Buddhist Wisdom for the Long Night

The last of the four parts drawn from *The Awakened State: What Buddhist Enlightenment Actually Means*. You have read the maps. This is where you begin to walk.

Practice has two wings. Stillness moves the wood: it clears the space. Insight uproots the tree: it severs the root. Neither wing alone finishes the work.

Then the question everybody asks. Is awakening sudden or gradual? The Tiantai answer refuses the either/or. The recognition is sudden; the manifestation is gradual. The lightning flash happens in a sky that has been clearing for years.

And the Lotus names five kinds of Dharma master: receiving and upholding, reading, reciting, explaining, copying. Not a ladder with five rungs. Five descriptions of a single step.

That is the series. The full overview, four and a half minutes of it, goes up

Thursday the thirteenth. The book is here:

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