Different schools of Zen have evolved, principally the Rinzai and Soto orders. A whole hierarchy has developed for the teaching and practice of Zen. Zen has become, to a certain degree, institutionalized.
It is possible to move to an enlightened state of mind from a lower bardo or level of awareness. It can happen, but it is extremely unlikely.
From the point of view of enlightenment, none of this has ever even been. All time and space, all the conditions that are apparent in the absence of enlightenment are unreal.
Enlightenment just means that you don’t have a structural self. It means you’ve flipped through the gradated realities. Nothing binds, nothing clings to you. You’re unaffected by everything.
Good teachers are not known for telling you what you want to hear, and consequently they’re rarely popular because they tend to offend people on a regular basis by their mere presence on earth.
When you are enlightened, your physical body will still feel pain if you get hurt, but you will not be overwhelmed even by extreme physical pain, because your mind is filled with light, love and understanding.
If we really reflect and discriminate, we’ll find that all things are created by our perception, that all states exist within the mind.
The whole objective universe is created, ordered, by our perception and by our sense of self.
When we erase perception, then we erase that which perceives perception. The universe dissolves and we see that it was never real to begin with.
On the pathway of knowledge we view life as in a dream. We feel that all of this world is a dream.
We go to the cinema we see images projected on the screen – but they’re not real, they’re only images.
Consciousness is the screen. The images on the screen are your perceptions, the illusion that life is solid, that there is a material universe.
There is no material universe. There is no reality. All that exists are images.
Where do these images comes from and where do they return? What is it that projects these images? How is it that we are the screen? How is it that we have forgotten that we are the Self and that nothing but the Self exists?
These questions can only be answered in absorption, because there are no answers.
Answers can suit the relative mind. In the dream we can be thirsty. But upon awaking from the dream, there’s no thirst.
All questions about the Self, fall away in the white light of eternity, in nirvana, because then we have awakened from the dream.
The finite forms have fallen away and we have become God.
So when we wake from the ignorance of this world, the dream of existence, all of the experiences that we have ever had fall away. The ideas of life and death, of rebirth, of reincarnation, karma, God, truth, knowledge – all these things fall away.
All the concepts, all knowings, all truths, all religous systems, all beliefs, fall away in the white light of eternity.
When you feel that you are superior to someone else, you lack compassion. Compassion is a word Buddhists use to express the realization that even though we may differ greatly in evolution, appearance, talents, or intelligence from other beings in the universe, we are all equally valuable in the eyes of eternity. This is wisdom.” – Surfing the Himalayas 202.