Zen saying: "Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water".
Some more from Ram Dass:
“Just because you are seeing divine light, experiencing waves of bliss, or conversing with Gods and Goddesses is no reason to not know your zip code.”
"If you see yourself as God and then you come back from this state and somebody says, "Hey, Sam, empty the garbage!" it catches you back into the model of "I'm Sam who empties the garbage." You can't maintain these new kinds of structures. It takes a while to realize that God can empty garbage."
What I get from it is that if you are considering starting a cult, creating your own government, going to war, or how to integrate your newfound knowledge into the bureaucracy of the world, you're not quite out of the woods yet.
Your first quote reminded me of this from Bruce Lee:
> Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.
At the lsd height, i was everyone and the world only progressed through me.
I also knew that i wanted to keep this enlightend state and thought about mechanism to bring me back into my 'normal' form. I thought up religion to only discover that it did not work, i came to the idea of creating an idol something like lsd. Something which will give me access back to this state and will be discovered and easily to be distributed.
After that, i was normal again. Continuing my life.
This article appears to be deeply confusing two drastically different meanings of "enlightened".
There's the spiritual sense, which might be described as fully understanding and accepting the impermanence of the world and the "artificiality" of meaning.
Separately, there's "getting" something in a knowledge area. E.g. you finally understood how pointers work in C.
The author seems to start with the first... but then immediately goes wrong. He assumes if you're enlightened then you want to spread it -- but this is the exact opposite of enlightenment, so the author has it 100% backwards.
Then he eventually veers into "But what do you know about education and foreign policy, ecology and immigration, tax reform and monetary policy?" Which is the second sense of enlightenment, but has nothing to do with the first.
Spiritual enlightment has nothing to do with applied knowledge in any of those.
This is... really just a bad article. The author doesn't seem to understand what enlightenment is at all, and is trying to satirize/criticize it because of that. It's kind of sad, in a way.
>if you're enlightened then you want to spread it -- but this is the exact opposite of enlightenment, so the author has it 100% backwards.
I have to disagree there. Many people who achieve benefits through enlightenment want to spread it to as many people as possible, so that others can receive help in achieving their own enlightenement.
Enlightenment to me means the realise the nature of the universe and the nature of Man in it. Also to realize the nature of your happiness and desires, and the extent of your control over it.
To me, enlightenment in Europe picked up pace in the 1700s. It most certainly involved religious reform and the generation of new cults.
I think you are confusing the buddhist definition of enlightenment with other possible definitions. Perhaps you even believe that the buddhist definition is somehow final and absolute.
The buddhist definition of enlightenment lies far from mine, and both lie far from what a devout Christian might consider enlightenment.
Very scattered post. I guess the confusion about enlightenment these days is grounded in the conflict between the actual traditional concept and the way spiritual practises have been sold as a sort of productivity booster pack for knowledge workers.
In many religious traditions enlightenment is nothing less than the annihilation of the self or something of the sort. It's a proper recognition or awareness of one's own nature, absence of desire, superficial rewards, it's not easy to put into words but I think most people get the point.
This has gotten lost in all the self-help posts about meditation and it's been turned into a commodity on app stores and whatnot and now people treat it like a snickers when your blood sugar is low.
Buddhism is politically quietist traditionally, but Abrahamic religions are politically activist, so Western reception of Buddhism requires transforming it into “engaged” Buddhism. It’s hard for someone raised in the West to look at Nazis and just shrug and say that they can only kill the body but not the soul, but that is more or less what Buddhists before 1800 would say.
I honestly don't get the point of the article. Is it supposed to be a jab at the modern mindfulness wave? Or is it actually speaking of "enlightenment" as it's understood in most spiritual practices, in which case none of the questions even make sense?
> Or is it actually speaking of "enlightenment" as it's understood in most spiritual practices, in which case none of the questions even make sense?
You'd think that (and I agree that the article doesn't make much sense) but as a matter of fact, quite a few people seem to think that they are enlightened in the spiritual sense you're talking about, and that this means that their view of enlightenment should definitely be turned into a quasi-cult, with them at the lead. Daniel Ingram (author of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha - a surprisingly pragmatic take, all things considered!) has repeatedly expressed his frustration with this.
Seriously. But presumably it's easier to write a snarky article than it is to spend years learning about that enlightenment really means for different traditions.
Do you have any reason to not see it in the light of your first alternative reading? I would not necessarily have put it that way myself, but on seeing you do so, it resonated.
Upon reading it my thoughts went to yesterday's Verge article on the audio recordings of Zuckerberg's Q&As. Facebook has many vocal rank and file people who seem to believe they've arrived at Enlightenment and want Zuckerberg to toe the line. His imperfect attempts to walk a tightrope that keeps everyone happy infuriate the Enlightened, who believe tightrope walking is in its very conception a concession to Evil. They conclude that he's an Agent of Hatred and start taking steps to coerce him into compliance with Correct Thinking.
You can be the enlightened one in many things. Here is an example: Edward Snowdon. Re-read the article imagining yourself to be him and it might make more sense.
Was he enlightened? Well yes. He could see the system for what it was in a very Matrix type of way. Before he came out with facts we were tin foil hat wearers, certainly not enlightened.
Because Snowdon knows some of the truths he has a vantage point to see the rest of the way government works for what it is. He also has a vantage point for seeing his fellow human beings for what they are. You can count on one hand the amount of people in the spy agencies that came out in a way inspired by Snowdon. It didn't happen, they just hunkered down.
I would say that Snowdon has got the measure of his fellow man and is therefore enlightened.
You can achieve enlightenment in many ways and the spiritual practice world does not have a monopoly on enlightenment. There are probably more fraudsters than genuine enlightened in the religious world.
Enlightenment is a thing though and with it comes a whole host of other thoughts, as per the article.
The article desperately tries to push all the triggers like a nerd on a party who tries to small-talk about science with a beauty queen who already has achieved inner emptiness.
'If anyone should think he has solved the problem of life & feels like telling himself everything is quite easy now, he need only tell himself, in order to see that he is wrong, that there was a time when this "solution" had not been discovered; but it must have been possible to live then too & the solution which has now been discovered appears in relation to how things were then like an accident. And it is the same for us in logic too. If there were a "solution to the problems of logic (philosophy)" we should only have to caution ourselves that there was a time when they had not been solved (and then too it must have been possible to live and think).' - Wittgenstein
That's fascinating but I don't understand his argument. Wouldn't it mean that no problem can be solved? There was a time before Wiles proved Fermat, for example.
The idea of enlightenment as a vague loosely-defined “I know it when I see it” phenomena is mostly a western “new age” cultural misappropriation of Buddhist teaching.
Enlightenment is well-defined and described in detail by the Buddhist cannon. You can call “enlightenment” whatever you want, but Buddha taught a specific conception of enlightenment and a specific path to achieving it.
The Tripitaka describes enlightenment proceeding in four stages (SN 22.122), with each stage defined by the abandonment of some of the ten fetters (SN 45.179 and 45.180) which bind us to samsara. Once the ten fetters are conquered one has reached the final stage of enlightenment and will be liberated from the cycle of rebirth (nirvana).
The Tripitaka describes each fetter in detail and how to overcome them. The process of enlightenment is fairly systematic (eightfold path).
The ten fetters are:
1. Self identity view (sakkaya ditthi)
2. Sceptical doubt (vicikicca)
3. Attachment to mere rites and rituals (silabbata paramasa)
4. Sensual desire (kama raga)
5. Ill-will (patigha)
6. Desire to be born in fine material worlds (rupa raga)
7. Desire to be born in formless worlds (arupa raga)
The Zen sudden-enlightenment doctrine seem a newer teaching/dharma/interpretation than enlightenment by stages, distinct from it, and no less valid by any objective measure I can think of. I think Jainism and Hinduism also have some notions of enlightenment or concepts close or related to it, like moksha. The sudden enlightenment view seems closer to the root of western "new age" conception, so it seems rather uncharitable to pick an older and more restricted definition for dramatic effect on the claim of cultural misappropriation.
But the word "enlightenment" seems too overloaded from different conceptions/traditions, so it hardly seems worth splitting hairs over--using the word itself seems like a barrier to clear communication at this point unless you have a clearly defined context, like the enlightenment of the Buddhist Pali canon, or whatever. I just find your view narrow and uncharitable, and we should focus on what we know the author means rather than quibbling over the definitions of words. Language isn't that precise, evolves, and is meant to communicate, and is adequate if it gets the idea across. Personally, I think we more or less know what the author means here without going back to Buddhist canon, so we should probably just leave Buddhist canon out of it.
This detail addresses none of the questions raised in the post. Either escaping these ten fetters confers a detachment from the world such that one no longer needs to change it, or one wants to share this state with the world and then has to grapple with those challenges identified in the post.
Most enlightened people don't even know they're enlightened.
The ones who arrived there without conscious effort, through some intense concentration on some other aspect of life, simply lose their angst. Asked to explain, they usually have some kind of muddled folk mysticism about how it happened. Very few of them teach.
I know of well attested enlightenment from an olympic-grade swimmer, and a guy who really liked fly fishing, for example. The swimmer counted breaths while swimming, very much like one particular zen practice.
The desire to go out and teach is much more a side-effect of the people that were trained in schools founded by people who decided to go out and teach: the desire to teach is not embedded in the enlightenment experience for most people.
In that, it describes people as outwardly exactly the same as before, but their internal experience changed dramatically. This sounds to be the opposite of what you're describing.
One afternoon a student said “Roshi, I don’t really understand what’s going on. I mean, we sit in zazen and we gassho to each other and everything, and Felicia got enlightened when the bottom fell out of her water-bucket, and Todd got enlightened when you popped him one with your staff, and people work on koans and get enlightened, but I’ve been doing this for two years now, and the koans don’t make any sense, and I don’t feel enlightened at all! Can you just tell me what’s going on?”
“Well you see,” Roshi replied, “for most people, and especially for most educated people like you and I, what we perceive and experience is heavily mediated, through language and concepts that are deeply ingrained in our ways of thinking and feeling. Our objective here is to induce in ourselves and in each other a psychological state that involves the unmediated experience of the world, because we believe that that state has certain desirable properties. It’s impossible in general to reach that state through any particular form or method, since forms and methods are themselves examples of the mediators that we are trying to avoid.
So we employ a variety of ad hoc means, some linguistic like koans and some non-linguistic like zazen, in hopes that for any given student one or more of our methods will, in whatever way, engender the condition of non-mediated experience that is our goal. And since even thinking in terms of mediators and goals tends to reinforce our undesirable dependency on concepts, we actively discourage exactly this kind of analytical discourse.
I'm a little confused what this article is trying to say besides being on a peak state high doesn't mean much when it comes to really changing things. Don't get self-deluded about yourself by having a peak state experience.
If we are saying "enlightened" as in a general broad category of shift in mentality/emotions/peak state then that's one thing. If we're talking about a technical term that is used specifically within certain traditions then that's a different thing. I think it's very problematic that in a lot of people conflate the two as the same thing.
Even Buddhists who spend the decades realizing enlightenment still continue training to deepen. It's still possible to re-enter delusion after awakening.
And most real meditation masters I know do not make any claims about enlightenment meaning you're now a great ruler or CEO or something. That would be the Halo Effect.
Wow, a lot of hate in the comments, and a lot of know-it-alls. I would say that, at the very least, worrying over these details would be a step along that road.
And no, there is not widespread agreement on the speciific features. Some would say you cease to perdure in the phenomenal realm at all. Some would say you continue do altruistic things out of compassion. Some would say enlightenment is not possible in a single lifetime.
Personally, I have no pretensions about reaching it myself and remain agnostic. Which is why I am shit posting on hackernews with the rest of you schmucks.
There are so many models of awakening it’s boggling. The traditional Theravada 4-path model is a little too psychological perfection to me.
From what I understand, Buddhist ultimate insight is typically defined as the realization of the three characteristics:
1. One cannot separate the self from the context the individual is embedded in.
2. All phenomena are transient.
3. Nothing is satisfying forever, even jhanic experiences.
There’s a certain shift of relationship to suffering that occurs after various forms of insight. There’s still pain and suffering, and you can still be a total jerk face.
Jack Kornfield’s “after the ecstasy the laundry,” I’ve heard is a great exploration of this.
Compassion is a common characteristic of enlightenment. If you are still marred in duality you think there is a other. In the enlightened state there really is no difference between all forms of existence.
I believe it was Shrinyu Suzuki, author of "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" who said something like "In truth there is not enlightenment, only enlightened acts." Stewart Brand also tells a story that Suzuki was asked once why he didn't talk much about enlightenment in his writing, and his wife who was present said "it's because he hasn't been enlightened", and he batted at her with his fan and said "shh, shh". Very fun.
Abraham Maslow is mostly remembered for coining the term 'self-actualized', but not necessarily the detailed description of such a person. It includes working on something typically small, but very important. (Think, teacher of young children). And being so intensely involved in such a thing that they can't describe who they are without reference to this vocation. This speaks to a certain quality of enlightenment to me.
If you're not asking yourself some version of any of these questions, it doesn't sound like you've very enlightened at all. Going with the light terminology, you are perhaps blinded and/or overexposed.
The thesis of this article can be encapsulated in a single psilocybin trip, during which you will feel as if the secrets of the entire universe have been revealed, and after which you are utterly powerless to reveal them.
What a weird article. It makes several assumptions that seem entirely unproven, such as that someone who is enlightened would immediately want to "spread the word". Similarly, worries about the practicality (or not) of enlightenment seem very un-enlightened almost by definition.
Jan Willem van der Wetering "A Glimpse of Nothingness"
Would there ever be a time, I thought while I brushed my teeth, when meditation is an accepted general activity?
"Where is Father?"
"Father is meditating."
"Oh."
Father is meditating. He often does. The children meditate too when they have a chance. And Mother. And the neighbors. They are all disciples of the master of the neighborhood. There will be new classes, new ranks. When you want to be a member of the government you have to have solved a certain number of koans, otherwise your insight will not be sufficient to be able to help rule the country. The prime minister is a wise old fellow with a bald shaven head. He doesn't want anything. He has no possessions except what he needs for his daily simple routine. He is a high priest who nearly always wears the same clothes.
The higher you go the simpler you become. Only the common people are rich, they still want to have property. The more impressive your residence the lower your place in society.
Perhaps the prime minister owns a mansion, but it is a gift from the people. He lives there to please his subjects but his bedroom will be a small bare room with white walls and his mattress will be thin and hard.
He will get up at 3 a.m. and the ministers will visit him one by one for sanzen. The state will be very rich. The bridges, roads, public buildings, airports, waterworks and national parks will be of the highest quality and well looked after. Nature will be nature again and full of wild life, but the wild animals will be tame.
Tangential, but apropos your comment especially on "The higher you go the simpler you become...", "The Midas Plague" from 1954 by Frederik Pohl is a funny story about a socio-economic perspective shift -- related to a situation where "wealth" and social status in an age of robotic automation and automated factories essentially means material simplicity and the opportunity for meaningful work. The story is available at the Internet Archive (and elsewhere on the net): https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1954-04/Galaxy_195...
The story was also was made into part of a larger book called "Midas World".
James P. Hogan's 1982 novel "Voyage From Yesteryear" is a more modern version of that theme of a shift in socio-economic culture with abundance -- with an old scarcity-based culture in conflict with a culture rooted in abundance-based thinking:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120713225646/http://www.jamesp...
For me, the socio-technological version of enlightenment these days involves appreciating the insight summarized in the sig I use: :-) "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."
It's just amazing how difficult it is to get people to appreciate that simple-seeming idea. Perhaps Upton Sinclair was indeed right (even as regards various forms of enlightenment?) when he said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
And that sig came from thinking about such stories as well as writings of others like Langdon Winner, Buckminster Fuller, Ursula K. Le Guin, Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, or Albert Einstein (among others) -- so it is not like the core insight there is completely new.
For example, Einstein wrote in 1945: "The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
Although in an age where digital watches have more computer power than was used to design the first atomic bombs, even being a watchmaker these days can be problematic in the 21st century. And that is even ignoring the "Acceleration of Addictiveness" (Paul Graham) "Pleasure Trap" (Douglas J. Lisle & Alan Goldhamer) potential of watch-based "Supernormal Stimuli" (Dierdre Barrett) given the "pretty neat idea" of digital watches networked to large organizations with problematical short-term profit-driven goals involving socializing costs and privatizing gains.
Or in Douglas Adam's insightful and potentially-enlightening words: "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything. ..."
I've enjoyed learning from the various comments here and pointers to other resources on the main topic of spiritual/psychological enlightenment -- especially the link to the Slate Star Codex review of "The PNSE Paper".
Enlightenment is having the light within, without darkness. Meditation helps understanding of the problem of inner darkness that we're all born with, but doesn't directly translate into becoming the light.
All forms of unconscious reaction are a sure sign that one has darkness within. Unfortunately, our brains are seemingly hotwired into putting all pieces of information it receives into little pigeon holes of assumption. So, when someone provokes us, we get scared and/or angry, and we then re-act to their actions, making us a slave, not only to our own mind, but to the actions of others.
Learning how to maintain a peaceful composure in all aspects of life is a great way to learn of the battle between light and dark.
Those spiritually inclined can make supplications for assistance to the divine, which personally I find to be of immeasurably great help.
[+] [-] Liquix|5 years ago|reply
Some more from Ram Dass:
“Just because you are seeing divine light, experiencing waves of bliss, or conversing with Gods and Goddesses is no reason to not know your zip code.”
"If you see yourself as God and then you come back from this state and somebody says, "Hey, Sam, empty the garbage!" it catches you back into the model of "I'm Sam who empties the garbage." You can't maintain these new kinds of structures. It takes a while to realize that God can empty garbage."
What I get from it is that if you are considering starting a cult, creating your own government, going to war, or how to integrate your newfound knowledge into the bureaucracy of the world, you're not quite out of the woods yet.
[+] [-] MaxBarraclough|5 years ago|reply
> Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.
[+] [-] Regenschirm|5 years ago|reply
At the lsd height, i was everyone and the world only progressed through me.
I also knew that i wanted to keep this enlightend state and thought about mechanism to bring me back into my 'normal' form. I thought up religion to only discover that it did not work, i came to the idea of creating an idol something like lsd. Something which will give me access back to this state and will be discovered and easily to be distributed.
After that, i was normal again. Continuing my life.
[+] [-] gregfjohnson|5 years ago|reply
In the context of this discussion, "masterful programmers" could be considered equivalent to "enlightened programmers".
[+] [-] jchook|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _def|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crazygringo|5 years ago|reply
There's the spiritual sense, which might be described as fully understanding and accepting the impermanence of the world and the "artificiality" of meaning.
Separately, there's "getting" something in a knowledge area. E.g. you finally understood how pointers work in C.
The author seems to start with the first... but then immediately goes wrong. He assumes if you're enlightened then you want to spread it -- but this is the exact opposite of enlightenment, so the author has it 100% backwards.
Then he eventually veers into "But what do you know about education and foreign policy, ecology and immigration, tax reform and monetary policy?" Which is the second sense of enlightenment, but has nothing to do with the first.
Spiritual enlightment has nothing to do with applied knowledge in any of those.
This is... really just a bad article. The author doesn't seem to understand what enlightenment is at all, and is trying to satirize/criticize it because of that. It's kind of sad, in a way.
[+] [-] forgotmypw17|5 years ago|reply
I have to disagree there. Many people who achieve benefits through enlightenment want to spread it to as many people as possible, so that others can receive help in achieving their own enlightenement.
[+] [-] tinco|5 years ago|reply
To me, enlightenment in Europe picked up pace in the 1700s. It most certainly involved religious reform and the generation of new cults.
I think you are confusing the buddhist definition of enlightenment with other possible definitions. Perhaps you even believe that the buddhist definition is somehow final and absolute.
The buddhist definition of enlightenment lies far from mine, and both lie far from what a devout Christian might consider enlightenment.
[+] [-] Red_Leaves_Flyy|5 years ago|reply
Isn't the opposite of spread - hoard?
[+] [-] Barrin92|5 years ago|reply
In many religious traditions enlightenment is nothing less than the annihilation of the self or something of the sort. It's a proper recognition or awareness of one's own nature, absence of desire, superficial rewards, it's not easy to put into words but I think most people get the point.
This has gotten lost in all the self-help posts about meditation and it's been turned into a commodity on app stores and whatnot and now people treat it like a snickers when your blood sugar is low.
[+] [-] earthboundkid|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theon144|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zozbot234|5 years ago|reply
You'd think that (and I agree that the article doesn't make much sense) but as a matter of fact, quite a few people seem to think that they are enlightened in the spiritual sense you're talking about, and that this means that their view of enlightenment should definitely be turned into a quasi-cult, with them at the lead. Daniel Ingram (author of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha - a surprisingly pragmatic take, all things considered!) has repeatedly expressed his frustration with this.
[+] [-] SamBam|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicbou|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mannykannot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edw|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Theodores|5 years ago|reply
Was he enlightened? Well yes. He could see the system for what it was in a very Matrix type of way. Before he came out with facts we were tin foil hat wearers, certainly not enlightened.
Because Snowdon knows some of the truths he has a vantage point to see the rest of the way government works for what it is. He also has a vantage point for seeing his fellow human beings for what they are. You can count on one hand the amount of people in the spy agencies that came out in a way inspired by Snowdon. It didn't happen, they just hunkered down.
I would say that Snowdon has got the measure of his fellow man and is therefore enlightened.
You can achieve enlightenment in many ways and the spiritual practice world does not have a monopoly on enlightenment. There are probably more fraudsters than genuine enlightened in the religious world.
Enlightenment is a thing though and with it comes a whole host of other thoughts, as per the article.
[+] [-] threatripper|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mellowdream|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexmingoia|5 years ago|reply
Enlightenment is well-defined and described in detail by the Buddhist cannon. You can call “enlightenment” whatever you want, but Buddha taught a specific conception of enlightenment and a specific path to achieving it.
The Tripitaka describes enlightenment proceeding in four stages (SN 22.122), with each stage defined by the abandonment of some of the ten fetters (SN 45.179 and 45.180) which bind us to samsara. Once the ten fetters are conquered one has reached the final stage of enlightenment and will be liberated from the cycle of rebirth (nirvana).
The Tripitaka describes each fetter in detail and how to overcome them. The process of enlightenment is fairly systematic (eightfold path).
The ten fetters are:
1. Self identity view (sakkaya ditthi)
2. Sceptical doubt (vicikicca)
3. Attachment to mere rites and rituals (silabbata paramasa)
4. Sensual desire (kama raga)
5. Ill-will (patigha)
6. Desire to be born in fine material worlds (rupa raga)
7. Desire to be born in formless worlds (arupa raga)
8. Conceit (mana)
9. Restlessness (uddacca)
10. Ignorance (avijja)
[+] [-] theonemind|5 years ago|reply
But the word "enlightenment" seems too overloaded from different conceptions/traditions, so it hardly seems worth splitting hairs over--using the word itself seems like a barrier to clear communication at this point unless you have a clearly defined context, like the enlightenment of the Buddhist Pali canon, or whatever. I just find your view narrow and uncharitable, and we should focus on what we know the author means rather than quibbling over the definitions of words. Language isn't that precise, evolves, and is meant to communicate, and is adequate if it gets the idea across. Personally, I think we more or less know what the author means here without going back to Buddhist canon, so we should probably just leave Buddhist canon out of it.
[+] [-] jessedhillon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leashless|5 years ago|reply
The ones who arrived there without conscious effort, through some intense concentration on some other aspect of life, simply lose their angst. Asked to explain, they usually have some kind of muddled folk mysticism about how it happened. Very few of them teach.
I know of well attested enlightenment from an olympic-grade swimmer, and a guy who really liked fly fishing, for example. The swimmer counted breaths while swimming, very much like one particular zen practice.
The desire to go out and teach is much more a side-effect of the people that were trained in schools founded by people who decided to go out and teach: the desire to teach is not embedded in the enlightenment experience for most people.
[+] [-] nafey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tgb|5 years ago|reply
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/21/the-pnse-paper/
In that, it describes people as outwardly exactly the same as before, but their internal experience changed dramatically. This sounds to be the opposite of what you're describing.
[+] [-] MichaelZuo|5 years ago|reply
“Well you see,” Roshi replied, “for most people, and especially for most educated people like you and I, what we perceive and experience is heavily mediated, through language and concepts that are deeply ingrained in our ways of thinking and feeling. Our objective here is to induce in ourselves and in each other a psychological state that involves the unmediated experience of the world, because we believe that that state has certain desirable properties. It’s impossible in general to reach that state through any particular form or method, since forms and methods are themselves examples of the mediators that we are trying to avoid.
So we employ a variety of ad hoc means, some linguistic like koans and some non-linguistic like zazen, in hopes that for any given student one or more of our methods will, in whatever way, engender the condition of non-mediated experience that is our goal. And since even thinking in terms of mediators and goals tends to reinforce our undesirable dependency on concepts, we actively discourage exactly this kind of analytical discourse.
And the student was enlightened.
[+] [-] alfonsodev|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inglor_cz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peterxpark|5 years ago|reply
If we are saying "enlightened" as in a general broad category of shift in mentality/emotions/peak state then that's one thing. If we're talking about a technical term that is used specifically within certain traditions then that's a different thing. I think it's very problematic that in a lot of people conflate the two as the same thing.
Even Buddhists who spend the decades realizing enlightenment still continue training to deepen. It's still possible to re-enter delusion after awakening.
And most real meditation masters I know do not make any claims about enlightenment meaning you're now a great ruler or CEO or something. That would be the Halo Effect.
[+] [-] samirillian|5 years ago|reply
And no, there is not widespread agreement on the speciific features. Some would say you cease to perdure in the phenomenal realm at all. Some would say you continue do altruistic things out of compassion. Some would say enlightenment is not possible in a single lifetime.
Personally, I have no pretensions about reaching it myself and remain agnostic. Which is why I am shit posting on hackernews with the rest of you schmucks.
[+] [-] fizixer|5 years ago|reply
The know-it-allness and the highness shall remain reserved for the author of the post.
[+] [-] draw_down|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] SirensOfTitan|5 years ago|reply
From what I understand, Buddhist ultimate insight is typically defined as the realization of the three characteristics:
1. One cannot separate the self from the context the individual is embedded in. 2. All phenomena are transient. 3. Nothing is satisfying forever, even jhanic experiences.
There’s a certain shift of relationship to suffering that occurs after various forms of insight. There’s still pain and suffering, and you can still be a total jerk face.
Jack Kornfield’s “after the ecstasy the laundry,” I’ve heard is a great exploration of this.
[+] [-] prox|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ta1234567890|5 years ago|reply
It seems like most of them lead pretty normal lives (they "chop wood and carry water").
[+] [-] surajx|5 years ago|reply
The state in which such a question arises is contradictory to the state of enlightenment.
[+] [-] raxxorrax|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lcuff|5 years ago|reply
Abraham Maslow is mostly remembered for coining the term 'self-actualized', but not necessarily the detailed description of such a person. It includes working on something typically small, but very important. (Think, teacher of young children). And being so intensely involved in such a thing that they can't describe who they are without reference to this vocation. This speaks to a certain quality of enlightenment to me.
[+] [-] darod|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kspacewalk2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] galacticaactual|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WJW|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robaato|5 years ago|reply
Would there ever be a time, I thought while I brushed my teeth, when meditation is an accepted general activity?
"Where is Father?" "Father is meditating." "Oh."
Father is meditating. He often does. The children meditate too when they have a chance. And Mother. And the neighbors. They are all disciples of the master of the neighborhood. There will be new classes, new ranks. When you want to be a member of the government you have to have solved a certain number of koans, otherwise your insight will not be sufficient to be able to help rule the country. The prime minister is a wise old fellow with a bald shaven head. He doesn't want anything. He has no possessions except what he needs for his daily simple routine. He is a high priest who nearly always wears the same clothes.
The higher you go the simpler you become. Only the common people are rich, they still want to have property. The more impressive your residence the lower your place in society.
Perhaps the prime minister owns a mansion, but it is a gift from the people. He lives there to please his subjects but his bedroom will be a small bare room with white walls and his mattress will be thin and hard.
He will get up at 3 a.m. and the ministers will visit him one by one for sanzen. The state will be very rich. The bridges, roads, public buildings, airports, waterworks and national parks will be of the highest quality and well looked after. Nature will be nature again and full of wild life, but the wild animals will be tame.
[+] [-] robaato|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdfernhout|5 years ago|reply
The story was also was made into part of a larger book called "Midas World".
I can wonder if "The Midas Plague" might have helped inspire the 1956 sci-fi story by Theodore Sturgeon called "The Skills of Xanadu", which in turn inspired Theodore Nelson to create the Xanadu hypertext system, which in turn helped inspire the web? https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1956-07/Galaxy_195... https://archive.org/details/pra-BB3830.08
James P. Hogan's 1982 novel "Voyage From Yesteryear" is a more modern version of that theme of a shift in socio-economic culture with abundance -- with an old scarcity-based culture in conflict with a culture rooted in abundance-based thinking: https://web.archive.org/web/20120713225646/http://www.jamesp...
For me, the socio-technological version of enlightenment these days involves appreciating the insight summarized in the sig I use: :-) "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."
It's just amazing how difficult it is to get people to appreciate that simple-seeming idea. Perhaps Upton Sinclair was indeed right (even as regards various forms of enlightenment?) when he said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
And that sig came from thinking about such stories as well as writings of others like Langdon Winner, Buckminster Fuller, Ursula K. Le Guin, Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, or Albert Einstein (among others) -- so it is not like the core insight there is completely new.
For example, Einstein wrote in 1945: "The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
Although in an age where digital watches have more computer power than was used to design the first atomic bombs, even being a watchmaker these days can be problematic in the 21st century. And that is even ignoring the "Acceleration of Addictiveness" (Paul Graham) "Pleasure Trap" (Douglas J. Lisle & Alan Goldhamer) potential of watch-based "Supernormal Stimuli" (Dierdre Barrett) given the "pretty neat idea" of digital watches networked to large organizations with problematical short-term profit-driven goals involving socializing costs and privatizing gains.
Or in Douglas Adam's insightful and potentially-enlightening words: "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything. ..."
I've enjoyed learning from the various comments here and pointers to other resources on the main topic of spiritual/psychological enlightenment -- especially the link to the Slate Star Codex review of "The PNSE Paper".
[+] [-] brna|5 years ago|reply
It seems to me, that an being at peace with it self has no need to change or make progress in any direction.
Human actions, and progress seem to originate from various needs we have, and not from a peace of mind.
[+] [-] cmroanirgo|5 years ago|reply
Enlightenment is having the light within, without darkness. Meditation helps understanding of the problem of inner darkness that we're all born with, but doesn't directly translate into becoming the light.
All forms of unconscious reaction are a sure sign that one has darkness within. Unfortunately, our brains are seemingly hotwired into putting all pieces of information it receives into little pigeon holes of assumption. So, when someone provokes us, we get scared and/or angry, and we then re-act to their actions, making us a slave, not only to our own mind, but to the actions of others.
Learning how to maintain a peaceful composure in all aspects of life is a great way to learn of the battle between light and dark.
Those spiritually inclined can make supplications for assistance to the divine, which personally I find to be of immeasurably great help.