How to gain enlightenment (explained)

Bhikkhu Bodhi; Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly (EXPLANATION*)

The Buddha's first enlightened disciples taught the Dharma or truth "as it is."

This is so powerful a description that Bhikkhu Bodhi, the most famous American Buddhist scholar-monk, named his fundamental course on Buddhism (now available FREE online from BuddhaNet.net) The Buddha's Teaching: As It Is.

How does the ego distort things and not see them as they really are?

First of all, we rarely question what we see or hear or think, taking it instead to be self-evident. It is not. A great deal of distorting takes place. We do not see reality as it is.

Fundamentally, there are three misperceptions. The first misperception is that things (I, me, myself, phenomena, forms, bodies, situations, etc.) are permanent. They are not.

From this flows the second misperception, the idea that they are desirable and able to fulfill us. They are not.

Implicit in all this is the third misperception, the idea that at least the ego (the thinker behind the thinking) exists. It does not.

1. All phenomena are radically impermanent, not holding unchanged for even a single moment.
2. All phenomena are unsatisfactory, incapable of being so.
3. All phenomena are impersonal, empty, devoid of an ego.

Enlightenment is obstructed, and no one reaches stream entry, because egolessness (anatta, literally "non-self") is not seen.

It is not seen because the unsatisfactoriness of things is not penetrated at the ultimate level.

And it is not penetrated even superficially because impermanence is not reflected on. It would not be enough to reflect on the kind of impermanence we see all around us, which might lead to worldly disillusionment and the search for truth

It needs to be seen on the level of ultimate materiality-and-mentality -- particles (kalapas) and mind-moments (cittas) -- which is only possible with meditative concentration (jhana) and insight (vipassana).

Craving is the immediate cause of unsatisfactoriness. The first step toward enlightenment is disillusionment. But craving wants illusion! It does not want to wake up from it. From time to time we search for truth because we become disenchanted with the illusions.

But if the ego finds a comforting illusion again, it's again enchanted. Only SEEING THINGS AS THEY REALLY ARE (enlightenment) provides a final solution to the painful round, which otherwise continues life-after-life ad nauseum. There's no self in it, but what there is sure thinks there's a self. And not seeing reality, the "self" suffers.

If craving can be stilled, a concentrated-mind can quickly develop insight to see things just as they really are. Then enlightenment dawns, here and now, in this very life. This is the end of all suffering.

There's a little more to it, but not much:

• Virtue and meditation ("continuous serene attention") lead to right-concentration (jhana).
• Concentration and practicing the Four Foundations of Mindfulness lead to insight (vipassana).
• Insight leads to detachment (non-craving).
• Then the disillusioned mind, searching for something that is not limited and unsatisfactory, directly comes to know-and-see NIRVANA.

Is "nirvana" nothingness? No. Listen to Lecture 6: Nibbana.

*This essay is a HOW TO. It was composed as an accompaniment to explain what Zen Master Adyashanti did not. He stated that enlightenment is a "shift in perception" without explaining how. How did the Buddha learn to permanently shift perception through enlightenment?