The word "enlightenment", in my opinion, is used rather loosely in the West, and probably loosely in the East like in some places in Thailand when people get drunk and love to discuss dhamma into the middle of the night.
If you go to Amazon.com, and search the word "enlightenment" in the book section, you will get close to 100,000 results. That may tell something. Perhaps the word is great for marketing, and perhaps it is oversold. If we assume that one person writes about 5 of these books, you can make a rough estimate that there must be about 20,000 writers who know something or believe they know something about real enlightenment ... out there (don't forget to subtract a few cons).
Anyway, the word"enlightenment" seems to point to something like sainthood or something like that. But those who have really been liberated, there is not a tiny bit of ego or conceit left. For them, they are probably more down to earth than most of us unenlightened beings. For all I know, some real liberated beings might be sleeping on pieces old planks on monastery floors while other monks are busy teaching lay visitors the path to enlightenment.
Another aspect of enlightenment is that some people wants to believe that they are enlightened so bad so that they make themselves act like one. And believe that they are one. This is a sad bit.
Better getting rid of defilements first.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment