An Unenlightened Digression from a Delayed Denver Layover

Christ is in our midst! He is and ever shall be!

Being sober in Reno is like being underage in New Orleans, there’s fun stuff to do, but you don’t really get the full experience. When I was younger, I thought it’d be funny to move to Reno to pursue stand-up; I never went because the art scene in the city leaves a lot to be desired. 

Reno is like the cool uncle who, despite being able to snowboard or build an engine, is a functioning alcoholic who is one beer run away from a third strike DUI. When I was younger it was where I wanted to be, because a functioning alcoholic tertiary character was always what I aspired to become.

Someone barely holding on in a brilliant, chaotic whirlwind that is more impressive than it is objectively terrifying, like waking up in your bed after a four-hour drive through the Alabama mountains—blitzkrieged on Jager bombs and vodka tonics—to find your car waiting in the driveway, pristine and untouched. Living a life moving from close call to close call, more and more emboldened to keep rolling the dice, night after night, week after week, year after year. 

Reno is the kind of town that just feels like a hot streak about to freeze over, with all sorts of bells and whistles to keep you distracted enough to keep upping the ante. Reno would have done me in had I moved out here when I wanted to, but it’s nice to visit as a slightly wiser person, emotionally distanced enough from my cool brother to enjoy their antics yet not be pulled into them. 

I love it out here, but it’s not where I belong, like staying too late at an office party of a business that never hired you. I can take a deep breath of the high desert cold, feel it shake my lungs and chap my face, but this is home to others. I’m just visiting. I’ll tell you, though, the best part of being away from home is drinking another fella’s coffee. 

I’m up a little after dawn, packing for my flight home; the coffee starts getting cold as soon as it’s in the cup and the nonalcoholic beer I put in snow on the porch exploded overnight. I sit down at the table, built to be danced on, with my friend busy looking for houses in Colorado on Craigslist, asks me how liturgy was the day before and I tell him it was nice (Liturgy feeds my soul but why ruin a perfectly cold, quiet morning by going into all that?).

My friend told me had visited a Tibetan Buddhist center with about four people including himself and decided against it. I can’t say I blame him. That sort of spiritual practice is difficult to get your luggage into when it’s such an intimate setting, like you’re both trying each other on to see the fit without the mercy of informality or the buffer of a mutual friend.

Trying each other out, raw.  

I don’t care much about Buddhism myself, but in terms of my own spiritual journey I’ve always felt more akin to Charles Allan Bennett over Aleister Crowley, which had a lot to do in steering me towards Orthodoxy. 

Anyway, he mentioned another Buddhist temple around the area and how they are Pure Land Buddhist which he’s not into because of the prayers and worship involved. My friend is an atheist and his interest in Buddhism does not go beyond meditation and the “being a good person” aspects and I can’t know if that’s every material objectivist viewpoint while it makes sense that that is as deep as it goes for them, spiritually. 

It makes sense that if one assumes religion, as corrupt and violent as it can be, is mostly a code of conduct in order to lead better lives, why would that be of interest to someone who feels they don’t need a book to tell them how to be a good person? 

Especially considering giving people a code of conduct is masking an authoritarian vibe, which the secular world is more than a little uncomfortable with, as am I.

Pure Land Buddhism is a branch off the Mahayana bodhi tree and, the way my friend explained it, is a form of Buddhism concerned with the afterlife. It is a devotional practice in conjunction with all the stereotypical images of Buddhism—meditation, nonviolence, etc. Tradition says that where Pure Land enters the Buddhist framework is through a ruler who, upon learning Dharmic teachings, renounced his throne and became a monk.

The monk’s name was Dharmākara, and he promised that once he had attained Buddhahood, he would create a celestial realm where those who had faith in him would be reborn and have an easier time of achieving enlightenment there. This nonlocal space awaiting the faithful is called Sukhāvatī, otherwise known as the Pure Land. This monk, having attained his Buddhahood thus being able to create this paradise is known as Buddha Amitabha.

The Pure Land can be attained by the Buddhists who sincerely invoke Buddha Amitabha’s name, meditating on it in a practice called Nembutsu where the practitioner chants, “Namo Amida Bu,” meaning I follow Amitabha Buddha, or I entrust myself to Amitabha Buddha. The practice, like many spiritual practices, is not of an intellectual nature nor is it an employment of cognitive function, but rather a prayer of the heart that works to open one up to receive what they seek.

The Buddha Amitabha is a savior figure and what struck me is the similarity between this practice and the Jesus prayer, although, this being Buddhism it is not a form of worship. This practice is a form of veneration.

In any case my friend is not a Pure Land Buddhist, nor a Tibetan Buddhist, nor any kind of religious adherent. He is an atheist with an interest in meditation and does not see this as a worthwhile practice and—being orthodox—neither do I. Orthodox φρόνημα notwithstanding I appreciate what attaining enlightenment means, but I do not blame him because what the hell is enlightenment?

As the saying goes: before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. I bet someone who’s not interested in the spiritual path would be seeing that you’re chopping wood either way, so what’s the point of doing the whole spiritual journey if it just leads back where you began?

The journey is the point, but I understand the objection. It takes going where you don’t belong to work out where you do, and even then, where you do belong might be benefitted from all you pick up along the way. Like figuring out you want to marry someone but needing to have worked out stuff about yourself before you’re ready—no matter how perfect the two of y’all fit.

Plus, the spiritual journey is fun, but I digress.

The Western mind does not generally have a good grasp on what enlightenment actually is, and fewer than that actually care to attain it.

Kind of like becoming a child of God, most have their own idea as to what that means, but I’m willing to bet few know the real meaning, and even if they did, they would not want to do what was necessary to become reborn in His image.

There are the apostles, Dharmākara, and then there’s us… all of us a rich, young ruler in our own right.

Regardless, I kind of think this branch of Buddhism is a brilliant piece of spiritual praxis. Attaining something one seeks by giving up seeking altogether and just doing the work. Enlightenment is not something one can buy, hold, or wear as a sash.

It’s something you do. Something you embody.

It is becoming like Christ.

I am ignorant in regard to Buddhism et al, but the 12th Century Buddhist priest Hōnen taught that most men were incapable of achieving Buddhahood in this incarnation through their own endeavor, but rather were dependent on the Buddha Amitabha’s help, which means foregoing enlightenment in this life and working it out in the next, in Sukhāvatī.

I believe that when one allows an eternity to accomplish their goals, they can begin moving toward it, relaxed, in this life.

A devotional practice is not everyone’s cup of tea; however, we find things to devote energy to whether we believe in God or not, and what we worship is what we become. Looking at the Pure Land Buddhist school of thought I see a breathing kōan the adherent lives through prayer and meditation where, because there’s no rush to attain enlightenment here, it becomes that much easier to attain enlightenment here.

We’re just here drinking another fella’s coffee.