Enlightenment

FlyingFly · Dec 30, 2012

I have never 'pursued enlightenment', nor looked at it this way, but it makes sense:

"Robert Saltzman" said:

After reading a post purporting to expalain what "enlightenment" is and giving instructions on "HOW"
to attain it:

Enlightenment is another thought like "Heaven." Imaginary paradise for people who want to escape from simply being and living a human life for as long as it lasts.

Someone hears about "enlightenment," (never even noticing the the source of the idea was just another human being who has no more access to "reality" than the hearer does). This is credulity.

Now having heard the idea, the credulous one begins to pursue enlightenment, eventually imagines having found it, and then wants to instruct others in how to obtain it, as if there were some fixed "person" to be enlightened, some one size fits all, fixed understanding which can be explained in words, or some fixed state to be obtained and clung to. Nonsense!

This enlightenment quest is just another flavor of the hero's journey. "Amazing grace. . . once was lost but now I'm found." Cultural indoctrination plays out over and over again, simply assuming different forms--different disguises for the same tired old thoughts which circulate down through the ages. Pure self hypnosis.

There ain't no "how" nohow
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What do you think about it and what is enlightenment for you?

---

Found more:

"Robert Saltzman" said:

In my view, 99.999% of all the words ever spoken about "spirituality" are nonsense for credulous minds. And that last little bit, the 0.001%, as I see it, consists of advice like Papiji's recommendation to "Call off the search." Or, as I like to say, "Just be yourself. Awakening--whatever that is--happens when it happens, not because you try to make it happen. How can someone else's experience ever trump your own anyway?"

I say that if you are seeking "enlightenment," you are deluded. If you imagine that someone else can "enlighten" you by any words or methods whatsoever, you are doubly deluded. Finally, if you are making claims about "truth," and presuming to gather followers to listen to it, you are triply deluded.

Of course many, if not most, "spiritual" people hate hearing that. That's just the way the cookie crumbles.
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"Doug Miller" said:

Thought I'd share here as well:

There is impulse/desire for "more," for novelty and meaning, and a dissatisfaction with what is. The spiritual stories provide the promise of something greater, while quelling the dissatisfaction. The stories are plays of consciousness and experiences, once interpreted, may go where the story leads. Shifts in mind/consciousness, occuring often anyway, will be interpreted into the chosen story.

Dropping the external stories and living in one's own experience, as much as possible without story, seems a clear and uncontraminated way. It too quells dissatisfaction with a sense of "less is more." This way may also require the dropping of various meanings that stories provide.
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Irminsul · Dec 30, 2012

Enlightenment to me is simply a quest for knowledge.

FlyingFly · Dec 30, 2012

Can you reach it, then? It is impossibile to know everything and things that you know might turn out to be false.

storch · Dec 30, 2012

The removal of unnecessary baggage. What is unnecessary baggage?

Fairlight · Dec 30, 2012

I think true enlightenment as the Buddha meant it must be virtually impossible to achieve in first World developed society.There are too many distractions and general hyper-mania.I think only relative enlightenment is possible,and this entails removing the hell-realms that exist around us,or at least trying to reduce their impact as much as possible.I would say "Understanding" internal and external conditions is essential to this.

MeAgain · Dec 30, 2012

The illusions of enlightenment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCiesXus7cg"]Redefining Enlightenment - Ken Wilber - YouTube

themnax · Dec 31, 2012

enlightenment isn't "for" anything. it simply begins, ends and consists of, being honest with yourself. like all things, there is more to this then what we see when we look at it.

there are many things which it is popular to pretend are self honesty, and that includes most of the claims of the most popular dominant beliefs.

there is nothing in self honesty which precludes consideration for all things. quite the contrary. nor does it preclude the existence of things which are greater then ourselves, though neither does it entirely require them.

sunfighter · Dec 31, 2012

Fairlight said:

I think true enlightenment as the Buddha meant it must be virtually impossible to achieve in first World developed society.There are too many distractions and general hyper-mania.I think only relative enlightenment is possible,and this entails removing the hell-realms that exist around us,or at least trying to reduce their impact as much as possible.I would say "Understanding" internal and external conditions is essential to this.
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No, I don't think you're right. There are many accounts of individuals achieving enlightenment in the modern age. My favorite set of these accounts can be found in "The Three Pillars of Zen" by Philip Kapleau, Beacon Press, 1965. In the introduction he says

In recent years stories of the enlightenments of ancient Chinese Zen monks have found their way into English. While their laudable aim is to inspire and instruct modern readers, paradoxically they often have the opposite effect. A contemporary Asian or Westerner surveying the paths to self-realization which these ancient worthies trod is all too likely to say to himself it's all very well for these people, they could attain satori because they were monks isolated from the hurly-burly of the world, celibates unburdened by the affections and responsibilities of wife and children. Life in their day was relatively simple. Theirs was not a highly organized industrial society making insatiable demand on the individual. The spirit of their day and mine is vastly different. What meaning can their satori have for me?

No such objections can be raised to the following eight accounts. These Asians and Westerners are living among us today, neither as monks nor unworldly solitaries but as business and professional men and women, artists and housewives. All have trained in Zen under a modern master and realized their Self-nature in one degree or another. Their stories bear witness that what man has done man can do, that satori is no impossible ideal.
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apricot~sky · Dec 31, 2012

I think enlightenment is just for chickens, female chickens. one day they wake up and can fly

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