What is Enlightenment?

What is enlightenment?

Without looking it up on the internet, what does it really mean to you? What do you conjure up in your mind when you see or hear the word “enlightenment”?

It is a strange word and is clearly open to interpretation. Enlightenment – seeing the light? Having total understanding? Finally realising a true way for yourself? Knowing that there is a true way for others that may or may not relate at some point to your own? Being me? Being completely intelligent? Using all your compassion and capabilities to do good for others? Be empathetic, emotionally intelligent? To embrace emptiness? To understand one’s true self?

What is it all about?

“Chop that wood
Carry water
What’s the sound of one hand clapping.
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is.”

What is all this talk of chopping wood and carrying water? What has that got to do with being true to oneself or having a complete understanding of life? What is there to understand about collecting water in a bucket?

And how can you possibly hear clapping when there is only one hand? Isn’t it just a riddle to which there is no solution?

In the West, we had a period of time known as the Age of Enlightenment – or the Age of Reason.

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/enlightenment.html

Michel de Montaigne asked the question, “what do I know?” and was sensible enough to realise that he could not possibly know anywhere near as much as some academics would think they knew because he did not have the experiences of life in other parts of the world, where there might even be a different type of knowledge.

We often hear the phrase “intelligent life” and ask ourselves if there is another planet that could, in time, communicate with us intelligently as capable life forms. Montaigne probably felt the same way about the people of distant continents. At the time, they may as well have been aliens or Martians from the big, red planet. In realising this, he realised his knowledge was limited and conformist, to an extent, through circumstance.

In the 18^th century, people believed that reason would bring about the type of changes to society that they thought were needed; i.e. the advancement of knowledge for societal reformation. Huge developments in technology, thinking, rejuvenation of the arts; all of this took place. The world was not standing still. It was evolving into a different form but at the heart of it was the development of knowledge and reason to try and make the world a better place.

 “Every second, every minute
It keeps changing to something different
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
It says it’s non attachment
Non attachment. Non attachment."

Let’s not confuse the discussion by bringing non-attachment in at this point. It is hard enough to decipher the meaning of enlightenment, and yet, non-attachment is core to that.

So, what is this about enlightenment and reason? According to the development of the Enlightenment period, it was all about reason. We can reason, therefore we become aware, therefore we can develop new things and see the light – ergo we have achieved enlightenment.

But in many ways, this is similar to the inaccurate thinking about the word ‘intelligence’.

People have, for many years, equated intelligence to thinking, to reason, to understanding and have not begun to grapple with the complexities of this phenomenon.

Is the baby not intelligent to cry for food? Am I not intelligent if I want to help the suffering for no ‘reason’ other than a sympathetic feeling towards them? Is it stupid of me to sit on a hill, looking out to an open sea and feel more at one with myself and my ‘learning’ than any amount of time spent head-first in a book on quantum physics?

Am I really going to discover myself and the wider world through reason alone?

“I’m in the here and now, and I’m meditating
And still I’m suffering but that’s my problem
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
 Wake up”

Some may indeed be beginning to wake up, and we should be thankful for that.

It comes as no surprise to find Matthew Taylor from the RSA talking about a need for a new stage of Enlightenment, for he was one of those who ‘reasoned’ with the former Prime Minister Blair. He supported the New Labour mantra of “Education, education, education” with a very clear purpose to develop further reason, raising standards and enabling our young people to be knowledgeable and full of facts. He supported the idea that learning to read and write would come about most effectively by programming children to learn phonemes rather than use their imagination to create a story from their own mind. He believed, like Blair, that this reasoning, this knowledge would somehow magically lift the impoverished out of intellectual decline and therefore reduce all social inequalities at the drop of a CVC word or an intelligent use of the sort of vocabulary that Will Self

often plops into articles just to remind us he is more intellectual than the rest of the country.

However, according to this clip, I think he is beginning to see a glimmer of light, though seems a world away from what I would deem to be real enlightenment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7ANGMy0yo&feature=related

Taylor explains that the age of Enlightenment helped to shape the “collective consciousness of modern people” with shared values, norms and lifestyles. His question now is that is this same consciousness and collective values correct for the 21^st century?

He states that the there have powerful insights into human nature over the last thirty years that should make us rethink. He uses words and phrases such as “moral critique of individualism” where we should all consider the distinction between need and appetite as the drivers for our behaviour.

He suggests that we need wider levels of empathy to the point that he declares that the education mantra is important but that “fostering empathic capacity” is equally integral to a change in society and by default, a greater enlightenment.

He says that we should seriously consider substantive and ethical questions and that there should be a reassertion of ethical humanism. He concludes with the notion that we cannot advance without ethical reasoning, explaining that we need to know who are we, who we need to be, who we aspire to be.

This is the ethics of the 21^st century and this is what we can collectively achieve, according to Taylor, who captures this all as the new Enlightenment.

And of course to some extent he is right.

If we are ever to become fully enlightened, we really do need to have a collective and individual ethical basis. We need to be empathetic and to act with that empathy for the good of ourselves and others. When we see or feel injustice, we have to reason against it.

But enlightenment has to be more than mere reason.

We have to feel, think, imagine, act and also chop wood and carry water when the time is right to do so. We need to embrace everything in order to be. We need to learn well beyond our age of schooling. We need to intuit and be allowed to do so. We need to understand the strength of our body, mind and soul. We need to appreciate and use our passions. We need to have time to stop and feel rather than constantly bombarding our spirit with thought, all because we have been led to believe that we can only get to the ‘right’ answer through reason.

And as important as need, we must have the desire to do these things.

 “Enlightenment says the world is nothing
Nothing but a dream, everything’s an illusion
And nothing is real”

So what is real?

Who knows?

My first introduction to philosophy was from a teacher, spouting off about George Berkeley and his notion that material substances only existed because we thought they did. Without the thought, without the idea that a chair was a chair – it wasn’t. It didn’t exist without our thought.

Who knows what is real? Who needs to know what is real unless you are completely dedicated to reason but the world cannot possibly be compartmentalised in this way, and perhaps that is one element of enlightenment that many in the West have yet to see.

There are so many vitals in our lives that are unquantifiable and un-reasonable.

Who can truly measure contentment yet we need and want it in our lives?

How is compassion valued?

What of patience as a virtue? We’ve all heard the phrase but how many of us actually understand it and its place in our world.

Isn’t honesty and truthfulness as or more important than reason?

Isn’t there something about what Montaigne said in that we cannot possibly be enlightened until we realise that there are essential parts of our lives that we cannot possibly rationalise, and possibly never know.

“Good or bad baby
You can change it anyway you want
You can rearrange it
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
Chop that wood
And carry water
What’s the sound of one hand clapping
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is.”

Good or bad? Black or white? Hot or cold? Yin or Yang.

Where there’s a will, there’s a Way.

The enlightened don’t see black and white. They may see black, they may see white. They may see various shades of grey in between. What they do not do is insist that black is always black or that what they saw as black in one moment of their lives will always be black.

With every certainty in life there is uncertainty.

The enlightened do not dismiss reason but they appreciate that there is possibly more than this that should influence, shape and change us.

Change does not have to be huge but it does have to be.

The enlightened know that we cannot stagnate in an ever evolving world.

“All around baby, you can see
You’re making your own reality. Every day because
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is”

Enlightenment is the ultimate reality but the ultimate reality for me may be very different from your own ultimate reality. There is uniqueness in life and there is collectiveness.

We need both, and the serenity and beauty of life can certainly be enhanced by the understanding, acceptance and reasoning of shared values.

But ultimately, enlightenment is your own, and is all embracing.

I wish that they wouldn’t call it the Age of Enlightenment because for me, it is only a fraction of what enlightenment actually is. It is a drop in the ocean compared with the thoughtfulness of enlightenment from the other side of the world. It is a mere parody by comparison.

 “One more time
 Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
It’s up to you
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
It’s up to you everyday
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
It’s always up to you
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is”

I don’t know what it is either. But at least I have my eyes, ears, heart, mind and soul open ready to learn, ready to reason and not to reason.

My enlightenment is somewhere out there as long as I travel the pathway.

But at the heart of it is living as well as I can for myself and others as I can, with clear pitfalls along the way and no excuses for my insufferable hopelessness, only a willingness to keep going, to keep looking and to keep trying to go beyond the rational and the reasoned.

The mind is greater than the cerebral, the soul more constant than the ephemeral, the body more able than the mere physical.

It's up to you, it's up to me but it is certainly something that everyone should be considering - beyond reason.

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 Further thoughts on enlightenment..........

"Late one night a female Zen adept was carrying water in an old wooden bucket when she happened to glance across the surface of the water and saw the reflection of the moon. As she walked the bucket began to come apart and the bottom of the pail broke through, with the water suddenly disappearing into the soil beneath her feet and the moon's reflection disappearing along with it. In that instant the young woman realized that the moon she had been looking at was just a reflection of the real thing...just as her whole life had been. She turned to look at the moon in all it's silent glory, her mind was ripe, and that was it...Enlightenment."

CHIYONO-- NO MOON, NO WATER

"The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature."

W. Somerset Maugham

And special thanks to Van Morrison for making me think.

http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Enlightenment-lyrics-Van-Morrison/FFA2D8D1A2BC211D48256A34000DC302

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And finally,

'We’re enlightened in our delusion. We’re deluded in our enlightenment. And then there’s delusion beyond delusion'. 

Dogen Zenji: