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You're enlightened – now what?

whatiscalledthinking.substack.com

171–180 of 239 posts

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#171
post #6

Most enlightened people don't even know they're enlightened. The ones who arrived there without conscious effort, through some intense concentration on some other aspect of life, simply lose their angst. Asked to explain, they usually have some kind of muddled folk mysticism about how it happened. Very few of them teach. I know of well attested enlightenment from an olympic-grade swimmer, and a guy who really liked f…

That doesn't really jive with what I've read about "enlightenment", particularly from the study summarized here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/21/the-pnse-paper/ In that, it describes people as outwardly exactly the same as before, but their internal experience changed dramatically. This sounds to be the opposite of what you're describing.

[deleted]

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#172
I am enlightened, and all of that doesn't apply. I see myself as a marketer of some ideas, nothing more. When the conversation happens to run into them, I offer my ideas, and handle any questions about them that might arise. I hope the ideas will spread, and eventually be reified into code, and make things better in the long run.

No delusions of glory, profit, etc.... just a slow but determined push to make things better, eventually.

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to easy to reach enlightenment when you are living in a monastery with a bunch of dudes and no responsibilities but to "chop wood, carry water." But an enlightenment philosophy that can help a father of 3 with a hard marriage and a fulltime job or two...? Hmm, maybe the enlightment philosophy project will take a few thousand more years...

> It seems to easy to reach enlightenment when you are living in a monastery with a bunch of dudes and no responsibilities but to "chop wood, carry water." Do you find it easy to confine yourself to a monastery with a bunch of dudes and no responsibilities but to "chop wood, carry water"? If so, why don't you take this "easy" path?

Because the challenges of marriage and kids and work present challenges for self improvement that are real opportunities for the growth of my soul. I can be happy to have a trainer that gives me such heavy weights to train with

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#174

The idea of enlightenment as a vague loosely-defined “I know it when I see it” phenomena is mostly a western “new age” cultural misappropriation of Buddhist teaching. Enlightenment is well-defined and described in detail by the Buddhist cannon. You can call “enlightenment” whatever you want, but Buddha taught a specific conception of enlightenment and a specific path to achieving it. The Tripitaka describes enlighten…

This detail addresses none of the questions raised in the post. Either escaping these ten fetters confers a detachment from the world such that one no longer needs to change it, or one wants to share this state with the world and then has to grapple with those challenges identified in the post.

You’re right, I should have mentioned that the Buddha and the Tripitaka do talk about “what does someone do after being enlightened.” To sum it up, once someone is fully enlightened (arahant) they would either live as a monk (otherwise they’d still be attached to household fetters) or choose to die.

In the Tripitaka there are not many examples of lay people who reach arahant stage. In the Milindapanha Buddha is supposedly asked directly whether layman can attain arahant stage, and he says "If a layman attains arahant-ship, only two destinations await him; either he must enter the Order that very day or else he must attain parinibbàna (nibanna upon death).

It’s clear from Tripitaka that anyone could obtain arahant stage but obviously if you were free of ten fetters it would be seemingly impossible to live another lifestyle except one described as monastic.

Unorthodox Buddhists (Mahayana, Tibetan, Zen, etc.) reject some or most of the orthodox concept of enlightenment. But IMO it’s telling that their alternative conception of enlightenment is both indescribable and lacking a systematic path to attain, which very much contradicts Buddha’s message (I’ve found the way and therefor I can tell you the way, and if you follow you will reach the destination as I have).

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#175
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hobby of mine is taking sayings like that and saying, "Well, if it weren't mumbo-jumbo, then what might it mean?" In this case, it would seem to be: At the start, you have a bunch of knowledge, concepts built on other concepts; studying Zen involves breaking all of that down and reforming it from scratch; at the end of the process, you have a new bunch of knowledge and concepts built on concepts, and you have simil…

Wow, that is impressive. I would love to read more of these translations if you ever post them somewhere!

Really? I'm flattered! To me it's just a simple description of what I'm guessing something might be supposed to refer to, but if it's sufficiently non-obvious to others...

Well, I haven't kept a list, but here's another that comes to mind. Someone's signature was "How do you prepare for death? Learn to live. How do you learn to live? Prepare for death."

On the face of it, this is a trollish non-answer. However, there is a way to interpret it. The first sentence is straightforward: Death is going to happen, how do I prepare for it? The second sentence is saying: You can't stop it, so the best you can do is figure out what to do with the life that you have. The third sentence is also straightforward: How do I figure out what to do with my life? The fourth sentence is saying: Imagine you're going to die, figure out your obligations that you'd want to fulfill before you die, fulfill them now, and then you will have freedom to focus on exploring what you really want to do. The phrases "prepare for death" and "learn to live" are each used twice, with different intended meanings each time.

There is always the possibility of getting a quote that is actually nonsense and was meant as nonsense (or, today, was generated by a computer), and "interpreting" wisdom into it that comes from the interpreter rather than from the quote. Or there could be multiple, similarly wise-seeming interpretations. For example, I could have interpreted the fourth sentence instead as: Imagine you're going to die; then, from that perspective, observe which things seem important and which no longer seem so important; thus, the thought-exercise of imagining you'll die is an exercise that teaches you how to live.

It's possible that cryptic sayings were devised to hold wisdom. It's also possible that they were devised by trolls surrounded by gullible admirers. Perhaps there were wise people who, as an apparently necessary evil, made themselves look cryptically impressive so as to attract funding from gullible rulers, or to keep their ideas from being misused by outsiders who might have bad intent. Perhaps there was a mixture of trolls and well-intentioned wise people. I really don't know.

I am generally a fan of straightforward textbook explanations that don't play word games, or, if they do, they have straightforward explanations of the word games. Still, it is possible that there's something to the cryptic stuff. And so it can be a fun game to try to get meaning from them.

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#176
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to easy to reach enlightenment when you are living in a monastery with a bunch of dudes and no responsibilities but to "chop wood, carry water." But an enlightenment philosophy that can help a father of 3 with a hard marriage and a fulltime job or two...? Hmm, maybe the enlightment philosophy project will take a few thousand more years...

The very underrated movie "Redbelt" kind of addresses it. It's not about enlightenment, but the challenges of following a warrior's ethos in a modern world. It includes job, money, friendship, legal, and marriage challenges and the main character struggles to stay true to himself and his code throughout. The ending scene is magnificent.

Seconded.

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#177

The idea of enlightenment as a vague loosely-defined “I know it when I see it” phenomena is mostly a western “new age” cultural misappropriation of Buddhist teaching. Enlightenment is well-defined and described in detail by the Buddhist cannon. You can call “enlightenment” whatever you want, but Buddha taught a specific conception of enlightenment and a specific path to achieving it. The Tripitaka describes enlighten…

The Zen sudden-enlightenment doctrine seem a newer teaching/dharma/interpretation than enlightenment by stages, distinct from it, and no less valid by any objective measure I can think of. I think Jainism and Hinduism also have some notions of enlightenment or concepts close or related to it, like moksha. The sudden enlightenment view seems closer to the root of western "new age" conception, so it seems rather uncharitable to pick an older and more restricted definition for dramatic effect on the claim of cultural misappropriation.

But the word "enlightenment" seems too overloaded from different conceptions/traditions, so it hardly seems worth splitting hairs over--using the word itself seems like a barrier to clear communication at this point unless you have a clearly defined context, like the enlightenment of the Buddhist Pali canon, or whatever. I just find your view narrow and uncharitable, and we should focus on what we know the author means rather than quibbling over the definitions of words. Language isn't that precise, evolves, and is meant to communicate, and is adequate if it gets the idea across. Personally, I think we more or less know what the author means here without going back to Buddhist canon, so we should probably just leave Buddhist canon out of it.

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to easy to reach enlightenment when you are living in a monastery with a bunch of dudes and no responsibilities but to "chop wood, carry water." But an enlightenment philosophy that can help a father of 3 with a hard marriage and a fulltime job or two...? Hmm, maybe the enlightment philosophy project will take a few thousand more years...

That father's life of suffering is also a life with a sizable family that he had the privilege of supporting. That is enlightenment.

What is enlightenment?

Re: You're enlightened – now what?

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buddhism is politically quietist traditionally, but Abrahamic religions are politically activist, so Western reception of Buddhism requires transforming it into “engaged” Buddhism. It’s hard for someone raised in the West to look at Nazis and just shrug and say that they can only kill the body but not the soul, but that is more or less what Buddhists before 1800 would say.

Are you aware that a sect of Theravada Buddhism has been perpetuating genocide against the Rohingya population of Myanmar for almost 5 years now? How about the dozens of self-immolations performed by Tibetan Buddhists to protest China's annexation of their homeland? Honestly, it's hard not to think of Buddhism as a religion which is traditionally politically activist. Wasn't Siddhartha himself a wealthy prince who on…

Not sure why you’re being downvoted. Myanmar had had an issue with Buddhist militias for years now.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/buddhist-violence-portends-new-...

The parent comment just the typical western romanticisation of eastern religion. Why are our religions so bad and corrupted, while those mystical buddhists are so pure and enlightened?... It’s just nonsense really.

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