To the end of exposing the self-centredness bundled into the notion of 'personal enlightenment,' the quest can be imagined as hiking up a fairly steep, winding road to get to a mountaintop. It's a tortuous way up, but it'll be well worth it, one imagines, to get an amazing view over everything, a sense of immensity, a feeling of being on top of the world—ah! the pinnacle of spiritual endeavour. Persevering in spite of any and all difficulties, including much tedium, one eventually reaches the last turn in the road and—surprise! there on the summit is a huge car park and an enormous coach is slowly disgorging a lot of people in wheelchairs. Privately one feels a strange sense of disappointment because that view was for oneself alone. One desired the exhilaration of looking out from the top of the mountain, with the overview and the sheer aloneness that should have been there. Still, it was a bit churlish on the part of a spiritual seeker such as oneself to mutter a complaint. They're in wheelchairs, dammit! So it's a good thing that they get to enjoy the view. One turns to go, thoughtfully.
Another time maybe. Anyway, it's only a dream. In the meantime, it may be useful to bear in mind that 'Spirit' is already and always all the 'enlightenment' there could be, so that the seeker is an irrelevance. Oh, and 'Just find out how to put a stop to conceptual thinking.'*
*(Huang Po)
*(Huang Po)
