full vs. partial

The various definitions and arbitrary points are the confusion.

I think of it as an apple ripening on a tree. One day, the apples falls from the tree...never to return.

Likewise, there are spiritual experiences and mini-awakenings, but that is the ripening process. A little understanding may be gained...and so if you focus on this Enlightenment looks gradual and in degrees of partiality. However, one day you awaken (fall from the tree) and you can never really fall asleep again. That point of realization that changes everything...for now vision is clear. This is enlightenment...falling from the tree...it is an all or nothing kind of thing. There is no partial falling from a tree.

There is a point of no return.

~ Eric Putkonen
www.awaken2life.org

The best definition I know of is:

"the willingness to lighten up"

Not an easy question, as are all good questions of things beyond words. All thought is in terms dualistic, so in a way, it can be both. Enlightenment is "thought", by some, as a graduation day, and by others as a state of being. Most who have had Illumination experiences, which are often few and short lived, are profoundly changed by them. So much so that the dualistic nature of mind becomes deeply apparent to them and they proceed back into their lives from this enlightened way of being. But, the dualistic nature of experience, one that is constructed into the forms of all living things, can reenter a changed mind, and easily push it back toward dualistic responses. In this way, one who has been enlightened can still be so, in one moment, but, unfortunately, unenlightened (or less enlightened) in the next. Those who seek and find illumination through years of practice are better armed to stay illuminated than those who have the rare spontainious brief glimpse of the infinite, and have little or no ability to get back to it. I believe that there are gurus who are powerful enough to actually give students a taste of an illumination experience. The wise ones (if Paramahansa Yogananda is to be believed) do so sparingly, and only for students who can progress to make good use of it. Pretend gurus, sell enlightenment as if it were in a store for you to buy. This is not enlightenment, even if they do have some ability to give you something of an illuminating experience or useful methods of practice. Leading up to enlightenment, there are various gradations and stages of peacefulness and awareness that students can and do go through. Some are deep enough to be confused with enlightenment, and it is my belief that even a full experience of loss of a sense of individuality and a feeling of infiniteness (full illumination), can and does take different subtle forms in different people. AND, the aftereffects are then subject to their mind's interpretation of the experience in hindsight, and within the frames and beliefs of the individual. It can degrade into a tug of war that can have a big fat "I" in it instead of the immense feeling of nothingness and profound connection from whence it, and us, all have come (more duality here). The best masters are the ones who can stay in or close to a nondualistic way of being, while engaged in the world. Buddha for example. The best teachers are also the ones who can communicate this to others through both ideas and through non-mind experiences. Hope you get the idea. Hope this helps.

The world is full of half-enlightened masters.

Overly clever, too "sensitive" to live in the real world, they surround themselves with selfish pleasures and bestow their grandiose teaching upon the unwary.

Prematurely publicizing themselves, intent upon reaching some spiritual climax, they constantly sacrifice the truth and deviate from the Tao.

What they really offer the world is their own confusion.



The true master understands that enlightenment is not the end, but the means.

Realizing that virtue is her goal, she accepts the long and often arduous cultivation that is necessary to attain it.

She doesn't scheme to become a leader, but quietly shoulders whatever responsibilities fall to her.



Unattached to her accomplishments, taking credit for nothing at all, she guides the whole world by guiding the individuals who come to her.

She shares her divine energy with her students, encouraging them, creating trials to strengthen them, scolding them to awaken them, directing the streams of their lives toward the infinite ocean of the Tao.



If you aspire to this sort of master, then root yourself in the Tao.

Relinquish your negative habits and attitudes.

Strengthen your sincerity.

Live in the real world, and extend your virtue to it without discrimination in the daily round.

Be the truest father or mother, the truest brother or sister, the truest friend, and the truest disciple.

Humbly respect and serve your teacher, and dedicate your entire being unwaveringly to self-cultivation.

Then you will surely achieve self-mastery and be able to help others in doing the same.

-Lao Tzu