Last week I wrote a post called "Saying Too Much," which explained why it's generally not a good idea to go around blabbing about one's enlightenment experiences. A commenter suggested that maybe teachers ought to speak more openly about enlightenment, however, because otherwise it becomes shrouded in mystery and an object of speculation. And I want to address that.
Several of the great Mahayana sutras could be thought of as descriptions of enlightenment. The Heart Sutra is supposed to be the distillation of all enlightenment teachings, expressed in language, for example. The Lotus Sutra is said to pull one into an experience of enlightenment.
As a Soto Zen student I've spent some time with the writing of Dogen. The great thing about Dogen is that his work defies being grasped by intellect. Just when you think you've found some conceptual thing to hang on to, he yanks it away a few sentences later. So you end up flailing around wondering what the bleep was this old guy writing about.
This is a good thing. Anything you say about enlightenment that can be clearly and sensibly explained, is wrong. It's wrong because it's a view from the perspective of conventional thinking, which sees enlightenment from a place separate from it. It's something like the difference between studying a map of Italy and actually being in Italy. The map may be easier to understand, especially if you don't speak Italian, but it's not the same thing.
So relying on texts that are easily understood is kind of a trap. If you're satisfied with conventional-thought explanations, when will you step beyond that? How will you step beyond that?
I believe about all Dogen ever said about his own awakening experience is "dropping body and mind." In a famous passage from Genjokoan he wrote,
To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.
That's Dogen describing enlightenment. How do you understand it? That's the question. The truth is that no one can tell you what enlightenment is, or what it's "like." So how do you understand it? Texts like the Heart Sutra and the Genjokoan don't make a shred of sense to most of us the first time we read them. Or the tenth or twentieth time, either, usually.
That not understanding tells us there's something lacking. They tell is to not be satisfied with conventional-thought explanations. Our living teachers may feel they have nothing more to say that hasn't been said, anyway, and they may be right.
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