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.
Be just this pillar, be still, 
