Reality and Experience

There is a Zen story.

A student went to his teacher and said earnestly, "I am devoted to studying with you. How long will it take before I become enlightened?"

The teacher's reply was casual, "Ten years." Impatiently, the student answered, "But I want to master it faster than that. I will work very hard. I will practice everyday, ten or more hours a day if I have to. How long will it take then?"

The teacher thought for a moment, "20 years."

Many stories related to Zen and Zen masters are diffcult to interpret, and in trying to understand them, we can get deep insight into the truth of Life.

Zen describes the truth of life in simple stories with paradoxes. Here the story tells us about the futility of effort in receiving THAT.

This story reminds me of renowned philosopher J Krishnamurti's words "Known, however expansive it may be, cannot capture the Unknown. For the Known is always bounded by Unknown".

Another radical thinker UG Krishnamurti (popularly known as UG) declares that consciouness must be purged of its content to attain Natural State(perhaps another word for enlightenment). UG: "Everything man has experienced whether sacred or profane, must be flushed out of the consciousness. Every experience is a contamination there. You must touch a point in the consciousness which no one has ever touched."

In one of the ancient Hindu texts it is given like this. A dog picks up a bone and starts chewing it hoping that it can extract some content out of it. While it is chewing its gums get hurt and start bleeding. Tasting its own blood coming from its gums, the dog thinks that that it is successful in extracting certain content out of that bone.

All our experiences are like that. They are self generated and self projected. We assume that we experience the world around us but the fact is, what we experience as the reality is our own self projection.

Subject creates the Object.

Experience is not seperate from Experiencer.

The fictious division which we create between us and all our experiences is an unbridgeable gap. The gap widens further with our pursuits for more and more experiences. When materialistic pursuits are over one turns to spiritual experiences. And God becomes the ultimate pursuit.

An enlightened person (Avadhuta for Hindus and Bodhisatwa for Buddhists) is a finished man and is finished with all experiences. His actions and words cannot be fitted into any of our frameworks. Our frameworks are limited by time and space in which we experience the world around us.

The Reality is not in the realm of time and space . The experience structure in us with which we experience the world around us is a product of time and creates its own space. Hence it is singularly incapable of experiencing that which is beyond time and space.

Truth or Reality is a living thing. It cannot be captured by mind and much less be given an expression.

That which IS, is not an experience.