Shinzen Young - What Is Enlightenment?

A two-part dharma teaching from Zen teacher Shinzen Young.

Shinzen Young talks about comparison mind and a teacher's dilemma in describing and not describing stages on the spiritual path, and Maezumi Roshi's answer to the question "What is Enlightenment". Shinzen then talks about reaching critical mass with concentration, sensory clarity and equanimity, when impermanence dominates in sensory experience. He then describes two stages of arising and passing, includes Sasaki Roshi's description of the zen approach and his three-dimensional paradigm of expansion and contraction, seeing and participating in impermanence through Zen and Vipaasana and the sensory system, participating in the activity of the Source and how this process arises from zero to create self and world.

Filmed at Mt. Carmel Spiritual Centre, Niagara Falls in Nov. 2008.

Part One:


Part Two - The "final stage" and the names that different spiritual traditions use to describe this oneness. How one's service naturally extends to this larger identity.

Tags: Shinzen Young, Enlightenment, Maezumi Roshi, Mindfulness, Vipassana, Stream Entry, Sasaki Roshi, Zen, Buddhaghosa, Visuddhimagga, Impermanence, Mt. Carmel Spiritual Center, prayer, T.S.Eliot, St. Paul, d'vekut, sahaja samadhi, non-dual, enlightenment, advaita, Ken Wilber, bri'a yesh me-ayn, Jewish, Christian, Sufi, Baka, oneness, Cloud of Unknowing, Buddhism, meditation, Enlightenment, Philosophy