It is too clear

 

It is too clear and so it is hard to see.
A dunce once searched for a fire with a lighted lantern.
Had he known what fire was,
He could have cooked his rice much sooner.

- Zen Saying

Enlightenment

Enlightenment is not something that we can acquire through an action. It is a deep inner knowing from which successful action proceeds. Rituals, which are very powerful and necessary,, can also be misunderstood, and function as a distraction.

For a long time, I had a long list of rituals that I believed I had to do before I could make contact with God. I thought I had to get up at a certain time in the morning, take a cold shower, do a certain number of yoga postures and breathing exercises, perform a certain preparation for meditation, and then (I believed) I could go within and experience my inner peace. And it worked. I grew tremendously from this practice - but there was a flaw in the way I was doing it.

My mistake was that if I was occasionally unable to perform my rituals, I would feel frustrated and unfulfilled. I felt as if I was not prepared for the day, as if I had missed something. I had the mistaken notion that my happiness depended on these exercises. I believed that God is something that could be accomplished, when it is a Presence that needs only to be recognized.

~Alan Cohen

Going Home

There was a child made all of salt who very much wanted to know where he had come from. So he set out on a long journey and traveled to many lands in pursuit of this understanding.

Finally he came to the shore of a great ocean. How marvelous, he cried, and stuck one foot in the water. The ocean beckoned him in further saying, "If you wish to know who you are, do not be afraid." The salt child walked further and further into the water dissolving with each step, and at the end exclaimed, "Ah, now I know who I am."

~ancient teaching story

Breakthrough

A great mountain sage sits in his cave – smiling
A seeker seeks him out and asks
Master, what can I do to attain what you have attained?

A year goes by while the sage waits for a reply to come to him
The stars and moon and sun and clouds wheel around his head
And not a single thought crosses his mind

The same year goes by for the seeker
He prides himself on his patient endurance of such a severe test
Surely this is the straight and narrow path, he thinks to himself

At last the sage focuses his eyes and clears his throat
I have done all I can do to answer you, he says…
And still after a year you hold onto that need to attain perfection

The seeker suffers the shock of that reply and staggers blindly from the cave –
And there, confronted by a ring of mountains draped in blue snow
He stops caring about enlightenment

And there, with his bare feet on cold stone he wakes…

~Grace Gibson