Stop Your Spiritual Search: The Mind Itself Is Enlightenment

Seeking Enlightenment Prevents It

Every serious spiritual seeker understands that actively seeking enlightenment will actually push you further away from it.

If you didn't know this, you're probably just not serious about it.

Ordinary people seek fame and money, while spiritual people do the same, but they seek spiritual experiences and ways to be more spiritually advanced than others. This is neither good nor bad, but understanding how our mind works is important, especially if we are on a spiritual path. Whenever we crave something that isn't present in this moment, we are projecting an idea of a better moment onto the current moment. This itself will make it impossible for you to attain enlightenment.

The Addiction to a Better Moment

Buddha said that desire leads to suffering.

When we desire anything, it implies that we are not content with the moment as it is. Instead of accepting the reality of the current moment, we fantasize about a different moment and think we will be happy once it arrives. However, once that different moment arrives, we are already thinking about yet another moment. 

If we were able to enjoy a moment we once dreamed about, now that it's here, we wouldn't have dreamed about it in the first place; we would have enjoyed the moment back then. Since we didn't have the ability to enjoy the moment back then, why would we suddenly be able to do so now, even if it's a moment we once dreamed about?

Can you remember a time when a "dream" came true, but instead of feeling extremely happy, you felt disappointed? Perhaps you felt disappointed because you intuitively knew that this wasn't it. Maybe you were projecting happiness and fulfillment onto this moment, but now that it's here, you don't feel that way because it didn't actually change anything. At least, it didn’t change your inner addiction to seeking a better moment. And this addiction to a better moment is what most spiritual seekers are completely ignorant about. I get it, since I’m a spiritual seeker too.

Once we become disappointed with the material world and the illusion that we are separate beings born to die, we can't help but shift our focus to a more true and holistic worldview. Every mature soul will go through this process, but this is also the moment where we need to pay special attention. Often, when we shift our focus from an impermanent material worldview to a transcendent one, we carry the mindset of the temporary material world with us into our spiritual journey.

One hallmark of a material worldview is that we think in terms of gain and loss. And now, although we have become “spiritual,” we continue to think in these terms. Instead of fantasizing about material things, we simply replace those images with spiritual ones. 

So, nothing has truly changed, and the enlightenment we expect will never happen since it's only a fantasy based on our materialistic thinking.

Huang Po’s Profound Truth: The Dharma Is Your Mind

My favorite Zen Master, whose name was Huang Po, said: "When people hear that all Buddhas transmit the Mind Dharma, they fantasize that there is a special Dharma they might attain. They then try to use the Mind to find Dharma, not realizing that this very Mind is the Dharma and that the Dharma is this very Mind."

I can remember the first time I held his book in my hands and read it. I was traveling to London, and as I read the first few pages, it became clear to me that whether I continued reading or not wouldn't make any difference. This book simply couldn't offer anything to my ego. The main message was "don't seek," but not in a way that romanticizes the outcome of not seeking anything. No, it’s way more harsh than that. It made it clear to me that there is nothing to be sought in the first place. However, although it didn't initially excite me, I kept reading the book and was astonished and shocked by his message and the way he communicated it. My personal opinion is that he was the greatest Zen Master of all time, and if I could only keep one spiritual book, it would be his.

So let’s go back to his quote.

“When people hear that all Buddhas transmit the Mind Dharma, they fantasize that there is a special Dharma they might attain. They then try to use the Mind to find Dharma, not realizing that this very Mind is the Dharma and that the Dharma is this very Mind.”

What he is essentially saying is that once we hear about enlightenment from a Buddha, an enlightened person, we start fantasizing about it. Then we try to seek this enlightenment, but we don’t realize that we are already enlightened. He equates enlightenment, what he calls the Mind Dharma, with our own mind. So, the place from which we are seeking is already the place of enlightenment. So rather than trying to reach a special place or a special state of mind, we should realize that it's not about that, but about the mind that is actually seeking these experiences. We use our minds to find enlightenment, but we don't realize that enlightenment means recognizing that this very mind itself is what's being realized.

This mind is already enlightened. It always has been and always will be. If we dream up an idea of what enlightenment looks like, who is going to actually experience it?

Any idea we come up with is just a projection; it's how we imagine enlightenment to be. However, this also implies that it's not here now, and only once we have the experience, will it be here.

This means it’s an impermanent experience we are thinking about since it can appear and disappear. "It's not here now, but hopefully, it will be here in the future." Since this is an impermanent and limited experience, it can't be the ultimate truth.

According to Zen Master Huang Po, instead of looking for an experience that might arrive in the future, we should examine the very mind itself that is seeking this experience. He says that this very mind itself is the Truth. This mind with which you can recognize these words is already the enlightened mind. That's why you move further away from it the more you seek something that isn't here.

Stop Seeking

Sure, since everything you can become aware of is an expression of this enlightened mind, please don't take it too seriously and divide the universe into enlightened mind and everything else. Every idea or feeling you have is an expression of this enlightened mind, and even the universe itself is an expression of this enlightened mind.

Therefore, you don't have to seek any special state of mind or anything else you expect enlightenment to look like.

You are already this very mind.

You might now be asking yourself, "Okay, how do I move from my seeking mind to just accepting my mind as the enlightened mind itself?"

"How can I move away from seeking?"

It's very subtle, but maybe you've got it. Please pay close attention right now, as this is really important. If you are asking yourself how to move from seeking to non-seeking, this itself is seeking. If you want to be enlightened, that's seeking. If you want to stop seeking, that too is seeking.

What can you do?

Anything I might say right now could and will be used by you to seek something, even if it's a method not to seek. Now you might better understand what I meant when I discussed the book by Huang Po before, saying that reading it or not wouldn't make a difference at all.

This is the very place we want to reach with our spiritual practice. Becoming completely still, like vast, empty space. Since we are already this very enlightened mind, there is nothing to do and nowhere to go.

Maybe you are confused or disappointed by now. I know, this message doesn't make our egos feel confident, spiritual, or anything of that sort. And this is exactly why it is so powerful, especially if you are serious about your spiritual path.

All the best, your friend of the way. Bye.