What is enlightenment?
The descriptions I've read are rather confusing. It's as if the enlightened person can't describe what he or she has seen.
A bit like trying to describe a colour to a blind person.
But what is enlightenment?
If we look with clear eyes, what do we see? We see the world, we see the things in front of us.
Without clear eyes, in other words, when we are lost in our thoughts we see nothing.
Enlightenment then, could be described as 'seeing' with clear vision, i.e, when we are 'not lost' in our thought processes, and when we are able to stay present with whatever is happening, within and without us.
Perhaps we could call that enlightenment.
Why not?
However, we may have to assume from the very few people that seem to have achieved it, that it is not an easy thing to become - to be present.
Not all the time anyway!
So from this perspective we could have levels of enlightenment, that we are, at any given point, more or less present.
So what prevents us from being present, our thought processes, our pain?
Indeed, it may be very painful to be fully awake to the moment, there may be issues that we would rather not deal with right now, would rather leave them till later.
But later somehow never seems to come.
I'm no expert. I just look at the evidence of my own experience. We can read about someone else's experience, and we may identify with it. But there is nothing like 'knowing' from one's own truthful experience what it feels like to, feel sad through loss, joy through realisation, misery through pain, laughter through fun.
We come back to trying to explain a colour to a blind person.
How do we do that?
The descriptions I've read are rather confusing. It's as if the enlightened person can't describe what he or she has seen.
A bit like trying to describe a colour to a blind person.
But what is enlightenment?
If we look with clear eyes, what do we see? We see the world, we see the things in front of us.
Without clear eyes, in other words, when we are lost in our thoughts we see nothing.
Enlightenment then, could be described as 'seeing' with clear vision, i.e, when we are 'not lost' in our thought processes, and when we are able to stay present with whatever is happening, within and without us.
Perhaps we could call that enlightenment.
Why not?
However, we may have to assume from the very few people that seem to have achieved it, that it is not an easy thing to become - to be present.
Not all the time anyway!
So from this perspective we could have levels of enlightenment, that we are, at any given point, more or less present.
So what prevents us from being present, our thought processes, our pain?
Indeed, it may be very painful to be fully awake to the moment, there may be issues that we would rather not deal with right now, would rather leave them till later.
But later somehow never seems to come.
I'm no expert. I just look at the evidence of my own experience. We can read about someone else's experience, and we may identify with it. But there is nothing like 'knowing' from one's own truthful experience what it feels like to, feel sad through loss, joy through realisation, misery through pain, laughter through fun.
We come back to trying to explain a colour to a blind person.
How do we do that?
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