How do you achieve Enlightenment?

Answer 1

With open eyes.



And knowing there is no one to achieve enlightenment.

Answer 2

I believe that through believing in your Enlightenment you achieve Enlightenment. If you just could believe that you are already Enlightened you can achieve it. The difficulty is believing that you are and holding on to it.
I think more than anything, it is more important to know what to do with your 'Enlightenment' . Once you understand this, it would seem as if you've known about it all your life. (Even to the past lives).
YOU HAVE ALREADY achieved ENLIGHTENMENT!
Can you see it NOW? It is in the Mirror of your Life. It is YOU and ALL that you see. The 'Buddha' saw this. Once you start recognizing it in others, it means you are awakening.

Thanks for a wonderful Q

Answer 3

"The Way that can be followed is not the eternal Way." Meaning, there is no way to achieve enlightenment. That doesn't mean that there's nothing to be done, but it does mean that there's nothing to be "done." We can't make ourselves enlightened by "doing" something. In a sense, we already are enlightened, but we're unaware of it.

But, I've found that by "doing," (in my case, meditating twice a day) I find that doing is useless, and the more I accept the futility of doing something to become enlightened, the closer I get to catching some glimpse of what people call enlightenment. The world is perfect as it is, no matter how wrong it seems sometimes.

Answer 4

To me it involves opening ones mind and heart, and being honest. Further, it seems to be a process of unlearning and setting aside preconceptions, many of a lifetime. I don't believe its like taking a class where you get graded. But the process puts me in mind of water washing against stone, or an (unfortunate) lobster being slowly heated up and cooked in a pot. It is never all at once, and it takes a long time. If while living we can exchange our temporal shell for spiritual wings, then perhaps we are enlightened.Or freed, as I prefer to think. PS In my opinion, enlightenment is not something "I" achieve. Rather, it absorbs the "I" into the all. Where we came from into the first place and where we will return.

Answer 5

It takes a long time....many years. It comes with learning about all the negative things about self and correcting them...thus learning through them and experiences.
To say you should accept anyone or anything into your life and that will enlighten you is both deceptive and a copout. Listen to your inner you. Keep your eyes and ears open....as it is funny how somethings are not seen and heard even when we are awake. Good luck and well wishes if you truly seek enlightenment.

Answer 6

Before enlightenment I chopped wood and carried water.
After enlightenment I burned water and drank wood! Not a very successful Buddhist joke.

Ethics, Meditation and then, quite naturally in good time - when you're ready - insight and enlightenment.

Answer 7

Enlightenment - Advice and information on health, happiness and life
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Age of Enlightenment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Short article on the thought of this period, and its legacy. ... the intellectual movement of The Enlightenment, which advocated reason as the ...
Quick Links: History - Conflicts - Influence
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Answer 8

It's not so much a destination as it is a journey, and it's different for everyone. However, I think it's important to let go of fear, mainly the fear of death and of loss, since these are both an inevitable part of life and can't be changed.

This says it all. "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.""

Answer 9

I think folk who have achieved enlightenment rarely converse with mere mortals. I personally think it is a state of being completley at one with your consciousness and you would spoil it by speaking to people. If I reached enlightenment I imagine it to be the case of a constant dialogue with my higher self, which would be just outside my physical mind.

Answer 10

I've heard it said that the realization of enlightenment is an accident, and practices like mindful activity and meditation make a person "accident prone."

Enlightened realization tends to be described as an event arising largely in connection with NOT doing things. (Zen master Ma-tsu said, "The Way does not require cultivation, just don't defile it.")

As best I can make out, enlightenment is a kind of organic appreciative participation in an "obvious" truth that is always already here, but one we tend not to realize because we are caught up in and overly-identified with our "thought" identity. Thinking we know who and what we are, we obstruct a more fundamental expression of who and what we are.

And we tend to assume achieving enlightenment is about figuring something out, but that very process of "figuring" is always already too late. Kind of like trying to use our minds to figure out the essential nature of our feet, when what is called for is to forget about figuring out and just to walk naturally.


Here are some passages from Zen materials.

[from Yuan-wu in The Blue Cliff Record:]

It depends on the fundamental basis being illuminated and the six sense faculties being pure and still [seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and conceptualizing]. Knowledge and truth merge, and mind and objects join. There is no profundity to be considered deep and no marvel to be considered wondrous. When it comes to practical application, you naturally know how to harmonize with everything….

After this you see on your own. You never consent to bury yourself at the verbal level in the recorded stories of the ancient teachers or to make your living in the ghost cave or under the black mountain [i.e., in meditative states of a blank mind without thoughts].... You naturally arrive at the stage of unaffected ordinariness, which is the ultimate in simplicity and ease.

You must cast off knowledge and views, discard mysteries and marvels, and abandon all contrived actions. You simply eat when hungry and drink when thirsty, and that’s all.


[a koan story involving Chao-chou and his teacher, Nan-ch'uan:]

One day Chao-chou asked Nan-ch’uan, “What is the Way [= the Tao, enlightened reality]?”

“Ordinary Mind is the Way,” said Nan-ch’uan.

Chao-chou asked, “Can it still be approached?”

Nan-ch’uan said, “If you try to approach it, you go away from it.”

Chao-chou further asked, “If we do not approach it, how can we know that it is the Way?”

Nan-ch’uan replied, “The Way does not belong to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is false awareness; not knowing is blankness. When without any doubt you truly penetrate the Way, then it is like the clear sky, vast and open. How can then there be any quibble about right and wrong?”


[from the record of Zen master Fo-yen:]

Enlightenment is like meeting your father in a big city many years after having left your home town. You do not need to ask anyone whether or not it is your father.
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