Brief and Rude Reflection on Enlightenment and Hemorroids

I enjoyed the comments to my last post about Zen priests (whoops, “practitioners,” I mean) although I never expected so many on that topic. Go figure. 

The issue of enlightenment (or kensho or satori or my personal favorite, verification) experiences has been kicked around again over on Brad Warner’s Hardcore blog (with many hundreds of comments), James Ford’s Monkey Mind and beyond. 

Brad tends to kick such things down. James tends to kick them up. I’m with my buddy James on this one.

Simply and personally put, verification experiences have been very important for me.  Never the end of the road but pointers to the work that might be done.

“Seeing that there’s nothing to do, rolling up our sleeves and going to work,” said Gary Snyder, I believe.

Without them, Buddhism is just another belief set with people yabbering on in idle speculation – a virtual hemorrhoid support group (whether it be composed of Zen teachers or students) for those who have pristine assholes (my regrets for the questionable metaphor!). 

Of course, there are issues with verification experiences, like how they’re all transitory too, how we can get all greedy and stupid while chasing after them, and how we can get hung up on them and all high and arrogant. Oh, and how we can’t control their depth or frequency and that’s a pisser.

Yeah, well, those complaints also apply to lots of wonderful things, like love and paychecks, but we somehow learn to work through the kinks.

Here’s a talk by a Zen teacher I like a lot, Genjo Marinello, “Mu and Impermanence,” (click here and go to #5) that says it very much like I see it.

And, hey, find out for yourself (and confirm it with a teacher who knows such things) if you haven’t already and don’t get distracted or despondent or nihilistic by listening to people who talk about hemorrhoids but haven’t suffered them.