What is Enlightenment?
Is there any way of verbalising it?
How to become Enlightened?
Is it even possible to be Enlightened?
Is it just subjective sense or objective state that anyone can achive?
Is Enlightenment relative in anyway?
Is it worth or necessery to achive?
What dose being Enlightened and Enlightenment itself mean for you?

Enlightenment is:

Seeing without a seer.
Hearing without a hearer
Feeling without a feeler.
Smelling without a smeller.
Tasting without taster.

And most importantly.
Thinking without a thinker.

This is not an abstract concept. If you can bring your attention right now to the sensations in your body without any sort of ego based thought applied to it you have effectively achieved enlightenment (momentarily) of touch based sensations.. Get to the point where thoughts can occur spontaneously without the perceiving mind overlaying a story line based around you as a separate entity pulling the strings and you will have reached the stage of arahant...or enlightened being. A fully perfected being will have fully eradicated all residual traces of the perceiving mind... It is said in the Pali cannon that many reached the state of Arahant, but only the Buddha was a fully perfected being.

The funny thing about this is there is literally nothing to do, but doing nothing will likely be the hardest thing you have ever done. Yes it is absolutely possible to touch nirvana momentarily.

Peace

Nice. So Zen buddhism had it right, huh?

I do really think that Buddha was not a fully perfected being. In fact, I think he just didn't really know what he was doing. Like any courageous human being would he just went with it and with all the attention tried to make the best of it. And was reveered for it by his peers. Which is a funny thing, I sometimes feel like Buddha when on shrooms and say things that almost have to be born out of higher power. Cognition is weird like that, it simply produces the goods without conscious effort (!)

I hope endlessness doesn't mind me quoting him without permission... I agree with his position on the matter and I'm not sure that I could word it better if I tried.

I think part of the problem is the language we use when we say "someone is an enlightened being" because there is sort of this implication that the person is always enlightened. It's kinda like if you were to call a person nervous...sure they are - right now - but in a different setting or even just the passing of time, that person's state of being can fluctuate and change entirely. I think there can be fleeting moments of enlightenment in the same way that there are fleeting moments of butterflies in the stomach or feeling one's heart racing.

Perhaps we can think of ourselves like a piece of string. This string has been wound around a pole for most of its existence. Now someone comes along who takes the string off the pole and can stretch it between his hands so that the string is perfectly straight. The string momentarily enjoys this perfected state of being. When the person decides to let go of the string, the string almost instantly begins coiling back up again, even in the absence of the pole. The string may be capable of remembering what it's like to be "straightened" but he cannot will it just because it has been done before, and telling the other coiled strings about it doesn't directly make their coiled lives any easier.

What endlessness describes "paradoxically" is an enlightened way of being. Claiming that "I am enlightened" can be illusive becouse it is an ego speaking. "If you think you are enlightened you are in illusion, if you see illusion you are enlightened". After all if one retrive that state of enlightenment and is free of ones own projections including "I", one see that everything is connected and above all is love. Love for everything that arises, it can be called "acceptance for phenomena of all existance". Now if everything is connected and everybody can reach that state, which is free from suffering coused by identification, and perceives all as a whole life process in oneness rather than separate events, one to achive farther enlightment, wisdom and enviroment which would support that struggle, shall do those things that Endlessness describes and of course one is not free from mistakes. Who can predict the future in 100% anyway? After all each way of being leeds to enlightenment through realisation of the self but in different amount of time and suffering.

Untill endlessness won't accept existance of those who claims to be enlightened, even if they are not, he will project his likes or dislikes on them and that will be "I" projection, the ego, not true for the consciousness that simply is and expirances all forms of existence, including his ego and even nonexistence of any form.

Enlightenment is the separation and subsequent communication of the ego & self. If a gap is maintained the subconscious communication isn't disrupted by the ego.

Great thread and great question. I agree with a lot of what people have said here. I think enlightenment is a broad and many layered term nowdays.

One way I personally like to think of enlightenment is as the extreme end of a gradient. Being more enlightened is to have greater insight into the nature or reality, nature of self, and the relationship between reality and self.

There is a point on the gradient where a person truly realises the illusion of individuality and their true identity, past this point there is no fear of death, no unhappiness, no craving or aversion which isnt treated as a kind of game. Such a person can feel no hatred and accepts that they are all, and therefore that they are the highest benevolence and lowest depravity of the one thing. Thats a challenging realisation to integrate.

Of course there is the classic level of mastery and realisation born of mindfulness meditation, which i would put on the gradient of enlightenment.

Infected your thoughts, my thoughts, or anyone else's thoughts about what Buddha was or was not are pretty irrelevant. What I described above is a pretty general consensus across vedanta, Advita vedanta and Buddhism as to what the enlightened state of being is. It's described over and over in the Pali cannon and by various vedanta teachers. The three dominant frameworks that speak of enlightenment.

I'd also like to second what Global and Aeternus both said as well.

Which has striking similarities with Plato's cave allegory!

@Joedirt, I did not know that! My thoughts went out to general criticism of Buddhism that I heared from different angles.

You're right now that I think of it.

I Awoke one cold, calm night in November, having read page 82 of a particularly good book. Tears welled up in my eyes and a large smile broadened across my face. Laughter came next, but softly, so as not to wake the girl who lay asleep on my left.
It was a wonderful moment, a true awakening.
I stepped through the gateless gate with such ease, it almost took my breath away.

Outside, the clear night shone starlight down on me with a luminance that I had not seen before in this place.
Things would never be the same again and I was glad about that.
The Path stretched out before me.


Enlightenment (imo) is a shift in perspective, a sudden and irreversible realisation.

Once you know...you know...

It can't be undone.

Tis fleeting though and cannot be sustained indefinitely.

To look back through the gate at all the Seekers trying 'This Path' or 'That Guru/Ashram'... Reading the books...Attending the meetings...Listening to the 'Wise words' of the Foolish...
It makes me smile at their folly.

They don't know yet...but when they do realise...They'll smile too.

Much has been said and volumes have been written about "enlightenment". This is quite paradoxical, as being awakened to such a state of conscious-awareness, is to be so internally still and sooooooo very attuned to the sheer totality, that one does not entertain any conception of oneself... nor maintain any membrane of separation from the whole of this magnigicent cosmic phenominon. Relative mind dissolves within Omniversal Mind, Godhead, Buddha Mind or Super Mind (as defined by Sri Aurobindo).. Essentially, leaving absolutely no boundaries or divisions created from dreamer to projected dreamscape, itself an illusion of paramount significance for any sentient individual.

When thoughts reach zero point, ego ceases to attach itself to any paradigmatic manifestation. No mind is a deep pause betwixt differentiating between this and that. Clarity dawns and in so doing, perception blooms exponentially... causing the shift in attention from the transitory to the transcendental. Awareness abides resplendently, witness of all the dreamscapes passing through this lens of any particular, independent ray of focus (personal self embracing infinite possibilities) .

Who watches the watcher, watching itself., watch itself ???

But whatever our ideas about enlightenment are, said state also points towards being highly conscious of the Inner Light and therefore, wholly interphased within the Sacred frequency of the Divine presence. Hence, illumination is key to ascending beyond the iillusion and compression of mortal egotism. Ergo, this reveals a direct perception of one's interconnection within the Unified Field of Being, itself existent as everything appearing within the universal hologram. I call it "The Elclipsing" or "The Awakening of the Omniself". Meanwhile, I dream that I make this statement from a dualistic stance, despite knowing in my heart of hearts, that there is no duality. May the Light of consciousness illuminate each of our given paths!

this.

In plain English, I would try to describe enlightenment in terms of the physical as much as possible, skipping religious conceptualizations entirely. I'd call it an ideal somatic cohesion or synchronization, and a pursuit of bodily health beyond anything culturally recognized, down to the biological, cellular and genetic level. Perfect love nourishes these potentials not yet exoterically validated. It is maybe the discovery of this love that constitutes a kind of enlightenment, however fleeting the moment of it's full illumination.

In plain English.

This book "The Mystique of Enlightenment" is one of my favorites. Not to be mistaken with the other Krishnamurti (Jiddu), U.G. Krishnamurti is the less known, but all the more intriguing Krishnamurti. U.G. did not write the book himself, as he claimed to have no message.

"That book should have been named 'The mistake of enlightenment' - U.G.

(EDIT: add some introductory quotes from the book.)

People call me an 'enlightened man' -- I detest that term -- they can't find any other
word to describe the way I am functioning. At the same time, I point out that there
is no such thing as enlightenment at all. I say that because all my life I've searched
and wanted to be an enlightened man, and I discovered that there is no such thing
as enlightenment at all, and so the question whether a particular person is
enlightened or not doesn't arise. I don't give a hoot for a sixth-century-BC Buddha,
let alone all the other claimants we have in our midst. They are a bunch of
exploiters, thriving on the gullibility of the people. There is no power outside of
man. Man has created God out of fear. So the problem is fear and not God.

I discovered for myself and by myself that there is no self to realize -- that's the
realization I am talking about. It comes as a shattering blow. It hits you like a
thunderbolt. You have invested everything in one basket, self-realization, and, in
the end, suddenly you discover that there is no self to discover, no self to realize --
and you say to yourself "What the hell have I been doing all my life?!" That blasts
you.

All kinds of things happened to me -- I went through that, you see. The physical
pain was unbearable -- that is why I say you really don't want this. I wish I could
give you a glimpse of it, a touch of it -- then you wouldn't want to touch this at all.
What you are pursuing doesn't exist; it is a myth. You wouldn't want anything to do
with this.

pitubo, I respectfully disagree with 'The mistake of enlightenment'

In my own humble experience, when one has had an "infinitesimally brief glimpse of enlightenment"

"reality becomes less random"

Events appear, as if orchestrated by your own unconscious desires, at a faster pace than anything you are familiar with.

It's as if your karma, is exploding from you.

Circumstance; I think not.

Śūnyatā.. being that which already is, ultimately, infinitely.. is greater than we know.

in the world of this little voice that speaks here is the strongest conviction, that there is everything to achieve. So very much. So much more, that by virtue of pointing towards it from this little voice here these beautiful potentials are made ghost like, joke-like, hidden.

Taking absolute physical health out of the picture, the skeleton of Enlightenment is the sentiment of a mind where it may function free and unconstrained by language.