What is enlightenment?
The German word "Erleuchtung" comes from the Sanskrit term "Bodhi" and means translated "awakening".
With light, or an experience with light, "Bodhi" has little to do, rather it is about the awakening from the dreamlike world experience of everyone, from leaving a wrong view of reality.
Wrong is the view of all being before awakening, because people perceive their self as separate from their perception, and do not recognize the impermanence and emptiness. An example here would be that the laptop on which I am writing these lines (as well as my body and everything in this room) will have completely crumbled to dust in a hundred thousand years, thus having no real substance.
By "enlightenment" I personally understand that my self becomes one together with other subjects and objects in harmony. I am not talking about my body, but about me.
My body, my head, my arms, my legs, my hands, my feet, that belongs to me, that is not me.
But then where and who am I?
This is exactly the question of "awakening", and if the answer would be so simple, the historical Buddha would have already left us an instruction manual, with which we can "easily and quickly" find "enlightenment". But Buddha had just not done that, because "enlightenment" is a very personal act, finding one's self is a very individual process.
Imagine life as in your dreams. You are always in the picture, you see yourself in the dream. Just as you see yourself in the dream, your real self sees your body, the things you do, the people you meet, the events and places around you.
So your real self, now you "just" have to find it again!
Too complicated you say?
No!
Often I hear that enlightenment could be achieved through meditation. But against it speaks that even the Buddha did not find an answer to his questions by meditation, but only when he gave up searching and striving, was completely at the end, saw no more possibility, wanted nothing more, sat down completely sunk under a tree, did nothing more, desired nothing more, when all fear and all hope fell away from him, no wanting and no doing guided his actions, then happened what could not have happened otherwise, at the sight of the morning star he experienced "enlightenment".
He spoke: "I and the great earth and all living beings have attained enlightenment together".
However, it required for his "enlightenment" a borderline experience, emptiness was a prerequisite, the end of all desire.
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