What does it mean to be enlightened?

Question

Is enlightenment possible? How does one go about becoming enlightened? How does one know if one is allready enlightened?

Answer 1

There are several types of enlightenment.

Not all are religious.

It is easy to say that enlightenment is being at one with the universe. But what does that mean?

You might as well say that it is to see that being one with the universe is an illusion, or better yet, that the thing doing the harmonizing, the self, is an illusion.

The universe is already in harmony. Everything is already in harmony. Never was not in harmony. Whatever harmony means.

Sure enlightenment is possible. No big deal. You know you are enlightened when you know you are an illusion. Be careful with the words. I didn't say believe you are an illusion. Important difference.

Sure, there are plenty of enlightened people. The ones who are the most enlightened tend to be the ones who are kind and don't try to lay some dogma on you, who accept you as you are, but know you are an illusion.

Answer 2

"HARRY: That's right. Yeah, I've had a team working on (The meaning of life) over the past few weeks, and, uh, what we've come up with can be reduced into two fundamental concepts.
1. People are not wearing enough hats
2. Matter is energy. In the universe there are many energy fields
which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person's soul. However, this soul does not exist ab initio, as orthodox Christianity teaches. It has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However this is rarely achieved owing to man's unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia.
BERT: What was all that about hats again?"
- Monty Python and the Meaning of Life

What does it mean to be enlightened?
To the Bhuddists who coined the term it means, "a final blessed state marked by the absence of desire or suffering". However, for non-Bhuddists it simply refered to a state of advanced knowledge or wisdom gained from experience.

Is enlightenment possible?
Yes, but enlightenment itself is not important as the journey leading towards it.

How does one go about becoming enlightened?
There are many paths but the most common is by gaining experience plus MANY hours of work and study before finally using the wisdom and knowledge gained to help those around you.

How does one know if one is already enlightened?
Well if you are asking this then you are not enlightened. To best answer this question I've posted the following link. Please read some of the stories because they are very good.
http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/zenindex.html

Answer 3

I guess you are worldly if you are enlightened. You have knowledge others don't. I suppose you just know if you do or not although I think that there are many, many areas which I am a complete dummy and people tell me all the time that I am very worldly because I am educated and think through things. I try to be humble as well. I realize there is a need for every type of person in our society. We should treat all with respect whether or not they are enlightened. Some people may not be enlightened, but they are the light by which others follow.

Answer 4

Literally, to be enlightened means to see (in an intellectual sense) the light.

The important question that arises is whether the light you choose to see will be the difficult but deep light of reason or the easy but shallow light of revelation.

For Plato, enlightenment requires a lifetime of rational education which guides the student to a recollection (a reaquaintance with what the mind already knows) of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness.

For Plato this lifelong education is a preparation for our release from the distractions of life, so that the mind can rejoin these Perfections which are the essence of intellect.

Plato's philosophy can be described as a religion. It is a religion of the intellect, but a religion all the same. It denies the death of the mind or soul.

History has shown enlightenment to be *not* a goal to be achieved but an ideal to be pursued. It is not, as Plato suggested, a process that ends in perfection but one that builds towards an optimization.

Plato thought that enlightenment is reachable by the individual, but it is proving to be something that transcends the individual. It is instead a project of the human species.

You must decide whether you want, like Plato, to go for a religious revelation of individual enlightenment, or instead join and contribute to the human project of rational optimization - in which the individual's share of enlightenment comes in the pursuit, not in the capture of what is uncapturable.

Answer 5

The quest of enlightenment is something that one can not strive for. Many people doubt things that are spoken, like, what is the sound of one hand clapping... Einstien once said "Our current problems can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were using when these problems were created." In Essence, enlightenment is simply a paradigm one must learn on one's own journey. One day, you will appreciate a certain suppleness of the mind, when you can notice all things at one time, and contemplate several matters in a non pressing state, in synchronicity. No one can tell you how to become enlightened, and the steps needed for one to go through are of such that there are literally no words to express the radical changes in the way one needs to utilize the brain.

One will never know when one is enlightened. There is no alarm that will go off, or change of anything noticeable to a man's common perceptory abilities. One day, on the road to enlightenment, one's only gauge is those that surround him, and in this enlightened state of being, you will feel nothing for these people. They are simply people, just as one's self, and every other one's self. You will then see the world as a series of interdependencies, and one will easily let go of issues that give rise to a state of mind other than relaxed. In other words, if you can go on a roller coaster, and notice the expression of the faces of people waiting in line to board the very roller coaster you are enjoying, you will no longer need to ask another man a question.

Answer 6

Enlightened means to gain knowledge about reality; this term is very popular with Eastern religious philosophy, but is by no means confined to them alone; the problem is to discover which reality is the true reality, and if the one you know isn't true, then have you truly been enlightened? There can be only one true reality, even though people may believe they can create their reality, what about the others who also believe they are doing the same? That certainly can't be enlghtenment.

Answer 7

To reach enlightenment, most say you have to rid yourself of desire, which means wants, needs and beliefs. Thus, if you do reach enlightenment (and you won't think there is a you necessarily), you won't care! To be enlightened is to accept that which comes about and what passes away.

Answer 8

I was always wondering about meditation and enlightenment. Maybe it is a feeling of how you overcome boredoom of sitting in a wierd position for hours.

Answer 9

One is never fully enlightened. We will always have questions that we cannot answer, and new things to learn.
Absolute enlightment is impossible in this life.

Answer 10

According to Buhdist beleives, it means to be one with nature and other suroundings to truely understand the world, and knowledge, to be at peace with yourself and others. Basically heaven on earth.