
Originally Posted by
EnT
I was reading Phion's interesting thread "Is suffering necessary for enlightenment?" and the responses made me think about "enlightenment" itself.
Many people treat enlightenment like some kind of qualification you can obtain. Of course, everyone would scoff at the notion of 'enlightenment as a qualification' but the way most ppl talk about it, it sounds like something you achieve:
Enlightenment is: knowing yourself, loving yourself, loving the world, the absence of suffering, etc. In fact, we can generalise it as "enlightenment is... [an enduring goal one slowly advances on and (if we're lucky/hardworking) achieves.]"
I see at least 3 problems with this:
1. I doubt any human has ever stood in any kind of permanent relation to anything (no one is always anything); give the Buddha a 9 to 5 job, a wife and a couple of kids and let's see how 'enlightened' he is then...
2. It inevitably implies something like a ranking system which seems weird to me; what does it mean to be 'half enlightened' or 'closer to enlightenment than someone else'?
3. I think few ppl would ever dream of actually calling themselves enlightened, no matter how much meditation/reflection/whatever they do, so is it even a real thing or just an ambiguous metaphysical/religious concept with no substance?
I don't see any way of avoiding these problems so I think we should scrap the whole thing. Instead, if we mean someone knows herself well, then that's what we say. If we mean someone is in a state of harmony (at the moment), then we say that. We shouldn't try and force an absolute value (enlightenment level 5... with honours!) where it doesn't belong.
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