Pai-Chang

So Tsu-ssu, Chang-Tzu, Tu-Shun, Pai-Chang, and Hui-hai all walk into a bar. They approach the counter looking to order when the bartender looks at them and grins. “You know we have a drink named after you?” he said. Tsu-ssu, Chang-Tzu, Tu-Shun, Pai-Chang, and Hui-hui all looked at each other and asked, “you have a drink called Collection of Ancient Chinese Philosophers?”

There’s just something about this passage, and I can’t… quite… not want to read it. I feel a compulsion towards this passage, and I don’t know why. I just implicitly trust it. It seems honest. These other passages we’ve read, from the Bible to Yehiel Mikhal of Zlotchov, have been exactly what they were: a struggle to put into words that grandiose wonder that is everything and all. They are a group of men and women, scattered through time and challenges, that collectively think they’ve stumbled onto something that can only barely be explained. Frankly, this is a good thing. If they can explain it in layman’s terms, it wouldn’t be enlightenment, right?

Enter Pai-Chang: he doesn’t sound like a man with stones on the mountainside. He doesn’t sound like a man barely garbed sitting in the desert with the most beautiful smile. He doesn’t sound like a man with a megaphone on the street corner with frustrated tears in his eyes. He sounds like Hans. He sounds like Cory. He sounds like me, to be honest. He sounds like your best friend who’s had a new idea. You laugh and make a quick joke when he tells you about enlightenment, and then you listen. You absorb his seemingly quirky message, and you forget about it until you get home and lay awake at night. And then you understand.

It’s the last five words that really sink into me. “Please, hold on to it.” It’s so simple, but speaks volumes. I never thought of enlightenment in a sense of fleetingness. I always assumed that enlightenment would be permanent: you realize, and you continue realizing. What if you could forget? Or be distracted? This puts enlightenment in the hands of people, not sages. It makes enlightenment subject to the human condition, and that completely levels the playing field. We are all subject to the human condition. We are all then potentially subject to enlightenment.

Thanks, Pai-Chang. I owe you one.