You’ll Never “Get” Enlightenment

What does it mean to become something or to get something?

“I want to become enlightened.”

“I want to get more clarity and compassion.”

But can we really become or get anything?

Everyone who has studied Buddhism knows that ignorance and craving or wanting lead to suffering.

Becoming enlightened, however, will destroy our ignorance, and suffering will stop. Instead of losing ourselves wanting many things—like money, a partner, or whatever—we accustom ourselves to only wanting one thing: truth, freedom, insight, realization.

Unlike a river branching off into many streams, losing its power, we become more centered and focused by putting our energy into only one stream: the desire to know ourselves. Who am I?

We want to get enlightenment. 

But what does it mean to get enlightenment—or really, to get anything? A form appears in one moment and disappears in another moment. This form can be something we consider material, like a car or a house, or it can even be something subtle, like an insight or realization. Since everything that can appear will also disappear—because that’s just the law of impermanence—how can we even speak of “getting” something?

If you “get” something, this usually means you have it. But what does this mean? You could die the next moment, and you and the thing you got will be gone. Okay, let’s say the imagined you will be gone—not who you really are, since this has never been born.

When we speak about getting something, we already consider the basis of our reality as a given thing. If we are not clear about who we are and what this is, how can we jump forward and claim something?

Even the concept of “getting something” is only a concept that we learned from the relative world. It doesn’t make any sense. How can reality get something from reality? The only thing that can happen is that something appears and later disappears.

Maybe there is the experience of something appearing, then the thought “I got it, finally,” and then there will be an experience of it—or of us—disappearing.

It’s as if we are watching a movie, and during the movie, we as the viewers claim that we got the nice car that is parking on the screen. But then the scene will change—and where is the car now? The same is true for our life.

When we get something in one moment, we’ll lose it in the next moment. That’s just how impermanence works—how experience works. And the funny thing is, we are right in the middle of it, and although we don’t even know what the hell is going on, we claim that we can get something. 

We don’t know anything about it. We don’t know who we are, why we are here, what all of this is—nothing. Everything we think we know is just borrowed from an imaginary reality.

Imagine you are creating a computer game. You come up with a virtual reality, and you place a non-player character into it. Then you program this character in a way where they think that they can get something from this virtual reality. Maybe you even build a meaningful story into it—maybe the character thinks it’s real, that it exists, and that life has meaning and purpose and that they can get it somehow. This character will probably exhaust itself doing what it’s programmed to do, without even knowing anything about what’s really going on. And then we just turn off the computer game. What happened to this character, or to the things it got? Maybe it’s the richest character in this game, maybe it’s the most enlightened character in this game—but now, what?

When you practice meditation and you become aware of a thought, a wanting, that says “I want to get enlightenment,” immediately let it go. You don’t know what “I” is, you don’t know what “getting” is, and you really don’t know what “enlightenment” is—otherwise you wouldn’t need to seek it.

So, what are you looking for?

All you have is right now—only this moment.

Let go of everything you want from this moment, and just ask yourself, “What is this?”

If you don’t know what THIS is, talking about getting something or losing something is just fantasy.

Zen only points to THIS moment.

This moment is already it. This moment is already infinite, this moment is already beyond every concept and idea we have. This moment already has everything, but at the same time, it already has nothing.

And if you now think, “Ahhh, I get it,” you are already lost again.

Just give up all of your ideas about this moment. What is this?

If you make any assertion about it, you are already holding onto something that is impermanent by its nature.

Only this moment is important—let go of everything else that you brought with you.

Let go of any ideas or speculation about what this moment is. Let go of it and see directly for yourself: What is this?

All you have is only THIS moment.

All the best.

Your friend of the Way. Bye.