Buddha's Enlightenment (We Must Have Done Something Right)
Photo by Dimitry B
To live in a time and place where we can actively seek and find the Buddhist teachings is remarkable. If you’re wondering how this might unfold in your life in a way that leads to the liberation of all beings, look to the Buddha’s path. This talk draws on the life of Shakyamuni Buddha and more.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. See below for transcript.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
Two thousand six hundred years ago, Siddhartha Gautama made a vow, a solemn promise, to find the path that leads to the end of suffering. Having seen the three signs of age, illness, death, and the fourth sign of spiritual life, he decided to dedicate his life to attaining liberation. I want to remark on this choice. Of all the things that each of us could do with our human life with the eighty or so years (if we’re fortunate) we’ll be on this planet, why choose to devote yourself to something so intangible, so mysterious, so seemingly unattainable? I think this is one of the most wonderful aspects of humanity, that each of us is called to a particular path, to a particular way of living a life, that to someone else may be unimaginable or impractical or just plain strange.
Not all of us even have the option to follow a calling. Some of us are just surviving, just putting bread on the table. Some of us are doing what is expected of us. But a few are lucky enough to be living their passion, their purpose. If you’re one of them, if you’re living the way you want to live, then rejoice, my friend, because few people are luckier than you. The Buddha was one such person, and yet, this is not the Buddha’s story I’m about to tell or it’s not just the Buddha’s story. It’s also my story, it’s your story, it’s the story of every person who’s said, Enough!Enough of this sorrow, enough of this burden of wanting and lacking, enough of this constant fighting and fleeing and gaining and losing and hurting and having. Enough of not seeing and not being seen. Enough of half-living.
It’s the story of every person who’s decided that feeling is more important than avoiding, that learning to love yourself and to love others and to love all things deeply, respectfully, is the most important thing we’ll ever do in this life. It’s the story of someone who admits, I'm not happy or I’m not satisfied, but I want to be, I trust that I can be, so I’m going to go looking. The Buddha, as we know, went looking. He found a delightful piece of ground, perfect for the work of meditation, just like this mat we sit on, this room with enough light, enough space, enough quiet for his body and mind, just like this body and mind, hungry for living. He took the bodhi seat, the seat of enlightenment. He rested his hands in his lap, he lowered his eyes, made a vow. He made a vow to not move, to not stir an inch, until he attained enlightenment, until he saw what had to be seen, and did what needed to be done, until he awakened to his life, fully.
He had already mastered all the dharmas that could be mastered at the time. He’d already put an end to all desires, pushing his body to its limit and beyond. He had spent days standing on one leg or with his arm held high. He’d forced himself to stop breathing. He’d eaten a hundred, then a dozen, then a single sesame seed, until his body was so emaciated that when he touched his belly button, he reached his spine. His skin had shriveled, his hair had fallen out in clumps. He’d beat and constrained his mind, all for the sake of liberation.
The belief, which appears in virtually every religious tradition, that mortifying the body, that denying the body is the way to freedom, is hard to give up because, from one perspective, it seems so clear that the body is the obstacle, it has all these wants and needs, all this craving and laziness and restlessness and distraction. I tell my body to do one thing, it does another, sometimes completely the opposite! So the answer must be to beat the body into shape, into submission. We no longer do it with whips or crosses, we do it with boot camps and Peloton and high-end diets and ice baths and fasting and purging and the scalpel and, and, and. That belief runs deep: If I were thinner, if I gave up sex, or sugar, or alcohol, if I was in control of this body then I’d be a cleaner, leaner, meaner me, I’d get to my goal, and I’d be invincible.
Empires have been built on this promise, commercial empires, but spending our time and energy trying to control our bodies is like spending time decorating a jail cell. It’ll look nicer, but it’ll still be a cell. Denying the body does not lead to freedom, this is what the Buddha saw. On the brink of death, he realized that the body is not the problem. Let me repeat that: The body is not the problem. The body, in fact, is not an obstacle but a gate, it’s the vehicle for our liberation. The body is a temple which sounds cheesy, I know, but it’s true. There’s no more important temple where each of us will worship, no more relevant temple.
My grandparents had a big book in their house, one of those old tomes huge as a table with the family crest and the family history. Many years ago I read in it that my last name, Goddard, means House of God. I saw this at a moment when I really needed it. It was a time in my life when being in my body was so difficult I could barely stand it. I couldn’t bear to be in my own skin. But then I read this and I thought, Oh, I’m the House of God, I better start acting like it. I better start taking care of this house accordingly. So I did. I began to treat it with as much reverence as I treated Zen Mountain Monastery’s zendo, with the kind of awe I felt when I walked into a great cathedral and I felt the presence of something larger than my own mishigas, my own preoccupations. It didn’t happen overnight, by any stretch. Slowly I understood that until I stopped fighting myself, until I stopped using my energy to berate or control or constrain or punish my body, I wouldn’t have much left over to do anything else. One day I decided I could maybe love this body and everything it gave me everything it gives me every single day.
The Buddha, at the brink of death, saw that neither pampering nor denying his body would lead him to peace or to freedom, so he took what he called the Middle Way. It’s such a delicate balance I find. Too much, and the strings of my lute are loose, they don’t play. Too tight and they break. What’s just the right amount of tension? A good question to ask every day and to calibrate accordingly is, “How much rest do I need today? How much work, how much play, how much solitude, how much company?”
The Buddha, deciding to nourish himself, accepted the bowl of rice gruel that the young village woman Sujata gave him. He then made his way to the shore of the Niranjana river. He washed himself and, setting his bowl on the current, he said, “If this is the day of my enlightenment, may my bowl float upstream.” I’ve only seen one version of the story that has this particular event. He was looking for a sign. We do this too? We pray to God or to Buddha or to some Higher Power and we say, If I’m meant to leave this job, be with this person, buy this house, you name it, please, give me a sign. Then we watch carefully and lo and behold! Something happens and we think, That’s it, that’s what I’m supposed to do. Of course, it’s all happening here.
I think it’s one of those moments where we’re looking to align ourselves with the path, instead of in opposition to it. We’re invoking that help, we’re saying, Show me the way I need to go, help me to see, help me to hear, and I’ll listen.In Christianity it’s called petitioning. I think of it as invoking in Buddhism, invoking the help of the universe, of your own life force so we can align with the natural order of things and with our own karma in a way that won’t bind us further, but will free us. It’s incredible that we can do this, if you think about it, incredible that we know, or maybe not so incredible, since that’s our inherent wisdom. That’s our clear, bright mind. We’re asking, Help me to pay attention to it, help me to be it.
The Buddha let go of his bowl, and immediately it floated up against the current and reached a whirlpool, at the bottom of which the Naga King, Kala Naga, the great River Serpent, lived. The bowl floated down to the crystal palace of Kala Naga until it got to a row of identical begging bowls on a shelf, and settling next to them, the bowl went, Clink. Hearing the sound the Naga King opened his eyes and thought, Today, another Buddha has appeared in the world. I’d better keep my eye on this one. He’s going to need my help.
Up on the riverbank, the Buddha sat down on a small mound of kusha grass, and vowed to not get up until he attained liberation. This is the moment, this is the pivot point. This is the moment when we decide to trust the unknown, when we say to ourselves, I’ve tried everything. I’ve done what others said would make me happy, and it’s not working. I've put in the time, I’ve checked all the squares, and it’s not working. When I asked before, “Why is it that some of us hear the call, and respond to it?” Because we have to, because we reach a point where we realize, there’s no other choice. All the other choices we've tried didn’t get us far. Well, that’s not true, they got us to this point.
For some of us, it’s very clear, the moment in which everything shifts. For some of us it’s more like sliding or stumbling toward awakening, it happens little by little. We keep having this feeling that something’s off, that things are just not clicking into place. It’s like someone changed the channel while we were sleeping, and now we’re watching a show in another language. We recognize the images, but they don’t make sense anymore. How come I was going along with my life, mostly happy, going to the movies, going out with my friends, going to school and working, and one day I thought, Wait? What is this? What is this? What am I doing?
It’s a bummer, this period in our lives. Trungpa Rinpoche used to say, if you can do anything else, don’t practice. It’s going to mess up your life: the movies you used to enjoy, the friends you’d hang out with, the rituals you devised for yourself, they just don’t do it for you anymore. It’s very destabilizing, until you understand that something’s shifting inside, and that it’s a good thing. Until you understand that feeling your discontent, instead of covering it over, is a good thing, because it’s what will drive you to search for more, that wanting a deep connection with others is not too much to ask, that doing meaningful work is possible, and that having time for solitude and reflection is not weird or luxurious but necessary. In order to get past this awkward phase, we have to be willing to feel this tension, like growing pains. We have to feel the pull of something that we don’t have, of a place we haven’t reached but that we sense is possible, is near, otherwise why would we go looking? This is the same tension that turns into art or into a religious call.
The poet e.e. cummings said, “A poet [or practitioner] is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words.” This may sound easy. It isn’t. A lot of people think or believe or know they feel, but that’s thinking or believing or knowing—not feeling. And poetry (or life) is feeling, not knowing or believing or thinking. Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people, but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself, in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting. We are called to create what doesn’t exist, whether in the world or in our minds. Though that’s not quite accurate, it does exist, potentially, but we have to bring it into being. It’s going to be difficult and uncomfortable for a while and, of course, it’s going to be terrifying now and then, but it will also free you.
The Buddha knew this. At the outer threshold of the known, he sensed the realm of possibility. He sat down on the bodhi seat, the trees around him leaned in, the animals hushed and the devas looked down from the sky, expectant. The Naga King, Kala Naga, rose from the bottom of the river, and he stood on his coiled tail and he fanned out his great hood over the Buddha’s seat to protect him from the heat and the rain. As the potential Buddha, the Thus-come one, turned his mind inward, all hell broke loose. Mara appeared, Mara, the Evil Tempter, who wanted to unseat the Buddha. In the Paadana Sutta, the Buddha identifies Mara’s Squadrons: the first is Sense-Desires, then Boredom, Hunger and Thirst, Craving, Sloth and Torpor, Cowardice, Uncertainty, Malice and Obstinacy, Gain, Honor and Renown, ill-won Notoriety, and finally, Self-praise and Denigrating Others. The whole shebang.
We should recognize these squadrons. You sit down and after 10 minutes, you’re lost in a fantasy, you’re enjoying a delicious meal, or you’re off on a tryst in Rome or Paris. Your stomach grumbles and you start to plan dinner, you decide you’ve been sitting too long and get up to get a glass of water. You wonder when the period will end, you wonder why sitting has to be so hard. You congratulate yourself on an excellent period, you start planning what you’ll tell me on your next private teaching, on and on and on. During my first year at the monastery I spent a couple of sesshins with a very elaborate fantasy of creating a Zen Olympics with Dai Bosatsu, a nearby monastery. The classic stories tell of the beautiful daughters, or it could be beautiful sons, of Mara coming to tempt the Buddha. Then the armies of conflict and discord, monsters with horse heads, ten-eyes, with tiger faces and many-arms, with faces in their chests, with sharp yellow teeth and mouths dripping blood, with spiders for hands and snake tongues. All the horror, all the wild hunger, the greed, coming to assail the Buddha.
Let me suggest that next time Mara visits you while you’re sitting, or while you’re going about your life, give it a face and a name, give it claws or fangs or a beautiful face, a sexy body. Put a little space between you and Mara’s legion. How? By saying, I see you, just as the Buddha did. When nothing worked, when the Buddha remained sitting tall and unmoving, the dancing daughters faded like fog, the spears and arrows of the various monsters turned to flowers, Mara pulled all the stops and he got right in Buddha’s face and he said, “Who are you to think you can awaken?" Supreme enlightenment? You? Think of it, Supreme! Enlightenment! Sound familiar?
If I had a dollar for every instance someone tells me, “I don’t care about enlightenment, I just want…X,” I’d be living the life. Why? Why not care about enlightenment? Why settle on reading the menu when you can have a delicious, supremely satisfying meal? I think it’s that insidious voice that says, “Who do you think you are to want liberation?” The Buddha’s dharma is called the lion’s roar. It’s encapsulated in the vow he made when he said, I will not move from this seat until I am free. It’s the same lion’s roar when we decide, This is what my life will be about from now on. You don’t have to become a monk or a hermit or a priest or anything. You can just be you, you can just do you, but fully, unimpededly.
The Buddha touched his hand to the ground and called on the Earth goddess Sthavara to witness his enlightenment. She appeared, clothed in resplendent green, and to her voice joined the voices of all the trees and all the stones and all the fish and all the two-legged and four-legged creatures and together they all said, “He is worthy!” Mara and his squadrons all trembled in fear. They dropped their weapons, which were useless by that point, anyway. Some of them bowed down to the Buddha and asked his forgiveness, others just fled, never to come back. The Buddha continued sitting through the night until, just before dawn, his mind broke open and he saw and said, “Isn’t it wonderful! Isn’t it marvelous! All sentient beings, the great earth and I have at once entered the way!” Or, as the Pali sutras said, “Birth is destroyed, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more coming to any state of being.”
But this was not the end, it was only the beginning. Here we are, the beneficiaries of that fateful night, series of nights. How can we be so incredibly lucky? Who knows? But one thing is clear— we must have done something right. We must have done something right to be here, like this.
Explore further
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02: Padhana Sutta: Exertion translated by Thanissaro Bikkhu
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