enlightenment book

I have come across an interesting book partly about enlightenment called "The Buddha is still teaching Contemporary Buddhist Wisdom". It is a compilation of writings from many authors from different spiritual traditions selected and edited by Jack Kornfield.

Most people who come to this blog won't be from the Buddhist tradition but the first of the two quotations applies to everyone who is interested in enlightenment.

p 201 BECOMING ENLIGHTENED

Before becoming enlightened you just think that you are here and things that are not you are over there, and you are unable to take even one step out of a dualist world. Experience enlightenment, even shallow enlightenment, and you naturally understand that the thought of "objects over there" is completely mistaken - you have opened your eyes on a world where the totality is yourself. This is enlightenment.

Taizan Maezumi in The Hazy Moon of Enlightenment: Part of the On Zen Practice Collection, by Taizan Maezumi and Bernie Glassman

I think that this quotation sums up what enlightenment is. It is nothing more than this. The second quotation tries to take it further and comes to a wrong conclusion. At one time I would have believed it but I don't now.

p 205 NIRVANA

The word nirvana ... means extinction of thirst and the annihilation of suffering. Buddhist masters teach that within each of us there is always a fire. Sometimes this fire is quietly smoldering; other times it is raging out of control. This fire is caused by the friction of duality rubbing against itself, like two sticks. This friction is generated by me (as subject) wanting other (as object) and the interaction between the two. This ever-present friction that irritates us blazes up into the fires of suffering. When we realize emptiness and perfect oneness with all, the fires of duality go out. When even the embers themselves are cool, when conflicting emotions are no longer burning us - this is nirvana, the end of dissatisfaction and suffering. This is liberation; this is bliss; this is true freedom. 

The freedom from craving spoken of by the Buddha is an inconceivable inner peace, a sense of at-one-ness and completion. 

The lasting happiness the Buddha speaks of does not mean having no personality or passion. Desirelessness means lacking nothing. Consider this possibility ... for your life.

Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World