The Experience of Enlightenment?

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   johnscott00posted 13 years ago

   
   The Buddhist and the Hindu concepts, like other ideas from the middle ages, may not be a very good approximation of reality.  The astronomy, anatomy & physiology, biology, meterology, and geology (just to name a few) of the ancient cultures were, without exception, all discarded as science progressed.
   
   No matter how poorly they may describe reality, older ideas linger until a replacement appears.  The cognitive science of Asia has been an effective tool for changing human consciousness, but it’s replacement has only appeared recently.
   
   Do you see the light? Enlightenment is one of those terms that mean a lot of different things to many different people. In the Yogic, Buddhist and Mystical traditions, one of the primary goals in meditation is enlightenment. Enlightenment is notably characterized by the story of the Buddha. Before Buddha was the Buddha, he was known as Siddhartha, which very interestingly means, “One who achieves his aim”. The story goes that Siddhartha was a prince having been born into a royal family. He was raised in wealth and luxury. He knew very little about life outside of the palace or about the lives of the common people. When he became older, he wanted to learn more about his kingdom and the people who lived there. He began to travel and learn about the pain and suffering of the many people around his village. He became disillusioned about the life of royalty and began to search for truth. He learned various meditative practices and after many years, experienced enlightenment. Enlightenment is basically the English translation of the Buddhist word, bodhi; which also means to awaken or to know. Buddha means “One who has awakened”. To be awakened is to become completely transformed to the ultimate level of reality where there is no dualism, no pleasure or pain, no suffering and no ego. One has become liberated and no longer tied to the wheel of samsara or the cycle of birth, suffering, death and rebirth.

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2. 0

   klarawieckposted 13 years ago

   Most of us are works in progress. Enlightenment - it's harder to find than to prounounce or spell. But it is the ultimate goal, even if it takes thousands of lifetimes to achieve it.

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3. 76

   Shadesbreathposted 13 years ago

   Too much modern stuff feels good way faster than anything that enlightenment has to offer for most people these days. Enlightenment is an abstract with nebulous values that are even more intangible than "heaven" or "75 virgins."
   
   The problem with all the old religions is that they operated in times where patience was in much greater supply.
   
   However, religions have, throughout time, died out to make way for new ones. I am sure we are in a time of transition. The rapid evolution of technology and communication that is going on, and has been for the last twenty years ( a flash in the pan of time) is going to, eventually, spawn some creative and charismatic storyteller-philosopher to come up with something new based on the new understandings of how the world works.
   
   A new religion will be born. The "end of time" so essential of the Abrahamic religions will not happen any more than the world will end based on the Mayan calender or than it should have as described by any of the thousands of dead religions that lie on the ash-heap of history. It's just how it works. Religions are like underpants... they only support for so long and they they just fall apart, no matter how unwilling we are to have to go try something new.
   
   Believers use this heap of dead religions as proof of why their "modern" religion is true ("modern" can date back a thousand  years or two). Thinkers see the huge pile of defunct religions as evidence that we should accept, humbly, that we have no clue. The rest is all guessing and luck.

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   1. 0

      klarawieckposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      You're too shady to understand enlightenment.

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