You're enlightened – now what?
whatiscalledthinking.substack.com
whatiscalledthinking.substack.com
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.
"How to Start Your Own Religion: Form a Church, Gain Followers, Become Tax-Exempt, and Sway the Minds of Millions in Five Easy Steps"
Cool guy and a very fun read!
https://www.amazon.com/How-Start-Your-Own-Religion/dp/144053...
> 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.
“Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.”
― Dōgen
Physics is kind of like that as one develops successively better models of molecules, atoms, and particles, replacing the bottom-level concepts each time. Though the stuff on top of them doesn't change a huge amount every time.
Well, I haven't kept a list, but here's another that comes to mind. Someone's signature was "How do you prepare for death? Learn to live. How do you learn to live? Prepare for death."
On the face of it, this is a trollish non-answer. However, there is a way to interpret it. The first sentence is straightforward: Death is going to happen, how do I prepare for it? The second sentence is saying: You can't stop it, so the best you can do is figure out what to do with the life that you have. The third sentence is also straightforward: How do I figure out what to do with my life? The fourth sentence is saying: Imagine you're going to die, figure out your obligations that you'd want to fulfill before you die, fulfill them now, and then you will have freedom to focus on exploring what you really want to do. The phrases "prepare for death" and "learn to live" are each used twice, with different intended meanings each time.
There is always the possibility of getting a quote that is actually nonsense and was meant as nonsense (or, today, was generated by a computer), and "interpreting" wisdom into it that comes from the interpreter rather than from the quote. Or there could be multiple, similarly wise-seeming interpretations. For example, I could have interpreted the fourth sentence instead as: Imagine you're going to die; then, from that perspective, observe which things seem important and which no longer seem so important; thus, the thought-exercise of imagining you'll die is an exercise that teaches you how to live.
It's possible that cryptic sayings were devised to hold wisdom. It's also possible that they were devised by trolls surrounded by gullible admirers. Perhaps there were wise people who, as an apparently necessary evil, made themselves look cryptically impressive so as to attract funding from gullible rulers, or to keep their ideas from being misused by outsiders who might have bad intent. Perhaps there was a mixture of trolls and well-intentioned wise people. I really don't know.
I am generally a fan of straightforward textbook explanations that don't play word games, or, if they do, they have straightforward explanations of the word games. Still, it is possible that there's something to the cryptic stuff. And so it can be a fun game to try to get meaning from them.
If you are in flat land (a beginner), you see mountains as mountains. Well defined features on the horizon.
Once you start climbing, you concentrate on the details of the concrete mountain in front of you (rocks, moss, shrubs, ice, snow, caves) and your inner concept of a mountain changes into a collection of such details.
But once you summit, mountains around look like well defined features on the horizon again. Just like from the flat land of the beginners, only the perspective has changed.
At first, I saw things in the normal everyday way, with conceptual thought labels attached strongly to everything. Then, through Zen practice, I came to see things in a more direct way, without the constant presence of words and thoughts, and this was kind of amazing. Now, having thoroughly internalized this wordless perspective, I again use words with no problem, seemingly the same as anyone else, but with the freedom and playfulness that comes from the wordless perspective.
My view: In the same vein but a different lens - enlightenment has a component where it is a “state of mind”/feeling(a kind of ah-ha)/a new perspective where ‘mountains are no longer mountains’.
But it’s also a cycle, one of living->death->rebirth->living where it’s through that process of “enlightenment“, the core and primary concepts and perspectives may have changed, but mountains are again mountains once everything known about mountains from before has been “re-integrated”.
You don’t know what you don’t know.
You know what you don’t know.
You know what you know.
You don’t know what you know.
Comparing acid trip on Burning Man to enlightenment is like comparing candle to the sun. Both emit light, that much is true.
But an enlightenment philosophy that can help a father of 3 with a hard marriage and a fulltime job or two...?
Hmm, maybe the enlightment philosophy project will take a few thousand more years...
Vimalakirti proceeds to chastise them for how useless their 'enlightenment' is when it doesn't help anyone in the real world, and is only a self centered quest to save one's ego from suffering.
Note: Find a translation that works for you. Specifically, the word 'duty' meant something very different than it does today.
I recommend : https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1586380192/ref=as_li_tl?ie...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagavad_Gita
EDIT: For a more western take, I'd also recommend the Bible's knowledge books: Ecclesiastics, Proverbs, and Job. Again, a good translation is essential here, but I'm not about to recommend that.
But as a continual process - you can't just experience that once and go right back into old habits.. Or you can bring it into everyday interactions with the world. Business, family, politics, science, technology - all the hard stuff.
And it manifests as a cultural phenomenon as well an individual experience.
They describe awakening as an actual, irreversible natural process that can be triggered by concentrating your awareness onto bare experience for a long enough time. Doing this intensively enough will bring about a "discontinuity" / cessation of space-time experience called a "fruition" (nirvana). Coming out of that discontinuity goes with a blissful "what was that?" feeling and some level of understanding of "ultimate reality", meaning a permanent perspective shift (instead of "I am seeing" and "I am hearing": in seeing there is merely the seen, in hearing the heard, etc...).
Do you find it easy to confine yourself to a monastery with a bunch of dudes and no responsibilities but to "chop wood, carry water"?
If so, why don't you take this "easy" path?
My combo is bringing together stoic philosophy, perennial enlightenment philosophy (it's all one, man) with a design thinking and new thought mentality (manifesting reality). That's what works for me.
Parts of the video on resonance reminds me of this one: "This equation will change how you see the world (the logistic map)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovJcsL7vyrk
Some other parts on design remind me of videos by Charles and Ray Eames.
You might want to consider adding Dialogue Mapping using IBIS to your design process if you have not already? http://cognexus.org/id41.htm
The ending scene is magnificent.
But it would help you worry less about things that can't be helped, and focus on this that can. It would help lessen the mental strain that we have for not being able to do more, or help us deal with the marriage problems in a way that it affects you less during your work hours.
You still have to work, still have sickness, marriage problems. But being better at separating those things, and suffering less because of the problems, is really beneficial
It is not that our complicated lives prevent us from enlightenment. Quite the opposite, it is our lack of enlightenment that make our lives appear complicated.
But what do I know, my only zen knowledge comes from C64 game Usagi Yojimbo I played some 30 years ago :)
I'd add that, imho, the aphorism means, enlightenment isn't an answer to the struggles of your material existence, or even your own unhappiness, from whatever source.
Enlightenment is just enlightenment, it's not a magic happy pill which makes you no longer a flawed human being.
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.
Have you heard of Open Individualism, or read the short story 'The Egg'?
> But a question nags at you: why can’t the world already know what you know? They’d be so much better off. So much happier.
we can't define "enlightenment" but we can probably name endless things that would not be a central feature of enlightenment. That above would be pretty high on the list.
It's impossible for me to maintain for long, but I do my best to collect takeaways while I can.
Mostly what comes back with me are cheesy phrases like "just do your best" or "everything will be ok". Occasionally I come back with some type of specific insights about how to approach a problem that has been causing me problems or newfound motivation to persevere.
Occasionally I think about starting a cult afterward, but I really just want to collect kind, intelligent and motivated people around me. Would that really be so bad?
Definitely great moments leaving strong emotional impact and sense of joy and happiness.
In the context of this discussion, "masterful programmers" could be considered equivalent to "enlightened programmers".
The point is that nobody should claim to be free from causality (though maybe the esoteric interpretation is that this is not because one can't be, but because the non-Enlightened will misuse or misunderstand the teaching). We are always culture-bound, and thus always biased, and thus mistake-prone, even if or when we achieve samadhi.
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.
Isn't the opposite of spread - hoard?
Only in the 2nd sense (ie: "getting" something in a knowledge area).
The 1st sense (... understanding and accepting ...) cannot be hoarded, since it is not given to you from someone else.
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.
Perhaps that may sound somewhat paradoxical, but that kind of paradoxical understanding is somewhat representative of enlightenment as a whole.
Can you really think of anyone you believe to be truly enlightened spiritually, who is busy trying to "spread it to as many people as possible"? I think the answer is no. The enlightened may help you out if you seek their assistance, but they are almost the exact opposite of "evangelicals" who seek to spread a message.
It is a real gift, and I know many people who do their best to help as many others achieve it as they can.
It is considered a service and a sacrifice to forgo one's comfort to help others achieve enlightenment.
You may be imagining someone being pushy or insistent, but this does not have to be the case.
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.
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.
I am not a scholar but what little I know of East Asian history strongly suggests otherwise, particularly in Japan, where even today one of the biggest and most active political parties (Komeito) is just the political wing of a Buddhist sect (Soka Gakkai.) Any religion which is adopted by the elite class becomes politically active. Buddhism is no different that Christianity, Judaism or Islam in this regard.
Buddhists pretty much had the opinion that a king who supports the sangha is a dharma king, whatever other sins he’s committing. The important thing is that the king pays the monastery for his legitimation. Beyond that, they’re not greedy. The king is probably going to hell for 10 million years for all the mayhem he’s causing. No need to be rude about it.
How about the dozens of self-immolations performed by Tibetan Buddhists to protest China's annexation of their homeland?
Honestly, it's hard not to think of Buddhism as a religion which is traditionally politically activist. Wasn't Siddhartha himself a wealthy prince who only left his life of comfort and privilege after being shocked by the injustice and pain that he saw when he stepped out of his ivory tower?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/buddhist-violence-portends-new-...
The parent comment just the typical western romanticisation of eastern religion. Why are our religions so bad and corrupted, while those mystical buddhists are so pure and enlightened?... It’s just nonsense really.
Look, you can be against Orientalism without pushing nonsense like all religions just being the same under the skin. Religions are really different from each other, because they do different things in their societies. Some things are the same in all or most societies because we are all humans, but there’s also a lot of cross society diversity and you can talk about those differences by making sweeping generalizations. Yes, generalizations are simplifications and can be done poorly, but if you try to do without them, you just have to give up on understanding anything at all about humans.
Theologically Buddhism is not a quietist religion. Buddhism has both communal and vocal worship rituals (mantra chanting). It has some quietist rituals, like meditation. But you can’t just pick one aspect of a religion and say it describes the whole thing. Otherwise a contemplating monk would make Christianity quietist too.
In terms of social issues it’s certainly not quietist either. Some Buddhists will argue that Buddhism is apolitical, and others will argue the opposite. I’ve heard Christian priests take either side of that issue too.
Then when you put theology aside, it’s not quietist in practice either. Any place that you have a large population of Buddhists, you’re going to have Buddhist political activism (which is more to do with them just being people, rather than specifically Buddhists).
The simplification only makes sense when viewed from the misinformed, romanticized perspective.
Chanting mantras (???) is not an example of being "non-quietist." Political quietism is the belief that the material world is basically screwed and there's no use in bashing your head in trying to fix it. It means advocating total disengaging from government—including not bothering to advocate for less activist government. That politics will not alleivate our true causes of suffering is a trivial corollary to the First Noble Truth in Buddhism. There are occasional strains of Christian quietism but overall, Abrahamic faiths don't believe you should just sit around while the world is burning. They think you should try to fix government.
Judaism begins as an explicitly political project. There are kings who are "wicked" or not based on whether they oppress the people and worship "foreign" gods. The project of the prophets is to reform these kings. The Jews are sent into Babylonian exile. This isn't taken as a sign that land doesn't matter, you can be Jewish anywhere, what's really important is spiritual worship, or whatever else. No, this is taken as a sign that God is punishing the Jews, so they need to be on their best behavior to get their land back! All of the religions that derive from Judaism take from it the goal that the state works to protect the poor, do justice, and promote true religion.
Okay, Christianity comes along as a reformation/expansion of Judaism. It has some quietistic elements ("render unto Caesar" is quietistic) and emerging under persecution leads to a little bit of fatalism about reforming the state, but post-Constantine, the project is mostly about creating some sort of symbiosis between the popes and the emperors. There are two spheres of influence (secular and religious), but even within the secular sphere, there is an explicit goal of perfecting the state. Even with the Protestant Reformation, while there are some quietistic strains like the Quakers and the literal Quietists, you still end up with things like Calvin running Geneva and the Westphalian settlement still assumes that each territory will have an explicit religious affiliation.
So then there’s Islam. Islam I know the least about, but obviously jihad is a central concern of Islam, and there’s an explicit goal of creating a politicial sphere in which God’s justice reigns. Islam is an explicit continuation of the Jewish/Christian project with the goal of creating a universal kingdom of divinely inspired governance. There are some Suffis and others who think the real jihad is the spiritual jihad, but physical jihad is also a pretty big theme in the history of Islam.
In the Enlightenment, humanistic atheism emerges as another sucessor to the Abrahamic tradition. It drops the supernatural elements and the belief in God, but it absolutely doubles down on political perfectionism. There are a lot of conflicting schools of thought on how to arrange the state to achieve maximum liberty, equality, and fraternity, but everyone is on board with that being the goal. There are essentially no big movements that say “politics is dirty and never helps; your best bet is to just reform youself.” Even movements that seem like they might want to say that, like Ayn Rand-ism, end up swerving at the last second and saying “government sucks and never helps… and therefore we need to put all of effort into creating a political movement to stymie the spread of government and create libertopia.”
Nietzsche’s Geneology of Morality is pretty fanciful as history, but as a metaphor for what happened that made the West different from prior and other cultures, it’s not that crazy. At some point, the Abrahamic cultures decided that we can and should do something to keep the Nobles from trampling over everybody else. This is an important historical change in how we see the world.
Pre-Western Buddhism was just not like this. The political goal of Buddhism is to get tax money for the sangha. That’s it. There’s nothing about trying to reform the state, to get the kings to be less vicious, to get the kings to live by the laws of dharma. It’s just not there. You see political agitation and interventions by monastaries all the time, but the interventions always amount to “give us tax money, so we can afford to do our Buddhism stuff on our own!” They never make demands about reforming government qua government until after Western contact. (NB Islam is absolutely a part of the West, and any schema that doesn’t put it in the West is garbage.) Even Ashoka, who kinda felt bad about all his conquering, didn't actually stop doing violence after converting to Buddhism. He just started sponsoring a bunch of monasteries and councils and whatnot. And this was not considered a sign he was a "fake" Buddhist. It was just assumed that being king is bad for your karma because inevitably you get sucked into doing a ton of violence. The king's best bet is to give enough money to monks to balance all this bad karma out.
If you look around today, you can find various ethnic groups using “Buddhism” as the name of their cause, but look closely at what’s going on with them. Even after Western contact, the goal is still not “let’s get rid of the Burmese generals because they’re oppressing the poor”. It’s “let’s get rid of the Karen because they’re not like us.” It’s just a classic case of seeing religion and ethnicity as two names for the same thing, and then trying to stamp out other ethnic groups. This sucks, but it doesn’t bear on the historical nature of Buddhism or whether Buddhism typically is more quietistic than Abrahamic religions. It just means that genocide is a common impulse in the modern world, and when it arises, it often latches onto "religion" as the name for the group it's trying to eliminate.
The blog Love of All Wisdom has some good posts on the historical/philosophical implications of quietism in Buddhism: http://loveofallwisdom.com/blog/category/applied-philosophy/...
Also for FWIW, I think “Buddhism” in these cases is just a stand in for ethnicity.
I am a nerd, I do attend parties with all kinds of people - so you have my curiosity:)
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.
There are definitely various interpretations what this actually means, but the early texts indicate it to be the extinguishing of Dukkha (stress) in the target subject.
The subject arrives at this state (of no suffering) by way of understanding the origins of stress to be the fact of impermanence of all things, including a soul.
Of course there are thousands of ways to become enlightened (science for one tells a lot about impermanence), but there is a single effect of those ways which is the most direct for the given context.
If you really want to see behind the curtain, go sit in Vipassana. This is what Buddha suggested, if one is interested in this attainment!
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.
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)
In the Tripitaka there are not many examples of lay people who reach arahant stage. In the Milindapanha Buddha is supposedly asked directly whether layman can attain arahant stage, and he says "If a layman attains arahant-ship, only two destinations await him; either he must enter the Order that very day or else he must attain parinibbàna (nibanna upon death).
It’s clear from Tripitaka that anyone could obtain arahant stage but obviously if you were free of ten fetters it would be seemingly impossible to live another lifestyle except one described as monastic.
Unorthodox Buddhists (Mahayana, Tibetan, Zen, etc.) reject some or most of the orthodox concept of enlightenment. But IMO it’s telling that their alternative conception of enlightenment is both indescribable and lacking a systematic path to attain, which very much contradicts Buddha’s message (I’ve found the way and therefor I can tell you the way, and if you follow you will reach the destination as I have).
I think you can generalize this phenomenon to Buddhist enlightenment.
(PS. I believe the original teachings of Buddhism are essential and valid, and the Zen model of enlightenment should not be interpreted as contradicting them.)
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.
And here we are, a Rabbi talking about enlightenment as something that can be born into, which contradicts the Buddhist and Hindu concept. I’m sure he means well, but it seems to me he’s talking about this “new age” notion of enlightenment, which is arguably a misappropriation of Buddhist and Hindu ideas.
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.
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.
Feel free to correct me and kindly point out the agreed definition between the practices you mention.
“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.
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.
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.
The know-it-allness and the highness shall remain reserved for the author of the post.
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.
It seems like most of them lead pretty normal lives (they "chop wood and carry water").
The state in which such a question arises is contradictory to the state of enlightenment.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
In my experience, this is impossible. Light is defined by darkness. Enlightenment must contain both. Trying to extinguish darkness is doomed to fail
If you're willing to take my word for it: it is possible. I've met those who have radically changed themselves, and have met others who walk the path (& the latter are amazing enough).
Darkness doesn't exist where Light does. It's a matter of sacrificing the darkness for something better.
Remaining staunchly skeptical, distrustful, or scoffing the path is a sure way of not seeing it. It requires objectivity, particularly in spite of one's own prejudices.
All other uses of the term are mambo-jumbo, wanna-be, i-feel-blessed, i-think-i-know, world-is-a-whole utterances with myriads of ways of understanding it. One upside is that it makes us think about being... nicer?
That's my view.
Nice article, nice list of pretty difficult problems to solve, swooshing around my brain since childhood, but being enlighted just goes orthogonal to every single issue mentioned. BUT, oops!, here I come... talking about enlightment. I will stop here if it is not too late.
I think it's near impossible to be able to convey these as teachings since it's such an intimate experience ultimately modeled by the world around you. Perhaps that's just my definition of enlightenment, an intimate understanding of the internal and external world.
If I am ever to reach this state, I hope it's an inner state of peace and acceptance because my current angst is wearing me down.
Some people decide to focus on problems and that inevitably leads to insights. It doesn't matter if the problem is programming a GPU, baking bread, making music, or understanding your inner world.
Obviously the longer you advance on a road the more insights you will have. We get wiser as we get older simply because we've lived longer.
In Spanish we have a saying "El diablo sabe más por viejo que por diablo" which can be translated to something like "the devil knows more because he is old than because he is the devil".
To me it sounded awfully like a temporary mental affliction back then, but who is to say?
1) I was deliberately leaving open the definition of Enlightenment--how we define Enlightenment, I think, is not the point. It shouldn't matter what is happening inside someone's brain or how they describe their experience if what we are weighing is the worldly impact of that experience, unless that inner experience can be communicated or translated into something socially tangible. If Enlightenment is supposed to bring "infinite compassion," as some describe, what's the actual delta for the un-enlightened as a result?
2) If you think Enlightenment is a good, like any other, than it can be priced. There is an opportunity cost to pursuing it or not. We should be transparent about the tradeoffs that come from pursuing Enlightenment, just as we should the tradeoffs of specializing in any one thing to the detriment of others. I am worried that we talk about Enlightened people the way Plato talks about philosopher kings. This is a great Buddhist parable on this topic: https://www.ibiblio.org/zen/gateless-gate/2.html
3) My article is not trying to make a point; each day I ask questions. My aim is to stimulate thinking, not refute or defend a position, though of course I have biases. No snark is intended. I believe the skepticism I evince is not in opposition to strands of Zen, but consonant with them.
4) There are good reasons to be pluralistic about our definition of Enlightenment, otherwise we become sectarian and intolerant and that is how religious wars start. On the other hand, maybe there is one true Enlightenment--but can you insist on that and not become theocratic? I'm not sure.
"Someone, perhaps it was Robert Adams, once suggested that there should be a Great Gathering Of Awakened Beings, and anybody who showed up would be immediately disqualified."
quotes from "Perfect Brilliant Stillness" by David Carse
https://ebookppsunp.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/martin_heide...
No human can fully understand any given situation. To do so, you must first fully understand the entire universe, as everything is connected. And that is of course utterly impossible.
I say this as someone who has found great value in Buddhist philosophy and a personal meditation practice.
Do you have any concrete theories of how a human can _fully_ understand the entire universe?
If you are an empiricist you can't be sure about anything, you can't be even sure that your theories are describing what 'is' the world, they are just a way to look at it.
If you are rationalist, you would believe that there are some kind of innate features of your brain, now where those features came from?
You can't compute the next tick of the entire universe using a process that is contained within it. That would be like saying a single page of a book can contain the entirety of the book (without changing the size of the letters, obviously). It doesn't fit.
Here's one piece of evidence out of thousands more. Consider that the psychedelic effects of LSD can be prevented simply by blocking 5-HT2A receptors in the brain [1]. This is what you would expect if a psychedelic experience is a biochemical phenomenon occurring in the brain, like that sparked by caffeine. A more powerful and much more interesting one, yes, but not something that requires talking of "god" or "universal understanding".
[1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/httpbl... (search the page for "block the 5-HT2A receptor")
Even though neuroscience intimidates me, I'm smart enough to regurgitate the summary: "The 5-HT2A receptor is central to the effects of many psychedelics, but it may not be the only receptor involved." Also I know enough about myself that I don't kknow any of these topics enough to evaluate Barbara E. Bauer, or https://psychedelicreview.com. I can keep Googling though ...
This was quite interesting news: https://psychedelicreview.com/uc-berkeley-opens-the-center-f...
I've been there -- too tired or busy to write out a proper response. Lately, I have been thinking that not responding is better in such cases.
Apparently, just as I thought, the author doesn't know about enlightenment. No, that doesn't imply that I am more "woke" than anyone else, or anyone else is more "woke" than me. Even if it does, so?
Enlightenment, if you know it, you know it. You want to change the world, go ahead. You give no f* about the world, you do you.
(Critically) Questioning enlightened people about what they will do for themselves or the world won't make a difference, it doesn't make the author more enlightened, more clever or sounds superior.
I will gladly ask after he finishes his words, so?
I can't change the world, so?
I can't change people to learn, so?
You aren't happy with me enlightening, so?
I enlightened, or not, so?
I will change the world, and so?
Now you are enlightened in this moment, so?
Maybe they experienced it, maybe they didn't, but now they are concerned with what to do with their enlightenment. It's gone, if it ever was there.
But Enlightenment does not imply Clarity, which may come from more contemplation and perhaps some guidance.
Some people never experienced Bliss.
Some people experience Bliss all the time.
Some people can experience Bliss whenever they like, or need to.
Bliss is not Enlightenment.
So just because someone tasted ice-cream, doesn't mean they should eat it all the time, or that tasting good is all ice is good for.
Today, for truly enlighten person it would be very easy to send message, all you need is Youtube account and a smartphone (adds free). Would people understand message, that is whole another story.
Which leads to another interesting question:
Which of these alternatives makes you to be the owner of your own destiny in this universe?
The ultimate takeaway from enlightenment I understand to be true is that if you can be enlightened, it is superior to abandon enlightenment for yourself in service of others to be come enlightened.
Imagine a jigsaw puzzle. But not any jigsaw puzzle. An unbelievably huge jigsaw puzzle that's been mixed up with other jigsaw puzzles. Some of them are really old and faded. Some of them are brand new. Some are larger and some are smaller. The edges change from jagged to smooth. Like everyone else at the table, you've been trying to put this one puzzle together for years, trying out numberless pieces until one day you realize that you don't even have the box for it. Like everyone else, you were told what it looked like when you were first sat down in this room and left to it. But you're not making any progress and the solution, the memory faded by time and others, doesn't feel right and you abandon it.
Now, you ask everyone around you about what the puzzle looks like. And they are all certain about what it looks like when it's finished, despite the fact that you know they haven't spent nearly enough time looking in the box, or the pieces, and you're pretty damn sure it's not a picture of your loved ones burning, a giant man creating smaller men, or nothingness.
And you start to talk with other people who don't believe in these solutions. They have their own ideas about the puzzle. The vast majority of them think the idea of a pre-solution is the problem. If only those who have been working on their own sections piece by piece were allowed to work together with their work corroborated by other piece-by-piece sectioners, without pre-solutionists telling them what it looks like, it'd be put together by now. You think this is the right course of action going forward. So you dabble in doing your own piece-by-piece work, keeping up with the latest pictures of the latest additions to different sections, published and funded by the people who originally sat you down at the table.
And everything is fine. For a while. Then you begin to see that the sectioners' works are being used to justify new pre-solutions by onlookers that aren't compatible with each other. Some sectioners are just producing pictures of themselves and their funders. And you realize that this just doesn't make any sense. None of it makes any sense. Not the pre-solutionists, not the sectioners. It's all a giant question with no authority and no one seems to realize how insane and un-ending the whole process is. Then you pick up a piece that changes everything. In it you merely see the Self and your own reflection in it. But it changes everything.
You look up from the table and see through eons. You see everyone who has ever been sat down at this puzzle table. You see the same people wearing different costumes as the endless passage of time flows. You see the same puzzle processes and sections arising, maturing, then being scattered. You notice this and infinite other things, lost to the ephemera of cognition and memory. Then the pieces fall into place in your brain. And you see that it isn't a puzzle. It was never a puzzle. You realize in your vision that there were countless people throughout time who stood up from the table. And they saw a door and went through it. And came back. And they said in exaltation in the plurality of dialects and tongues that this is not a puzzle. It is a map. A map to exit the room. These chosen few make a new map of the room, offering it triumphantly to the rest. Some see it and in turn stand up and leave the room to go outside. Others follow. But the stream of people slows and stops. The map is left, abandoned by those who followed it to those that didn't or couldn't. And those remaining beings slowly rip it apart, piece by piece, to fit in their view of the puzzle until it too resembles... a puzzle.
You proceed to come down from grasping this piece, realizing the truth of what you have seen; That this in fact a massive collection of old, incomplete maps, made puzzles by mankind, all showing the way to a door that leads to outside the realm of the puzzle. So you stand up from the table, go to the exit, and open the door. And there it is. Outside. The Sun. Indescribable to anyone who has been left inside the cave their entire lives. This is so apparent to you that it is the very definition of self-evidence, bound with knowledge ascertained by pure observation. And you realize that nothing, absolutely nothing can erase the certainty that outside and the Sun exists, having been there. You now have a decision to make. In an act of compassion, you return to the room and proceed to draw yet another map for those left behind...
But seariously: many forget that the goal of spiritual practices is the ability to DO (instead of react)
The best metaphor I’ve heard is - you’ve walking all your life with a rock in your shoe, and now suddenly it’s gone. Forever.
You can’t “get” it - it’s about something you lose.
edit: and the biggest question is: How do you know you are right? I think t he answer is: you can't. Not you alone. You need to discuss it with others and see what works out (probably?). Therefore respect of others and their opinions is very important for me.
If you see the Buddha, kill the Buddha
Now, go chop wood and carry water.
Well, after enlightenment you clearly know that you need to chop wood and carry water on your own volition. Ok, technically very likely not for yourself, but still. "You do it for yourself" is the same lie we tell children when they need to go to school after all.
No more self-doubt, no more fear etc...
IMO it's the only goal that matters, since humans in one way or another do things to "remove" fear or doubt from their lives.
No delusions of glory, profit, etc.... just a slow but determined push to make things better, eventually.