Is Your Dog Enlightened?

Three things our dogs can teach us about living life to the fullest

The other day I was reading a book about spiritual enlightenment and it suggested there were three traits you could look to in a teacher to see if they were “really enlightened” — in other words, whether they were just really good at talking the talk or if they actually walked the walk. Putting to one side questions of whether or not enlightenment is a “thing” and if it is, how would an unenlightened person (and I put myself firmly in that category) be able to genuinely discern it in another, I read the next section of the book with great interest.

Apparently, enlightened people are a) unconditionally loving, b) live fully in the present, and perhaps most interestingly c) instantly forgiving, which is to say they don’t hold a grudge, refilling their glass of toxic emotions in hopes that the person they’re grudging on will get sick.

While I have been fortunate enough to meet several apparently enlightened people in my lifetime, I can’t say that I spent enough time around any of them to be able to truly evaluate them against these criteria. But on further reflection, I realized that by this definition I do know some enlightened beings quite intimately — my dogs Sgt. Pepper and Lily.

Sgt. Pepper belongs to the “wise fool” school of teaching — sometimes stalking shadows for hours on end, seemingly clueless until you look into his eyes and see the depth of his unquestioned confidence in his actions that makes me wonder at times if there really is something there in the shadows that I lack the discernment to see for myself. He is ever present and responsive to the moment, able to change tacks from vigorously chasing off squirrels to lying peacefully in a patch of sunlight in less time than it takes me to come up with my order at the local coffee shop.

Lily, on the other hand, is clearly from the “trickster” lineage of the Norse god Loki and his modern heirs, Gurdjieff and Osho, lulling you into a false sense of security before flying up at your face to lick whatever it is that remains behind from your most recent encounter with food of any description. She too loves unconditionally and lives fully in the present, though her superpower is teaching forgiveness by being the…