How Long Will Enlightenment Come?

Part of enlightenment is letting go. When we decide to let go of our ambition, even ambition for being enlightened, then being enlightened is very possible. It is a mystery or a puzzle; how can we become truly enlightened without even trying? But when we ultimately realize and understand endlessness, and eternity, and endless endurance and eternal patience, when all hope is finally gone, when nobody is there to become enlightened anymore, and when we exist no longer, then being enlightened is capable of happening. Enlightenment could take a very long time, maybe as long as a lifetime, or a year, or perhaps in only a week, or maybe as long as it would take for a granite mountain to wear down to the ground by a fine veil brushing its tip once every hundred years as the Buddha proclaims, if you could maintain perfect mindfulness for 7 days. nnWhen we finally forget the very reason we began this whole search very long ago, and when we steadily stare at the stars for no reason at all, no purpose, then enlightenment may come. When we finally come to our realization that we will never ever become enlightened, when we know that deep down in our hearts that the one desiring true enlightenment is nothing more than just a figment of our imagination, less than just a speck in the universe, only then is real enlightenment be possible. We could never really reach enlightenment in the future because the future will always and forever be our nemesis. nnThere would never be eons toward being enlightened, or a year toward being enlightened; real enlightenment simply is. It has always been, always would be and we are all that—yes, we are all that right now. When all of a sudden everywhere becomes empty; with no one evolving. The evolution never began; it ended. All is, as it often has been and always should be. No endings and no beginnings, no sufferings no changes and no delusions. Now, with only the void now the comforting and everlasting void, where all is stillness in the chaos. Enlightenment could only be discovered in this priceless and valuable moment that interface between and divides the past and the future that is too impossible to perceive. nnAnd when time exists no more and experiences no longer exists and here we can find our eternity. Can a sharp knife cut itself—or could an eye see itself? Could an “I” thought become enlightened? Could we ever know and understand anything? Can we even understand these things with our minds? Shall we just give up or shall we pull back into the bottomless pit of the world and shatter our dreams? And if we really do, would we ultimately for the very first time see our universe and all its creatures. For what we really are, where we are no longer holding the world at arm’s length by something that does not exist not anymore confused by the world, because we are, actually the world? Are we the world or are we enlightenment---or is there any difference at all?