We All Have Our Own Bodhi Tree

Under the Bodhi Tree, Prince Siddhartha Gautama was just sitting, in absolute silence. He lost any interest in any purpose whatsoever and gave up any desire of reaching awakening.

This is why we now have the Buddha.

Each of us has their own Bodhi Tree.

Any quest for understanding is a quest for liberation in disguise.
The same principle applies in the Buddha’s case. The need to understand conditioning/limitations arises in humans, not out of simple curiosity, of course, but out of the need for deconditioning. Unfortunately, we have this strange persistent determination: in our journey toward deconditioning, we create new mind patterns and so we add new layers of conditioning between us and the final liberation that we seek, always pushing it forward in a future that never comes.

We forget all the time that, by definition, the future never comes.

What actually could have happened to the Buddha?

First: A traumatic event: he crosses the threshold of the paradisiac, protective environment as he steps out of his comfort zone and acquires this straightforward visualization of illness, old age and death. These moments of despondency equate with the call to adventure, to a heroic endeavor, and with a new type of mindset, that is: a new type of conditioning.

Second: he accepts the challenge, starts questioning everything and leaves the protection of the environment, the mirage, the world of appearances and so he sets off for a seeking adventure that we all are very familiar with, because there are so many seekers around us and there is a seeker in each of us as well.

This is his philosophical and ascetical stage. During the quest, he becomes acquainted with all major philosophies of India and with all religious belief systems of his time. In addition, he gets along well in yoga practices.

Nevertheless, this is not the Buddha yet, this is only an exchange of IDs.

He just traded the illusion of a prince who is terrified by illness, old age and death for the life of renunciation. Not only did he see the appearances of suffering, but also, he found himself ensnared by the illusory powers of a monk, whose meditative demeanor would have seemed, back at the moment of his departure, as the only way out of suffering.

Illumination is now the last desire that he’s got left, an ardent desire that makes him push every spiritual practice beyond the limit. This is his new hope, his new dream and his new kind of expectation. Namely: the enlightenment that will happen sometimes, soon, in the future, as a result of renunciation and constant practice.

Henceforth, he exchanges the identity of a prince for the identity of a philosopher and a wondering monk. He is in this stage a seeker of enlightenment; he is seeking a state of mind where there is no suffering.

Now, don't get me wrong, this effort was necessary, like the training in the ballet. The movements in ballet seem effortless because there is such a great deal of effort behind, that is -all those years of hard work and exercise. Therefore, this need for understanding was a preparatory stage to both the Enlightenment and to the later doctrine of the Eightfold Path.

The last stage, under the Bodhi Tree, is that stage where the former prince Siddhartha and present mendicant leaves the vehicle behind: the seeking, the effort, the journey, the idea of a purpose, the idea of identity, the idea of idea, the need for understanding, the path itself.

He now comes to this realization:

How could there be a path, when there is no tomorrow?

I have come to realize that only when the human being that we know call the Buddha was able to give up the effort (the need to understand, to explain, to achieve awakening etc.), then and only then he actually awakened.

This supreme renunciation, which is giving up the desire to reach enlightenment, made him capable of looking at himself with an equal eye and in a state of utter equanimity. Prince Siddhartha, the monk, the philosopher, the Awakened One and "this body" and "emptiness" – they all are the same thing. In other words, he was able to assume each of these evanescent identities and, at last, to look at himself from the highest perspective, which is the radiant core of the consciousness of the entire Universe. This means that at this final stage he doesn’t care that much about any of these identities because, in essence, he comes to the realization that there is no identity whatsoever.

There is no clinging, no fear, no attachment, no duty and no identity, besides the functional-relational one. Of course, he remains fully aware that this is a human body, this is its masculine gender; this body must be fed and so forth. However, there is no subject of suffering anymore there to be found, there is no longer an "I" and no duality. The body is going to encounter pain, old age, illness and death, BUT there is a still point, a motionless place within, and he is now capable to seal off this center of pure awareness from any suffering, as the sense of the “I” has vanished. Nirvana is the pure and peaceful awareness that has remained after extinguishing the flame of the “I”.

There is no suffering anymore because there is no longer a sufferer.

This is what happened when the ego dissolved completely, as the need to reach Enlightenment was the last barrier between him and Enlightenment.

For both conventional and teaching reasons, he might have continued to act in the world in this or that way, but the sense that there is an "I" was no longer active in him, even when he would speak in first person, delivering sermons and so on.

The stage after the last stage: teaching - return journey and the necessity of a map

The Buddha did not follow and did not need the Eightfold Path for himself. He creates this kind of design in order to make this process of deconditioning accessible to others and I don't think that in creating this (let's say) therapeutic doctrine he has to struggle too much. It just pours out. He doesn't make any additional effort, the understanding is there, so complete, that the entire Universe is now speaking through his mouth. The effort is purely physiological: he just has to open up his mouth and speak.

The Buddha has ventured into uncharted waters by himself and when he later "returns" to the community, he draws up a map for the rest of the humankind. Therefore, we now think that the map is necessary, and there is a yonder shore. Nevertheless, for him, no map had been necessary and in the last stage of his quest, under the Bodhi Tree, he discovers that when the effort comes to a halt, the yonder shore is everywhere and everything. All this adventure of the Buddha was necessary maybe in order to prove that the center is everywhere.

The center is total awareness.

 We all have our own Bodhi-Tree

There is a tree of enlightenment for every one of us, waiting for us, ready for us, specially designed for us. We spend our entire lives running and running to get there and sit down under our own Bodhi Tree.

Eventually, we realize that it can’t be somewhere out there, but it’s in here and everywhere at the same time. There is no need to plan, to go or to run in order to grasp it sometimes in the future. We can give up the path altogether.

We just have to open up to the suchness of any given experience and thereby sanctify the place and the moment we are in.

Life sucks, dude, I should kill myself!!

 “We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy”

(Joseph Campbell)

 A text message of a good friend of mine reads: “Dude, this life is miserable&meaningless! Nobody needs me, really! I fail all the time, my life is a mess, and everything I do is useless. What purpose do I serve? What do I exist for? Life sucks, dude, I should kill myself!!”

I replied that life is meaningless, indeed. And I don’t want fool you around and tell you that there is still somebody who needs you: your wife, your husband, your kids and the like. No, they could make it somehow, even without you, should you be dead by tomorrow. There is always a solution, a replacement of some kind: a new husband, a foster parent, a shrink, a dog, a cat, a bottle of booze. A substitute for the “late” Nick or Jack or whatever your name was.

And God doesn’t need you either because there are so many people out there, more optimistic and trustworthy, than you, a more enjoyable and amusing crowd. God might have lost the count by now. And God must have got bored of millions of depressed middle aged fellows like you and might as well be manifesting as something new: as this suffering, which is here in order to wake you up - and entertain Him.

So, life is meaningless, that is: it has no outer purpose, no external aim. There is no final conclusion beyond life itself. But why should we bother, why should we carry this burden of a purpose? What if there is no purpose…? Why can’t we still enjoy a total meaningless life?

However, the last thing a resentful guy wants to do is letting go of his anger, this is the last piece of advice that he wants to hear: “You don’t need to listen to these silly thoughts, let go of this horrid veil that covers your eyes! You are not your thoughts; you are not your worries! Wake up!” I always try to make them figure out how toxic this veil of thoughts that lie to them all the time is. But people are very much attached to their unhappiness; they always want to perpetuate it. People become appendixes of sorrow, because they let themselves ensnared by sorrow, they simply give up and become walking sorrow. They become addicts. This is a terrible drug; it teaches your brains that you cannot live without sadness. It sounds so funny but it is all true.

Don’t mess with a guy’s misery; it’s his gold, his ring of power, his own, his “precious”!

But I have this terrible habit: I can't and I won't let people dream, I don’t want to let them sleep on their illusions and sometimes my company is not very pleasant… I often come across unhappy friends that failed this or that project and I feel compelled by compassion to wake them up. I realize all of a sudden that I must tell them the truth, no matter what. So I usually go like this:

“Don’t get into this trap again! Life is neither good nor bad. Life is beautiful, with all its apparent hostility…, it just has two aspects: the fascinating and the terrifying. But you can see it like this: it’s just tragic beauty, all of this never ending cycle of happy and sad stories. And tragic beauty is more than beauty; tragic beauty can be your experience of the sublime. It has this potential. And yes, you are right, I must admit this:  it’s very likely that life serves no purpose. Take a closer look at this never ending, tragic wheel of endless births and deaths; it seems to have no noble goal, no logical sense. Will you be able to celebrate this mystery of a life that still can be beautiful despite lacking any purpose? I think you are, because joy and peace are fundamental to human nature. You don’t need any reason to be peaceful. No goal, no achievement is necessary. Be joyful, no matter what, because the barrier between you and true joy is your care for achievement and your care for prestige. Let them also come naturally, if and when they come, but do not fight for them, don’t accumulate more inner tensions and inner conflicts! Look at all so called reasons, meanings and purposes for what they are: they are meant to give you illusory motivations to cling further to your suffering!”

A question should be asked now: are you able to live simultaneously in two dimensions- the plane of the eternal and the plane of time? Are you able to feel, somehow, that ever motionless place in consciousness where the eternal touches the transient, where is the “hub of the wheel” of your life experiences? If you say yes, you say yes to a life that is in fact a slaughter house, as all life lives on killing, but it is also a splendid garden. Don’t ask me why I feel that the same life energy rejoices in a new born baby and in a decaying corpse. I just know it does. The same mystery of life manifests itself in both birth and death. And this life that makes possible the birth of a child is the same life that takes away the vital energy from a dying man.

And this Life never dies. You are one with this Life.

Our life experiences are mere cherry blossoms. But their evanescence doesn’t deprive them of beauty, but on the contrary, evanescence enhances it. And as I said earlier in other words, tragic beauty is more than just beauty: it is the experience of the sublime. Of course, all of this depends on our vision, and not on the specific context or life situation or the story that we apparently are part of.

I should warn you, in full confidence, that this kind of therapy with a friend that tries to overcome a bout of depression doesn’t work all the time. Even when you tell a healthy, balanced person that all life is just like the beauty of a sunset, that is: total useless and evanescent, the guy can go berserk! Because a sunset is total meaningless, its’ beauty doesn’t serve any purpose, any reason whatsoever! What’s the meaning of beauty, what is its aim? It has no meaning, it has no goal and it doesn’t have to. It just is. And so are you. You don’t need any purpose, drop-off the burden of meaning!

But, again: don’t try this type of spiritual exercise and psychological counselling at home. Stay indoors and keep this post secret. Keep it safe. Do not share!:)