D’accord, not only have I not personally visited “enlightenment” (which always makes me think of my German-speaking priest friend who would ask us to “disenlighten the candles”) but I don’t even know anyone who’s managed anything even remotely close to being rid of impure thoughts, even during a half-hour period of zazen.

I do know a couple of people who’ve been completely, unexpectedly transformed—had the experience Zen calls “kensho.” It seems to take a while before they can head back down to the village (cf. Ten Oxherding Pictures), but when they do their relationship to everyone and everything has changed. From the outside, it doesn’t seem like they embrace suffering, exactly, but that, in the words of Ms. Byron Katie, they become lovers of reality.

And then there’s the wise AA practice of acting-as-if, useful for those of us just muddling along the best we can.

Hey, next time I’m visiting my loony parents in Texas, we should all (you me & Ms. Jenzai—not my parents) get together!!!!!!!!!! <–excessive enthusiastic exclams

Tú
eres
tu presente,
tu manzana:
tómala
de tu árbol,
levántala
en tu
mano,
brilla
como una estrella,
tócala,
híncale el diente y ándate
silbando en el camino.

—Pablo Neruda, “Oda al presente”

I like this image by Neruda that being in the present means you are the tree and the apple, and the hand. If we condition ourselves (i.e. through meditation) to rid ourselves of impure thoughts, this conditioning is an antecedent cause, and not permanent, hence we will return to ordinary levels of consciousness. Enlightenment (I suppose, not having been there) involves embracing the impure and the suffering of life. “Sink your teeth into it, and go whistling on your way.”

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