This weeks FBA Dharmabyte titled: and#8220;What is Enlightenment?and#8220;, from the talk, and#8220;Enlightenment as Experience and as Non-Experienceand#8221; by Sangharakshita exposes a modern disease of frustrated craving for experience. Sangharakshita suggests that spiritual life is better seen in more concrete ways; as growth, work, and duty.
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
What is Enlightenment?
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. So first, what do we mean by experience? And after all, we use the term often enough. But what do we mean by experience? Usually, experience is distinguished from thought. That it would say distinguished from abstract thought, from conceptual thought. Even though, of course, in a sense, thought itself is an experience. Now, if we want to speak just very generally, basically, with regard to what experience is, we may say that experience is principally, is, outstandingly, a matter of perception and feeling. Experience means the actual living through an event. Not just looking at it, not just contemplating it, not just thinking about it, but actually living through. That event, experiencing it, as we say. Experience also means, also suggests, real life, as contrasted with the ideal of the emotional life or existence. So enlightenment, as experience, means, therefore, enlightenment as something which we actually perceive, which we actually feel, felt in the nerves and felt along the heart, felt in the blood, felt in the bones. Not just something abstractly thought about or speculated about, but imagined or fantasized about. And something that we live through, enlightenment as experience, is something that we live through. But when, of course, we experience enlightenment, we live through enlightenment in a rather different way from the way in which we live through any other experience. In the case of other experiences, we, as it were, come out at the other end, intact or modified, to some extent. In the case of the experience of enlightenment, we do not come out at the other end. There is no end, maybe there's an end of us, but that is another matter. We do not come out at the other end. So that we may say, enlightenment is something which is, as it were, a continuing part of our life. After we've experienced it, or rather our life becomes a continuing part of enlightenment itself. But how did we come to think of enlightenment in this way? How did we come to think of enlightenment in terms of experience? We mustn't think that this is the natural, the inevitable, the only way of thinking about things, thinking about enlightenment, thinking in terms of experience. This is, if you look at it, a rather odd way of thinking. We might have become used to it, but that simply means that we've become used to it. There are alternatives. So how did we come to think of enlightenment in this way? How did we come to make the statement that enlightenment is an experience? And probably that is a statement with which no one would wish to disagree, not without being rather pedantic, perhaps. So this way of speaking, that is to say of enlightenment as experience, is not an Indian way. Not an Indian Buddhist way, to speak of enlightenment as an experience. In the Pali scriptures, that is to say, in the ancient scriptures of the Theravada school, some portions of which come very close to the Buddha's original teaching. In the Pali scriptures, there's no reference to enlightenment as experience. That's something perhaps to ponder upon. They get along in the Pali scriptures without the need of speaking of enlightenment in terms of experience. The very early Buddhists, as far as we know, didn't think of enlightenment in precisely those terms. Perhaps experience was implied, but it was never stated in so many words, in that sort of word. Or in an equivalent word, enlightenment as experience, that was not their mode of thought. If we come on to say the Langkavatarasutra, which, as everybody knows, I'm sure is one of the greatest of the Mahayana Sutra's. If we come on to the Langkavatarasutra, we find that the Langkavatarasutra speaks of something that it calls 'Gati Go Chara'. I'm not going to try to explain what 'Gati Go Chara' really means. This will take me much too far afield. But Suzuki does translate it as experience, which is very approximate indeed. I don't think that would get passed to a really strict scholar, not as an exact translation. 'Gati Go Chara' in the sense of, as it were, the experience, inverted commas of 'Arir Knana', that it would say 'No Book Wisdom'. And the Langkavataras also speaks of 'Pratyatma Go Chara', which Suzuki translates as in a realization. Again, a bit like, you could say, experience, but not very exactly so by any means. So even if we do accept that the Langkavatarasutra does in a way, speak of enlightenment in terms of experience, is in a rather distant and almost equivocal sort of way, you could translate alternatively. And in any case, the Langkavataras is quite a late sutra. In its present form, it could not have been compiled more than, or less than probably, 700-800 years after the time of Shakya Muni, the Buddha. And we could even say, perhaps, that the Langkavataras, it's teaching, it's approach. It's stress on what we now call 'experience', or on something corresponding to what we now call 'experience', does reflect developments taking place in India, analogous to certain developments taking place in the West very, very much later. In Parli and Sanskrit, we can say, it's as difficult to speak of enlightenment as experience in our sense, as to say, the all life is one. To say that all life is one may be a justifiable interpretation or reinterpretation of Buddhist teaching, but you can't put it back into either Parli or Sanskrit. It represents a quite different mode of expression, a mode of expression which is a product of a modern Western way of thinking. If we want to translate back into a Parli or Sanskrit, enlightenment is an experience, or all life is one, we can't do it. Because we become involved, not in translation, but in reinterpretation, rethinking, if you like even, re-experiencing, making anew. Which is, of course, one of the things that you mustn't do, according to some schools of Buddhism in the East. Now the Qatar, as they call it, making new is equivalent to heresy, but anyway, we won't say anything more about that at the moment. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Thank you for your contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donnie. And thank you. [music fades out] [music fades out] [music fades out] [BLANK_AUDIO]