Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Awareness = Mindfulness = Enlightenment

Listen deeply to the following Thay's Dharma talk on enlightenment from 00:47to 2:49.


The followings are the excerpts.

Quote:
Only a Buddha, a full Buddha is someone who is awake all day. But we become awake from time to time. That is why we should practice mindful breathing in order to be more awake in our daily life. 

I talk about awareness, I talk about enlightenment because enlightenment and awareness, they are of the same substance. And now we have a word, mindfulness which is the same. Because when you are mindful of what is going on, you are aware and you are enlightened. 

Suppose a practice:

Breathing in, I'm aware I have good eyes.
Breathing out, I smile to my eyes.

That is awareness, that is mindfulness of having good eyes. But that is also enlightenment. Because if I have good eyes but if I don't know it, I am not enlightened at all. So, being enlightened means the same thing as being mindful. And you can get enlightened every minute if you have that kind of awareness

So, many of us spend our days in forgetfulness. We live, and yet we don't. We get lost in the past. We worry so much about the future and we are afraid of it. We make so many projects, we are excited about the future. We have no capacity of being alive in the present moment where everything is. And people who live like that live in forgetfulness. And life is not available to them. And they live like a person who carries the dead body on the shoulder and wanders around. He is already dead, she is already dead
:Unquote

(My commentary)
Most people are not awake except for small children and the deep sleep state. However, they can't recognize it because they are not mindful. In order to be really alive, we need to be mindful by returning to awareness (non-separate self). The key is to stop thinking. 

(Cf.) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014NYEP04