My living room. I’ve actually made a lot of progress, if “a lot of progress” means making my bed.
In the course of getting my undergrad degree, I took a class in Indian Buddhism. A lot of undergrads at Iowa did because it sounded cool and fulfilled the Eastern Studies requirement. I’ve forgotten the impassioned notes I scribbled next to passages in the textbook that summer, but I remember a little about Buddha’s enlightenment. Enlightenment is the Western translation of bodhi, which means “awakening.” Wikipedia says what the we understand enlightenment to be is “sudden insight into transcendental truth.”
I always imagined Buddha becoming enlightened in this searing, brilliant, sunshine-y moment, when he suddenly saw the world for what it is: temporal, finite, and indescribably beautiful. He saw that every single one of us is born and every single one of us must die, and every single one of us is important, and we hurt ourselves over and over and over but we don’t have to. I imagined him seeing the brilliance of roses and commuter trains and basically, it was all really intense and made him the Buddha. As I imagined all this, I could see why people take acid; I’ve heard it’s like what I’ve described, but I don’t know for sure because I’ve never taken acid.
But I don’t have to. Being back in Chicago after all this time, after thousands and thousands of miles, I swear I know at least 1% of the enlightenment experience.
I walked out into the alley behind my building this morning and the oil on the cement, the rumbling el overhead and the pigeons flapping away as it came, the smell of fresh dough coming from Lou Malnati’s, the crisp pre-snow air, the Columbia kids walking to class, the beep of the parking garage security bar going up across the street, the skyscrapers to the north, painted there just for me, all that metal and glass and the whole city was there, right there, and I was no longer in exile. I saw Chicago, my real home, as it really is: alive, temporal, suffering, perfect. I never knew pigeons could vibrate.
Words can’t express my joy. God, I missed you so much. I tried to do that thing where if you tell a lie long enough it becomes true. But my heart was buried in that alley and I had just enough honesty left to come back and scrape it out. Telling the truth is so easy but we cover it up, roll trucks over it, let snow fall on it, bury it. For what, though? Appearances? Fear? Impatience, I think, in my case. Surely, there’s something better than what I’m doing. Surely, there’s something else to see. Surely, if I don’t put down roots I can’t die, can’t grow moss. If I don’t admit I love a place so much it feels like part of my body, then if I lose it, or if it rejects me, it won’t hurt as much.
The definition of suffering in Buddhism is, essentially, being in one place and wishing you were someplace else.” For one second, for the first time in a long time, I really couldn’t tell you what suffering feels like.
The post Enlightenment: Easy appeared first on Mary Fons.