I treat 'enlightment' as a technical term reserved only to be used by zen masters to confirm that your state of mind is identical with their state of mind, in a tradition of confirming it one person to another. They just agreed to do it so and been doing it for circa 2500 years. If a zen master says you're enlighted, you are enlighted (in this narrow, technical sense). If you are not confirmed by a zen master, save yourself a hassle of talking about 'enlightment'.
All other uses of the term are mambo-jumbo, wanna-be, i-feel-blessed, i-think-i-know, world-is-a-whole utterances with myriads of ways of understanding it. One upside is that it makes us think about being... nicer?
That's my view.
Nice article, nice list of pretty difficult problems to solve, swooshing around my brain since childhood, but being enlighted just goes orthogonal to every single issue mentioned.
BUT, oops!, here I come... talking about enlightment. I will stop here if it is not too late.
All other uses of the term are mambo-jumbo, wanna-be, i-feel-blessed, i-think-i-know, world-is-a-whole utterances with myriads of ways of understanding it. One upside is that it makes us think about being... nicer?
That's my view.
Nice article, nice list of pretty difficult problems to solve, swooshing around my brain since childhood, but being enlighted just goes orthogonal to every single issue mentioned. BUT, oops!, here I come... talking about enlightment. I will stop here if it is not too late.