. I take a rather Calvinistic approach to Zen. I.e., that Enlightenment is more a matter of \u201cpre-destination\u201d, or something other than \u201cgood works\u201d. From the Buddhist perspective, \u201cpre-destination\u201d might be roughly equivalent to \u201ckarma\u201d and the \u201cmomentum\u201d of past lives. I would go even further than that. Taking a page from St. Paul, I would proclaim that Enlightment is a matter of grace from a transcendent universal power \u2013 i.e., from God. We can\u2019t attain true kensho or Nirvana by ourselves; we are inherently flawed, subject to chaos, entropy and decay. We apples that don’t fall far from the tree, i.e. the imperfect universe that spawned us. Our only hope for the Pure Truth is in and through relationship, relationship with the ultimate power and principle behind all “being”. <\/p>\n

So as to express this thought, I offered our sangha a quickly made up haiku during the discussion session. This probably did\u2019t fulfill all the technical requirements of a haiku, i.e. the 5-7-5 form<\/a>. In a way, it\u2019s more of an anti-haiku. But nonetheless, here is my little Calvinistic anti-haiku regarding the world of Zen and its fascination with \u201cenlightenment\u201d:<\/p>\n

There is no Enlightment
\nA bug walks across a zendo floor
\nthat has just been cleaned.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, we did clean our zendo that morning. And yes, after we finished, I laughed when I saw a bug walking across the floor, oblivious to all our efforts to bring out the so-called cleanly purity that allegedly exists beneath the layers of dust and grime. The sensei said in his talk that all of us \u201care already Buddha\u201d, we are all are enlightned \u2013 but most of us just don\u2019t know it, akin to the clear mirror beneath a layer of dust. This is a standard Zen maxim. Calvinist Zen student that I am, I said that there is no purity, there is no Enlightenment in all or any of us, just waiting to find its way from beneath the rubble. The rubble is us, it\u2019s all we got when alone. We may be perfect, but only realize perfection when in relationship — when in relationship with the ultimate power and principle of all “being”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the zendo the other day, our sensei gave a talk about enlightenment. He made the point that many people are attracted to Zen because they want and hope to achieve \u201cenlightenment\u201d, as a big whoop, a quasi-orgasmic experience of spiritual realization. Then he went on to say that \u201cit\u2019s not like that\u201d; you can\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3486"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3486"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3488,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3486\/revisions\/3488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}