This week on Integral Spiritual Center....
After Enlightenment, What's the Point? - Gabriel Nossovitch/Ken Wilber
What Integral Brings to Buddhism - Patrick Sweeney
After Enlightenment, What's the Point? (audio)
In this week’s featured
audio, Gabriel Nossovitch asks: if who we are is empty, formless
ground, why should we do anything about the world of form? Why should
we care about the evolution of consciousness or awareness? Why should
we pay attention to the impulse to awaken others? After enlightenment,
what’s the point?
Ken Wilber points out
that this is actually a very old paradox, a sort of koan through the
ages, which usually goes something like this: “There are no others to
save; therefore I vow to save them all.” Gabriel’s question comes
after ten years of deep practice; most people who’ve had a taste of
satori eventually come to the same question.
Taking an Integral
view of the evolution of enlightenment can be very helpful here. As
has been often noted, spiritual practice seems to have the universal
purpose of fostering states of consciousness. While the
practices vary by tradition, the states themselves are remarkably
similar, East and West. Both Vedanta and Vajrayana, for instance,
posit five distinct states. The first three states are gross, subtle,
and causal, all associated with the world of form. The fourth state, turiya
(literally, Sanskrit for “fourth”) is the Witness of all form. Whereas
the first three states (all experienced in the Upper-Left quadrant) all
have corresponding energetic bodies (in the Upper-Right quadrant), the
fourth state is associated with the space in which everything arises.
The traditions birthed during the great Axial age (800-200 BCE) tended
to have this state as their endpoint. Their practices usually involved
witnessing all objects until attachment itself was exhausted, and
grasping and identification dehydrated. And at that endpoint, radical,
infinite, intelligent darkness, subtle bliss, Nirvana….
Of course,
consciousness—and with it, enlightenment—continued to evolve. Led by
Plotinus in the West and Nagarjuna in the East, the growing tip of
consciousness pushed through turiya to a fifth state, turiyatita
(literally, “beyond fourth”). This is the classic nondual state, in
which the Witness merges with everything witnessed. The Heart Sutra
says it beautifully:
Or, from Vedanta:
In these paths, what
arises is seen not as a distraction, but rather, as an ornament, and
not as deficiency, but as abundance. As Gabriel puts it, “let form be
forming.” And that is precisely the reason to come back. If
enlightenment is indeed the nondual union of the Absolute and the
relative, then of course, in an Absolute sense, nothing needs to be
done. But in a relative sense (and the nondual transcends and includes
the relative!), there are countless sentient beings living in a
nightmare. We are given this precious human birth, and there is more
to be done than we possibly can do in this precious human lifetime.
Or, as Jack Kornfield memorably put it, “after the ecstasy, the
laundry….”