Why are we seeking enlightenment? What is it?
Ever since we got a grasp of awareness and vocabulary we are on a " path to enlightenment " , or at least we wish to see ourselves like that.
But what is enlightenment?
Is it a total comprehension of mankind? If so how can one grasp a whole of something when we function only on partial results and partial actions?
But what is enlightenment?
Is it a total comprehension of mankind? If so how can one grasp a whole of something when we function only on partial results and partial actions?
Comments (23)
The general attitude of the Christian faith was not to 'seek enlightenment' in that sense, although the term was sometimes used by Christian writers and commentators. But the orientation of Christians was towards the second coming of Jesus, the Eschaton, and so on. There were underground movements, like the Rosicrucians, Hermetics, and some gnostics (like the Cathars) that taught such ideas but generally they were pretty foreign to the mainstream Christian tradition.
The term that most closely translates to the sense you want to convey, was used by the translator W Rhys-Davids, who founded the Pali Text Society in 1881 to translated the Buddhist Pali literature of then Siam (now Thailand) and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The word which he translated as 'enlightenment' was the Buddhist term 'bodhi'. And 'bodhi' is one of the many Buddhist terms for which there aren't really any direct English equivalents. The meaning given in Wikipedia is 'the understanding possessed by the Buddha of the true nature of things'.
In any case, one of the reasons Rhys-Davids used the word 'enlightenment' was because it harmonised nicely with the way the term was understood by the 'European Enlightenment'. Rhys-Davids, and other scholars of that time, tended to present Buddhism (or the Theravada form found in SE Asia) as 'a rational religion', largely free from supersition, priest-craft and institutional corruption, and therefore more likely to harmonise with the scientific attitude of the Enlightenment than Christianity, which in its institutional form had become corrupted (as had, in his view, the 'lama-ism' of Tibetan Buddhism.)
Around the same time, one of the founders of the Theosophical Society, Colonel Henry Olcott, arrived in Ceylon, and announced his conversion to Buddhism, on similar grounds - that it was a 'scientific religion'. Then in 1888, at the first Parliament of Religion, held in Chicago, there were two notable Buddhist exponents, one being Soyen Shaku, a Rinzai Zen Master, a Japanese of an aristocratic background (and whose lectures at the Parliament are still in print as the 'Sermons of a Buddhist Abbott') and also Anagarika Dharmaphala, who was sponsored to attend by Olcott.
Soyen Shaku
Also speaking at the Parliament was the charismatic and highly intelligent Swami Vivikenanda, a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna and exponent of Hindu Vedanta. He toured the US for months after the event and developed a large following. His six-volume edition on Schools of Yoga is also still in print.
Swami Vivikenanda
In the early 20th century, these pioneers were followed by others, including Paramahansa Yogananda, who built a large organisation headquarted in Los Angeles, and numerous others, aside from the previously-mentioned Theosophical Society, which hit its straps around the first three decades of the 20th C. Collectively they converted some influential people to their cause, and Yoga/Vedanta/Buddhism became part of the rubric of modern life.
So that's a bit of historical and sociological background to the question - it was these kinds of people that introduced the idea of spiritual enlightenment to the West.
Wait--we are?
I wouldn't say I'm seeking enlightenment. What I'm seeking is friendly, philosophically-oriented talk from people who don't just want to argue and who aren't arrogant, snobby, etc., and I'm seeking that primarily for purposes of both entertainment and because I like to keep my expression (specifically writing) "chops" exercised a bit.
Unfortunately, it's not easy to find.friendly, philosophically-oriented talk from people who don't just want to argue and who aren't arrogant, snobby, etc.
I am a friendly, talkative, philosophically minded, arrogant, enlightened snob.
You'd like me to think that, eh? ;-)
A philosopher is a lover of truth!
That's a specifically rationalist image of the idea of enlightenment; the project of the West. The Oriental project has actually been quite the opposite.
That is by having many insights in the nature of man will someone "become" enlightened?
Is enlightenment the ultimate thing in life? After which there is no other purpose or action to be taken in one's life?
I often tell people a Jedi feels the force flow through him when he is regular. It is ripe for parody because it implies an underlying systems logic that can be applied to life, the universe, and everything reconciling even quantum mechanics and Relativity. Essentially, what I colorfully describe as Homogenized Heaven and Hell where crap rolling downhill can transform into poetry in motion because the same more cartoonish yin-yang dynamics apply to both.
During the historical era called The Enlightenment, which led to the industrial and scientific revolutions, more people began to rely on the explanatory power of reason than on traditions based on superstition, magical thinking, or other undeserved authorities. But the word Enlightenment is used in many different senses, and seeking all of them makes no sense.