Enlightenment

Enlightenment: it’s not what you look for; it might be what you find.

What then is this enlightenment that the Buddha found? Understand that the Buddhist world has been stuck with the word enlightenment for 2000 odd years. That has been very unfortunate, because the Buddha did not go out to look for enlightenment. He was not trying to get a spiritual experience. He went out to find the reason for birth, old age, decay and death. In other words, to put in Zen terminology, he had the first Koan in existence.

 He had to go back to the naive mind of a child and just sit with his mind still. There, in that stillness, he found the iron being within himself. He had pulled down all the walls he had built: walls with his ideas and his concepts, his notions of right and wrong, good and evil, how it is done, how it is not done, what is wise, what is not wise. He had dropped all that stuff and he just sat still completely still and found enlightenment.