Making the connection: “Enlightenment and the Cosmic Joke”

This story began long before I was born, and since I wasn’t there when it happened, I am unable to give you the actual testimony of what was, and if it had happened at all. The Legend however, has it — that at the moment of Buddha’s Enlightenment, he was sitting under a Banyan tree.

I wasn’t aware of this until recently, even though I’m all about the ultra spiritual stuff and such. When I did find out about it, it was in the most peculiar way because it was from a Ukrainian guy, who went to Thailand for New Year’s. I don’t know all that much about him, but from what I’ve seen, he’s into yoga and possibly martial arts — very zen seeming kind of dude.

I say it was peculiar, because I also live in Ukraine now, and I was just laughing so hard at the thought that he had to go way over to Thailand, when there’s a whole lot of friendly trees right here that are so easy to connect with and I absolutely adore them.

It made me think of how we get to the most distant places looking for things that are mostly under our very noses at all times, in our inability to be Present with what is. To sit still is transcendence, contrary to restlessness and business and pursuit of this idea that it is elsewhere. Whatever it is. That there’s elsewhere we need to be. And it’s also slightly ironic, because I believe the joke’s on his guy. Not to say that we aren’t allowed to admire different aspects of creation or even to have preferences. But I only imagine Buddha coming to these very conclusions in the moment of Epiphany, in the quietness of totality of his Presence — that whatever he was trying to find was already there — and then seeing this guy doing the exact same thing in trying to pursue the very Path that’s under his feet.

For that matter,five minute walk, away from my house, I find myself in a park filled with trees that have the kindest and joyous of spirits, and even though I don’t necessarily hug them, their energy is always so welcoming and warm.

So at that time, in my Facebook feed, appeared this guys post in which there was a picture of him in front of a Banyan tree, and the caption (for obvious reasons, but yet unknown to me) was saying something like “Banyan — Tree of Wisdom and Enlightenment”. As much as I understand the fact that every creature is unique in it’s own right, and there's certainly qualities attributed to every vibration — that have a specific purpose and so to speak, contribute something specific to our experience, on my mind was something else entirely.

First of all, I thought about the extraordinary connections I was able to make with trees in Ukraine, and for the lack of information it made no sense to me that one tree could be labeled as special, chosen over so many others pretty remarkable trees. Then, it also made little to no sense to me, with everything I’ve witnessed in my life, and Divinity that I was able to experience, how much of an oversight would be to become that exclusive, when it’s literally everywhere.

So I commented. His response was a picture of Buddha sitting under a Banyan tree, and then it started making more sense, as to why the captions were like that. But the rest of it...nah.

Let alone the exclusivity in terms of excluding everything in favor of a preference, but there’s also this significant bit of exclusiveness to the overall orchestration of journey in favor of singularity of a moment. Buddha did not become enlightened because he sat under a tree. I’m not sure if that should be too much of a surprise.

There’s no such thing as “Moment of Enlightenment”. There’s the Path of Enlightenment and moments of Epiphany. Many, many moments in which the sum of our life experiences reaches a peak, a spiritual orgasm. To say that there is the Moment of Enlightenment, is to deny the magnificent orchestration that brought to it and never ceases to provide more substance. To think of existence of the moment, One single moment in isolation from all the others, is to put a restriction on the Infinity itself.

However, there is a question of limitation when it comes to human perception and it amazes me the way it extends to quite simple things. We could debate that the real reason behind Buddha choosing Banyan to sit under, could be the fact that the tree itself is able to provide cool shade in the midst of a hot summer day. It could easily have been any other tree. He became enlightened because of variety of countless things happening previously, that enabled him to have this experience of consciousness expansion. He reached a place within himself. Not what was made obvious to the viewer. We’re so easily mislead by what we can see.

Remember that any potential viewer would be witnessing the occurrence from a limited perspective. It’s the very moment in which limitation of the human perception intersects with the expanding consciousness of Buddha’s condition. Even if there were people who witnessed the course of his life, they would know nothing about the shifts in the consciousness experiences were continuously igniting, to eventually lead up to that moment. Would he be able to clearly communicate that? Would he even bother to try?

I have a wild guess that Buddha would find this funny as much as I do, all the while thinking something like: “Oh that’s what you think it was? If I was able to sit under several trees at the same time, it wouldn’t be so misleading. Be careful not to miss wood for the trees.”

But you see, perception is mostly an entertaining speculation. Otherwise I wouldn’t much rely on wisdom of such a conceited tree.

What do you think?

And just for the record, I don’t know why this guy got so upset when I said Buddha had only one ass. I seriously thought he knew.