Beyond the dictionary definition, what exactly does it mean in the real world to anyone that isn’t? In short, beyond the claim what are the proofs such as they are? Reason I am asking is because I had someone ‘throw’ that at me today. I simply dismissed it by saying “faith is not factually debatable by definition & enlightenment falls under said definition.” I then walked away slowly.
Enlightenment is a Buddhist concept that indicates the practioner has freed himself from the constraints and petty desires of the material world. This indicates they have achieved the highest level of thought and practice, as first demonstrated by the Buddha. They are then capable of ascending to Nirvana and escaping the cycle of death and rebirth.
Sam gives the Buddhist case well. Generalizing, it is the (generally sudden) awareness, usually through a(n) “Eureka” moment, of What Is Truly Important and how petty, by comparison, are the things of this world which enslave one to themselves. A sense of freedom and transcendence are general concomitants of an Enlightened state.
…and that furthermore the Eureka moment entails seeing things as they are, as opposed to the way they seem. Of course according to this view, seeing things as they are means understanding Buddhist doctrine, specifically the part addressing the non-existence of a permanent soul or self and ignorance’s role in perpetuating suffering.
Not sure where I heard this but it echos your post - ‘faith is it’s own justification.’ Personally, I’ve always read that to mean that not every experience can be expressed and yet some can literally change your life and/or blow your mind.
From a Christian worldview the definition is not that esoteric. Ephesians 1:18-19 uses the word and then expounds on that by listing a few elaborations.
There are better translations out there, but basically three things are listed.
[ul]
[li]knowing the hope of his calling[/li][li]knowing the riches of God’s glory associated with the inheritance that Christians are promised[/li][li]knowing the power of God at work in one’s life[/li][/ul]
Included in that list are a few words with specific Christian meanings – most notably “hope of his calling”, “inheritance”. The best way to understand these is to see how these words and phrases are used elsewhere in the bible and unpack from there.
The point is that the context is primarily an intellectual understanding. There may be an eureka moment and quite possibly a special revelation implied to bring a person to that point of understanding, but the essence of the concept is not some mystical process that is alien to the uninitiated.
Kind of a run-on sentence, no? So how do you parse that?
In the context of this question, and the answers about conforming to religious doctrine, I’m taking pleasure in the name of the 18th-century Enlightenment, the name meaning that it radically cast off adherence to religious dogma.
Isn’t it called an Epiphany? The moment of sudden realization or knowledge of God’s existence? (I’m just capitalizing the Christian version of epiphany)
To know that what you know is the truth. With absolute truth your mind is freed to ascend to a higher level of spiritual awareness and a higher level of awareness of reality. It’s similar to self actualization(see Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs), but on a spiritual level. That’s what I think anyway. I may be wrong.
Excuse the bump, but I’d forgotten this thread and had a couple of further questions upon reading some of the replies:
– bolding mine.
Quite honestly I can’t made head or tails out of the highlight. Can you make it simpler/easier to understand? Beyond that, who/what gets to define “petty”?
From your own italics, same query, what does that mean?
Made me think. Just not so sure that the caveat of being unable to verbalize something has anything to do with the capacity of any particular event to have life-altering results.
Again, read through all of these more than once – and as the others, I simply don’t “get” what “To know that what you know is the truth. With absolute truth your mind is freed to ascend to a higher level of spiritual awareness and a higher level of awareness of reality” means at all.
Perhaps I need this explained in a way a ten year old could understand.
There are lots of different strains of Buddhism, but a common tenet is that after you die, you are reincarnated into another body/species. You have no memory of your past life. Your new body is determined by your actions in your previous lives (your karma), so murderers might get reborn as beggars or cockroaches. This just keeps happening forever, unless you can achieve Enlightenment, at which point you fully understand how the process of karma works, and you understand what keeps you bound into the cycle of life and death and rebirth. Because you know how it works, you can free yourself. Then you can enter Nirvana, a state of bliss beyond life and death.
In Buddhist terms, all concerns are petty, just by virtue of being concerns. The fact that you care about them means that your ego is invested, and this is a hindrance to understanding/becoming Enlightened.
Enlightened beings (such as the Buddha) can try to explain it, but you have to learn it for yourself, by meditating, and following other Buddhist practices.
The difference between a “peak” experience (the “Eureka” moment above) and a more permanent “plateau” experience should not be understated. Almost anyone can have the former, but invariably they come back down to earth in their normal waking consciousness. If you can maintain the plateau on the other hand your consciousness will be transformed in the bargain to a newer higher state.
Just think about all of the layers language has to penetrate even when it is well adapted to convey an idea. So much rests on a shared cultural background for example. So really, when you communicate, you’re actually tapping into a common shared experience, it’s just not something that’s overt–rather it’s implicit by virtue of a shared cultural background.
Even when you extend this to non-native speakers, there are still shared experiences that serve as the background for language, but this is also often where communication can become unreliable.
The point is that language itself relies on experience to serve its purpose and it shouldn’t be too surprising that there are great swaths of human experience that are simply beyond the ability of language to capture.
“Ascending to Nirvana” in Buddhism isn’t necessarily what that phrase might suggest. “Nirvana” is a “snuffing out,” like one does to a candle. Nirvana is the state of being snuffed out as an individual and having your soul rejoin the one soul (atman). To be enlightened in Buddhism, thus, is to lose any sense of self.
Sometimes language is like the lettering on a pair of Juicy couture hot pants in that it precisely targets what you’re after. Other times it’s completely useless, but those instances I think are rare. Much of the time I think it resembles, to varying degrees, a fairly intelligent golden lab who can’t actually explain anything to you, but can nudge you in the right general direction. Sort of like this passage from the Lankavatara Sutra.
