“There’s a story of a fellow who went to see a Zen teacher and asked, “I heard
there was a buddha in ancient times who sat in meditation for ten eons but
still did not achieve full liberation of mind. How could this be?”
“The teacher said, “You’ve answered your own questions.”
“But he was meditating the whole time! Why didn’t he wake up?”
“The teacher replied, “He wasn’t a buddha.”
“Like this fellow, we want explanations. We come to Zen, or to meditation,
with some idea of what happens to people who practice hard. We think that
people who are really serious about meditation must achieve something
spectacular. We have all kinds of expectations --- about what a buddha is,
what enlightenment is, what liberation of mind is, what happens to you if you
meditate a lot. And then we get upset when our expectations don’t match up
with Reality.
“Yet most of us fail to see that it’s our expectations that are the problem,
not Reality.
We think that if we work very hard at something --- say, becoming an astronomer
or an auto mechanic --- we can become good at it and perhaps master it. And
sometimes that’s true. The problem is that we come to meditation with this
same kind of thinking. We even think of a Zen teacher as someone who has
mastered the art of meditation.
“If we approach Zen practice with that idea, however, then we don’t understand
it at all.
“In this story, the questioner assumed that any hardworking and assiduous
meditator would experience something special or come to some profound
realization. After all, it seems only fair that if we work very hard at
something for a long time, we should master it. Either that or we’re likely to
give it up.
“In fact, people often _do_ give up Zen practice after working very hard at it
for some time. When it seems like they’re not getting anywhere, they quit.
But why didn’t they get anywhere?
“They --- and we --- don’t get anywhere because we think we’re doing something
“getting somewhere.”
“Zen practice isn’t about getting somewhere. It isn’t about becoming a buddha.
In fact, that’s impossible. Nothing _becomes_ a buddha.
“A buddha is simply a human being who is awake, aware of Reality. If you _see_
how things are, what Reality is, then you’re a buddha.
“Still, we cling to the notion that “if I work very hard, maybe I can become
enlightened --- like a buddha.” And then we begin practicing as if somehow we
can acquire buddhahood.
“But the fact of the matter is that you can’t. You can’t acquire it for a very
simple reason: you are Buddha already. There’s nothing for you to acquire.”
(Hagen, Steve, 'Buddhism Is Not What You Think').
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