This difference means that in the Hinayana model, the situation is black and white: you are either successfully maintaining the precepts or not. By contrast, the Zen model sees the precepts as a metric against which to mindfully measure oneself, in the full knowledge that any action taken has karmic consequences. Absolute success in not expected but rather an awareness of how one’s actions measure up against the standard.

The Zen model has always appealed to me as a true and vital representation of what it is to work with morality in the real world: The ideals are there to be worked towards, in the awareness, that, in any given situation, there will be downstream consequences.

The resulting m/o puts a premium on awareness along with recognizing both choice where it is available, as well as finitude where it is not. Practice in morality then becomes a matter of working with reality in an aware balancing act between what is actually possible, and the inescapable limits of contingent circumstances.

Such a model seems to me to be both demanding of effort and attention in working towards expressing and cultivating the precepts, while at the same time, full of compassion as one recognizes the contingent limits of this ideal expression.

Moral practice thus becomes an aware, mobile, becoming mode of being, that fully allows and recognizes the imperfect. A yoga, in short of compassionately working towards/with ideals. What could be more perfect! And never-ending, one might add. This, is what I would understand as Hokai’s impeccable morality.

What I do question in your post is the way you conceive enlightenment as separate from morality. Is this really possible? I’m neither expert, nor articulate on the subject, but I think the answer lies in Josh’s last paragraph where he speaks of ‘basic goodness and sanity’ In your excellent interview with Gaylon Ferguson on Buddhist Geeks he speaks of the same fundamental sanity and goodness which we learn to uncover and express in practice. My sense is that awakening and morality are necessarily linked within that fundamental sanity, and that development of only one or the other alone is a stunted development. Mind you, that’s speculation on my part.

I also think its a bit dangerous to try and make Buddhism into a form of new agism. People seem to be doing this because they think there _view_ of enlightenment isnt dogmatic?

on a more serious note, since we’re all speculating here, i prefer to speculate on enlightenment as not the ultimate maturity or ultimate whatever. i prefer to look at enlightenment as another momentous leap into a super adult (at least from the conventional/relative perspective). in my geeky transhumanist imaginative moments, i see a future (or even parallel worlds) where enlightened beings who are awake to our/their true nature could manipulate matter/energy/darkmatter/darkspace at the quantum level, at will. (yeah, i’m thinking of you, Dr. Manhattan!) now that’s a more kick-ass enlightened being compared to what we have in our midst right now

as a wise sage once said, “today’s enlightenment, is tomorrow’s mistake.” i think this statement captures it very succinctly

~C

P.S. sorry guys, i just had a tall glass of margarita.

One point I would like to make is that I feel that enlightenment is held in too high of a regard. I like the definition of enlightenment as being the ultimate maturity. Now thats something, as a practitioner, that I feel I can attain. That’s precisely the problem with my experience of people with thier opinion of enlightenment. It’s something that only special people with special circumstances can attain and the rest of us are unworthy, unable, and simply not privvy to the inner circle of understanding. It’s always been that enlightenment is available to all as all of us have that basic understanding and we simply have to slow down and recognize the stuff that stands on the negative side of enlightenment. Perhaps enlightenment is non-dual. It really is up to each of us to decide.

The trainings seem designed to progressively guide people from conventional paradigms and delusions to enlightenment—the absence of such delusions and the perfection of the positive qualities. But how, you ask, can these qualities be perfected? How can there be an endpoint?

My understanding of the teachings is that there is no endpoint as such. The concept of an endpoint is an artifact of our conception of the method. The popular conception (and don’t misread me; it’s very useful) is that we are developing and cultivating the positive qualities from the ground up, like a video game player “levelling up” with experience. It’s a useful conception in terms of practical application, and perhaps this psychology also explains the popularity and addictiveness of the “level up” concept in video games.

As a mental exercise, though, let’s change the conception of the method and see how that affects the endpoint concept. Instead of levelling up our positive qualities, what if we are deepening our understanding and experience of them? What if the positive qualities are by nature perfect, but they are obscured by delusions in the same way that the blue sky, obscured by clouds, is still blue behind the clouds? In verb form, “to perfect” these qualities is not a matter of levelling up, but rather of deeper and deeper realization to the point that the individual fully realizes, understands, and embodies that true nature.

So, while they are offered as purifying methods along the path to enlightenment, the perfections are themselves basic qualities of buddha-hood. By practicing these methods, we are simply practicing the perfection of our buddha-nature. In other words, is there such a thing as pure water? Yes, when it is purely H20 and free of contaminants (everything that is not H20). Buddha-nature is still present in a being clouded by delusion, just as the H20-ness of water is still present in a polluted stream. How can the perfections be, well, perfect? By being free of that which is not perfect. For the perfection of generosity, being free of self-cherishing and attachment and other contaminants of generosity.

Rather than attaining an endpoint of development, we are manifesting ourselves as the unobscured, undeluded, unpolluted perfections. The endpoint is just a useful concept for people needing a “how-to” perspective.

If we look carefully at the sequence of Buddhist revolutions (or “dharma-wheel-turnings”), we may recognize a master-blueprint for our own contemporary attempts at clarification. Individual awakening (traditionally deemed as *liberation* rather than *realization*) came first and foremost. Philosophical sophistication came next, culminating in a sharp discernment of the way we solidify and reify conceptual categories, including the notions of samsara and nirvana, as well as tend to ignore the varying meanings something as “buddha” has. As this became normative, what emerged from the ever-receding background of such awakening is a universal purpose, which was then found to be at the very heart of awakening. Now love was the force behind wisdom, and the ultimate became not just a goal to be reached but even more a ground of all experience, as that which is already the case. One’s own situation forever remains finite in relation to that vast reality, even when distinction between “one’s own” enlightenment and the vastness of the great completeness (buddhahood in “cosmic” terms) is erased in light of direct realization i.e. recognition.

An impeccable (not the same as perfect) morality is itself a result of many influences coming together, and we may well be cautious in ascertaining a degree of morality in self or other, since the recognition of an impeccable morality requires an impeccable moral cognition. And moral cognition always arises in a social and cultural gestalt(s), obviously, just as less obviously meditation and insight do. This socio-cultural gestalt being the very epitome of perfectability due to its many flaws, the whole configuration is set for an awakened individual’s larger purpose, namely service.

In short, the first stage is already complete buddhahood, with all *perfections* adorning it, though not in a literal, fundamentalist sense. Everything that follows is a gradual uncovering of its mysterious depth, step by step never ending.