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Subject
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the nature of enlightenment
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Original Message
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What is enlightenment?
Enlightenment is certainly something problematic to describe, since if most people were prone to understanding it, then most people would be enlightened. However, most people are not enlightened, and as enlightenment is a matter of ignorance vs. realization, so may most people be said to be ignorant. Yet enlightenment is paradoxical in nature, which is just one example of how it is beyond the scope of the linear way most people think. Case in point as to its paradoxical nature is the fact that everybody is innately enlightened as sure as they exist. A person can therefore be essentially enlightened while ignorant practically speaking, in the sense that ignorance is a matter of forgetfulness, and something one forgets is still retained deep in unconscious memory.
Enlightenment is a matter of realization, and more precisely a matter of realization of paradox. One way of describing enlightenment is as the maintaining of two contradictory ideas in mind simultaneously and still functioning perfectly. The truth of the matter is that one cannot help but always have precisely two contradictory thoughts in mind, in the sense that one can only think one thing at a time, and everything contains its opposite. One cannot think more than one and thus by extension two things at a time, as if one thinks of two or more things simultaneously at once, then the group of thoughts may be said to constitute a single thought. In other words, any single thought is more accurately described as a pair, as even if one thought’s opposite is not consciously acknowledged, it is implied in the sense that all things are mutually contingent and contrast is fundamentally essential to existence.
Paradox is a fact of reality—not a practical impossibility, but rather a necessity and inevitability of existence. Existence is essentially paradoxical in nature, but as it can be and often is perceived linearly, so is it possible to not be enlightened. The state of ignorance is therefore a matter of denial of what is, denial corresponding with ignorance and acceptance with realization. However, this text thus far does hardly describe enlightenment accurately, while everything that has been said about it thus far is perfectly true. The thing is, that ignorance and realization are ultimately both illusory, dualistic interpretation of the state of awareness. Enlightenment is indeed a state, as opposed to a factor of realization, and as such it is a transient state as is any other.
It is misguided to say that one may glimpse enlightenment for a fleeting second and then continue life back in ignorance. The choice to accept or deny the reality of things is a function of the ego, and as the soul is innately enlightened in essence, so any declaration of enlightenment or non-enlightenment by the ego is artificial. In this light is enlightenment often described in negative terminology as what it is not, like when the Buddha describes it as freedom from suffering. Here there is no affirmation of what it is, but rather only of what it is not. Enlightenment is like the wind that cannot be grasped. Often it is also described simply and eloquently as the state of being in all its pure isness, without mention of any attainment. Indeed, in the sense that one cannot ever attain something that they cannot possibly lack, so any seeking of enlightenment’s attainment is already a step in the wrong direction.
One way to describe the paradox of enlightenment by analogy is to consider the nature of the word itself—enlightenment. As everything in existence is essentially light-in-motion, so is it impossible to become or receive actual “light”, as the term enlightenment could be mistaken to imply. Rather, the term refers to the realization of one’s self as pure light, obviously not strictly literally, but in essence, as in the perpetual state of simultaneous oneness and difference with one’s conventional physical body. Perhaps enlightenment may be best described as a foundation, as what we all can only ever work from, and with. For as we strive towards enlightenment in this day and age so that *then* we can be the change we wish to see in the world, so too are we constantly enlightened along the way. Enlightenment is truly humbly wise, as the best student is the best teacher.
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