In this essay I will discuss the nature of the term 'enlightenment' and attempt to explain what it means, both to the different traditions of meditation, and as a whole.
Each tradition and school of meditation has it's own specific description of what it means to be an enlightened being, and how it is that a person achieves that state. However, there are so many different schools of meditation that it would be impossible to discuss them all. Therefore, I'm going to focus on the three traditions of Buddhism, Yogic Hinduism and Taoism, and what the term 'enlightenment' means to them.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary states that to enlighten is ". . . to give spiritual insight to illuminate." 1 This is a very simple description of what it is to be enlightened. It is also a very ambiguous one. What is the spiritual insight? What is it that is illuminated? These are questions I will endeavor to answer.
There is so much literature on how to achieve enlightenment. Thousands of books telling us how to think, how to act, how to live, what to believe. . . every aspect of a meditators everyday life has been explored and described. On the other hand, there is so little written on what enlightenment actually is. So little explanation of what it is like to be an enlightened being, and how it alters you. Why is this? Is it because the few enlightened people who have lived on this earth have either refused, for their own or our own interests, to tell us these things? Or perhaps they have not been able to tell the unenlightened what liberation is like. Perhaps it is such a different and abstract state of being, compared to what we experience in our everyday lives, that it is impossible to explain enlightenment in any language that unenlightened people could possibly comprehend? It has been said and written many times that it is, in fact, impossible to truly describe the enlightened state, and that it is a waste of time to even attempt to do so.
But from what has been explained, it seems that the three traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism have concepts of enlightenment that are very similar. Enlightenment and illumination are the ultimate goals of all three, the reason that many thousands, if not millions of holy men and women devote their lives to the strict practice of meditation. Enlightenment is believed to be the ultimate state of being, the purest and most pleasant mental state that a person can attain. It is said to be total freedom from the suffering that we live with everyday, the attainment of true peace with ourselves, and possibly even union with the higher being.
So how is it that these people attain the state of enlightenment, and what does it mean to them?
In Buddhism, a meditator reaches enlightenment through vipassana meditation. When this enlightened state is reached, the meditator has attained nirvana.
"… a domain where there is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind, nor the infinite domain of space, nor the infinite domain of consciousness, nor the domain of nothingness, nor the domain without perceptions or the absence of perceptions, nor this world or the other world, nor sun or moon. This domain, I name neither going, nor coming, nor enduring, neither deceased, nor reborn because it is without foundation, progression and support: it is the end of suffering." 2
To reach this nirvana is to escape from the endless cycle of samsara, which is caused by the perpetuation of karma. Samsara is the endless cycle of death and rebirth that each person is locked in for all eternity unless they achieve liberation. Enlightenment is this liberation from suffering (or dukkha), an escape from the endless bondage in samsara, and an end of the bondage to mental states and emotions, the most prominent being a freedom from any desire. A person, once enlightened, is cleansed of their karma and are free to come into nirvana. Buddhists believe that it is not a person's identity that is carried on from one life to the next, it is only the karma that has accumulated. An enlightened Buddhist discovers that there is no such thing as "I", but that it has just been an illusion created by the egotistical mind.
". . . in the enlightened state there is no 'I'; there is simply life itself, a pulsation of timeless energy whose very nature includes - or is - everything." 3
The Buddhist idea of enlightenment is very similar to that of the Hindus in many ways. Most Hindus practice meditation in the form of yoga in order to free themselves from suffering, and their styles of practice hold many similarities to that of the Buddhists. Also, like Buddhism, once a meditator is enlightened they are free from the cycle of samsara and physical birth and death. However, to have achieved freedom from bondage to samsara in the Hindu tradition is to have realized the atman. The atman is an individual's true self, or soul, which perpetuates throughout past and subsequent lifetimes.
". . . he who knows that the individual soul is the Atman, becomes Atman; being it, he knows it and knows all the world. . ." 4
After realizing the atman, an enlightened person also comes to the realization that their atman is also identical to the Brahman, which is the divine essence, the source of all the Hindu deities and the essence to which all atman will return like a drop of rain will return to the ocean.
The main difference between Hindu and Buddhist enlightenment is that the Hindus believe that it is the atman, the 'I' that Buddhists reject, that is reborn each lifetime with its karma attached, whereas Buddhists believe it is only the karma which is carried on, attached to nothing.
The concept of Taoist enlightenment is quite different to that of the Hindus and Buddhists, most likely stemming from its Chinese origins. The purpose of Taoist meditation, or contemplation, is to forget everything one has learnt over the course of one's lifetime. To unlearn every emotional and intellectual response, every automated thought and action. Complete indifference and emptiness is the aim of the Taoist.
"Vacancy, stillness, placidity, tastelessness, quietude, silence, and doing-nothing are the root of all things." 5
To become enlightened in Taoism is to become on with the Tao. The Tao is sometimes called God, sometimes called the Way, and sometimes called the Void. It seems to have a rather ambiguous meaning, as do all concepts of enlightenment.
" The Tao does not exhaust itself in what is greatest, nor is it ever absent from what is least; and therefore it is to be found complete and diffused in all things. How wide is its universal comprehension! How deep is its unfathomableness!" 6
When a meditator becomes one with the Tao, they also believe that both the body and the mind can become immortal.
So, to address my original questions, what is the spiritual insight and illumination that is provided through the attainment of enlightenment? All three traditions seem to see enlightenment as a place where the mind is free from all encumbrance. Free from desire, free from emotion, free of all trivial matters which normally complicate life. They all make the point that bodily and material pleasure and satisfaction is fleeting, and as soon as it is gone we will be left wanting again. The spiritual insight that they all discover seems to be that once peace is found within the mind, and material pleasures are left behind, we can no longer be disappointed, and this lack of disappointment seems to be the state of eternal joy. The mind set appears to be this: if we desire nothing, we will be content.
So enlightenment and illumination is freedom from all desire, which in turn is freedom from all suffering. But we are still left wondering. . . what does if feel like to be enlightened. How do the patterns of thought change? One thing we do know - and the Buddha is the best example of this - is that enlightened people are still quite capable of rational and intellectual thought. They do not become silent and non-communicating enigmas, living in another, incomprehensible place. Enlightened people are still firmly part of this existence. The difference is that they purport to have found total peace, and that they are free to move on once they have died. They are freed from all obligation to remain in the cycle of samsara.
However - despite all we believe we know about the subject - the state of enlightenment, by its very nature, is ultimately unfathomable and ambiguous to those who have not experienced it. For if we were truly able to understand what enlightenment was, we too would be enlightened beings.
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1 H. B. Woolf, (ed.) The Merriam-Webster Dictionary. (New York: Pocket Books, 1974), p. 241.
2 Daniel Odier, Nirvana Tao: The Secret Meditation Techniques of the Taoist and Buddhist Masters. (London: East-West Publication (UK) Ltd., 1986), p. 40.
3 Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen. (London: Thorsons, 1997), p. 163.
4 Sir Charles Elliot, Hinduism And Buddhism: An Historical Sketch, Vol. 2. (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1971), p. 309.
5 Chuang Tzu, "Thien Tao, or the Way of Heaven." The Sacred Books of China: The Texts of Taoism. Trans. James Legge. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1962), p. 331.
6 Chuang Tzu, "Thien Tao", The Sacred Books, p. 342.