Monthly Wisdom from Aroter

Sometimes people ask me why I get so caught up in things - why I care about ‘enlightenment’ and don’t just get on with things. Like this (what follows is an excerpt from an article on non-conceptuality by Ngak’chang Rinpoche):

I have some friends who seem like being spontaneous; and they ask me sometimes why I need to concentrate so much on how everything is, instead of just getting on with things and doing things, and I think if one of them were sitting in this room hearing us talk about, you know, letting awareness ride on our experience, and this sort of thing, I mean that would be, to them, an extraordinarily complicated, sort of double-dualistic way of behaving - when they just simply do something… Is this because my friends are more enlightened than me, or am I misunderstanding the..?

I never really have an answer for that. I say things like, “I’m obsessed”. But that is really simplistic. I always feel a little uncomfortable with that answer - because I realize that I am not getting accross something - I am not being clear. People think, ‘whatever happens, I am fine’, but then they walk in the front door and their parakeet has fallen into a boiling pot. “OH WHAT HAVE I DONE! OH NO, Sweet Tweeeeeeeeeeeeeet!”. Then it is all kinds of problems, ‘why am I so upset? I thought I was better now? I thought I had it figured out.’

Anyway, here’s the answer to the question above:

[laughs] I have met people who have been quite surprising in a lot of ways. I think people who just get on with things - who simply live life with verve and enthusiasm are much to be admired - especially if they are relaxed, care-free, kindly, generous, tolerant folk… I think that with a certain amount of narrowness you can get by… At the narrowed off end of the spectrum, it is easy because questions just do not occur. For a lot of people it remains easy until tragedy hits… and then… they are hit really hard. So sometimes people who don’t question too much, appear to be very worked-out… until… they come back home and find some horrendous thing happening in their living room [laughs]: their partner is making out with their best friend; their father’s been eaten alive by the goldfish; or their family get killed in an accident; or…

This really is just a tangent in the conversation. The bone of the article is that thinking is not necessarily ‘dualistic’. An enlightened person is not bereft of the ability to think. But there is a context, the context of Shine, in which we experience a mind free of concept. This, however, is not regarded as the goal, or the final state, of Buddhism.

Please read more of Ngak’chang Rinpoche’s conversation about non-conceptuality here.