Friday, June 27, 2008

Buddhists, Lamas and Nine-Year-Olds

I've been feeling under the weather, but my writing on a Buddhist forum made a few people in Ireland, Norway and Tokyo laugh today. Still working on an enlightened Lama in Guam. He is going to be a hard nut to crack.

And my daughter called. I was able to tell her about her little brother's comment this morning. Feeling bored without siblings or a friend, a week into summer vacation, he said:" Even the youngest of my siblings has turned out to be even more mature than all the older ones!" I tried to get more details on this, but he said it was just so. It's a koan for the rest of us to figure out.


2 comments:

Todd Settimo said...

Very much enjoyed your comments, back-and-forth, with the Lama in Guam. I don't know you and have never read your work before, but your light shines brightly in your comments to our dear friend, the Lama.

I find the conversation interesting because, after 40+ years on 'the Path', the farther I walk, the less I know what 'enlightenment' really means.

I am intrigued with those more certain.

Namaste.

Mayke Beckmann Briggs said...

Namaste, Todd.

Thank you for your kind comment. I hope I can some day make our friend in Guam laugh. He is so sincere, humble and kind I already regret calling him a "hard nut to crack". He is not a nut, of course. I only wish to crack through his seriousness. Maybe he is laughing about my arrogance with all of his friends, already.

As to your comment that after 40 years on the Path, the farther you walk, the less you know what enlightenment really means - don't let my certainty fool you into thinking that I know more than you.

My one certainty is that I absolutely do not know what enlightenment means at all. Less and less (as you say), and even less, is not little enough. Only when we are completely finished with enlightenment, and ourselves for that matter, is enlightenment possible. It is a total uncertainty, rather than a certainty. I hope you become even more uncertain.

It means nothing at all, which is pretty funny. Uncertainty when total is the same as all-knowing.

A very beautiful moth, almost as big as a butterfly but skinnier, with crystal clear wings with dark gray spots just landed on my nose. Now she is sitting on my white wall and we are both thinking about it. She made me laugh. Namaste!