If the self is an illusion, then who is it who is not enlightened?

One thing that I dislike about Buddhist philosophies is that they are completely unclear and opaque. They are almost anti-progressive in the way they are left to such broad interpretation. Kant's noumenal and phenomenal realms are laid out in a meticulous and consistent framework designed to be easily understood and, indeed, accepted. I'm not saying that all ideas are communicable, just that the incommunicable ones should be left in the mind. Trying to put some ideas in words requires that you cheapen them and inevitably results in their being misinterpreted. I'm sure Buddha had a great insight, but he should've just kept it to himself. You can't give insights to others; they have to be personally stumbled upon.

This is a pretty consistent teaching throughout many buddhist traditions, making your comment awkward for my brain

I don't often hear Kant and "designed to be easily understood" in the same sentence. "Notoriously difficult" seems a bit more common, and aligns with my experience. Is there a specific work and english translation of his you would recommend on the noumenal realms?

I don´t think anybody realy understands Kant...much of it makes no sense at all, so much of it is just impossible to understand.

There can be no such thing as synthetic-a priori knowledge for instance...it´s just impossible. If knowledge is synthetic it just can not be a-priori.

i really like your posts. your words truly resonate with me, and with many others i believe.

for me christianity is very primitive and behind in the teachings and the spiritual practices, compared to budhism and hinduism, which in my opinion are more scientifically written than any other spiritual teaching for that time.

I agree; Kant was a bad choice, in hindsight. I don't think any of the great philosophers have been particularly easy to understand. I guess I was just trying to remark that adherents of philosophical tradition emphasize the attempt to be completely thorough and as straight forward as possible, while the themes of many eastern religions are anything but that. I see how using riddles and nonsensical concepts can be effective at reaching certain realizations, but the masters who told their disciples to contemplate such riddles seem more like pranksters than philosophers to me.


I disagree. What Kant was trying to show was that some of the most predominant structures of reality originate within the mind.

They seem incredibly clear to me, just so simple that they go over peoples heads.
Take the Diamond Sutra for example, it is clear enough.

Nobody has ever been enlightened, no self can be.
Nobody who claims it, has it, and nobody who has it can claim it and still have it.
It isn't evolution, it isn't gained, it isn't something that you already have.
It is far more simple than all that, more profound than any interpretation of teaching.
_______
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud...
tries to become enlightened?
_______

http://www.accesstoinsig.../kn/dhp/dhp.05.budd.html


Most people can't see past themselves, the mind then is too cloudy to see the simple truth.
One who says "I see it" cannot see it.
It cannot be pointed out either.

If we are concerned with pleasure, with senses, with knowledge, with self, then we do not understand the teachings. That is ok, but many want to pretend that they are enlightened and are still totally obsessed with ego, sense and pleasure. They want the knowledge of emptiness and to be full at the same time!

So what you're saying is that the phrase "I'm enlightened" is somehow off-limits to an enlightened person. You're saying that an enlightened person has free will, excluding the ability to say that particular phrase. I don't really know who wrote the diamond sutra, but nobody gets to decide who is enlightened and who isn't. You aren't granted a badge when you're enlightened, and there's no enlightenment police. Enlightenment is just one of those things that nobody can tell you you've attained. Like love or hyperspace, you just have to decide for yourself at some point that "this" is it.

^This.

The diamond sutra was written around 868....long long after the Buddha had passed away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Sutra


This particular sutra is meant more as a koan to get the person to break down the ego. To an enlightened person there is no self...which would make the diamond sutra correct... To be sure this phrase wasn't intended for everyone to take at face value. An unenlightened person claiming there is no self is delusional.

Furthermore enlightenment is possible and many people have achieved it, and many of them have said so...including the buddha and quite a few of his close disciples.


I recommend the book "In the Buddha's words: An anthology of discourses form the Pali Canon" for anyone that is seriously interested in learning more about Buddhism. Buddhism is an incredible deep subject and there is pretty much no way someone will understand the grander meaning without actually walking the path.

Peace.

I think the right way to think about this is that saying that someone is "enlightened" is in effect saying they are one specific thing, in contrast to other things--and that would be...just another thing.

If Buddhists texts say "There is no enlightenment. No one is enlightened," the meaning is that enlightenment is not a "specific state" that one seeks to achieve. Enlightenment, really, is nothing other than the ABSENCE of ignorance. Once one ceases being ignorant and deluded his perception can then be referred to as "enlightened." Enlightenment is not a state to be achieved, ignorance and delusion are states to be abandoned.

^^^

Yup... that's similar to how I see it... I think the main reason there's controversy on the subject is because a lot of practicing buddhists disagree on exactly what enlightenment means.

Enlightenment may be a state of being, but it's necessarily not a fixed state of being, but a fluid one. Or, rather, it's the only true fixed state of being in a world that is constantly moving. The knowledge of enlightenment is not something a person can know; therein lies the paradox.

Which is also why enlightenment can never be explained with words-- if it could, we would all be Buddhas!
Which, of course, we all are

Yeah, that's why I think it's kind of a tricky subject. Because of the constantly evolving nature of the universe, the "enlightenment" of 2500 years ago is probably a far different thing than what it is today. I feel like that might be why several people can seemingly grasp the concepts that Buddha presented us with and put them into practice, but aren't necessarily enlightened. Because(in my ideation) the world is a completely new thing each moment, the only way to understand it clearly and live accordingly is to keep progressing and changing with the times.

It's kind of like when you go really deep into hyperspace to an "enlightened" state that feels all-encompassing, timeless, and perfect. It seems like you've reached a pinnacle, or like the deepest core of life itself that is the source and embodiment of all that was, is, and ever will be. Boom! Heaven. Impossible to improve upon...Until a month later when you put that shit in the shade with the glow of your next big experience. If there were some sort of final or complete state, it seems to me that no matter how beautiful and perfect it may be, eternal contentment with it would be impossible unless it's always changing. So I feel like the old ideas of the brilliant ones back in the day, while still offering a lot today, just aren't as mind-blowing and life-altering as they used to be.

Also, somebody mentioned something about miracles not being necessary, or something to that tune, but I sort of disagree. I think there's probably a separation between someone who understands many things from having the veil temporarily lifted, and somebody who can permanently embody the universal energy and sort of run with it and master it in a way. Maybe there's fault or too much ego in my ideal, but if I were to get the point of being a vessel for the creative energy of the universe, then I'll be disappointed if the most ridiculously amazing and impossible things aren't happening left and right. If enlightenment isn't the happiest, most miraculous ride available, then I'm not sure enlightenment is what I want.

EDIT:
I also just wanted to add that d-T-r hit on some points that vibe with me, like the Lao Tzu quote. I've said this before in another thread, but I feel like because of the interconnection of everybody and everything, that nobody can permanently enter heaven or become enlightened until everybody does, or at least it's incomplete until we're all there. That's also why I like McKenna's ideas of the singularity, which for me seems sort of inevitable. I think a snowball of heavenly experience already exists somewhere in the future, or somewhere outside of time, and many beings are probably already on that roller coaster ride, but it can't completely take off because us unenlightened ones are sort of keeping it attached to the dead weight of our problems and imperfections. But that's why helping others get to whatever positive levels we've each reached is just as important as pushing ourselves further. It's like if you and a friend started drowning, and he started to sink first, so he's holding onto your feet and dragging you down. The best thing wouldn't be to try to swim up even harder, it would be to help your friend up first, thus making it easier for both of you to reach the surface and take that life-nurturing air into your lungs. Anyway, my dream of how life "ends" is that the snowball keeps getting more and more awesomely powerful, and it eventually sweeps everybody and everything into it for an endlessly improving cycle of love, creativity, and transformation(sort of vague, I know; but I can picture it so much more clearly when I'm blasted on ayahuasca )

I agree it's the end of ignorance but there is clearly more to it than that. The pali cannon goes into pretty good depth about the various jhanas or states of consciousness that once 'achieves' for lack of a better word. I have personally experienced the first jhana on a few occasions now. It's real...it's more than just lack of ignorance....it however is also not even close to enlightenment.

I guess in a sense it really is just the end of ignorance, but it's not like you can say oh yeah I'm one with everything...or there is no I and claim enlightenment...there is WAY more to it than that. Waking up from the ignorance like a person wakes up in a lucid dream perhaps captures it. That kind of end of ignorance probably has a lot to do with enlightenment. It's the direct perception of the viel of ignorance being removed...but even then it's more than that.

I'd also agree that there are degrees of enlightenment..and perhaps it makes WAY more sense to talk about it in that regard. For instance I feel as though I'm a good bit more 'enlightened' today than I was 5 years ago. I'm clearly not an enlightened being like a buddha, but I have grown on the path.

If enlightenment was referred to as a continuum like this more so than a single end state (which I do believe exists) then it would be taken seriously more often and it would perhaps also end a lot of the confusion.

I don't know.... I do know this though. The word enlightenment carries a lot of baggage with it. It's almost like the word God these day's. Our generation believes they can read about something in a book or read about another persons experience and then claim they have some sort of understanding...this is certainly not enlightenment. Understanding is not the same as absence of ignorance in this case.

Ok enough rambling out of the peanut gallery.

Peace

So they cannot reveal knowledge of the outside world..wich is synthetic.

I have sat back and contemplated about this thread and not just jumped into the discussion. I am not a Buddhist in the traditional sense. Hell, I am not anything, in the traditional sense, nor am I any type of: ist, ism or ian. I am just a child. Gray haired and slightly ravaged by the effects of the time-space-continuum... but still a child, nonetheless. So, I thought I'd write a book and a novel about my musings on the subject of Buddhism.

I admire the expressions of those illumined sages and shamans, who have shed great light upon the nature of existence and the paradoxical nature of self. And while I have found, when I look very, very closely... that there is no actual self, whatsoever. There is something... something immeasurably powerful and supra-intelligent, which I have touched and in so doing, remembered an ineffable truth.

Perhaps one in a series of ever changing truths? I don't know. I've shifted my awareness and found my mortal self to be wholly illusory and the Sacred Field of Unified Being, as being the only eternal reality. But then again, who had the self realization? Who am I? From my existential windowsill, I believe that when the human mind stops thinking, yet remains conscious of existence, an awareness blooms of a translucency of being. Said translucency leads our attention into a Void of conceptual formatting. What is... exists without our mental definition or even our isolated observation if it's cosmic being.

I'd like to recount something I once read, that suggested something like this, were all of the quoted oral teachings attributed to the historical Gautama Buddha, truly his factual verbiage, he would have had to be talking nonstop, for over 250 years. Mixing the interpretations of human semantics and the complexity of translation of the scriptures, from one language to another... much is left to an individual's subjective speculation.

While this is a greatly exaggerated point to bring up, there is much truth behind the implication. As has bee pointed out already, there are a number of schools/doctrines of Buddhism, which have developed over the centuries and each branch has it's own spin of the words of the "Enlightened One".

I was personally, most blown away by one statement quoted as being from Lord Buddha, he simply said, "I am awake". Does this implies that by-in-large, we humanoids are asleep? The sleep of ignorance? For my own spiritual journey, this is the sole inspiration which drives me to embrace each moment anew and consciously separate the appearance from the innate reality, within this existential paradigm.

Self does not exist, yet, the appearance of self and the assumption that we are all selves, plays a revolving mind game within there perception of our own consciousness. I feel that when Lord Buddha became awakened, nevermore to dream of being temporal ego-self, he might have easily remained in silence and enjoyed the bliss of Nirvana.

Likewise, he may have dissolved into the blinding luminosity of the Great Void, merging within the Light of all lights. But it is said, that out of tremendous compassion for the dreams and subsequent suffering of all sentient life forms, he chose to speak the truth to his human fellows. For good or bad, what we have today are interpretations of his wisdom and the direct proclamation of his that we must each awaken, as well. :idea:

So, I have come to believe that this great sage provided a lovely invitation for all of humanity to join him in this great awakening. An awakening so deep and permanent, that there was no need to speculate about an ultimate God or the realms beyond our limited material awareness. He gently returns us to the present. This is key!

Here and now is all that exists, within the appearance of self and other. One needs no philosophy about this level of reality. Are we not living and breathing within this very moment? And though we are illusions played within our own subjectivity... we are essentially Divine being, despite the mirage of self identification. I would theorize that true enlightenment is only possible when the witness to the phenomena has disappeared, by a permanent immersion into the infinite plane of The Unified Field.



I think that it's fair to say, that there must be as many ideas or opinions about meditation and enlightenment, as there are minds to entertain the concepts. I have found, in my own practice, that meditation is not a goal-oriented exercise. It certainly was for many, many years... but now I believe it is an quiet posture of true inquisitiveness. An emptiness of mental dialog and an attuned center of concentration. It is a never ending opening-up, within a human soul, whereby we embrace the depth of our being.. by becoming centered on the nothingness of the insubstantial. In so doing, and often spontaneously, we interconnect our conscious-awareness to everything else within this Omniverse of Being.

Now, formal sitting meditation is indeed a practice. It is quite necessary if we desire to awaken from the dream of self, because we do appear exist within the time-space-continuum. "Enlightenment" cannot be a fixed state, as it is an ever expanding understanding of THAT which is beyond the boundaries (and inherently within) our dualistic multiverse.

So, even Lord Buddha continued to sit in meditation, as he was gifting by his dignified example, the key of awakening to all of humanity in his time and into the future. Also, it seems like any spiritual epiphany, be it directly chemically induced or induced through meditation (again, chemically induced), has a cyclical pattern. so, we rise to heights of spiritual euphoria and for most of us, we return again to our slumbers. There appears to be a learning-curve to spiritual awakening. The Buddha was quite rare and magnificent, indeed.

We open and close like colorful blossoms on the vine. "enlightenment" is not like flipping an electrical light switch. It is an endless journey, deeper and deeper into the fulcrum of the very heart and living presence, of this present moment, the here & now.



Most profound... really! As self has been found to be illusory, by humankind's most aware members, how can a phantom thought-form become enlightened? For is not enlightenment the lack of that membrane which separates one soul from another? Is not awakening a stance of endless inquiry and an open-ended question of, "who am I?" I'm not suggesting that we adorn this point of circular logic with overly grandiose significance, I just feel that when a soul merges within the whole... there is no one to become enlightened nor transformed into a saint or an avatar.

There is only root consciousness dancing throughout myriad dimensions and multiples of mirrored images of self, morphing for eternity. and within the absolute silence of this very consciousness... a Void beyond the grasp of any self. Not nothingness, as that is a human concept. THAT which is simultaneously immaterial and material, unmanifest and seemingly manifest.



Nice. I like the way you put these words together. I wholeheartedly agree! This idea is mirrored in the teachings of Cha'n/Seon/Zen Buddhism. This path is part of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. Mahayana is an admixture of the teachings of the original, historical Buddha and indigenous shamanic thoughts and beliefs.

The 17th century Japanese Zen mystic, Bankei Yotaku, postulated the notion of "The Unborn". His epiphany was that there is existent, before our individual material incarnation, a force which is unmoving and untouched by the time-space-continuum. This force is our spiritual essence and our true nature. We already are "enlightened" before even stepping into this existential parameters of our own personal incarnation. This idea created the koans, "what is your original face?" and, "who were you before you were born?"

This hardly implies that merely by dying, we are once more merging into the vast sea of eternal being. Nothing is as simple as that. It does reminds us that we have always been inseparable from that unbound consciousnesses, which could be labeled as "God" or the "Sacred".

So, again, I agree. The journey is the destination. The relative is an aspect of the absolute. Only within the mind of the observer, the self, does it separate into this and that. For myself, illusory as I am, meditation is the gradual and cyclical remembrance of this truth.



Yes and I agree, brother! There are certainly degrees of enlightenment, even as there are degrees of remembrance and degrees of being fully awakened. This is especially significant if we link the idea of light, with the idea of human enlightenment. In total darkness, nothing can be seen. In partial darkness, many things can be seen. In full light, details about the many things, becomes clear and more easily discernible. Increase the light to a blindingly intense degree... and all is light and naught is darkness.

Meaning? When the light is all that one perceives, all becomes evident as a shimmering translucency of sorts. The very light becomes void of all perceivable characteristics. Observer and observed are both washed into a Void of inseparability, yea indivisibility, by the un-limitlessness of said Light.

So yeah, there certainly appear to be measured steps and degrees of understanding. Sri Adi Shakaracharya said that sadhana (spiritual training) is necessary because of the force of Maya. Conceptually, Maya is the collective dream-state we all share on this physical plane of being. It has a lot of power over our perceptual parameters and it cannot be shrugged off intellectually, as merely a mirage. Right? Or can it? IMO, that is what it's all about. Our voyages into Hyperspace and our pilgrimages into the unknown, towards what lays beyond the confines of our relative view. And that beyond state is where we all came from, as well as return to. A circle.

Shakaracharya also compared meditation to the dying of cloth. a profoundly simple analogy. It takes repeated immersions into the dyed water, to fully saturate and in so doing, color the cloth permanently (that being said, what is really "permanent" in the endlessly changing universe of manifesting duality?). Now, that's another line of thought, altogether. How do you enlighten a soul, which has an enlightened nature, to begin with? It's the spontaneous dance of Spirit and we needn't over-think this issue, to see that there are stages and graduated levels of understanding. Everything organic seems to grow in measured degrees, always in natural balance. :idea:

But it makes the most sense, that there would be levels of enlightenment and so, levels of awakening. It's certainly a paradox, since there is no time, outside of the time-space-continuum. So, what has always been, will always be... forevermore.



Oh, you just say that because you've been using psychedelics for so long. My, my... but aren't you a clever lad?



I am also of this line of thought. Well, when I am thinking about such lofty levels of awareness, that is. There exists an irony to the whole enlightenment game. We are created by the Insubstantial Quintessence. We suffer as humanoids, because ignorance really sucks! IMO, knowledge is bliss. Ego is a state of compression and it just somehow feels wrong or unnatural, when our mind is expanded enough.

We have peak experiences, in which we see more than we thought even possible and we seek to revisit this epiphany, like a junkie seeks a fix. When we are immersed in the light... we are One and we are acutely aware of being One. One without division nor separation from the whole of "The Unborn" force existent in all places, yet, existent limitlessly, within the Clear Light of the Void.



Nice. Wise words, which make a distinct differentiation betwixt that which is impermanent and thus, unreal... and that which is perhaps an ever expanding reality, always just beyond the grasp of sentient mind. Very well worded and quite spartan in content. And very, very true! Now why can't I be more like this? Sometimes I feel like I've been talking nonstop for 250 years, myself.

He so mutters to himself, a self which does not even exist, as he gazes into his empty coffee cup. 'Tis a Long Wind Blowing Cosmic Dust.

One of the best posts I've read here so far.

Ditto.

My reasoning about enlightenment is based on the very clear Buddhist concept that everything is "Buddha Nature." Essentially there's no conceivable ESCAPE from Buddha Nature--except by a "falsely" manufactured veil of ignorance and delusion (which, of course, is even itself Buddha Nature). You're ALREADY enlightened--but you mistake it for suffering.

So sure, there could be degrees--and most of the ancients who described their experiences described a process. But that too is understandable as just degrees of release of ignorance--you can be rid of significant quantities of it, so a lot of "light" shines through, etc. Degrees of enlightenment are nicely exemplified by the Zen Ox herding drawings.

I'm just saying, for me, it has been useful to think in those terms. It has been useful to have a clear idea that I'm not trying to ACHIEVE anything, because that puts me in the mindset of ambition.

If everything is Buddha Nature, then it's "impossible" to concentrate on it or seek it. Instead (as I see it) it's psychologically most efficient to better perceive one's DELUSION, so one can break it's spell.

A little bit late to this soirée, but I thought I would chime in with a few observations. Most of these things have been mentioned before, but that is no surprise.

1) There are a good many schools of Buddhism. Fact is, that most of them agree on very little, so it makes as much sense to talk about the Buddhists' impression of something as it does to speak of Christians' impressions. Just like a born-again, speaking-in-tongues evangelical will not find much agreement from a Catholic, or a Jehovah's Witness won't be on the same page as a Coptic or Russian Orthodox... Theraveda, Tibetan, Zen, and Shaolin (to name but a few) are extremely different animals, both in practice and in theory.

2) What many of you guys are talking about as "enlightenment" are actually satoris, or maybe one of the dhyānas (jhanas) as far as I can tell. The Arūpajhānas specifically (sometimes called the 5th - 8th dhyānas) can be so transcendental, that one might confuse them with samadhi. But even this, supposedly final dhyāna is considered lesser than mahasamadhi or nirvana. And even these two lofty states are different, thus begging the question... what is enlightenment really?

Like anything, it depends on who you talk to.

Satori and kensho "seeing into one's true nature" (Ken means "seeing," sho means "nature or essence" in Japanese) are commonly translated as enlightenment, a word that is also used to translate bodhi, prajna and buddhahood. Some will say that kensho is a briefer glimpse of Buddha-nature, satori being a deeper, more lasting (but still temporary) immersion. But most texts acknowledge that satori is considered a "first step" or embarkation toward nirvana.

In the end, the kind of ultimate (never come back down to mere mortal) enlightenment that people are talking about is Buddhahood. It is possible to be very "enlightened" and not be a Buddha. Bodhisattvas, for instance, renounce the highest and most perfect enlightenment out of compassion, and choose to wait until all sentient beings can join them... they are said to "stick around" and spread the light to speed the coming of this day. The Tibetans tend to describe these people as having full Bodhicitta (enlightened minds) and possibly being superior to those who seek Buddhahood without compassion. Avalokiteshvara (for instance) is considered a Bodhisattva, but is not only not less than a Buddha, but in many estiamtions... greater.

As you can see, this is a tangled mess. Buddhism can not easily be removed from its Hindu and Jain roots. It is also inextricably linked to very specific local ideas in the various countries where it is practiced (various forms of shamanism, animism and polytheism... Confucianism, Shinto, Taoism etc.).

Probably the only clear demarcation of enlightenment is the old Theraveda "Four Stages Of Enlightenment" concept, and even this leaves a lot of room for debate.

My greatest experiences of Buddhism were always through the various martial arts I studied. Shotokan Karate as a very young boy... and Kung Fu for most of my life. In these traditions... as well as the Indian Yogic ones I am familiar with as well, miracles (siddhis) go hand in hand with perfection. Well before you get close to "enlightenment" people begin to display these powers and skills. You can meet many people at many stages on their way towards mastery who can do things that we consider to be miraculous. Even in the Taoist schools where I directed much of my effort, superhuman abilities are not only expected to result from your practice... but lack of them indicates that you are not practicing correctly.

It is thus not uncommon to find gurus and grandmasters, sifus and swamis who appear to be telepathic or have other such skills and yet humbly consider themselves unenlightened. I suppose it is possible to reach the ultimate without ever having displayed any such skills, but I doubt it. Even in Christianity, one must be able to heal the sick, prophecize, cast out demons and devils, trod on serpents etc. as signs and wonders that you really have the holy spirit. You can't find any Jewish Prophets either that couldn't pull of some rather hefty miracles.

The last thing I will say here is this:

3) Central to the idea of Buddhism is that this is all an illusion. This is the lila (play) of Maya. Of course, you will find a lot of debate about this between the various schools, but however you dice it up... attachment to illusions as the cause of all suffering was the Buddha's main message. Thus, I tend to favor ideas like the ones put forth above that liken enlightenment to waking up from a dream. Like Lucid Dreaming, it is certainly possible to hang around in a dream and still be transcendent to it. But, it is utterly impossible to evaluate or judge awakening from the vantage point of the dream. The laws of nature and basic ideas you use to envision the truth are all illusions themselves. The rules of the dream no longer apply to someone who has become lucid... and miraculous powers go with that territory as well.

Be well friends
HF

Thank you for the lucid and dare I use this misnomer, "enlightened", post as always HF