gradual versus sudden enlightenment

score:6

Accepted answer

There is no set, predictable pattern.

Yes, some attain gradually. Don't worry about gradualism too much though, just figure out how to Practice better and better, keep improving your Dharma knowledge. Your recognition that your mind is racing is the 1st step. (Most ordinary people are at step 0. They don't even know that their mind is hell.)

Yes, there are many cases of sudden enlightenment, and such people always had great amount of merit and past life cultivation and already had tremendous concentration power (2nd Training).

Read a Buddhist book. I suggest reading the articles here. Read Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha for the best hardcore introduction to Buddhism ever. It's free.

It's not as simple as force yourself to sit for 20 minutes twice a day and get enlightened...there is a lot to the whole Buddhist work and it is plain out stupid for someone to expect realization and get it. Realization is a type of non-attainment. Read the Diamond Sutra and Heart Sutra to start to understand this concept.

Also, unless you can focus your mind (the 2nd training) so well that you are absolutely clear and blissful (this happiness is happier than a constant o*g**m, jhana) the 3rd training (which involves "realization") is far far off.

Learn to concentrate first (2nd training).

You also have to learn how to meditate correctly or else you can meditate for 24/7 for 100 years and nothing will happen - no stilling of the mind, nothing, just racy mind getting worse and worse until you give up.

"Don't have hope for Enlightenment but Practice all your life." --Milarepa

Upvote:3

It all depends upon the personality & interpretation of teachings. Huineng got sudden enlightenment mere on listening to Diamond Sutra.

From here, in the words of the sixth patriarch Huineng.

"So far as the Dharma is concerned, there can be only one School. (If a distinction exists) it exists in the fact that the founder of one school is a northern man, while the other is a Southerner. While there is only one Dharma, some disciples realize it more quickly than others. The reason why the names 'Sudden' and 'Gradual' are given is that some disciples are superior to others in mental dispositions. So far as the Dharma is concerned, the distinction between 'Sudden' and 'Gradual' does not exist."

He further elaborated that interpretations also lead to sudden or gradual enlightenment,

"The teaching of your master," replied the Patriarch, "is for the followers of the Mahayana School, while mine is for those of the Supreme School. The fact that some realize the Dharma more quickly and deeply than others accounts for the difference in the interpretation. You may listen, and see if my instruction is the same as his. In expounding the Law, I do not deviate from the authority of the Essence of Mind (i.e., I speak what I realize intuitively). To speak otherwise would indicate that the expositor's Essence of Mind is under obscuration and that he can touch the phenomenal side of the Law only. The true teaching of Sila, Dhyana, and Prajna should be based on the principle that the function of all things derives from the Essence of Mind. Listen to my stanza:--
To free the mind from all impurity is the Sila of the Essence of Mind.
To free the mind from all disturbance is the Dhyana of the Essence of Mind.
That which neither increases nor decreases is the Vajra
(Diamond, used as a symbol for the Essence of Mind); 'Coming' and 'going' are different phases of Samadhi."

As a side note, Daosheng can also be a good reference to look into the matter.

More post

Search Posts

Related post