Book Peek: A Chapter on Enlightenment

Stop struggling toward it and start relaxing into it

It’s Sunday, so before I watch the Washington Commanders football 🏈 team beat the Philadelphia Eagles for the right to play in the Superbowl, I’m sending out another draft segment of my book in progress, which has yet another tentative title:

The New Middle Way: A Buddhist Path for Now, Between Secular and Ossified

While my regular, shorter, almost daily posts are always available to all subscribers, only paid subscribers can read the longer book chunks. If you’d like to read them but can’t afford $5 a month or $50 a year for a paid subscription, send an email to melpine@substack.com or send me a message via Substack. No explanation of your finances is needed.

You can upgrade your subscription at any time, and all the previously paywalled material will be available.

My experience in the writing, editing, and publishing universe confirms my belief in impermanence. Everything I plan and write now is tentative. It’s a long way from final (if anything ever is). Having said that, today’s release is a draft of the likely third chapter. With the introduction and first two chapters, which I’ve already released, this makes enough text for a book proposal.

You’ll see some content that has appeared in From the Pure Land posts along with newer sections.

As usual, all subscribers can read the first few paragraphs.

---

Becoming Enlightened in This Lifetime

The Vajrayana Path

After three decades of practicing Theravada (First Wave) and Mahayana (Second Wave) Buddhism, I was still confused about one thing. As far as I could tell, every form of Buddhism teaches that all beings have the Buddha Nature within or at least the potential for enlightenment, but it always seemed portrayed as distant—not within reach.

I certainly didn’t consider myself a Buddha, but my meditative experiences had convinced me that Buddhahood or some form of enlightenment was closer than I had been led to believe. It was within reach. During the second half of 2015, I expanded my spiritual horizons and spent much time listening to teachings from several traditions on YouTube. I grew interested in learning more about Lama Surya Das.

Although Lama Surya is five years younger than me, we grew up in similar cultural circumstances—two young men from urban Jewish homes (I from Philadelphia and Jeffrey Miller from Brooklyn) navigating the turbulent 1960s. He had more chutzpah than I did, so after the Kent State massacre, he left the United States with a couple hundred dollars in his pocket and found his way eventually to the spiritual teachers of Southeast Asia. He returned West decades later to teach without losing his Brooklyn accent, as I have never lost my Philadelphia accent

As I watched him on YouTube, deciding whether to attend a retreat he was to lead in the first week of January 2016, this exchange with an interviewer most impressed me. Paraphrasing from memory:

Interviewer: Do you consider yourself enlightened?

Lama Surya: [Pause]…Yes.

How enlightened?

Enlightened enough.

Enough for what?

Enough for where I am right now.

In that exchange, he confirmed that enlightenment is within reach, even for gruff-sounding former urban Jewish kids. I attended the retreat and, on January 8, 2016, took Refuge and the Bodhisattva Vow with him. He gave me the dharma name Urgyen Jigme (Fearless Lotus). I’ll return to the meaning of Refuge and Bodhisattva Vow later in this chapter.