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easily that both words mean the same. `Illumination' or `enlightenment' -- both are simply declaring that darkness has disappeared. What you choose to call it is immaterial.
"Just get to the root, don't worry about the branches" -- he must have got this from an enlightened master. "Just get to the root, don't worry about the branches," because once you have cut the root, the whole tree will wither away. But just cutting the branches is not going to help; the foliage may become, on the contrary, thicker.
EMPTYING THIS MIND IS THE ROOT.
Not just emptying... in the first place, there is no way to empty the mind. You don't have any control over your mind. It goes on in its own way, filled with dreams and thoughts and emotions and feelings and reactions, sadnesses, happinesses -- there is no way to empty it. How are you going to empty it? From one side you will be emptying it, and from the other side a great flow will go on coming in. The only way to empty it is to go beyond it -- to become awareness.
Watch the mind, and the mind disappears.
ONCE YOU GET THE ROOT, THE FUNDAMENTAL, THEN ALL KINDS OF LANGUAGE AND KNOWLEDGE AND ALL YOUR DAILY ACTIVITIES AS YOU RESPOND TO PEOPLE AND ADAPT TO CIRCUMSTANCES, THROUGH SO MANY UPSETS AND DOWNFALLS, WHETHER JOYOUS OR ANGRY, GOOD OR BAD, FAVORABLE OR ADVERSE -- THESE ARE ALL TRIVIAL MATTERS, THE BRANCHES. IF YOU CAN BE SPONTANEOUSLY AWARE AND KNOWING AS YOU ARE GOING ALONG WITH CIRCUMSTANCES, THEN THERE IS NEITHER LACK NOR EXCESS.
That is one of the most important experiences of Gautam Buddha. He says that if you are just in the middle of any two polar opposites -- find exactly the middle, neither lack nor excess -- if you are exactly in the middle, you will go beyond.
The middle is the beyond.
If you go to the extreme, then you will start clinging to it; from the extreme you cannot go beyond.
That was a great contribution to spiritual science and to humanity, that the middle is the beyond. Just keep yourself balanced in the middle, and suddenly you will see you have gone above both the extremes -- neither good nor bad, neither ordinary nor extraordinary,
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