“Oh, but this doesn’t happen anymore” he said dismissively, for all the world as though he was speaking to a silly child, “yes, Zen becomes more like a psychotherapy because this is what people want. No one can get enlightened anymore”.
“No one can get enlightened anymore” said a man who practiced zen for decades. Who sits in meditation every day, in front of an altar set up in his living room.
“No one can get enlightened anymore” said a men who, in every prayer, in every ceremony, repeats: I am the buddha. I am the dharma. I am the sangha.
“No one can get enlightened anymore”.
He said that and I cringed.
I cringed because …
Because I know that as he says – so it is. I know, if he doesn’t, that it is not the prayers, the chants, the formulas he mouths that create his reality, but that which he believes. That which he truly believes. And what he truly believes is that Zen doesn’t work and that no one can get enlightened anymore.
And so no one does.
