Accepting Your Limited Spiritual Attainment Is Itself an Attainment

Acceptance is the true test of spiritual attainment. (Previous posts: “How to Accept Your Dark Side” and “Accepting Mediocrity”)

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

Many friends still approach spiritual practice with the same exam-taking mentality and elitism, believing that “spiritual attainment” is an ability that must be “tested” and “forged through hardship.” This is still a matter of instrumental thinking, harshness toward oneself, and obsessive fantasies. (Previous posts: “Spiritual Practitioners’ Obsession with Attainment” and “The Birth of a New Ego: The Spiritual Practitioner’s Ego”)

The central thing I have gained over these past five years, and these past two years, is the realization that I have innate wholeness, that I have always been complete. This counts as enlightenment. This is reaching the other shore. Although there are still plenty of karmic obstructions and plenty of suffering, I don’t have much in the way of attachments, 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 post: “My Second Year After Enlightenment”)

People are naturally whole and exist unconditionally. What we call spiritual attainment and our state of being are merely matters of karmic obstructions and circumstances; they, too, can be considered outward appearances. (“Special Series on Karmic Obstructions,” “A Day of Karmic Obstructions Is an Unhappy Day,” and “Zhuangzi: On Cockroaches”)

My favorite story in the *Zhuangzi* is the one in which Liezi studies the Way with his teacher, only to conclude that he has gained nothing. He goes home to raise pigs and farm with his wife, spending the rest of his life that way. Neither the *Zhuangzi* nor Daoism has this obsession with, or concept of, “spiritual practice.” (Previous posts: “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 toward any undertaking, shedding refinement and returning to simplicity, standing alone in his bodily form like an uncarved clod of earth. Amid the bustle, he remained whole and undisturbed, and in this oneness he lived out his days.