You’re Already Enlightened
Most of us on the search for enlightenment have heard the puzzling statement that ‘we’re already there’. Usually, it gives us a flash of hope, as long we don’t think about it too much. But if we do think about it, it can easily become frustrating, because it calls to question the entire search that we’re devoting our life to!
So what exactly does this statement mean?
The Basic Explanation
The most basic and commonly-used explanation is that we all have intrinsic Buddha-nature within us. Essentially, our perfect nature is buried just beneath layers of confusion, delusion, and habit.
This is a comforting thought, because it implies that all we have to do is strip away those layers, and we’ll suddenly shine through in all our true, brilliant Being-ness.
But in the search for enlightenment, comforting thoughts don’t do us much good. And this one’s no different. Indeed, it holds a tricky trap inside of it. Because once we believe that we’re essentially pure, and that it’s just a matter of stripping away the bad layers, we begin a quest to eradicate the layers. We begin meditating to calm our minds, we begin attempting to harness the power of our emotions, and we begin exploring different teachings that lead us to awakening.
Wait! These are good things to do, aren’t they?
Indeed. There’s nothing wrong with them at all. But they’ll get us no closer to Awakening than going for a long walk in the woods, or jumping on a trampoline.
Let’s see what the usual quest for enlightenment looks like. These ‘levels’ of being are derived from the path I followed in my own, personal journey.
Levels of Being
The Mindless Zombie – This is the most common place for people to be in their lives. Here, we’re totally unaware of our mind’s activity. We walk through life with an almost complete lack of awareness. Only the most blunt and superficial aspects of life register as important to us, which leaves us in a constant struggle just to keep our lives afloat. For instance, if we’re having financial problems one month, we approach the problem almost blindly. We say – ‘Well, money’s low, so what can we do to cut back on spending?’. This might solve the problem for this month, but it leaves the basic problem untouched.
The Monk – Here we begin to explore the most basic aspects of self-awareness through meditation or self-reflection. For instance, we might begin to see that our mind dwells in two states – one of momentary awareness, and one where our mind is ‘swept away’ in thoughts or emotions. Our life can seem more peaceful in this ‘monk’ state, but we also gain a new and deeper level of frustration, because we’ve begun to consider some of the most profound and frightening things in life, such as the nature of death, selfhood, and reality. We realize how ignorant we are concerning these things, but we have a feeling that there is a way – through enlightenment – to fully understand these things with complete clarity. The nature of the quest (that it can’t be accomplished through effort) makes it extremely frustrating, so that sometimes the Monk, though outwardly ‘spiritual’, is actually in more psychic pain than the Mindless Zombie.
As for the problems of life, they are seen a little differently. If the money is low, it’s not a matter of adjusting the budget, but about observing our feelings and emotions regarding money. Able to deal with our emotions regarding a given problem, we cease to see it as a problem anymore. But still, problems keep on cropping up, and every time they do, it’s a new challenge to see if we can successfully deal with the emotions brought up during each new situation.
The Enlightened Master – Finally, we’ve put in our time and we’ve achieved a sense of perfect peace in our lives. We don’t get angry any more, and we don’t feel frustration. We’re able to watch life unfold around us with perfect equanimity. At least 99% of the time.
To this mind, when the money is low we cut right to the heart of things and examine our most basic assumptions that money manifests. We find that we can only be worried about money if we have a deep-set desire for security of some kind, and in undoing our basic assumptions about the world and our lives, we find ourselves unable to worry about much of anything!
We feel very sure that we’re enlightened, and we’ve definitely had an experience that defies explanation. Maybe we start trying to teach others at this point. But there are still things we don’t understand in the world, and we still may get feelings of frustration or anger, especially when people challenge the one thing that we’ve really come to identify ourselves with – our state of enlightenment, or our knowledge of ‘reality’.
The problem? We feel that we’ve achieved something, and believe that others can achieve it, and that feeling of achievement has left our sense of self intact. We’ve made enlightenment into just another goal in life, and when we understand this, the truth can be startling.
The truth? The truth is that none of these three states is closer or further away from enlightenment than you are right now.
Read that again and make sure you understand it. Further understand that none of those three states is any closer to enlightenment than any of the others! You’re reading that correctly. The Enlightened Master is not closer to enlightenment than the Mindless Zombie.
A Misunderstanding
To say that ‘we are all enlightened, right now’, is a profound statement. To interpret that statement as a reason to chase more goals defeats the power it can have to guide us toward Awakening. If we say that we all have Buddha-nature just below the grime of our ceaseless thoughts is to create a goal of wiping away those thoughts. In a subtle way, a goal like this is a type of self-violence, and it creates dualistic conflict within us. It can seem to work, but what we’re actually doing is creating more refined dualistic models of reality, and getting ourselves ever more entwined.
However, if we say that enlightenment isn’t our true nature, then we create another goal – that of creating enlightenment where it didn’t formerly exist. Enlightenment becomes something we try to build up, brick-by-brick.
Enlightenment is neither our true nature nor is it something we can create within ourselves. Indeed, it’s not something we can achieve at all, by any means!
Now, this is just sounding like senseless Zen talk. So let’s cut straight through and make things clear.
The reason we can’t achieve enlightenment, and the reason we can’t say anything about it, is that enlightenment is Pure Experience, and our words and ideas can never even come close to describing it.
Go stand in a forest. Look around you. Close your eyes. Smell.
Now, go home and write down what you experienced. Pretend that your audience is a person who has lived in a white room with no windows for their entire life. Your goal? You want that person to actually experience what you did. Don’t just give them an idea or a mental picture. Get them to smell the forest, hear the forest, see the forest!
Even if they devoted their lives to reading your words, to sitting for hours each day trying to achieve the smell and the sights of the woods, it wouldn’t work. At best, they’d create a mental representation of the forest.
We can never communicate reality through words, which are a very sterile medium. Words are only capable of transmitting ideas. Indeed, the only way to truly get a person to experience the forest is to walk them out into the forest so that they can experience it themselves. And then it’s completely obvious what you were writing about all that time. But the actual act of experiencing the forest can only be done through a lack of effort – through passive, receptive Awareness. (If you don’t agree, observe most people in the forest – their mental effort of habitual thinking dictates that they never actually sense much of what’s around them, even when they are standing among the trees. And this doesn’t just happen in the woods . . .)
But We’re Not In A White Room!
That’s right. And it’s a crucial difference. We’re in the world. Enlightenment is here, right now, in this very moment. But it’s not available to you, as an individual person. Because your very idea of yourself as a person and your very desire to achieve enlightenment are creating white walls around you. They are the white walls. Your idea of you is an idea (in the realm of words), and when you lay words over even one thing in the world, the words spread (because one thing must be in relation to another thing), and in the blink of an eye the whole world is covered in words, and you’ve erected your white walls.
The experience is only available when we let our awareness do what it does all by itself – be aware. This is the simplest thing in the world, because it takes literally no effort. It is what happens when we cease, totally cease, our word-and-idea efforts, and allow Awareness to be Aware.
In that moment, we understand fully what is meant when someone says ‘we are all already enlightened’. Because in Awakening, the entire world becomes enlightened. You see Enlightenment for what it is, and it is much more (and much less!) than bliss, or perfect peace, or Unity, or understanding the True Self, or anything else we’d care to think about it. It is the pure non-dual reality that is always present.
Indescribable.
That reality would not say ‘there are people to become enlightened’, nor would it say that ‘there are no people, and thus no enlightenment’. If it were to speak anything, it would have to talk in Zen riddles, because any words it spoke (and by those words created an idea in your head) it would have to un-speak (in order to undo the idea).
Here, nothing is lost. Awakened, we don’t lose the ability to talk about yesterday, or to dream of tomorrow, or to see that the world is sad for some people and happy for others. We don’t cease to see bad things, or experience emotions.
Instead, we become fully alive, in the grandest sense – dancing and playing in the game of Maya. We understand that we are not enlightened, that we never could have been, and that no one can be – the very idea of enlightenment is a vain attempt to create the experience of the forest with only pen and paper as tools. In the same way, we can see that everyone is Enlightened, because we’ve ceased to see Enlightenment as a ‘thing’ that can be obtained.
It is Reality, Experience, Pure and Now, and that’s what’s always going on, no matter what.
Explore posts in the same categories: Awakening and Reality
May 24th, 2007 at 2:37 am
Perfect.
May 24th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Kenton, Thanks for this gem. Now let me just seep this in.
I must admit, i’m confused about the “letting go of effort” part. I guess, a lifetime of go-getting has really nailed the habit of putting effort, in my psyche.
May 25th, 2007 at 2:43 am
Greetings Rahul,
The idea of ‘no effort’ is a very important one — I wouldn’t hesitate to say that effort — and all that it creates — is the single block that is keeping all of us from Awakening in this very moment. The problem is that effort has become habitual for us — even when we are ‘zoning out’, our minds are up to their habits of constantly labeling the world, reinforcing our dualistic assumptions, and building up our particular model of reality.
I’ve approached ‘no effort’ from two different angles in each of these articles:
Mushin, Wu Wei, and Sahaja
You Are Perfect
But reading back over them, I’m not sure if either of them approached the idea directly enough. Let me know if either of these are helpful — otherwise I might have to dedicate a new article to the subject. Oh — this one might help too:
Free Will, Truth, and Belief
Sweetwater,
Kenton =)
May 25th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Thanks Kenton, for the links. I will definitely get back regarding my progress (which again is a dualistic word). Old habits die hard.
Best regards,
Rahul
June 5th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Hi Kenton, I find the “you’re already enlightened” story to be harmful, to be honest. Daniel Ingram presented a very carefully articulated argument against telling this story over at BuddhistGeeks and I encourage you to join the conversation over there:
http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/2007/03/05/buddhist-geeks-9-enlightened-teachers/#comment-8645
Best, Daniel
June 6th, 2007 at 12:26 am
Greetings Daniel,
I’ve begun reading at the link you posted – it is very similar to another discussion I was involved in a few months ago, where a person was insisting that no work was necessary for Awakening. In that discussion, I actually disagreed with the manner in which he was presenting his ideas. (The implication was that you’re already there, so why bother?)
My point here is not to say that meditation or formal practice is not viable, but to point out that these things can easily become a ‘quest for a goal’. My own experience is with Awakening outside of formal tradition – thus I focus my writing on that ‘method’. I’ve equally seen people get caught up in both sides of this issue – we can easily turn ‘no-method’ into a methodology, and in a very subtle way create an idea of an ‘intrinsic pure self’ (which I hope I dispelled in this article’s opening). But equally, I see many people who turn to traditional practices and get enmeshed in the idea that this practice will, on some level, improve them.
I also put this article in the Deeper Understandings section because it’s meant to speak to someone who already has delved deeply into these matters. Each of the articles on this site is meant to speak to different people – if someone believes they are enlightened, they are surrounding themselves with just as much delusion as someone who believes they aren’t. In either case, people move through this world and intake different influences – if they choose to stop at a place where they believe they are enlightened, how is that different from any of the other ways in which people live their lives? (In regards to being lost in Maya) It’s possible it might create reactions in some people because some folks feel that they’ve ‘put in the time’, and don’t appreciate people saying that they achieved in an instant what it took them years to attain. But people claim all sorts of things. I wonder why we feel (as seems to be happening in the link you posted), that we need to set people straight on this. Are there really people who are so ‘expert’ at the process of Awakening that they know that a given method is truly non-viable? It seems to me that there are many traditions, and the nature of traditions is that they usually tend to think that their methods are the ‘correct’ ones. Honestly, I don’t think that meditation is for everyone. Nor is sudden awakening. Nor is any tradition the ‘end-all’. My hope is that we can open the doors to a host of pathways, and allow people the freedom to choose their own.
Sweetwater,
Kenton
June 6th, 2007 at 7:17 am
>> if someone believes they are enlightened, they are surrounding
>> themselves with just as much delusion as someone who believes
>> they aren’t.
The Buddha claimed enlightenment. Are you suggesting that he was delusional for doing so? Didn’t the Buddha teach a path to the cessation of suffering and deep insight into the nature of reality based upon meditative practice? Enlightenment is certainly “right here, right now” — the only difference is that some people have actually realized it and others have not (even if they claim to).
Much of our debate can probably be traced back to differing views on what it means to be enlightened. My definition is based upon standard Buddhist teachings: Enlightenment is the loss of the perceptual inclination toward inferring a self that exists separately from the rest of the world. This is also called “Opening the Wisdom Eye” or “Untangling the knot of perception” and is a perceptual change, not a change in outlook. My understanding is that changes in one’s perceptual capabilities occur through the practice of meditation.
Best, Daniel
June 6th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Greetings Daniel,
Thank you for this exchange. I think this sort of thing is very relevant for readers.
I can’t really say what the Buddha was or wasn’t. But it does appear that he left us an incredibly effective pathway to guide people toward enlightenment. I’ve also found that many other religions point toward the same ‘thing’. In addition, my own experience was absent of traditional teachings – it was the natural result of an extended stay in the wilderness – it was only afterwards that I started to read religious texts and books on Buddhism, and found that everything described sounded perfectly normal.
There seem to be many fingers pointing toward this moon, and I’d never suggest that my way is the ‘only way’ or even the ‘right way’ for any given person. I tend to feel that people have the right to explore various paths – and each path has its own advantages and disadvantages. I’ve known plenty of people who follow traditional pathways and practice for year after year, always in a state of frustration that they can’t ‘get it’. On the other hand, what I’m suggesting here can easily be misinterpreted and turned into just another source of frustration, which is why I attempt to ‘undo’ any concepts I create. Different initial mindsets seem to create the need for different pointers. Yes, some people will point irresponsibly, and some people will be enmeshed in nothing but a desire to be seen as a guru or great teacher. Are these people damaging or harmful? That’s like asking if getting paralyzed in a car accident is harmful. It may be for some, it may be liberating for others. Trying to define others’ experience is a pretty futile game. I think the important thing is to look at our own reactions to different pathways – how do we feel when our pathway is challenged or when we’re faced with people who approach the same thing in a different manner? How do we feel when we believe that people are ‘leading others from truth’? What do these feelings indicate in ourselves?
You said that: “Enlightenment is certainly ‘right here, right now’ — the only difference is that some people have actually realized it and others have not (even if they claim to).”
I couldn’t agree more. Or less. This gets tricky if we try to conceptualize it, because this, like anything we say about enlightenment, can easily be turned around. Indeed, the article above is basically a treatise on how this idea unfolds in our minds. A statement like that can be misleading, since it suggests that we have to realize something. And in my experience, we could just as easily say this is about the absence of realization – if we think of realization as a willful or self-based act. In other words, ‘realization’, like any other word, comes with a lot of conceptual baggage, and any words (and thus concepts) we wish to present as pointers must be ‘undone’ if we wish to effectively point.
Actually, your description of a ‘perceptual’ rather than outlook-based change made a lot of sense to me. It’s not about shifting your perspective, but about experiencing something completely different – a total lack of perspective, one might say. Everything we ‘experience’ comes with the implication of an experiencer – how do we describe so profound a shift that any of our concept-based words automatically lead us away from ‘knowing’ it? Experience with experiencer. Experience without experiencer. Both of these sentences are way off the mark.
So, are we talking about the same ‘thing’ when we use the word ‘enlightenment’? I don’t have a ready definition, so it may be difficult to tell. Non-dualism is the best word I’ve found so far (mostly because it doesn’t hold a lot of baggage for people – the problem with it is that it’s ripe for baggage-collecting). I’ve tried to describe non-dualism elsewhere on this site. I’d almost say that it wouldn’t meet any definition we could lay down, because there are no defining words that don’t create concepts. On the other hand, if we are both using words in a concept-less manner (seeing them as pointers instead of realities), then perhaps it would be easy to lay down a definition.
Steve Hagen, a Zen priest from Minneapolis, wrote a book called Buddhism Plain and Simple. Although Dharma Field Meditation center, where he teaches, certainly endorses regular meditation, Steve’s book is remarkably direct, and in my opinion points in a manner which breaks down our usual means of perception by the undoing of our concept-based thinking. I’d be very interested to know what you think of this work.
Sweetwater,
Kenton
June 7th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
Hi Kenton, Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I’m enjoying our exchange.
There are certainly ways looking at the world that produce less frustration, and I try to encourage those in others. However, I also try to be very careful when using the word ‘enlightenment’ as this has a very specific meaning in the Buddhist tradition. In my understanding this word doesn’t point to simply experiencing the world without concepts. Your description of a ‘lack of perspective’ sounds closer to the mark.
The reason that I find the story harmful is that it seems to discourage people from practicing meditation. Of all the people who have realized the Buddha Way, almost every single one of them has spent serious amounts of time practicing meditation, including the Buddha himself. Now, *while practicing* it is true that intending to be something or get somewhere misses the mark completely, but practice itself is crucial. And what are we practicing? Enlightenment itself
Best, Daniel
I truly attained nothing from complete, unexcelled enlightenment.
- The Buddha
June 7th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Very well said, Daniel!
I think I’m understanding your concern — if someone claims to be presenting enlightenment, but is actually presenting, for instance, simply a shift in perspective, then our definition of enlightenment is being misrepresented.
In the case of meditation, I’m sure you’ve seen people become ‘trapped’ in the practice. Equally, we could say there are countless people ‘trapped’ in conceptualizing ‘enlightenment’ (a constant pitfall in the methods I’m presenting).
As I mentioned, I’ve encountered discussions which hit on this general topic before. Perhaps the question is — how do we decide who is presenting effective methods for pointing toward enlightenment?
Sweetwater,
Kenton
June 8th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Good question. If only we could know the answer to that one! In the Buddhist tradition people usually point to the number of students that have realized enlightenment under a particular teacher.
It would be nice to conduct an experiment to compare the outcomes from different types of teachings and practice. Alan Wallace of the Santa Barbara Institute of Consciousness Studies is undertaking one such experiment to assess the psychological and physiological effects of Shamatha meditation, though he isn’t comparing it against other techniques at this time.
In the end everyone must make up their own mind whether a particular teaching is right for them. And if some people become further deluded by false teachings, this too is just vast Buddha-nature.
June 8th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
How interesting such experiments would be! I wonder if in the end, different methods would be found to be more effective for certain personalties/psychologies, and whether in some cases, a combination of methods might be most effective.
This, of course, brings up the next question — how do we define or identify ‘enlightenment’? I’m guessing that if the Buddhist traditions you mention count enlightened individuals, they must have some method to identify these individuals. Is this decided by the teacher? By a group of teachers? By certain defining characteristics? I’m also guessing that Alan Wallace has fixed on some set of data which he is using to indicate ‘enlightenment’ or ‘progress toward enlightenment’.
This is not to say that enlightenment is not recognizable — but I couldn’t explain how. So it seems like it would be difficult to set up a system whereby a certain number of enlightened individuals could be claimed — and then used as an indicator by those who are seeking a practice.
This is fascinating, by the way. I greatly appreciate your contributions to this discussion.
Sweetwater,
Kenton
June 9th, 2007 at 5:28 am
Hi Kenton,
It may be that different methods are better suited for different types of people. This points out one problem with teaching over the internet, or even with books, where it is difficult to tailor the teaching to each particular person. Personal contact with a teacher seems to be very important in these matters.
It seems to me that enlightenment can, for practical purposes, be identified in the same manner as any other scientific “truth”. And how are scientific truths identified? One person (typically a scientist) reports a finding and then other people in the field evaluate his or her report in light of other reports and their own findings. In contrast to the public perception of science truths as objective, in reality they are inter-subjective, meaning that a broad range of scientists have found essentially the same thing under similar circumstances.
Now, this process of inter-subjectivity has its own problems. If one person finds something completely new, it may be difficult for others to understand it or replicate it, and dogma and personal bias always have a tendency to creep in. However, the bottom line is that there is no objective yardstick with which to measure anything.
I too find this discussion fascinating. You are pushing the limits of my understanding in these matters.
Best, Daniel
June 11th, 2007 at 2:59 am
Greetings Daniel!
You’ve made a very important point here, I think – one that I’ve also encountered in reading at your site. If we have no objective yardstick with which to measure things, (you and I would share this observance, though I must recall that most people would probably disagree with that statement), it leaves us wondering – is there anything truly objective or ‘real’ at all?
I’d suggest that science deals in assumptions, beliefs, and world-models, while the subject of enlightenment that we’re discussing deals with Truth – real, objective reality. My experience, however, is that this reality is something which cannot be described in words – precisely because words create and describe our world-model, and not reality. If we observe any sentence, we can pick it apart word by word and see the assumptions and models necessary in order to support the next part of the sentence. In this way, words can only describe a sort of reality which I’d equate with the reality of money – a reality created by human consensus and the internal support of our world-model (in other words, the reality of imagination).
Words, then, seem to me best suited not as definers of enlightenment, but as pointers toward it. One ‘description’ of enlightenment might be well-suited to a certain person, but act as a total falsehood (or be extremely misleading) to another. Because I see all of our various measuring sticks as similar to words (in that they are symbolic representations of the different elements of our world-model), it’s difficult for me to think that we might be able to create a viable definition of enlightenment that would be based on measurements (though I’m very ready to be proven wrong here =)
That being said, maybe all we need to do is to throw out some definitions here. Try some on for size. See if we can come to a common understanding of whether we’re speaking about the same ’thing’. (If either of us suspects that we aren’t, we won’t get any further than defining our definitions.)
If we can come to a common definition, it may only prove that we’ve both latched on to the same conception. On the other hand, we might find ourselves in the position of being able to more fully explore this idea we’ve been writing about.
So, if you’ll enter the game with me, here it goes – proposed definition number one.
Enlightenment is the complete absence of belief. If we go on a belief-eradication project in ourselves, we’ll find in the end that all we’re left with – the bare fact that we can know to be true – is that there is perception. If we look clearly, this is all there is – right-now perception, and nothing else. There is no evidence of a perceiver, no evidence of an outer world, no evidence of past or future or other people or anything besides perception.
Now, it’s important to note here that if we conceptualize this definition, it sounds terribly bleak. From a dualistic point of view, it’s a nightmare. Similarly, if we intellectualize this definition, we find ourselves in a state of ‘believing’ that we have no beliefs — in other words, we can correctly frame the idea in words or in our minds, but it remains a conceptualization.
But if we actually go through with the eradication of all belief, and Experience this state of ‘pure awareness’, the world transforms – and dwelling (please read that with no implication of dweller or time passage) in that pure awareness is what we call enlightenment. In the end, this turns around into what might be better called the ‘liberation’ of belief, because even belief is seen to be part of the direct experience (indeed, everything formerly thought to be ‘delusion’ is seen to be just as ‘real’ as anything else.) But for lack of better words, and because it is quite late, I’ll just leave this saying that belief (and all other former delusions) are re-engaged, but in an entirely different manner than they were before (I’ve found that this is the ‘meaning’ behind the idea that ‘everything is Buddha-nature’).
In short, proposed definition one is: Enlightenment is the liberation of all belief.
Looking back over this, the reason I don’t like this definition is that it is subject to numerous interpretations – each of which ends up being a concept, and not a direct experience. But I have a feeling that this will hold for any definition. And so there it is, and I’d love to hear what you think, and if you like, to have you propose another definition (or elaborate on this one). I’m interested to see where this takes us =)
Sweetwater,
Kenton
June 16th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
>> Words, then, seem to me best suited not as definers of
>> enlightenment, but as pointers toward it. One ‘description’
>> of enlightenment might be well-suited to a certain person,
>> but act as a total falsehood (or be extremely misleading) to another.
Excellent counter-point. In contemplating my response over the past few days I realized that my definition of enlightenment (see my previous comment) “works” for me, but may not “work” for someone else. And by saying that it “works”, I mean that it motivates me to practice being with reality just as it is. Your definition does not do that for me but it may for someone else.
Best wishes!
June 21st, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Hello Daniel,
So it seems we’re saying that our definitions aren’t really about defining a ‘thing’, but rather about motivating some response in ourselves or others. This would probably serve as the truth in regards to anything we’d care to define. Can we truly say what an apple IS? Or is our ‘definition’ actually a motivational force (our description might encourage the eating of apples, or, if we gave a genetic or scientific description, it might reinforce a certain model of the world)? If we see that we can’t truly define anything, but rather that our descriptions of the world are in essence aimed at creating some mental or emotional reaction in ourselves or others, this seems to have profound implications for our world view.
Interestingly, all of this seems to be aimed more at rational thinking rather than Awakening or Enlightenment — it seems that a purely rational thought-process would come to these same conclusions (unless we are going to accept a certain interpretation of the world as Truth). Which leads me to wonder if scientific thought could use a re-vamp — a re-examination of what we mean by ‘rational’ or ‘empirical’ thought. I recall reading with great interest your article on truth and scientific thought on your site, and I’ve often wondered if science needs to ‘get it’s feet rooted’ in a certain method of thought if it doesn’t want to eventually be put in the same category (as defined by popular thought) as, say, religion.
As always, thank you for spurring such interesting thoughts — I’d love to sit down to tea someday and get to talk to you face-to-face =)
Sweetwater,
Kenton
June 25th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
“If it were to speak anything, it would have to talk in Zen riddles, because…”
Thats going too far.
June 26th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Greetings John,
I’m a little unclear on what you mean here. If you give me some more details, I’d love to address your concern.
Thanks much,
Kenton
June 27th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
>> So it seems we’re saying that our definitions aren’t really about
>> defining a ‘thing’, but rather about motivating some response in
>> ourselves or others.
This isn’t my position. While all stories are indeed human inventions, some stories are more accurate than others, even when describing something as slippery as enlightenment. I do not believe your description of enlightenment as “the liberation of belief” is very accurate (compared with two and a half millennia of Buddhist research and teaching) yet I cede the possibility that it may be useful if it encourages someone, somewhere to practice meditation.
June 28th, 2007 at 1:21 am
Hello Daniel,
So what would you propose as a ’story’ or description of enlightenment (getting back to one of our original subjects)? Reading back, it seems that you were using the analogy of scientific process to imply a consensus-based definition of enlightenment. If this is the case, how would you characterize the object of this consensus? More interesting to myself is this question — how would you, personally, characterize or define enlightenment?
Sweetwater,
Kenton
September 2nd, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Hi Kenton,
just recently discovered your site and found it extremely interesting read. It’s quiet difficult to pass through words what you are trying to pass here yet you are doing it in very clear and simple manner.
As a reader I enjoyed your conversation with Daniel but feel it’s left open ended. I would like to better understand your thoughts on the subject. First of all I don’t believe that science anywhere soon will be able to research such poorly understood subjects as enlightenment. Consciousness itself (concept far better understood by everyone) is still a big mystery to scientists and even though there’s no doubt that eventually we will discover it’s neural correlates it’s still a long way from now.
Nevertheless the question of what enlightenment actually is and what it is not is interesting for mind to play with. During your discussion with Daniel you suggested definition “Enlightenment is the liberation of all belief”. This definition though sounds more like a different way of saying the same thing than as a real definition. In a sense that for one to say whether he is (or was) enlightened isn’t harder or easier than to say whether he is liberated of all beliefs. In fact, how one can count how many beliefs he has? It makes it especially problematic if one has a belief that he has no beliefs at all
It might be more beneficial to try to relate enlightenment to other well known experiences everyone had and which properties are well understood. For example:
- is enlightenment like knowledge?
E.g. at some point I didn’t realize that the reason why it’s cold during the winter is because Earth’s axis is tilted, then I learned it, understood it and now I know. Knowledge has some properties, like it can be learned (or discovered), once it’s learned it stays that way (e.g. once I learned why it’s cold during winter I can’t unlearn it), I don’t know anything besides what I know and I always know there’s something I don’t know, also there’s right and wrong ‘knowledges’ and there’s a method that can distinguish one form another (called science).
- is enlightenment like a feeling?
E.g. I feel pain when I fall from a bike, or I feel sad, of I feel angry. Again, feelings have some properties like now I feel it and then I don’t, I can’t make myself feel something I don’t (though in some cases - not all but some - I can do something to experience a feeling that I want to feel), if I never felt something no description ever going to give me that feeling (if someone never fell in love no amount of reading or talking will make him feel or even understand what it is to be in love).
- is enlightenment like a perception?
E.g. I’m reading your blog and don’t hear a noise produced by a computer’s fan, or by a bird screaming outside of my house, nor I notice how I breath, or sensations coming from my feet on a floor. Perceptions also have some unique properties, if I don’t hear a computer’s fan I can concentrate on it and then I hear it, or I can concentrate on where my feet are and immediately feel it. Perceptions are always there, all I have to do to realize them is to pay attention.
- is enlightenment like an action?
E.g. I want to move my hand and I do it, I can rotate it, move it around anyway I want it, there are, obviously, more complicated actions, like serving in tennis or dancing or singing or playing a piano. Interesting properties of actions are that they can be learned (through repetition), once I learned them they are always there (almost) - if I want to move my hand all I have to do is move it. Also one can do certain actions better than another (e.g. playing tennis or piano)
Etc., etc. - it’s quiet easy to extend this list. The point is that If we can relate enlightenment to well known phenomena we can better define what it is and come to certain conclusions.
For example, if enlightenment is like feelings than no “training” (like meditation), no amount of communicating with guru, no amount of studying will teach someone how to feel what he never felt. One just has to wait it will just happen to him one day (like love).
On the other side if enlightenment is closer to knowledge than gurus are important as they are the one who know and who can teach. Also if it’s closer to actions (especially complicated ones) only through training (e.g. repeating the same activity over and over again) can we possibly learn it.
The same stands true if enlightenment is like perception as someone can just teach you to pay attention to things you would never noticed otherwise as you simply wouldn’t know it’s there and where to look.
It would be interesting to know what your thoughts on this are.
Thanks,
Peter.
September 5th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
Greetings Peter!
I’m glad you wrote. I, too, felt that the conversation represented here was left unfinished, and you’ve done a great job of reviving it.
You took a very interesting angle here – examining the idea from so many viewpoints.
I think, if this conversation would have continued, that it would have come to the conclusion that enlightenment simply can’t be defined. In fact, nothing in our world can be defined. What I mean is that if we really wanted to define something like an ice-cream cone, we’d find that any definition is really just a definition of an arbitrary stopping-point. In other words, if I began defining an ice-cream cone, I would have to describe the cone, its shape, the ice cream, what the ice cream is composed of, where the sugar and cream comes from, and on and on. We might think it’s ridiculous to think that we have to carry it so far, but the point is that our ‘stop’ in the definition is arbitrary. I might say that an ice-cream cone is ‘A sugar and wheat-based cone with ice-cream in it’. But I haven’t really said much there, have I? I’ve just rearranged the words we started with. How deep into the description should I go before I have accomplished the goal of ‘defining’?
This, I think, is key. What do we mean when we say ‘define’? We’re never going to teach someone what a bird is, what a car is, or what a mushroom is unless we let them experience these things. We can describe them in words all day long, but until the person gets some experience of the ‘thing’ itself, they won’t understand what these things ‘are’.
Turning this around, it helps us understand that the ‘things’ we’re trying to define are created more by our definitions than by any line drawn in ‘reality’. We’re all engaged in a funny sort of game, our definitions creating things, and our things creating definitions.
I think what spurred the initial conversation here was a concern about if a person should be ‘teaching’ something. This is where the idea of a definition can become important. When we’re talking about enlightenment, who should be given the right to teach people about enlightenment? Whose teaching is positive, and whose is harmful?
This seems clear-cut when it comes to some things. If I’m going to learn how to fly a jet plane, I’m going to want a teacher who has a perfect track record. If the person clearly doesn’t know how to land a plane, or has had three crashes in the past year, or routinely forgets to do safety-checks, then I’m probably not going to get in the co-pilot’s seat with that person. But when it comes to teacher spirituality, enlightenment, or the ‘art of living’, we seem to have different standards. We allow our teachers to have human foibles. If they are depressed, or get frustrated or angry, or otherwise go about life just like the rest of us, we often still give them the right to teach us. Why don’t we hold our spiritual teachers to the standard of ‘living a perfect life’, just as we’d hold a flight instructor to a faultless flying record?
The reason is probably that we don’t know what a ‘well-lived life’ really is. We’re all confused about what emotional makeup and actions constitute an ‘enlightened’ person. It comes right back to the definition =)
This is typical of dualism – the world becomes very confusing when we are talking about symbols instead of ‘reality’.
So what is the answer when we come back to enlightenment? We could, within our definition of enlightenment, take in all the aspects you spoke of. We could probably leave them all out.
Perhaps the question we should really be asking is — why are we defining things anyway? What is the purpose of a definition? And I think the answer is pretty simple – it’s a pointer – a pointer used to reference an arbitrary delineation of a ‘thing’. You and I can speak to each other because we feel we understand what our symbol-words are pointing to. I say ‘apple’, and you experience a stop-delineation, and we experience that we have shared a clear communication (regardless of whether we actually were talking about the same thing). Likewise, if two people understood what enlightenment was, they could use almost any definition and it would be an effective pointer so that they knew what they were both talking about. But if one or both isn’t clear regarding ‘reality’, then they’ll struggle on and on attempting to find a definition. None will be found, because both are debating nothing but an arbitrary delineation. In the same way, we could argue for days about what an ice-cream cone is. I might favor an encyclopedia-sized definition which takes in everything I can conceivably use to explain what an ice-cream cone is. The other person might favor a simple, concise definition. It doesn’t take too long to figure out that we’re not debating the ‘ice-cream cone’ – we’re debating the idea of an ice-cream cone.
Share your thoughts =)
Sweetwater,
Kenton
September 15th, 2007 at 4:53 am
In “Good Will Hunting” there’s a scene when Sean says to Will: “So if I asked you about art you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written… Michelangelo? You know a lot about him I bet. Life’s work, criticisms, political aspirations. But you couldn’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling. And if I asked you about women I’m sure you could give me a syllabus of your personal favorites, and maybe you’ve been laid a few times too. But you couldn’t tell me how it feels to wake up next to a woman and be truly happy. If I asked you about war you could refer me to a bevy of fictional and non-fictional material, but you’ve never been in one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap and watched him draw his last breath, looking to you for help. And if I asked you about love I’d get a sonnet, but you’ve never looked at a woman and been truly vulnerable. Known that someone could kill you with a look. That someone could rescue you from grief. That God had put an angel on Earth just for you. And you wouldn’t know how it felt to be her angel. To have the love be there for her forever. Through anything, through cancer. You wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand and not leaving because the doctors could see in your eyes that the term “visiting hours” didn’t apply to you. And you wouldn’t know about real loss, because that only occurs when you lose something you love more than yourself, and you’ve never dared to love anything that much. ”
I think it’s very close to what you are saying (if I understood it correctly) - no amount of words, descriptions, definitions, categorizations, etc. can substitute for experience. I like your concept of “pointers”. I also think that it might be even worse. In a sense that these pointers mean something only for someone who already “been there” and thus realizes very well that these are just that - pointers that simply label something he “sees” anyway (it’s like having a pointer “flower” on a flower and a pointer “tree” on a tree - I see that that is a flower and that is a tree so pointers even though they have a meaning for me just state something I already see anyway). But they are completely meaningless for someone who is still “dreaming” as they will be just some funny paradoxes - somewhere away from the “real” life he mistakes his dreams for, something that tickles a mind maybe, but nothing more. They just don’t fit anywhere in the dreams, or they do under special category of “weird stuff some people say”
E.g. those who have already realized that “they are already there” don’t need pointers since they already realized that. Those who have not - don’t need pointers since they won’t serve any good to them anyway (though they won’t harm them either, in the worse case they will just be a part of another “game” - Enlightenment, Waking Up - whatever)
All this raises an obvious question - why even bother then? After all, for someone who (for good reason) doesn’t believe in verbalizing something that’s not really meant to be verbalized you wrote a lot of words (and very good ones indeed!)
And can’t be exact same reason be applied to question that was raised in this thread - why even bother to try to define what enlightenment actually is?
Hope it wasn’t too long and thanks for the patience
Peter.
September 16th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Hello Peter!
I’m so glad to hear from you! No patience required — you wrote back at the perfect time
I just loved where you took this. Your quote was very apt — I think you’re right in that it’s pointing toward the same thing.
Your thoughts about pointers are also very interesting. With non-dualism, it’s not really about ‘knowing your material’ — it’s about developing an understanding of where a person’s mind is travelling and trying to steer them with words. As you point out, these words are almost always going to be understood to point toward some new idea, instead of pointing toward Reality (or whatever word we choose to use — again, every word we choose will bring with it its own new ideas).
Therein lies the puzzle — how do we point when the very act of pointing will usually point in the wrong direction? =) I think this is easier when you’re face-to-face, and most challenging in a medium such as this one, where we trade only written words — symbols about symbols about symbols.
I see what you’re speaking of. Often, authors will point very well for those who don’t need the pointing, and the pointing will seem cryptic (and probably be misleading) for those who are asking for the pointing.
What I’ve tried to do here is to use words as best I can to undo themselves, without falling back on cryptic paradox-speak. In other words, it does little good to say “Reality is both Nothing and Something”. We have to explain what we mean by Reality, by Nothing, and by Something, and show how the ideas invoked by those words create the very confusion we’re trying to undo. It’s a marvelous dance, and I suppose one can only dance . . . but it’s certainly fun to look at how all of this unfolds, and to consider the possibility that there may be a pointing method none of us have thought of yet (which I think was part of the original dialog here — defining so that a ‘perfect method’ could be considered). I think the task is probably fruitless, as it’s not really about changing others, but about each of us and our own definitions, journeys, and dance.
Sweetwater,
Kenton
September 24th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Thinking about you said I came up to realization that besides being fun there’s another aspect of what you write
As it’s been my experience (of course not even close to being enough to generalize upon but still relevant) sooner or later one comes to this realization that almost everything he was taking so seriously his whole life was just… a picture. You know those puzzles that you assemble carefully, piece by piece, making sure they fit together at the right positions, so at then end when everything is assembled you get the image you saw on a box? You can spend a lot of time and efforts on this, becoming frustrated when pieces just don’t fit together or seem to be missing or enjoying when suddenly everything goes smoothly and you are getting closer to building that final image you are trying to build. You can become really consumed by this game. So consumed that you forget all about the “real” life that has nothing to do with that image you are trying to assemble so carefully together. That it was you who at some point took this box from a shelf and started playing with pieces inside and the only reason while you are still playing this game is because you want to.
You see all that and… laugh. As suddenly you can’t understand anymore how you could waste so much of your time on this game. How you could worry so much about missing or not fitting pieces and what if you wouldn’t be able to assemble it after all or million other what-ifs. How you could think that’s something that’s meant to be just a game you enjoy playing became your obsession. You look around and see that your friends, people you know or even don’t know do the same exact thing - playing the same game you were playing just yesterday (only pictures they are trying to assemble are slightly different) Also not seem remembering that it’s just a game. The one they chose, the one they choose to play everyday, the one they can stop playing at any point and then continue at any point.
And then you might start thinking that perhaps you really lost it this time
Got crazy. Completely nuts. Talking with your friends kind of reasures you in that though as they all say the same - it’s a phase, just a temporary crisis, everyone comes through this. And you agree with them even though inside you feel it’s not true. It’s like being woken up inside of your dream and knowing that it’s all just a dream - even if there’s no “proof” you just know. Still your “rational” mind is confused, tries to explain what’s going on with you, using same arguments your friends used.
This is when your site becomes so helpful. One comes to your site and all those “pointers” suddenly make sense. The full of meaning. They are like “welcome” signs
They confirm that you are not alone and that you are certainly not crazy 
That there’s whole world outside those worries what’s right or wrong and that’s the world you live in not what just yesterday you thought your world was. That that world you were taking as real yesterday was a product of your imagination and not those feelings you experience now. The fact that someone else drew all those “pointers” and that they point to exact same things you see for yourself now, helps to calm down that rational mind of ours that is so used to seek rational explanations of everything, and.. well, just enjoy what’s out there - what else? 
Thanks for sharing your thoughts,
Peter.