Why have I awoken Now? I am riddled by this question lately and it necessary for my progress on path of Dhamma. My question is, why is it that in this life time I have became obsessively bent to attain nibbana while everyone around me is living in total oblivion. I mean if I had so many rebirths in past lives exactly what was I doing all these quantillion lives, was I never told the dhamma. If I was told, then why am I not already enlightened. Was I dumb or something all these lives not to have awaken to the truth of suffering? What must have been my mistake all these lives? How can I rectify that mistake so that I can felicitate my nibbana in this life?
-- "why is it that in this life time I have became obsessively bent to attain nibbana"

There is a traditional Buddhist teaching that explains this Awakening through a combination of lucky causes and conditions. When the conditions are unlucky, they are known as "Eight Conditions in Which There is No Freedom to Practice Dharma". When the conditions are lucky, there are known as "The Ten Advantages" or "The Five Individual and Five Circumstantial Advantages". I will not quote them here verbatim, for fear of simplistic reification - instead I will try to explain the idea behind it.

Awakening happens when your life conditions are "just right". Being "just right" means they are not too bad but not too "worldly good" either.

On one hand, there has to be enough good luck to be born in the right place at the right time to encounter Dharma, and your personal circumstances should be good enough to allow you to pay attention to it. Meaning, you need to be born in the right historical period in a civilized country that has Dharma available in some form, when there is no active war or other issues that would completely distract from anything but survival. You also have to be born a human or other type of sentient being that has its mental faculty in a good functional order.

On the other hand, you need to have enough suffering in your life and enough confusion to push you to seek some sort of resolution. If your life circumstances are too structured from birth, for example you are born to a family that has everything running well and under control, you may be so completely preoccupied with worldly activities of study, work, art, making business etc., that you will have zero interest in Dharma even if the Buddha himself were to teach you.

Just enough suffering and confusion -- but not too much -- because too much suffering and confusion leads to perverted worldviews, excessive aggression, extreme pessimism/hopelessness/nihilism, an idea that one can only get happy by abusing others, incurable cynicism, addictions etc.

So when these multiple "just right" causes and conditions come together all at the same time, we have this phenomena of Awakening - one day you come in touch with Dharma and you are interested. This is the moment when your negative seeds (suffering, confusion) and your positive seeds (open mind, intuitively right values) germinate in the ground of lucky circumstances.

This combination of positive and negative factors is very important. This is why human condition is so valuable, compared to other life forms. It gives just enough positive and negative factors in just the right proportions. It does not happen all the time, true, but still a million times more frequently than with almost any other type of sentient life. We are lucky to be messed up just enough to Awaken! :))

-- "Why am I not already enlightened? What must have been my mistake all these lives? How can I rectify that?

As you can imagine, there's any number of mistakes you could have made, but here is one traditional list, known as "The Eight Intrusive Circumstances". I will list them here in brief, it could be one or more in your case:


you failed to overcome negative emotions dominating your mind.
you were intellectually lazy and did not want to make effort to study Dharma.
you failed to identify a confused teacher as such, and wasted your chance by following incorrect teaching.
you were a procrastinator when it came to meditation.
you failed to cut the self-perpetuating cycle of negative karma, and it claimed your freedom back.
you did not say "no" to worldly people in your life that wanted you to do what they thought was important.
you always prioritized solving your worldly problems over Dharma.
you fell victim to the temptation of using Dharma as a source of money, power, or fame - and lost connection with genuine virtue.


I'm sure there are countless other potential mistakes one could have made, but this should get you started. There is much more on this topic in a book I recommend, "The Words of My Perfect Teacher" by Patrul Rinpoche.