Fake news
So let's talk a little bit about karma. There are so many things to explain about karma that I don't pretend to know them all, and I won't cover all that I do understand here, but in simplified terms we can say karma is about actions and reactions. Without an action there are no reactions, without a cause there are no effects. So if you stop committing actions, if you stop creating causes, naturally there are no reactions, there are no effects.
Drop a rock into a still pond, :KAPLOOSH:, ripples are created. No dropped rock, no ripples. So if we see this physical world as the ripples, the creation, and our thoughts as the rock, what happens when we stop thinking?
Now, ripples go out until they hit some kind of edge, whether it's land, other rocks, floating trees or a half-submerged frog, once they reach something what happens? They reverberate back. They reverberate and ripple back to where the rock was dropped, the action was committed, the cause was created.
We cannot see all of the ripples we create. We do not know, as non-buddhas, what all the effects and reactions and ripples our thoughts, words and actions will create. If people knew ahead of time who would die in a particular war, those people likely wouldn't volunteer to fight.
If we could see when we meet a particular person that they will steal from us, or break our hearts or get us addicted to some narcotic, we would never talk to them. So we must be mindful of our thoughts, words, and actions. We cannot control the reactions and effects we receive except by not creating actions and causes that lead to unfortunate results.
Some actions and causes are pretty much destined to cause us to suffer. We hit someone, their big brother shows up the next day with a gun. We get so preoccupied thinking about hating someone, we stub our toe painfully or hit our thumb with a hammer because we are so distracted. So karma does not need to be some mystical force to be felt. It can be as simple as purely physical consequenses, both positive and negative.
So why do buddhas tend to eventually sink into motionless meditation? Because by letting go of the desire to produce actions and causes they find less and less reactions and effects reverberating back to them. Mind at rest, body at rest, speech at rest… no more problems except the results of previous actions. Nothing supernatural. Nothing difficult to understand.
I would like now to say what enlightenment isn't. In fact buddhists say there are a few things that can be said about enlightenment, but I'm not going to say most of them. I'm not going to tell you what most of the sayings are because they would create thoughts in your mind about what enlightenment is, and by creating thoughts you are moving away from enlightenment, not towards it.
But I will tell you two things the hindus say and one that the buddhists say, because what they say is a negation, and if anything can be useful when talking about enlightenment, negations might. The hindus say: About enlightenment, we can only say "Not this, not this", which means that if you are thinking "Is this enlightenment?" then no, it isn't, because you are still thinking. Not only are you thinking but you are thinking dualisitcally: "this is but that isn't" and enlightenment has no duality. It is non-dual.
The second thing the hindus say is that enlightenment is what is realized when there is no longer knowledge (called a known), one who knows knowledge (called a knower), and no one who knows of knowledge or of one who knows of knowledge. So they say "When there is no longer a known, a knower, or one who knows of a known or a knower, that is enlightenment".
As long as you think you know, you are thinking. As long as you are thinking of something you are a knower thinking about knowledge. As long as you can conceive in your mind that there is a being who knows of any knowledge you are thinking of a knower and knowledge.
So here, the buddhists say simply "Go beyond". Beyond is a misleading term in this case, because there is nothing to go beyond, beyond has a connotation of going farther when really we want to get closer, as in closer within into thoughtlessness, rather than farther out into externalized thoughts. But what they mean when they say go beyond is that as long as you are conceptualizing, whether about a known, a knower, or one who knows of known and knower, let go of that. When they say "If you meet buddha, kill him", they do not mean to use violence. Killing a buddha with violence is perhaps the worst possible karmic deed. What they mean is "If you think you are buddha, go beyond that and let go of that thought". No matter what thought arises, what perception of self arises, let go of it. Let go, and let go, and keep letting go until your mind has no discursive thoughts, obscurations, habits, patterns or illusions.
Just keep letting go.
And so I cannot say, no one can say, what enlightenment is, but this is perhaps all I can safely say of what enlightenment isn't.
So when I say a bodhisattva is like a soldier marching towards an unbeatable enemy you are not "buddha's soldier going off to fight in a war against demons" or any of this nonsense. The march is the march to constant meditation: thoughtlessness. Lack of ego, lack of grasping at or identifying with a self, including not grasping at an enlightened self. Go beyond all that, let go of all that. Let go of thinking about bodhisattvas and marching and buddhas and enlightenment.
The unbeatable enemy is the mind. It cannot be defeated with words, thoughts, actions, fists, sharp stones, pointy sticks, knives, guns, tanks or missiles. It is quite unassailable. But if you stop thinking, it disappears. That is the march, that is the battle: Letting go of thoughts completely so you can just be.