Nietzsche, Zen and Sudden Enlightenment.

In the spiritual life an intellectual understanding is not enough. People who have read many books on the subject might think they have a good understanding of Buddhism, but this is not enough. There must also be a definite spiritual experience, there must be a conversion, a tremendous change in our mode of awareness, our way of looking at things, and our way of behaving, for there to be any real spiritual life at all. Most of the time we are just acquiring intellectual information from external sources; there is no fundamental modification of the quality of consciousness itself. But it is this radical transformation in the mode of our consciousness which is the point of the whole exercise. There must be this turning about, even turning upside-down, or as Nietzsche says 'a transvaluation of all values' in which we see things not just in a slightly different way, but in a totally different way, with all our previous values reversed. We must be prepared even for that. And the turning about, this conversion, is sudden - that it takes place in an instant. Here we can see at once the connection with the Zen idea of 'Sudden Enlightenment'. Unfortunately it is still commonly taken to mean that you can get Enlightened easily and quickly, without any trouble at all. You just go along to the library, take out one or two books on Zen, read them, and hey presto! There you are! Conveniently forgetting that the books themselves say 'No dependence on words and letters'. Indeed, 'a book on Zen' is really an absolute contradiction in terms. Where there are books, there is no Zen - or one might say, where there is Zen, there are no books. At least, there is in Zen no dependence on books, no reliance upon them. Conversion, enlightenment, or satori, is sudden or only appears sudden because its coming about has been taking place at a different, deeper level, hidden from view.

You can read Sangharakshita’s thoughts and reflections on:
Nietzsche, Milton, Handel and artistic inspiration.
Nietzsche, Goethe and the enemy.
Nietzsche, Zen and Sudden Enlightenment.
Kant, the Buddha and the limits of reason.
The limits of space and time.
Baudelaire and awareness of others.
Spiritual friends.
Giving style to one’s character.
Anarchism.
Schopenhauer and the will to live.
Schopenhauer and aesthetic appreciation.
Mozart and pauses.
Mozart and the unpredictable.
Mozart and the concentrated mind.

[En français] [Auf Deutsch].

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Dernière mise à jour:
21 juillet, 2008.