i can’t help it…so to define enlightenment for myself, i would say ‘internalizing the process of sitting with nonduality…sitting with the human condition…sitting with…’

You didn’t include the approach I find most useful for myself: work with all the ideas about awakening/enlightenment and anything else as projections.

Explore it as a thought filtering the world in a certain way, and see it as just a thought.

And find right here now what appears to be out there, in someone else or the future.

Seems to be a nice way to work with it, since it starts where I am, works with the material that is right here, and brings me to the same place as any of the other approaches do – when each of them work.

However, there’s another side to this, and I’ll mention it just for case. Trying to appease “enlightenment”, even if only by tweaking the models – such as e.g. psychologizing the awakened mind – can never take away the raw provocation inherent at the very core of it. None of standard duality-rooted models – based on either idealism, realism, relativism, or absolutism – can ever encapsulate what is to them the unpalatable and unspeakable pain of their own modelled reality.

So, there’s a lot of myth in every traditional model, some of which has transformative potential if wisely unpacked, while some is clearly limiting for the practitioner and communities and nothing we do it will change that. Awakened reality is NOT limited to experience(s), even while the experiential approach is a crucial component of the path for anyone serious about it. If it’s to maintain relevance in the 21st century, making awakening a non-taboo par excellence is the task of this generation.

Thanks for your considered comment and for the book suggestion–I’ve added it to my Amazon Wish-List.

I really appreciate your points, and the struggle you mention of being pulled “in two very different directions.” While I’ve found the developmental approach very helpful in inspiring great effort and helping me clarify where, generally, I am on the path I am (which it can do well) I’ve also found it inappropriate at times as one can definitely obsess about attainments and how long it will take to get to the next stage. It’s especially interesting because at a certain point in the developmental model, one actually gets fed up with development and so de-emphasizing “enlightenment as a goal” seems quite natural–and as a side note can also be quite natural for people along the entire path who are overly obsessive about goals.

I really do think that both can be held in a dynamic tension though, and that if one has a mind that is able to hold different models simultaneous (including their contradictions) and do so lightly, I think having both can be a fantastic thing. At that point it becomes more about appropriate fit, of which model makes the most sense now, instead of which model is “right”.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts here.

In this connection, I’d like to recommend Barry Magid’s new book “Ending the Pursuit of Happiness”, which I just read. His approach is very psychological in flavor, very well articulated, and clearly in the “de-emphasizing enlightenment” camp. At the same time, he’s extremely sensitive to and critical of what you call “perfection models”, which I think shows how these models can overlap and be combined in different ways. He’s also strongly in favor of retaining “enlightenment” talk, even if just to make explicit the fantasies and desires that we attach to the idea. (And as you say, it’s inescapable in any case in Buddhist practice, so we may as well attack it head-on.) Finally, he is quite explicitly not denying the existence of enlightenment experiences. All in all, I think it’s an interesting combination of features of your models.

Without getting into details, I’ll just say that I have mixed feelings about this approach, which I’ve always found very strict (in that it gives us very little foothold for our desires, or our “secret practice” as Magid describes it). I do admire and sympathize with this, and while I do find myself objecting at times, it’s hard for me to to see whether I have any real objections that don’t start, “But I want…”, which is of course precisely the point, in one sense. (I’m also unsure how I feel about the strongly psychological flavor, as psychoanalysis/psychotherapy is a subject I know next to nothing about.)

I generally find myself pulled in two very different directions. While I find an approach like Magid’s appealing, I’m also really attracted to clear maps and models like Daniel Ingram’s. However (and speaking only subjectively and for myself!) I often wonder whether a fascination with attainments, mental states and stages, and so in is really entirely healthy and productive.

Anyway I found the Magid book quick, enjoyable and maybe a little challenging. Whether or not you are at all sympathetic to his approach, I think you may enjoy the book. And in any case I definitely agree that it’s vitally important to expose and get away from unrealistic, dangerous and disempowering ideals of enlightenment.