enlightenment, now

I really do think that enlightenment is just a keystroke away, so to speak, for many of us. Some may need to do some preparatory work to clear their minds and their emotions, but once progress has been made in that area, they should be ready for enlightenment. Awakening to what is, and accepting wholeheartedly the inherent nature of this moment, is to live in the enlightened state. All that is required to do this is a clear mind that is free from overly strong attachments to one's emotions, one's past, and one's future.

Bob Rose made it into today's NDH on a related topic:

It is said that Buddha once indicated that if you have even just heard about the concept of Enlightenment, you are in the final 7 incarnations prior to Realization. He was a meditator right up to and including his last lifetime before Enlightenment. There is a concept that goes something like, "You are already Enlightened, and need not seek anything; you don't have to meditate, just look deeply at what is". Looking deeply at what is, is meditation. Don't be afraid to call it that, or be fearful of being a "seeker", or looking for or having a Guru, as if these things are something to be ashamed of. It's all a part of your spiritual evolution. And that has been going on for hundreds of thousands of lifetimes. Now, after millions of millenniums, you are in the last few hundred years of finally reaching your goal. And yes, you will then live happily ever after.

From Bob Rose, President,
Meditation Society of America
http:www.meditationsociety.com

good Osho, via yesterday's Highlights

The present is almost always a hell: you can prolong this hell only because of the hope that you have projected into the future. You can live today because of the tomorrow. You are hoping something is going to happen tomorrow -- some doors of paradise will open tomorrow. They never open today, and when tomorrow will come it will not come as tomorrow, it will come as today, but by that time your mind has moved again. You go on moving ahead of you: this is what dreaming means. You are not one with the real, that which is nearby, that which is here and now, you are somewhere else -- moving ahead, jumping ahead.

And that tomorrow, that future, you have named it in so many ways. People call it heaven, some people call it moksha, but it is always in the future. Somebody is thinking in terms of wealth, but that wealth is going to be in the future. And somebody is thinking in terms of paradise, and that paradise is going to be after you are dead -- far away in the future. You waste your present for that which is not: this is what dreaming means. You cannot be here and now. To be just in the moment seems to be arduous.

You can be in the past, because again that is dreaming -- memories, remembrance of things which are no more -- or you can be in the future, which is projection, which again is creating something out of the past. The future is nothing but the past projected again -- more colorful, more beautiful, more pleasant, but it is the past refined.

You cannot think anything other than the past: the future is nothing but the past projected again -- and both are not. The present is, but you are never in the present. This is what dreaming means. And Nietzsche is right when he says that man cannot live with the truth. He needs lies, he lives through lies. Nietzsche says that we go on saying that we want the truth, but no one wants it. Our so-called truths are nothing but lies, beautiful lies. No one is ready to see the naked reality.

This mind cannot enter on the path of Yoga because Yoga means a methodology to reveal the truth. Yoga is a method to come to a non-dreaming mind. Yoga is the science to be in the here and now. Yoga means now you are ready not to move into the future. Yoga means now you are ready not to hope, not to jump ahead of your being.

Osho