Wed, 03 Mar 2010
Innate Enlightenment
If enlightenment is ours already, then why do we need to practice? Here's an analogy I've used before. If a jeweler is carrying a bag of gems and they fall out of the bag into the mud, he won't leave a single one of them behind or think that they've lost a single penny of their value. But he won't sell them until every last speck of dirt is removed from the gems. Practice is like washing the mud from the gems. Until the dirt is gone, the sprkle of the gems isn't seen. But the gem is always a gem, the act of removing the dirt deosn't make it a gem. Enlightenement is innate. It is not special ability we develop through practice. When we remove all our misconceptions, all our mental tics, we will discover nothing more than what we've always been. But that will be enough.
