Accepting Your Limited Spiritual Attainment Is Itself an Attainment

Accepting That Your Spiritual Attainment Falls Short Is Itself a Kind of Attainment

Acceptance is what truly tests your spiritual attainment. (Previous essays: “How to Accept Your Dark Side” and “Accepting Mediocrity”)

Life is often full of hardship and suffering. Our state of being is always fluctuating. Innate wholeness is easily disrupted by karmic obstructions. This is true of everyone, including eminent monks and Marx. Don’t be so hard on yourself. See this clearly.

When it comes to spiritual practice, many friends are still caught up in the exam-taker’s mentality and elitism. They think “spiritual attainment” is an ability that must be “tested” and “hammered into shape.” This is still utilitarianism, harshness toward oneself, and obsessive fantasy. (Previous essays: “Spiritual Practitioners’ Obsession with Attainment” and “The Birth of a New Ego: The Spiritual Practitioner’s Ego”)

My central realization over these past five years, and these past two years, has been that I possess innate wholeness and have always been complete. That counts as enlightenment. That is reaching the other shore. Though there are still many karmic obstructions and much suffering, I have few fixations, and I don’t psychologically manipulate myself into believing my spiritual attainment is inadequate. The rest of my life is simply a journey through life. (Previous essay: “My Second Year After Enlightenment”)

My favorite story in Zhuangzi is the one in which Liezi studies the Way with his teacher, eventually concludes that he has gained nothing, and goes home to raise pigs and farm with his wife for the rest of his days. Neither Zhuangzi nor Daoism has this fixation on, or concept of, “spiritual practice.” (Previous essays: “Spiritual Practice Is a False Concept” and “Striving Is a False Concept”)

Zhuangzi, “Responding to Emperors and Kings”: Liezi came to believe that he had never even begun to learn, so he returned home and did not go out for three years. He cooked for his wife and fed the pigs as he would feed people. He showed no partiality in his dealings, shed refinement and returned to simplicity, standing alone in his bodily form like a clod of earth. Amid the bustle, he remained self-contained, and in this way he lived out his days.