An Ordinary Dude's Guide to Enlightenment: Ordinary Dude Guides

By John Weiler

Beer drinkin' dudes can be enlightened, too.

 

While many enlightenment books suggest that a life of purity, angelic behavior, and a clean diet are required for inner peace—the truth isn't so black and white.

I was once like many seekers. On a spiritual quest to cast out my own feelings of emptiness and inadequacy. The big questions bothered me: Who am I? How can I find the inner peace I so desperately crave? What is the purpose of my life?

After nearly a half decade search for answers, hundreds of hours spent in meditation, and even more time spent reading philosophy, spiritual and Buddhist books, a meeting with an enlightened teacher transformed me: the seeker became an ordinary dude.

In this guide you'll find no gurus. No monks. No mystics.

But instead a dude just like you...perhaps someone you'd meet in a bar and chat about life's big questions till the early hours of the morning.

While you'll learn that enlightenment is much more ordinary than you think, you'll discover a not-so-ordinary understanding of life and the world we live in.

If you want to put the spiritual quest behind you, escape the pressures of the modern world and endless search for completeness, and find contentment in everyday life, then I invite you to pull up a bar stool, crack a beer, and stay up with me till the wee hours.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Weiler
• Release date: Mar 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393805243

Book preview

Introduction

The myth of the enlightened saint

Show me a monk who drinks beer, and I’ll show you a dude who may be closer to the truth. - Anonymous Ordinary Dude

Enlightenment. People obsess over it. 

For centuries, millions have aspired to its illustrious state of perfection, freedom from suffering, and being all-knowing. But let me tell you this…enlightenment is not what you think it is. 

The idea of the enlightened saint—a person with superhuman powers, and flawless actions and thinking—is a lie. 

The truth is that enlightenment is far from this. 

In fact, it’s exceptionally ordinary. Most of us just miss it because we’re looking for inner peace somewhere else, instead of right here and now. 

Contentment or inner peace, after all, is what most people want, right? 

That state of wholeness where you feel good enough, where the little day-to-day mishaps seem less heavy, where you’d feel satisfied with your life if you died tomorrow because it was complete. 

And enlightenment delivers. When you understand it, the desperate search for answers, for self-worth, comes to a stop. Life, however, continues as usual. Bills must be paid, laundry must be washed, indigestion from accidentally eating too much pizza will happen, and other dude problems will rear their heads. But there’s a subtle difference. 

You’re no longer fighting them. You’re no longer missing something in your life. You are content.

So how do we get there? 

How is enlightenment the truth of all existence? And perhaps most importantly, when does the beer come into play? 

I will answer all these questions in this book. And I’ll touch on the beer question right now. 

I think we can all agree that a monk who drinks beer is not a common sight. Most people would assume he’s not even a monk. He’s just a drunk. 

Instead, many believe monks are closer to understanding the truth of all existence...at least more so than the ordinary dude. 

But as someone who has been in the presence of thousands of monks, and who has seen them playing on their phones, chatting with their buddies, and even smoking, I can tell you many are much more ordinary than you think. The point is that appearances are deceiving. 

Being a monk doesn’t make you any more enlightened than being a dude who enjoys knocking back beers with your buddies. 

There is a catch, though. 

Having clarity of mind is core to experiencing enlightenment. And this, of course, is contradictory to enjoying a tasty mug of your favorite brew, wine, or spirit. Enlightenment gives you clarity. Booze gives you dizziness, drunkenness, and hangovers. So how can they coexist? 

With 16 years of meditation under my belt, over a thousand hours spent studying enlightenment, and an in-person encounter with an enlightened teacher, I get enlightenment. 

And on my way to understanding and experiencing it, I’ve knocked back countless beers, glasses of wine, and shots of tequila, and pulled my fair share of all-nighters. 

Do I still drink five to six nights a week like I did in college? 

No, not anywhere close. Had I continued that habit, I guarantee this book wouldn’t exist. 

Clarity of mind does matter to an extent. The key to consuming alcohol, and many of the lovely vices of this world, is moderation. 

More on that later. Right now, I just want to let you know enlightenment is not exclusive to those who abstain from smoking, drinking, or even sex. All can be enjoyed on the path to inner peace. And that goes for a monk or any ordinary dude. 

Why enlightenment is so damn difficult to grasp

Enlightenment is confusing for one main reason: we’re all really good at being humans. 

In fact, we’re expert human beings. 

Because of this, we’ve forgotten who we really are...we’ve forgotten our humble beginnings. As I’ll discuss later in this book, understanding the concept of no-self is the key to enlightenment; however, our culture promotes the opposite belief. 

When we’re babies, I think it’s fair to say we lack an identity. You can see this when you watch a newborn. Observe how they act. The look in their eyes as they study a person’s face or a new place. It quickly becomes apparent that one thing is certain: babies don’t have thoughts of I in their heads. The I is the illusion that stands in the way of enlightenment. But in truth, it’s just a reference point. We form an identity around the I, referring to it when we make choices.  

For example, say you’re on a diet and you and your buds go to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch a football game. Buffalo Wild Wings isn’t the greatest place for a dieter. So when it’s time to order, you need to make a decision. How do you go about that? You look to your reference point: 

I am on a diet. So I have to lay off the wings and beer. Okay, I will order a salad and whisky straight instead. (That’s not a recommended drink/food combo, by the way!)

Because you identify with being on a diet, you make choices according to that identity. 

We’ll delve deeper into this topic of no-self in Chapter 2, but for now, just know this isn’t how we think as babies. There was no identity for us to reference yet. So instead we experienced the world through sense perceptions: sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing. 

As you grew older, you developed an identity: likes and dislikes, goals and dreams, and so on. You mastered certain behaviors, skills, and the ability to think abstractly. Eventually, you became an adult. An expert at navigating the world, and doing things babies could never even imagine: speaking, walking, paying the bills, gambling at the horse track on weekends.

You forgot what it felt like to live simply, to be completely focused on what’s happening now. You started to view the world conceptually, instead of experientially. 

Now when you hear people say things like, You’re completely in the moment, You’re free of suffering, You have to overcome your ego, they may make little sense. That’s because these phrases have lost their meaning. 

So what does it mean to be present, to be right here, right now?

Being present means to hear the sounds around you: like the white noise of a fan or the sounds of hammers pounding outside as carpenters build a house. It means to feel the sensation of your feet touching a warm tiled floor. Or to smell the gasoline while you’re filling up at a Shell. 

The present moment is experienced when you get out of your head, when you stop focusing on thoughts like what to eat for dinner