Enlightenment Is Not

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I haven’t written much about enlightenment because I don’t like the futile nature of its discussion. But now that I’ve written about the paradoxical nature of spiritual growth, I am ready to take up this topic. (It’s a long article — you don’t expect a big topic like enlightenment comes in 800 words, right? But I will make it as entertaining as possible with youtube videos.)

The definition of enlightenment

The main problem of discussing enlightenment is nobody really knows what they are talking about. The definition of enlightenment is practically arbitrary. This hurts my feeling as a linguist.

First, let’s check the very basic — the dictionary. Merriam-Webster defines enlightenment as:

1. the act or means of enlightening (giving spiritual insight): the state of being enlightened (freed from ignorance and misinformation)
2. capitalized : a philosophic movement of the 18th century marked by a rejection of traditional social, religious, and political ideas and an emphasis on rationalism
3. Buddhism : a final blessed state marked by the absence of desire or suffering

We are not talking about 2 and 1 and 3 are actually related. We are not talking about merely brilliant spiritual insights, however. If that is enlightenment, hey, this blog is enlightening. So I must be enlightened — and I didn’t even know that (laugh — by definition, if I am so ignorant that I don’t even know what I am doing, I am not enlightened.)

We are basically talking about 3, the ultimate blissful state of no suffering. (I assume the blessed state is the state of bliss, or peace and joy.) And these days, the idea is not limited to Buddhism. Because suffering originates in ignorance and misinformation, this is related to the 1 definition.

Now, of course, this sounds nice. Who doesn’t want bliss?Who doesn’t want to get rid of suffering?

Why do you want enlightenment?

But then, if you want bliss, why don’t you seek bliss? Seeking enlightenment because you want the bliss that is supposed to come with enlightenment is like buying a box of cereal because you want the toy that comes with it. You can fool kids with this kind of sales strategy, but aren’t you smart enough to know it’s innately easier and simpler to buy the toy itself if you want the toy? Go for the cereal only when you want to eat the cereal.

Part of the reason I wrote “Acceptance Is The Key To Peace And Joy” was to point this out. To show how you can have bliss without complicating the process by the big-fat idea of enlightenment.

And then, I think there are some people who want enlightenment because they think that is what they are supposed to be seeking. In this case, enlightenment is like the fancy gadget advertised for Christmas.

Is enlightenment a holy, mystical experience?

Wikipedia says spiritual enlightenment is:

Spiritual enlightenment means to obtain a spiritual revelation or deep insight into the meaning and purpose of all things, to communicate with or understand the mind of God, to achieve some other type of profound spiritual understanding, or to achieve a fundamentally changed level of existence whereby one’s self is experienced as a nonchanging field of pure consciousness.

It says enlightenment is to “obtain” something good, like “revelation” or deep insight. “To communicate with or understand the mind of God” — that sounds pretty big deal, too. To “achieve” a fundamentally changed level of existence — whoa, will I levitate or something when I am enlightened?

I guess this represents the view of many spiritual “seekers”. Enlightenment is something nice to obtain or achieve. No wonder why some people seek enlightenment without really knowing what it is. Also, this definition of enlightenment implies we are not so nice as we are and enlightenment requires a lot of hard work.

Although this is a common view of enlightenment, many spiritual teachers say something 180 degrees different. Let’s examine . . .

What spiritual teachers say

Let’s see how some of the contemporary spiritual teachers define enlightenment — and how they say we can achieve it!

Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, Stillness Speaks and A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose . I’ve read them all, and they are excellent. This quote is from The Power Of Now:

(Enlightenment) is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form.

And he says the key to enlightenment is to focus on the Now. Don’t make it to a goal. Totally give up the search of enlightenment and just focus on the present. Here is his youtube video (in the video, he also says enlightenment is an egoless state):

Adyashanti, who is typically considered as a nondualism teacher, says enlightenment, or awakening, is simply not perceiving through the distortion ego makes. In other words, seeing everything as they are. It’s not about altered state of consciousness, but about clear seeing.

What I find interesting in this video is that he maintains enlightenment is NOT a permanent condition. It seems, for him, enlightenment can be a glimpse of egoless state, and after the initial enlightenment, there is a long journey of releasing layers and layers of remaining ego.

So how do we awaken? Adyashanti says, “Quit trying so hard.” He maintains most of the spiritual practices are mind-oriented and therefore prohibits the natural state of awareness. Instead, he suggests a process he calls True Meditation: Discover the Freedom of Pure Awareness (meditation with no manipulation of the mind) and meditative self-inquiry.

Ramana Maharshi doesn’t use the term enlightenment, but he talks about Self-realization, which is his way of saying the same thing. For that, he suggests a method called self-inquiry. You are the Self already, so the only thing there is is to realize it.

He also talks about mukti (liberation). This is from Be As You Are:

Liberation is our very nature. We are that. The very fact that we wish for liberation shows that freedom from all bondage is our real nature. It is not to be freshly acquired. All that is necessary is to get rid of the false notion that we are bound. When we achieve that, there will be no desire or thought of any sort. – Ramana Maharsh

So, again, the same thing — you are already liberated, enlightened, you are the Self, all there is is to realize it by removing false notion.

Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God : An Uncommon Dialogue (Book 1) series. I am a bit partial with him because I had the opportunity to see him in person at a book signing and was impressed how peaceful and tolerant he really was. He says in this article on enlightenment,

Enlightenment, when it is all said and done, has nothing to do with what you do with your body or your mind. It has to do with what you do with your soul. If you simply love everyone whose life you touch endlessly, unconditionally, with nothing needed or wanted in return, you have become Enlightened.

It’s a hilarious article, in which he discusses Paramahansa Yogananda, transcendental meditation (TM), and more. For him, enlightenment is when you declare you are enlightened. His exact wording; “to be enlightened is to say that you are.”

So what does enlightenment really mean?

This is only a quick view of what some spiritual teachers have to say, not meant to be a comprehensive review. But even this much shows how different these teachers’ definition of enlightenment is from the Wikipedia version.

So when we think about enlightenment, we must first decide which enlightenment we are talking about. Are you talking about the egoless state like many contemporary teachers mean? Are you seeking mystical experience? Or is it just some brilliant insights? (Ultimately, they may be all the same thing, but it is useful, at least in the beginning stage, to be clear what you mean.)

Buddhism enlightenment

Because spiritual enlightenment is originally a Buddhism idea, as the dictionary indicates, let’s see how the original Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, had enlightenment.

In the aforementioned article by Neale Donald Walsch, he mentions Buddha’s enlightenment as a result of non-doing. Prior to this, he tried all the methodologies that were known in his days, including various forms of meditation, physical exercises, and fasting, and failed. Finally, he just sat, and got enlightened — that is to say, he realized he is totally free. “There is nothing that you have to be, do, or have.” Freedom as non-attachment.

Wikipedia has a somewhat different story of Siddhartha Gautama. It says he achieved enlightenment after 49 days of meditation — sounds like he had a strong determination to be enlightened, rather than just sitting like Neale says. Buddhism enlightenment is traditionally summarized in the Four Noble Truth and the Noble Eightfold Path. It’s a lot of do’s and don’t, and highly philosophical (meaning it’s about the mind).

Buddhism also defines enlightenment as the end of reincarnation, or freedom from having have to reincarnate.

Enlightenment as clear realization

I am taking the definition of enlightenment as the freedom from false ideas that cloud my realization of who I am. It may come as a wonderful unusual experience or as a simple realization — it doesn’t matter which.

I have a feeling that my true nature is good, loving and naturally capable of peace and joy, but realizing these qualities are the possible result of enlightenment, not enlightenment itself. In other words, they are like the toys in the cereal box — what I’d like is to have this realization, and if it comes with bliss, that is nice, but that is not what I am after. (I already know how to have unwavering peace and joy.)

Also, if I can realize who I really am, it automatically follows I can realize the true nature of everything. It can be the other way round. Enlightenment is the freedom from false ideas that cloud my realization of anything as it is, including myself.

And when we define enlightenment this way, it is immediately clear that the seeking, or the trying, is counterproductive. This is the second issue about discussing enlightenment. If enlightenment is about realizing who I am, it’s not about trying to become something I am not, it’s not about seeking something outside of myself.

Rather, it’s about how I have been fooling myself.

Stillness or silence

Eckhart Tolle advises to focus on the Now. This is in effect the same as to quit trying, or quit resisting. Everything is as it is right here and now. When I accept this, things are really simple. We complicate things by wandering into the thoughts of the past and the future.

We try or resist because we judge. But how do we really know if any judgment is right or false?

We don’t. They are all in our minds. All the judgments are just stories we make in our mind. We don’t really know if anything is good or bad. We only think we do.

How do things look like without all the stories and judgements?

They just . . . are. It’s a similar feeling of finding I just am after the self-inquiry process. It cannot be put into words. Things are as they are before words define them.

Eckhart Tolle calls it stillness. Ramana Maharshi calls it silence.

The Bible says, “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10), but we might as well say, simply, “Be still and know that I am.”

Lucid dreaming in the human dream

My alternative definition of enlightenment is to wake up from the collective human dream, or the virtual reality simulation game called life.

When you are enlightened, that is to say, when you can clearly see things, including yourself, as they are without all the judgments and stories, you notice the true nature of what we call reality.

The reality is like a dream. You are dreaming, I am dreaming, we are all dreaming the same dream — so it feels real. But it’s a dream. This is why we can mold reality in a way we choose, using methods such as the law of attraction. It’s a dream, so nothing really matters — or, if this expression causes the empty feeling of meaningless, I can also say, as Neale Donald Walsch said in the aforementioned article, you can choose what matters to you. We are free to do so.

Two levels of awakening

In fact, I don’t think I am fully awake from this collective dream. What I am experiencing is the equivalent of lucid dreaming. I can tell it’s a dream, but I am not truly awake. Because if someone is truly awake, he or she would supersede death, like Jesus did. I only know death is another phase of this simulation game.

But then, it’s okay to be in this dream — just wake up from the nightmare of judgments. In other words, notice there is a malware in this simulation game that wasn’t in the original plan and disregard it so that you can fully experience the simulation game. This is what “freedom from false ideas that cloud my realization” means.

We are in this simulation game for a reason, to learn love. When I really learn love, what has to happen will happen, and I don’t need to worry about it now.

Are you enlightened?

What is your definition of enlightenment and are you enlightened by that definition? Let me know your experience of enlightenment. I am very interested what you have to say

By any means, just don’t follow others who say they know the path to enlightenment — that is a very unenlightened way.

Related post:

If you are interested in the two levels of existence that I wrote about toward the end of this article, please check this article — The Second Step of Self Realization.

By the way, enlightenment does NOT mean having no “negative” feelings or personal issues. Here is my followup on this point — The Purpose Of Life Is Life Itself.

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