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- Zen believes in sudden enlightenment
because Zen believes that you are already enlightened; just a
certain situation is needed which can wake you up. Just a little
alarm may do the work. If you are a little alert, just a little
alarm and you are suddenly awake. And all the dream with all its
long long desires, journeys, kingdoms, mountains, oceans...they have
all disappeared in a single instant.
- Your enlightenment is perfect only when
silence has come to be a celebration. Hence my insistence that after
you meditate you must celebrate. After you have been silent you must
enjoy it, you must have a thanksgiving. A deep gratitude must be
shown towards the whole just for the opportunity that you are, that
you can meditate, that you can be silent, that you can laugh.
- Enlightenment is always sudden because it
is not an achievement; it is already the case. It is only a
remembering, it is only a reminding, it is only a recognition. You
are already enlightened; you are just not aware of it. It is
awareness of that which is already the case.
- An enlightened person is one who has no
barrier between him and existence. And knowledge is a barrier.
Knowledge divides you from existence; it keeps you separate. Not
knowing unites you. Love is a way of innocence. Innocence is a
bridge: knowledge is a wall. Who has ever heard of knowledgeable
people becoming enlightened? They are the farthest away from
enlightenment. Enlightenment grows only in the soil of innocence.
- The word 'enlightenment' belongs to the
path of meditation. The meditator says, "Enough is enough. Long have
I suffered; now let me be free." In fact, he cannot ask. He tries,
but he cannot pray -- because to the man on the path of meditation,
even prayer is a bondage. Mahavir never prayed, Buddha never prayed.
Prayer was meaningless for Buddha; he made all efforts to get out of
it.
- Enlightenment means to live life without
any hankering for meaning. Then whatsoever is, is good, and
whatsoever is not, that too is good. Then each moment becomes so
radiant, so luminous, so fun of fragrance, but still there is no
meaning.
- Nirvan means enlightenment, the state of
ultimate realisation, the experience of one’s innermost core, the
actualisation of all the potential that one has carried all along,
the seed turning into the flower.
- The ultimate enlightenment means the
ultimate dissolution of the ego, the ultimate disappearance of the
individual.
- Try to be so wakeful that you don't fall
asleep again. Remain so alert that the future is not allowed to
deceive you again as you had allowed it before. What has become past
is nothing, but once it is your future then you get deceived by it.
Now it is past; now another future is arriving. Every moment future
is arriving, and future can deceive you only if you are asleep. Then
again it will become past. Now let me tell you one thing: if you
remain alert and you don't allow the future to deceive you in the
present, the past disappears. Then there is no memory left of it, no
trace of it. Then one is just a clean slate, a sky without any
clouds, a flame without smoke.
That's what the state of enlightenment is -- so alert that only the
witness is real and everything else is nothing but ripples on the
surface of the water. Everything is passing, everything is a flux.
Only one thing remains and remains and remains, and that is your
consciousness, your awareness.
- After enlightenment, you have to
disappear. The world is left behind, the body is left behind, the
mind is left behind; just your consciousness, as individuality, is
still there. To go beyond enlightenment is to go beyond
individuality and to become universal. This way, each individual
will go on moving into nothingness. And one day, the whole existence
moves into nothingness and a great peace, a great night, a deep,
dark womb, a great awaiting for the dawn.... And it has been
happening always, and each time you are always born on a higher
level of consciousness.
Enlightenment is the goal of human beings. But those who are
enlightened cannot remain static; they will have to move, they will
have to change. And now they have only one thing to lose --
themselves. They have enjoyed everything. They have enjoyed the
purity of individuality; now they have to enjoy the disappearing of
individuality. They have seen the beauty of individuality; now they
have to see the disappearance and its beauty, and the silence that
follows, that abysmal serenity that follows.
- The experience of enlightenment is also
beyond description, but it has been described by all who have
experienced it. They all say it is beyond description and still they
describe it -- that it is full of light, that it is full of joy,
that it is the ultimate in blissfulness. If this is not description
then what is description? I am saying it for the first time: for
thousands of years the people who have become enlightened have been
saying that it cannot be described, and at the same time have been
describing it, have been their whole lives singing it. But beyond
enlightenment you certainly enter into a world which is
indescribable. Because in enlightenment you still are; otherwise who
is feeling the blissfulness, who is seeing the light? Kabir says,
"... as if thousands of suns have risen." Who is seeing it?
Enlightenment is the ultimate experience -- but still it is
experience, and the experiencer is there. Going beyond it, there is
no experiencer.
- You have to understand one thing: that
enlightenment is not an escape from pain but an understanding of
pain, an understanding of your anguish, an understanding of your
misery -- not a cover-up, not a substitute, but a deep insight: "Why
am I miserable, why is there so much anxiety, why is there so much
anguish, what are the causes in me that are creating it?" And to see
those causes clearly is to be free from them. Just an insight into
your misery brings a freedom from misery. And what remains is
enlightenment. Enlightenment is not something that comes to you. It
is when pain and misery and anguish and anxiety have been understood
perfectly well and they have evaporated because now they have no
cause to exist in you -- that state is enlightenment.
- Nirvana means utter cessation, all
disappears, there is simple emptiness. In that emptiness there is
tremendous consciousness, fulfillment, but no centre to be
fulfilled. To know it, it has to be experienced….
- Enlightenment is not a desire, is not a
goal, is not an ambition. It is a dropping of all goals, a dropping
of all desires, a dropping of all ambitions. It is just being
natural. That’s what is meant by flowing.
- Enlightenment is the ultimate peak of
sanity -- when one becomes perfectly sane, has come to a point where
silence, serenity, consciousness are twenty-four hours his, waking
or sleeping. There runs a current of tranquility, blissfulness,
benediction which is a nourishment, food from the beyond. Eastern
psychology accepts mind as the lowest part of human consciousness --
dismal and dark. You have to go beyond it. And enlightenment is not
the end, because it is only individual consciousness. Individuality
is still like two banks of a river. The moment the river moves into
the ocean, all banks disappear, all boundaries are annihilated. You
have gone beyond enlightenment.
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