No Swimming in the Mirage!

The first stage of reaching enlightenment is to enter the stream. But what stream are we talking about? Is it not the thought-stream of a buddha? And what is the thought-stream of a buddha? It’s a stream of enlightened consciousness. But enlightened consciousness, of course, is nondual. It has no beginning and no end. So once you enter that stream, is there any shore to go to on the other side? And when you realize there is no shore on the other side, you also realize there’s no shore on your side, and you have always been in this stream because there’s nothing else but this stream.

And so what is the stream of consciousness that is the Buddha Mind, that one enters when one takes up the sadhana of this path? It is the realization that the world is an illusion, a dream, and one no longer enters into that dream. One doesn’t believe in it—one loses all interest in it. And all of the thought-stream of the ego that is not in nonduality, that is not Buddha-Mind, but is pure delusion, one will not enter into.

So the first stage of the realization of the truth of the Buddha Nature is already simply the Buddha Nature. And so the first stage is already the last. But does anyone ever enter the first stage? Because already when you’re in that stream, you realize you are never out of it, and you don’t exist except as the Buddha Nature, not someone who goes, “Aha! There’s the Buddha Nature! I’m going to jump in that stream and get enlightened!” It doesn’t work that way. But the realization is that you have never been anything but that, and only this is truly entering the stream. So that’s the Sotapanna.

Now he goes on:

“’Subhuti, what do you say? Would it be right for a Sakadagami,’”—that’s the second phase—‘”to think like this, I have attained the fruit of a Sakadagami?’ Subhuti said, ‘No, no, World Honored One. And why is this? The Sakadagami means the once-returner.’”

What it means is you have become so high in your consciousness that you’ve only got to come back one more lifetime. You’re that close—one lifetime away from Buddhahood. Not bad, right? That’s the Hinayana approach. But of course, obviously if you have any pride that you are one lifetime away, you’ve just put yourself a thousand lifetimes away because there’s no ego in that state, right? So:

“’Sakadagami means the one who is a once-returner, and yet, in truth, there’s no such thing as returning. This is why it is called a Sakadagami.’”

How can you return if you were never here in the first place? And what is there to return to if you can never leave it? And this has to be understood. It has to go so deeply into your bones that you get this, that there is no doubt of it, and there is no trace of an ego that doesn’t get it. No fragments dissociated out there who still want to hold on to the belief that you’re a separate individual being in a world, and you have a biological family, and you’re in a capitalist system, and you need to succeed, and make money and prove yourself ,and get status and prestige, and you want to make sure you’re not lonely, and you want to cling to somebody who’ll take care of you, and blah, blah, blah. All of those delusions have nothing to do with the Buddha Nature, which is pure nonduality, and free of all conditions, and free of time and space, and every kind of fantasy or delusion of attaining anything whatsoever in the world, because there is nothing to attain, and there is no world.

It’s all just a dream, and the dream is about to be over and there will be the awakening into the Real that is world-less, but that is already the truth. So if there’s any ego about wanting to attain liberation, or enlightenment, or freedom, then you haven’t reached the point where that is close.

OK, he goes on:

“’Subhuti, what do you say, would it be right for an Anagami to’”—that’s not monogamy by the way, that’s Anagami, meaning one—well—“’to think that I have attained the fruit of an Anagami?’ And Subhuti says, ‘No, World Honored One. Why is this? Anagami means a never-returner, one who will not come back.’”

(This is it. You’re going to be liberated in this lifetime.)

“‘And yet, in truth, there’s no such thing as never returning, and this is the reason it is called Anagami.’”

So even if you realize now the truth of all of this, and recognize that there’s no one to be reborn, there’s no reincarnation, because you’re not incarnated, but if there’s still an ego thought that “I am someone who has attained this realization”, you’ve lost it. No one can possess this. No one can own it. No one can say, “I get it.” The moment you say, “I get it, and why don’t those others get it?”—it means you’ve lost it entirely. Any kind of pride, any kind of superiority that you know something that others don’t know because of all the inner work you’ve done, and all the sessions you’ve had ,and all the understanding you have of your past delusions and fears, and all that, none of that will matter and all you’ll do is create more karma if you take some credit for having achieved something, because that’s the delusion. And that is what causes ego to fester, and create envy, and desire to be adored and recognized, and validated, and all of the detritus of the ego that follows upon the thought that “I get it.”

OK.

“Subhuti, what do you say? Would it be right for an Arhat to think like this, ‘I have attained the path,’”—or I would say the truth—“‘of an Arhat?’”

“No, World Honored One. And why? There is no Dharma called Arhat. World Honored One, if an Arhat were to think, ‘I have attained the path of an Arhat,’ he would be clinging to self, to being a human, to sentient being, and to having a soul.”

So Arhat is a word for, in the Hinayana lineage, of one who has attained Nirvana. And in that state then, not only doesn’t return to a life here, but won’t go to lives in other dimensions, whether it’s demonic planes, or hell realms or divine heavenly realms—no, you’ve blown out the candle, and you’re in Nirvana—there’s no trace of anyone to be reborn anywhere. But as soon as you have the thought, “I’ve got to that point,” of course, you’re back in total delusion.

So it seems that what is being gotten at by this section of the sutra is that even enlightenment is a fantasy, and of course, that’s what Gaudapada also said; all of Mahayana Buddhism is just an elaboration of the Ajatavada tradition, or doctrine, or realization, that Ramana reached and taught. It’s the same. The Ajatavada, the famous lines of Gaudapada: “There is no bondage and no liberation.” Here, there’s no Samsara and no Nirvana. There’s no enlightenment, there’s no delusion, because delusion is unreal and so is enlightenment, because no one achieves it. It’s not a phenomenological state, it’s not a shift in consciousness that belongs to someone. It is the end of the illusion of someone somewhere achieving anything.

Audio File: No Swimming in the Mirage! – Audio File.mp3