Spiritual Enlightenment

Damned peculiar. (Location 470)

“This is a very common error that’s found throughout the world’s teachings and religions,” I continued. “They’re often one hundred and eighty degrees removed from the truth. It’s the belief that if you want to be Christ-like, then you should act more like Christ; as if the way to become something is by imitating it. If you want to be an enlightened person, the thinking goes, you should act like an enlightened person. Utter nonsense, of course, but widely accepted. Once you’re able to recognize this fallacy, you’ll be amazed by how common it is. (Location 949)

Julie seems to have that ability to relax into the moment and let the universe do the driving. If there was a secret to happiness in life, I’d say that was it. (Location 1497)

This is the householder versus renunciate question. Anyone who wants to repackage enlightenment for mass consumption must first create the illusion that it’s comfortably within the consumer’s reach. It may be true that the price of truth is everything, but true don’t pay the bills. In the commercial model, the price of truth is whatever you can comfortably afford. (Location 1541)

questions be a joke? What are we, livestock? How can we do anything until that most fundamental of all questions is answered?” No one is leaping up to answer, least of all Brendan. “So, Brendan, if you’ll do the honors: What is the meaning of life?” (Location 1865)

“You’ve all heard the saying ‘When the student is ready, the teacher appears.’ Well, that means a lot more than just the mysterious arrival of gurus in a timely manner. It means that the knowledge you need will appear when you’re ready for it. The ability to open the next door is never denied, but the ability to open the door after the next is never granted. In this sense, you’ll have many, many teachers. In this sense, a passage from the Bible might be exactly the right thing at exactly the right time, but that doesn’t mean the entire Bible is the right thing all the time. Even the books and teachings I like the most I consider ninety-nine percent useless.” (Location 1909)

“But back to the original question: Wouldn’t an enlightened Zen master believe in Zen? Wouldn’t an enlightened Sufi believe in Islam?” “You’re talking about vehicles and destinations. Once one has arrived at the destination, the vehicle is discarded, forgotten. If I take a train to Chicago I get off the train and enjoy Chicago. I don’t drag the train around behind me. It did its job. I don’t need it any more. Of course, if one is going to turn back and help others with their journeys, then he would rely on the vehicle he knows.” (Location 2731)

point. “For instance, shame. The underlying cause of all shame is the deep and unshakable suspicion that I am an impostor. I sense the absence of true-self in myself, but not in others, so I naturally assume others to be real people and myself to be false. Seeing the outer shells everyone else has so convincingly erected and not knowing them to be hollow, I necessarily feel singularly fraudulent and, of course, shameful.” (Location 2776)

“We’re all afloat in a boundless sea, and the way we cope is by massing together in groups and pretending in unison that the situation is other than it is. We reinforce the illusion for each other. That’s what a society really is, a little band of humanity huddled together against the specter of a pitch black sea. (Location 2889)