Enlightenment

Enlightenment is as full an understanding of the world as possible.  It goes beyond rational understanding.  It is spiritual, so to say.  It is intuitive, if you wish.  When we say the Buddha was an enlightened man, what we really mean is that he understood the world much more than the ordinary people. 

Understanding leads to love or, at least, compassion.  The Buddha was one of the most compassionate creatures that ever walked on the planet.  French writer Francois Mauriac said in one of his short stories that God was able to endure our world because of his profound understanding.  Mauriac’s God was an enlightened being: one who saw the human condition so clearly that he could not condemn anyone.  Rather he would feel compassion, however wicked the person might be by normal human standards.  

In his classical work, The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James speaks of American poet Walt Whitman as an enlightened person.  Whitman loved whatever he saw.  He loved the flowers as well as the weeds.  Everything that he came across held a special charm for him.  All sights and sounds pleased him. 

Enlightenment produces what James called “healthy-mindedness” and defined as “a way of feeling happy about things immediately.”  Such healthy-mindedness “excludes evil from its field of vision.”  It is not ignoring evil conveniently.  It is understanding the object of perception so profoundly that the evil aspects dwindle before the intrinsic goodness of the object.  That ability to perceive the goodness, to perceive the object in its totality rather, is enlightenment. 

The enlightened person is happy in a way that is quite different from those who discover happiness in things like food, wealth or possessions.  As the Buddha said, “When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”

PS. Written for #BlogchatterA2Z