by Gawain

Gawain was new to soc.religion.eastern when he posted this in June 1991. He entered the group mid-debate — a long, heated argument about gurus, enlightenment, and who qualified to teach whom. He did not declare a position. He told a story about a meditation room and a photograph. The photograph said everything.

The discussion of the necessity, desirability, or otherwise of a guru seems to be the hot topic here, and so a good place to enter in. It seems that the source of much of the passion in these posts has to do with the use of the words "Enlightened being" or some such term. It seems surprising that anyone on the path to enlightenment would use these words. I thought that at the higher levels of spirituality, one would have transcended the categories of dualism. So it seems to me that the very use of the adjective "Enlightened" indicates that the person using the term has not reached a level beyond the opposites. Perhaps it is just a by-product of using dualistic language to describe a quality beyond dualism.

My understanding is that a truly enlightened person would be like the great master of any of the Zen-related martial arts. The belt beyond the black belt, for instance, is a white belt — the beginner's belt. Enlightenment is a return to an ever-renewed and renewing sense of wonder, one that the unenlightened might call naive, though I think this is far from the case.

That said, it leaves the question of the necessity for a teacher or leader. My first experience with an eastern religious group was hilarious. A friend spoke eloquently of this spiritual leader. His followers were so impressed by the leader that they bought him a country estate, on which they founded an ashram. These were intelligent people — most of them professionals such as lawyers and teachers. When I arrived, I discovered that the leader had been traveling around for a couple of years. In the meditation room, the followers faced a small color photograph of their spiritual leader. It all seemed pretentious and somewhat silly. And was. They were looking outwards for help towards enlightenment. And if their guide was gone, they would damn well look at his picture in their search for spirituality. This was their mode. And the mire of their souls.

Later I started to read eastern texts in English translation, as well as commentaries. When I found the works of D.T. Suzuki and R.H. Blyth, I began to have intense experiences that felt like insight — certainly not enlightenment, but interesting nonetheless. With Suzuki for instance, I would go slowly through his very erudite and dense exposition, painfully slowly, from one idea to the next. Without my noticing, the text would begin to flow with no seeming effort. This might be called a kind of reading samadhi. By the time the text was finished, I would look back to the world, hours of time gone by, and experience seemed very clear.

When I read of the Chinese and Japanese adepts who would leave their master to go into retreat for years, returning only to have their insight tested, I began to believe that though a teacher can take you part way up the pole, you must not only take the ultimate leap all alone, but perhaps make a good deal of the climb that way, too. I now believe that the return was not to be tested, for the enlightened need no tests. But perhaps these stories were part of the canon that an ongoing tradition tends to build up to maintain itself.

Insight, enlightenment, call it what you will, seems to me to be something experienced alone that turns you back to not only all humanity, but the universe itself, with an oceanic, all-embracing, all-encompassing consciousness. Of course there are many approaches to the path. I am simply saying that once on it, one becomes one's own teacher — or rather, as some have said, everyone becomes your teacher, which I think is another way of saying that you, part of the Great Whatever It Is, are your own teacher.

If the Buddha nature is there from the first — and it is — then indeed we must kill the buddha, the little self, and all who would tell us What It's All About. Some, call them teachers, may tell us a little about how we might find the path, but if there is Truth, Buddha nature, a way without opposites, Enlightenment — whatever you will — it should be reachable by a blind man sitting in a dark silent cave, or any of us fumbling on our own with whatever guides our deeper intuitive nature has us reach out for. If one of those guides be a teacher, so be it; but I think ultimately, we will reach into our Self, and there, find the experience known as enlightenment. And I believe that any real teacher would have us do the same.

Posted to soc.religion.eastern on 17 June 1991. Author: Gawain (online handle; email: dorsai![email protected]), The Dorsai Diplomatic Mission, New York. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

🌲