Expert: Joe McSorley - 3/11/2004

Question
My purpose
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I am a buddhist and realized that this life may be my last reincarnation. I realized this because my life is very steady, calm and serene. I had some ups and downs in the past, but I changed my negative features of character fast, so that I dont have to relearn thi stuff again in the future lives. I am only 23 and wonder if I can do smth, because I feel like my purpose in this life is done, so I just drift along the life, waiting for the physical death. I dont have any attachments to this world, material things etc. I really feel one step above other people, angry, irratable, greedy. They look like children to me, and I feel like grown up, you know. Maybe this is nirvana or smth. Anyway, I just wanted to ask you if I should do smth special in this case, because I cannot find any reference to what to do if I feel like I achieve my purpose in this life.

Answer
Awakening is not a matter of degrees or steps.  If you feel one step above someone else then you are seeing this dualistically.  Because your life is calm and serene at twenty- three does not mean it will remain that way in the future.  When I was younger studying Buddhism there were several in my group that felt the way you do.  They felt they had completed their cycle and some claim to have been awakened.  My teachers would drive them with questions about who it is that has completed their ‘cycle' and who is it that claims to be ‘awakened'.   Now, over 30 years later, those students have a different view of this.  
  It sounds to me that you see things like you have ‘ripened' with reincarnation and now you are waiting to fall from the tree but what is it that will happen to you after death?  Don' t you have a lot of assumptions here?  To overcome the process of living/dying and its dualistic consequences is the purpose of awakening.  For you to feel you have completed the cycle and then to think death is the next step is problematic.  This is the same cycle isn't it?  So if the purpose of Zen is to overcome this cycle then waiting around for something is precisely still in the cycle.  Who is it that has ‘ripened'?  Who is it that was born, asks such questions and will die?  To answer these questions is the purpose of Buddhism.  If you have not answered these questions in a profound and thorough- going way then you have not overcome dualism.  Perhaps this should be your purpose.
Take care,
       Joe