Numinous Nonsense

[I've been having a fun back-and-forth with a dharma friend on what seem to be two different takes on enlightenment. One is the more traditional Theravada model where the defilements (kilesas) are destroyed upon full enlightenment, which is call arhantship in that tradition. The other model is that the sense of a separate doer, perceiver, knower, or center-point is seen through completely and has simply stopped functioning in the way it used to. In this model the person is still able to feel and do everything they could prior to enlightenment, including anger, fear, desire, etc. What follows is my criticism of the first model and an argument for the integration between the desire to become a better person and to become enlightened.]

Thanks for your reply and for your thoughts on the difference between these two perspectives. Though I do disagree with the removal of defilements model, I do think that Jack Engler (from what I’ve read of his) has perhaps one of the more down-to-earth takes on it.

The main problem, as you know, is that there aren’t any westerners (including Engler) who using that set of criteria have attained arhantship. I wrote about this in my undergraduate thesis, in a section called “the glass ceiling of enlightenment” and quoted Joseph Goldstein, from two sources, supporting this view. The first was from an interview he did with some Spirit Rock folks, where he claimed that no Westeners had yet achieved full enlightenment, but that once they did he thought that several others would follow (kind of like when the 4 min mile was broken), hence my use of the glass ceiling metaphor. Then, when I was on the 3-month course with him a couple years back he made a comment that if anyone was an arhant in the crowd they could have the retreat center, IMS. It was a half joke, but also very serious. Everyone laugh and I cringed. hahaha.

The problem is that if we can’t find a single arhant out of all of these amazing folks who have spents year after year on retreat, have plunged the depths of the Buddha’s teachings, and have presumably sat with many asian arhants, then something is terribly wrong. And what is wrong, isn’t us, but the models we have about arhantship. We want it to be the final cure-all, an emotionally perfected state, and yet there isn’t a single westerner (or I would argue asian) example of someone who has clearly achieved that. There are however, some pretty smart people, who having attained what they can only presume is the end of the road–including Daniel Ingram and Jack Kornfield, but many others as well–who have deconstructed the models and have offered something far more human, attainable, and worthwhile in their place.

That being said, I have a great sense of sympathy with the appeal you mentioned around the development of compassion and presence, that certain great people seem to have. One way I think these two approaches can be integrated, is by differentiating between Buddhahood and arhantship. Arhantship being the untying of the knot of perception, and the dissolution of a separate doer, perceiver, or knower. In essence it’s the full realization of a fundamental non-dual identity, which while supremely important in terms of identity doesn’t necessarily change any of the human difficulties that came before it. Buddhahood on the other hand, is the ongoing path of one who has committed themselves to cultivating all of the different parami qualities, knowing that their development is really an endless endeavor, though it can have amazing results. After the ecstasy, the laundry and after enlightenment, the further cultivation and development of skillful ways of being in the world.