A nice fellow named Joel responded to my comment yesterday, and I decided to write another big chunk of material to try and clarify some of my current thinking around “enlightenment”. Here’s Joel’s original comment, followed by my response:
I appreciate Vince Horn’s comments regarding the need to demystify enlightenment. I’d like to make a minor point here. While I think it is true that we often project ‘weird shit’ onto those we regard as enlightened teachers–a longtime Buddhist practitioner once said to me, with a straight face, ‘Tibetans aren’t like us. They can fly’–I do believe the saying, ‘Ye shall know them by their fruits’ carries some validity.
Among The Three Trainings taught by the Buddha, morality is just as important as wisdom and concentration. I’ve grown tired of people saying that supposedly enlightened teachers who commit unspeakable acts–who harm others in ways that might shock an average person plucked off the street–have mere ’shadow issues.’ This has started to seem like a somewhat dangerous euphemism to me, valuable and true as the shadow concept is.
In other words, when looking for signs of an enlightened being, we should not demand an Unerring Goody Two Shoes who never gets angry, always wears a kindly smile, etc. But when it becomes clear that the individual in question routinely indulges in behavior that causes harm to others, I do believe that this should give us pause about that person’s level of realization.
Enlightened beings actually should have enough self-mastery that people associate them largely with wholesome states and behaviors, basic goodness and sanity. The strength and goodness of HH The Dalai Lama comes to mind here.
Dear Joel,
I really appreciate your comment and the points you bring up. I thought it would be helpful to respond, so that I could clarify some of my thinking around this topic…
Firstly, I totally agree that morality is an important part of the traditional Buddhist path also. Really, it’s an important part of living a good and healthy life. That said, when I use the word “enlightenment,” I specifically mean the realization that comes through training in insight. And so one can train in insight, attain realization, and then still be a jackass if they haven’t done much in the trainings in morality. And likewise, one can train in morality all day long, everyday, become a saint of sorts, and still not be awake in terms of insight. I tend to think there was both a reason that the Buddha separated these trainings (as becomes obvious when we see the huge disparity between the different trainings in certain people’s practices) and also a good reason he saw them as inter-connecting and mutually supportive. Mastery, or even small gains, in any of the trainings can be used as a support for mastery in the other trainings, but that doesn’t mean they are the same thing.
This brings us to another meaning of enlightenment, which is actually Buddhahood, in which we see enlightenment as the perfection of the 10 paramis (or 6 paramitas), which include qualities from all three trainings. I think when people think of “enlightenment” they are often thinking of the ideal of Buddhahood. But I’ll be honest, I don’t think the Buddha was a Buddha. Who can “perfect” a quality of being (let alone 10), and what does that even mean? “I’ve perfected patience”. Does that mean the quality of patience has an endpoint? And what can have an endpoint in the relative world? If that’s the case, I’d have to say this smells a bit of mythic dogma. If instead, the teachings on the perfections (whether there are 6 or 10) is pointing to ideals which we can cultivate, approach, and otherwise work toward, but which we acknowledge don’t have an endpoint per say, then I’m all for it. But when we recognize there isn’t an endpoint to patience, generosity, concentration, etc. then we’re also recognizing this type of enlightenment isn’t possible in the relative world. From this vantage, the 1st definition of enlightenment (certain significant milestones in the training in insight) becomes a much more useful working definition.
So, I’d say that enlightened beings realization should not be judged by their behavior, as insight training can really be done largely independent of the training in morality. That said, as Buddhist practitioners, the ideal, as you say, really is to combine the three trainings as best we can, so that we can live an awake, still, and ethical life. That though, is probably an endless process, and so I think we should give ourselves some credit where it’s due, and also be patient with ourselves as best we can.
