Mastering the Core Teachings of Buddha - An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book

While our direct perception of reality will depend on our practice and insights, any attempts at directly promoting similar insights in others will be greatly helped or hindered by what people think of us, whether or not we are given some title, whether or not a lineage accepts us as a teacher in that lineage, and whether or not the concepts and language we use to describe and sell our realization fit in with the cultural expectations and norms of our social circles. Further, there are those who falsely think they are enlightened because someone else thinks they are, and plenty of people on senior teacher lists that probably shouldn’t be there.

One way or another, it is worth examining our deepest beliefs regarding the social implications we imagine will occur when we get enlightened or more enlightened. These can have a big impact on our practice, our motivation to practice, and what kind of successes and failures we have in spreading insights around once we have insights ourselves. Unfortunately, most of our beliefs are likely to be somewhat unrealistic, springing from the understandable human need for 319

Models of the Stages of Enlightenment

recognition, role, and social status. Again, the further we find our dreams from our current reality, the more we need to look at what is happening right now, with those dreams and needs being one small part of the transient, causal sensations that are arising and vanishing.

Stated in practical terms and by way of example, you could be a foreign medical grad that had trained well in some foreign school, completed a good foreign residency, be perfectly qualified to practice from the point of view of knowledge, experience and talent, and yet not be allowed to practice in the United States until you had jumped through all the hoops. The same problem can arise when people go outside of a tradition or partially outside it and yet do very good insight work. They have the knowledge but not the social designation. Like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz who lacks a diploma, those who are enlightened who have not gone through standard channels can run into problems. That said, it also gives the freedom to speak out without worrying about those channels liking what you say, and there is much about the standard channels to speak out about.

I myself exist in a gray area like this, as do many modern teachers. I have accomplished much using the techniques of the Theravada, a tradition that explicitly says that only monks can know what I know and usually only recognizes monks as lineage holders. This is a cultural and social problem, and highlights the truth embodied in the social models.

I suspect there will be a lot more of this as the dharma moves into the modern era and more people are successful. We need to come up with solutions to this problem that neither artificially elevate people nor artificially prevent them from sharing what is they know that is of benefit to others.

THE THREE YANAS

While I am generally a die-hard fan of the Theravada, I have a great appreciation for much of the rest of Buddhism and the world’s other great mystical traditions. In that spirit, I offer the following. Traditional Tibetan training is broken down into Three Yanas or vehicles: the Hinayana, the Mahayana and the Vajrayana. These correspond very nicely to the needs of practitioners at various stages of the Simple Model presented above.

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Models of the Stages of Enlightenment The Hinayana is a set of techniques and practices that closely resembles many of the traditional trainings of the Theravada, and these are often confused for this reason. (There are some historical relationships between the two that I do not wish to go into.) The Hinayana’s emphasis is on basic morality, stabilizing the mind, and looking into the Three Characteristics, i.e. all of the fundamental practices and emphases that I mentioned in Part I. It is designed to get a person to the first stage of awakening, i.e. first path, which the Tibetans would call third path in the Tibetan Five Path Mode, or attaining the first bhumi.

Getting to the next stage of the simple model or third path involves a deep appreciation of interconnectedness in real time and a willingness to surrender to it. The Mahayana path provides methods for

understanding this in abundance with its strong emphasis on helping others and on the intrinsic emptiness (“shunyata”) of phenomena. The Bodhisattva Vow, a fundamental part of the Mahayana path, not only expresses a deep willingness to surrender to and understand

interconnectedness, but its emphasis on not becoming a full buddha can help people get away from the temptation of purely future-oriented goals and grandiose visions of perfection that can still be quite a challenge at this stage.