Russell Simmons Shares His Deepest Thoughts on Meditation Ahead of App Launch

Meditation on Perception (pp. 87-99)

What is Enlightenment Anyway?

The Seven Factors of Enlightenment

In the next talk, we will be exploring the seven factor of enlightenment. This is sometimes called the seven factors of awakening.

What is Enlightenment or Awakening? This is the great question to be explored first.

Enlightenment or Awakening

In Halfway Up the Mountain (Hohn Press, 1999), Mariana Caplan quotes many well-known spiritual teachers. Many of them would not directly talk about enlightenment because it is so easily misunderstood. It is much easier to say what it is not.

Caplan states: “The main difficulty with trying to define enlightenment is that we do so from the bleachers, and not from the playing field. The same person who watches a football game on television and says “If I were the quarterback, I would have made the touchdown,” is the one who cannot discipline himself to exercise three times a week and can’t throw a football five yards. We try to define enlightenment from a subjective and conceptual perspective, but it lacks any objective or experiential references. What we think of as “enlightenment: is an idea created by our imagination. Enlightenment is a fantasy.”

She goes on to note: “The most common, widely-held fantasy about enlightenment is that it is freedom from suffering, the transcendence of pain and struggle, the land of milk and honey, a state of perpetual love, bliss, and peace. Enlightenment represents the collectively-shared dream of an idealized and perfect world of pure beauty and joy. It is not only New Age fantasy, it is the secret wish of all people. It is our shared dream of salvation. But it is only a fantasy.”

While enlightenment may very well include some of these aforementioned elements. It is fantasy because we are wishing for a state of being in which our self can be present as well to know these elements. The mind cannot conceive of what enlightenment really is because it is beyond the mind.

So if enlightenment is a fantasy, why do we practice?

“Kappa,” said the Master, “for the sake of those people stuck in the middle of the river of being, overwhelmed by death and decay, I will tell you where to find solid ground.

“There is an island, an island which you cannot go beyond. It is a place of nothingness, a place of non-possession and of non-attachment. It is the total end of death and decay, and this is why I call it Nibbana [the extinguished, the cool].

“There are people who, in mindfulness, have realized this and are completely cooled here and now. They do not become slaves working for Mara, for Death; they cannot fall into his power.”

~ SN 1092–5 (translated by Ven. Saddhatissa)

• As you meditate, observe what arises when “enlightenment” or “awakening” comes to mind.  Is there any attachment such as in the form of fantasy that appears?  Can you see that whatever arises is a concept, an impermanent experience?

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