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were dead, now you are alive. A new life spreads all over you and brings great beauty and truth and grace.
"IT IS NOT OBTAINED FROM OTHERS. THEREFORE, WHEN YOU ARE ENLIGHTENED, YOUR ORIGINAL NATURE MANIFESTS ITSELF. NOW YOU HAVE ATTAINED IT -- CAREFULLY CULTIVATE IT."
This is a very significant statement of Hyakujo. You cannot cultivate enlightenment, that will be phony. You can walk like a buddha, you can manage to sit in the lotus posture -- it may take a little time for you, the bones... and particularly people coming from the West will find it more difficult. Colder countries devise chairs; hotter countries have no problem in sitting on the floor. But in colder countries, to sit on the floor is difficult. So if Buddha is sitting in the lotus posture, that does not mean that you have to sit in the lotus posture, only then you will become a buddha. You can practice it -- there are many idiots who are doing that, unnecessarily torturing themselves.
Buddhahood is your nature, so you cannot cultivate it. But what Hyakujo means is totally different. He is saying, "NOW THAT YOU HAVE ATTAINED IT -- CAREFULLY CULTIVATE IT. This attainment is so new, it is possible to fall back into darkness. It is possible to start thinking again that it may have been an imagination. All kinds of possibilities are there. The glimpse that you have is very fresh and young, and your past of ignorance is very long -- four million years; it has a weight. This new insight can be destroyed by that weight. This new flower that has blossomed in you can be crushed by a mountainous past."
You cannot cultivate enlightenment if you have not attained it. So first, attain it -- it looks strange -- first attain the glimpse and then protect, cultivate it; then make arrangements so that the past does not overtake you, because the weight of the old is very great and the new is always delicate.
So remember, Hyakujo is not saying to cultivate enlightenment. He is saying, first get it and then be careful in every possible way to protect it, to refine it, to go deeper into it, to find more roots to it. The real work starts when you have become enlightened. All that work you
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