serendipity – the faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.
The concept of enlightenment still bogs me down. Yeah, I’m literate with all the second-hand descriptions by different spiritual traditions, accounts by modern lay people, and out-of-this-world tales from some forgotten time. But to their own admission, a number of those people became "enlightened" by chance, accident, or whatnot. Even those who pursued a dedicated spiritual practice and had glimpses of "enlightenment" proclaimed that there’s no effort to be done. Yeah right.
Yet there are also those who had dedicated their lives to the spiritual path, but still weren’t fortunate enough to get "enlightened." Oriental and Occidental sutras are filled with stories of criminals, prostitutes, and lay people who attained liberation through "chance" encounters with certain masters, or with no apparent causation at all. And there’s also the concept of Karma, and the Christian concept of Grace. Personally, I like this metaphor better: "enlightenment is an accident, meditation makes you more accident-prone." I wonder what other practices can make one accident-prone. But my question is: Why do we want to get enlightened? Who wants to get enlightened? I know I do. But who am I-I? Screw this, and THAT! It’s serendipity all the way up, all the way down.
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“It’s serendipity all the way up, all the way down.”
Yeah, I think so. Now is that terrifying or comforting? If it’s serendipity that I want to be enlightened at all… where’s the meaning in that? What am I?
M
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[...] Anyone who has taken a serious study and practice of meditation inevitably encounters a lot of paradoxes along the way, especially when it comes to the concept of enlightenment. Different schools of spirituality put different emphasis on how to view enlightenment. Some schools (e.g. nondual traditions, like Mahayana, Advaita Vedanta, Dzogchen) view enlightenment as an abstraction — a non-goal in which the emphasis is on the non-doing. While some schools (e.g. Theravada) view enlightenment as a path — complete with stages and models of development with emphasis on different strategies and techniques on how to get “there.” Early on I was confused by these two seemingly paradoxical approaches to enlightenment. But over the years I’ve grown comfortable to embrace the two contradictory views. In short, I’ve gotten used to the paradox. I no longer agonize over it. It’s still a paradox to me. But I prefer to view it as enlightenment by serendipity. [...]