not both

There can be I

Or there can be an enlightened being

But not both

Enlightenment seems to be going through a rather unfashionable patch. And there's a reason why some teachers avoid using the word enlightenment, or at least advise against seeking enlightenment. The reason is really that as soon as we have a word for anything, it has become a concept, and the whole point about enlightenment is that it is going beyond concepts and living directly in the world. So having the word enlightenment, the concept enlightenment, is already a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. Nevertheless, I will continue to use the word here.

People seeking enlightenment have heard that it's the greatest way to live in this world. They've heard wonderful things about enlightenment, or perhaps they just have a deep intuitive sense, from their own buddha nature, and that is driving them on that search for enlightenment. Either way, before we become enlightened, we tend to think it's a wonderful thing. And what we don't really realise beforehand is just how much needs to be given up for enlightenment to happen.

For a being to become enlightened, The sense of I must disappear. It is not that I become enlightened. It's that I cease, and in my place an enlightened buddha walks the earth. This is why I can be, or the enlightened being can be, but there isn't space for both of us. It's one or the other, and this is why there's a deep irony in a person seeking enlightenment. Whether they've understood it or not, they are really seeking to extinguish themselves, to cease to be. Of course I'm not talking physically. I'm not talking about physical death. This is all psychological.

And I think before enlightenment we don't really realise the extent to which we are living a psychological life. We are living in our mind. We are living in our own little story, with our beliefs, our concepts, our ideas, including above all our idea of ourself, so ingrained we don't even really realise it's there. Before enlightenment this is our world. This is our life. And all of that has to be swept aside, if there is to be space for an enlightened being. And this giving up of one's sense of oneself is a step too far for most people.

This is why most people live out their lives in an unenlightened state. This is why many seekers never really become enlightened. The price is too high for them. I have to give up myself. I have to let it be snuffed out – again, not as a physical death, but as a sort of psychological death of the sense of self. It feels like a death, a psychological death. And no one really wants to do that, because all our desires are coming from the sense of self. It is our sense of self that creates desires, including the desire to be enlightened. But of course that desire is really a desire to be living in the concept of enlightenment, just as we live in the concept of ourself and innumerable other concepts.

So the ego, the I, wants to become enlightened so that it can be living with the concept of enlightenment. But in its image of enlightenment, in that desire, the I is still implicitly assuming it will be there, perhaps having changed clothes, perhaps wearing a new perfume, but still there. That's not the way, that's not the way. In the end, enlightenment can only happen to us. And it can't happen because of a desire for it. It happens in spite of us, not because of us. And yet if that great transformation, that miracle happens, it is the greatest benediction.