TOWARD A CONSTANT STATE OF BEING
The practice continues. It’s an unending process, the horizon boundless. I cannot say if there’s a point of complete enlightenment where there’s no need to return to the mat. Even the Patriarch had his practices. He would endlessly repeat the Great Dharani to himself, his lips moving almost imperceptibly. But to spend a long retreat spiraling ever deeper into the source of all things is extraordinarily beautiful.
It’s important that you get to the point where you’re able to practice solidly on your own, for however many months. Anything you attain is dubious. How to quantify these things? One of the real treasures is the rhythm established between long retreats and the reintegration into society. As the practice heats up, everything becomes polarized toward the Absolute. Kyol-che and Hae-jae, like day and night, awake and dreaming – the fury and heat of the Absolute surges through the framework of the day to day, shines through every facet, every turn, to the end of what we can endure – and again the furnace, until everything is hot. Like Rumi’s moth to the flame the life is all rapture and turning to the light, the emotion not like a feeling we commonly know, but coalesced into a constant state of being.
There are no limits to the path. What you’re able to reveal of this in your own life is ongoing. You can’t know when a breakthrough will occur, or how long it will take for the experiences to gestate. Only you can know when to commit yourself to a long retreat. A word of advice. If you are at your prime and able to sit well alone or with others – make a vow to attain enlightenment before the end of the retreat, and do it.
