Why is no one becoming enlightened now?

Dharmachari Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

One person's "sign of concentration" (nimitta), a meditative signpost on the way to zen (jhana). It signifies a mind cohering and creating for itself a counterpart sign for the object being concentrated on, such as the subtle breath at the end of the nose.

Sweet Absorption (Zen)

If you have ever been on a meditation retreat, you may have noticed that people are not attaining enlightenment. If they are de-stressing, settling into relaxed states, and beginning to recover a natural propensity for meditative concentration, that is considered great progress.

Even that, however, is accompanied by very sweet and refreshing blissful feelings, rapture (piti), an experience as sweet as glycerine. It should be pursued until one masters absorption, for such mastery will serve one in the final fold of the path.

The Buddha taught an eightfold-path, the last two elements of which are largely ignored. That is, people (monastics, schools, individuals) either devote themselves to one or the other. But they are essential, not an either-or proposition. Shamatha/vipassana, serenity or insight, is actually one thing: serenity-and-insight.

• In the Noble Eightfold Path they are formally known as right concentration and right mindfulness, defined as the first four jhanas and the mindfulness exercises outlined in the Satipatthana Sutra (DN 22). Just as Buddhism is the marriage of compassion and wisdom, successful Buddhist meditation is the path of joining virtue, concentration, and insight.

Potent Insight (Vip')

In insight meditation practice (vipassana), such as the popular Mahasi and Goenka methods, a person is actively discouraged from "wasting time" cultivating these preliminary serene states. "There is no time for that!" Instead, one is pushed to exercises pulled directly from the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (MN 10 and DN 22) sutra.

Launched from the right base, namely samadhi, these mindful exercises are a potent means of liberating the heart/mind from greed (clinging), aversion, and delusion.

The Buddha taught these foundations -- literally, "mindfulness-supports" -- for the benefit of beings yearning to be free of disappointment (dukkha, suffering), a practice as potent as nitrate.

But for all that glycerine can do with its sweetness, and all that nitrate might do with its volatility or as a catalyst, the combination of the two (into nitroglycerine) is what in fact leads to the realization of the four stages of enlightenment. Together they possess enough explosive power to launch one beyond Palookaville to nirvana.

The first stage is the threshold, called stream entry, when one glimpses nirvana and eradicates a few of the bonds or lower fetters that hold beings in bondage to the Wheel of Life and Death.