Rev. Danny Fisher

Photo by Rinchen Lhamo.

Today’s quote is from Peter Lieberson (1946-2011), the American composer whose works were often inspired by Tibetan Buddhism, and who also served as international director of Shambhala Training for many years. He died yesterday at age 64. This is it — from a beautiful piece he wrote for Shambhala Sun in 1997:

The Buddha let go of his struggle [to gain enlightenment] because he saw through all the techniques he had been faithfully practicing for years. He understood that the intrinsic wakefulness of his basic being was beyond any concept of enlightenment.

At the same time, he discovered that freedom paradoxically came about through those very disciplines that were artificial, gradual in application, and, ultimately, constricting. So for those inspired to follow the Buddha’s example, a path developed based on the skillful methods of the Buddha himself and of realized teachers in the lineages that followed.

From the very beginning of the Buddhist path simple techniques are presented to the student that encourage a state of wakefulness; in a sense one is deliberately playing a trick on oneself. Still, because one is trying to let go, there are nine yanas, or vehicles, in the Buddhist path that present ever more subtle and powerful techniques, each wearing out the previous ones. From this perspective, it might be said that enlightenment is a kind of transcendental exhaustion.