How to Achieve Enlightenment

I've always wanted be to be smart, wise and patient. I've always wanted to be like these older guys at work who always smiled, held high positions of esteem and were well liked and respected by their peers and everyone at work.


I've meet lots of these types of people. Many of them were the presidents of huge companies that dealt with hundreds, if not thousands, of employees. They handled hundreds of millions of dollars in their corporate daily affairs... 


And, almost every one of them, has been a very calm, patient, wise and polite gentleman. I've know and worked with some of them almost everyday for a few years and never seen them get bent out of shape or too worried about the little things that seem to drive most of us crazy.


I know one of them very well and he retired at 48-years-old, is a multi-millionaire, and he never gets upset about anything.


When I grow up, I want to be like him.


In my life, I've always wanted to become more patient and understanding of people. I always get so frustrated at myself when I get mad at people for silly things or when the brat child that lives inside of me comes out and lashes back at people who irritate me.


See? These people irritate me! Just the fact that someone can irritate me for anything shows just how very far from enlightenment and happiness I really am.


I've been studying Za-zen Buddhism and Transcendental Meditation on and off for at least 20 years. I am a bad student. 


In my search for enlightenment, I've met many priests and become friends, very good friends, with several. In fact, a few Buddhist priests and I have been drinking buddies. I've often asked these good gentlemen to help me in my search for enlightenment.


I know a world famous Za-zen priest named Hakuginryu. I don't know his real name. Everyone just calls him "Hakuginryu." When the Afghanistan war had just started, he and several of his priest friends walked across Afghanistan to bring world attention to the troubles of that country. They walked from the border on east Afghanistan, from Kandud to the western border town of Kamml Khan... That's a walk of about 1,400 kilometers (about 900 miles)... Barefoot!


No kidding. These priests all walked from east Afghanistan to west Afghanistan barefoot and without any military protection at all. Many people would think they were just plain nuts.


My mom would have agreed. When I was 16 or so, I told my mom that I wanted to go to Japan to learn how to be a Zen priest and my mom got very upset. She said, 


"You are not going to Japan to go live on some mountain like a hermit like those crazy priests!" I think that was the most adamant she ever was against something I told her that I was thinking about doing excepting joining the US marines or getting married to my first wife. 


But I digress...


I've asked Hakuginryu how it is that I can achieve enlightenment and he (and the others) have always told me the same thing: If you want to achieve enlightenment, stop reading books and pick up a broom.


There is an ancient Zen saying:


To achieve enlightenment; clean up your area.
After enlightenment; clean up your area.


Every time I take out the trash, I remember this saying. Every time I wash the dishes or sweep the floor or trim the hedges, or vacuum or clean in general, I remember this saying. Doing so, helps you to get closer to where you want to go. With every dish I wash and every speck of dust I collect, I pick up one speck of therapy for my soul.


Consider the future. When I turned 35...I told a friend, "15 years ago I was 20. 15 years from now, I will be 50."


Now, I think about my life. Someday, very soon, I will be 80. 


Everyday I think about my life... Everyday I think about achieving enlightenment and becoming happy.


Everyday I think about my children. Everyday I remember: "Great things and ideas are not borne from filth."


In 35 years I will be a very old man and probably very sick. I want my children to be happy. I want to be contented and happy.


I must achieve enlightenment... I must:


Take out the trash.....


Wash the dishes....


Make food....


Work at a job and earn money....


Be kind....


Everyday, I must clean.... And, after I finish cleaning, I must clean some more. 

   My daily activities are not unusual,   

I'm just naturally in harmony with them.   

Grasping nothing, discarding nothing...   

Supernatural power and marvelous activity -   

                             Drawing water and carrying firewood.                                                                      -    Layman Pang-yun (740-808)

One Easy Step To Becoming a Better Parent and More Successful at Life

With all the worry and pressure in today's world, with the financial news going so bad, talk of taxes being raised, and more, who isn't feeling huge stress and trepidation in their daily lives? How could this stress and pressure not be affecting our businesses as well as our personal well-being and family lives? This sort of stress cannot be good for our mental health.

It is the unusual person, indeed, who can shake off the troubles down at the company or office and leave that luggage outside the front door when they come home to their loving family.

Could you inadvertently be taking this stress out on your children? Have you found yourself getting a bit short-tempered recently? Have you gotten angry with your wife and kids and shouted or raised your hand only to later regret that you couldn't control yourself better? Have you considered that this bad temperament at home could be due the inability to control stress from work? And that this stress is affecting you 24/7 whether you want to admit it or not?

Today's short article will be about a simple and quick way that I guarantee will help you to control your stress and temper at home and become a better parent. All you need to do is spend 2 minutes a morning, every morning, writing down some quick notes in a notebook. And, no, 2 minutes is not a lot of time compared to what happens when you lose your cool and make a scene.

I used to have a bad temper, and I would get mad and shout, sometimes even raised my hand to my children… But since starting this method, that I will recommend today, it has been well over 2 years since that last happened. I haven't even raised my voice once…. Every time that I did get irritated, something in my subconscious kicked in and I immediately calmed down. This worked for me and several other friends that I have recommended it to. It will work for you. Let me take a moment now to highly recommend a book that has actually led to all of this. This book helped me greatly at work (and now at home) since the first time I read it and that is Brian Tracy's Goals!

In Goals! Tracy talks about how, if you are to succeed in life that you need to write down your goals in order to be able to achieve them. "Sure!" A lot of people say they've heard this or know this, but few actually do this. Trust that writing down your goals down does help your subconscious to actually remember and activate your brain to achieve those goals you set forth for yourself.

I write down my goals every day religiously in the morning when I wake up and, not only does doing so help me to achieve them, it also helps me to relax and stay much more focused through the day. Who doesn't want to stay more focused in this day and age when our "in-box" includes, for most people, several e-mail accounts that are constantly filling up as the day goes by and consistently altering our priorities? Add on an Internet world filled with Social Media like Facebook and Linkedin accounts to attend? Twitter is no longer for just sending messages to your friends, but it too, has been co-opted into the business world and your boss orders you to use them, or blogs and SNS, to get the company message out...

How in the world can anyone today get ahead of the pile in the "in-box"? Any person in their right mind would be stressed.

Goals! promises that you will "Get everything you want, faster than you ever dreamed." Sounds like grandiose claims but let me point out that writing down your goals and purposes is like having a sort of road map to where you want to go. When you write them down, they enter your subconsciousness and they cause your inner brain to focus upon the Law of Attraction. If you do not write down where you want to go — if you do not have a map — then how will you know where you are going?

The publishers write:

Why do some people achieve all their goals while others simply dream of having a better life? Bestselling author Brian Tracy shows that the path from frustration to fulfillment has already been discovered. Hundreds of thousands — even millions — of men and women have started with nothing and achieved great success.

Using the twenty-one strategies Tracy outlines, you'll be able to accomplish any goals you set for yourself — no matter how big. You'll discover how to determine your own strengths, what you truly value in life, and what you really want to accomplish in the years ahead. Tracy shows how to build your self-esteem and self-confidence, approach every problem or obstacle effectively, overcome difficulties, respond to challenges, and continue forward toward your goals, no matter what happens. Most importantly, you'll learn a system for achievement that you will use for the rest of your life.Here Tracy presents the essential principles you need to know to make your dreams come true. Tracy presents a simple, powerful, and effective system for setting and achieving goals — a method that has been used by more than one million people to achieve extraordinary things. In this revised and expanded second edition he has added three new chapters addressing areas in which goals can be most rewarding but also the toughest to set and keep: finances, family, and health.

One of my goals is to become a multi-millionaire. Laughable? Maybe. But at least I have a road map and I am consciously working on that every day... And since I do have a road map, it alleviates a huge amount of stress and worry from my shoulders.

I may not be a millionaire yet, but I really do have proof that this works! I have evidence that Tracy's philosophy and ideas in Goals! are successful. I have shown myself that actually writing down goals are critical to achieving them. And my proof stands in something that, for me, is much more important than the Rat Race and making money: it's being the best, most wonderful dad I can be.

It used to be my #1 priority in life was to always make more money. I always thought about how to increase my cash flow and I constantly worried about the economy. What a fool I was. My children were growing up around me and all I could think of was money. Then, one day, a few years ago my son said something foolish and I got a sudden flash of extreme anger. Later on, while my son was sobbing, I quietly considered and reflected upon my actions, I regretted them; I wondered if I had overreacted. I wondered if stress was clouding my thinking.

After deep consideration of that incident, I realized that the most important thing for me was not money. By far the most important thing for me was to be a great dad to my son. How could I have thought differently?

Now my #1 priority goal that I write down in my pocket notebook every day is; "I am a kind, loving and patient father and husband today and every day" (with today's date added). Then, I write my next 9 goals, which have to do with making more money and being successful at work.

Folks, trust me. This really works! Since starting this habit, I have caught myself several times with a flash of irritation — that before would have caused me to get angry or upset at my son and perhaps raise my voice — but since I started writing down every day my goal of being patient and kind, my mind recalls that goal within a split second and has killed that flash of anger instantly its tracks. It is truly amazing.

Why ruin what could be a good learning opportunity with your children and a possible great memory with an outburst of irritability? What for? Life is too short to be getting upset at the small stuff all the time.

As the great writer C.S. Lewis wrote in Chronicles of Narnia, "Life is difficult, so let us be good to each other."

Writing down my goals every day has truly helped my family to have joy, love and peace. Your family can have it too. All you need to do is write down your goals every day. You'll be glad you did.

Doesn't your family - and you, yourself, deserve it?

This article originally ran on Lew Rockwell on July 29, 2010