I’m not sure what enlightenment really means. But it does seem fascinating.
Some people have probably attained it. But most people don’t really talk about it directly because they think it’s taboo. But why is that?
A guy in this 2004 article who says he’s enlightened does talk about it directly and has some interesting takes on it based on his direct experience.
I do find it a little weird that an American named Steve Gray decided to change his name to Adyashanti. He says he had an awakening at 31 and decided to teach about it.
I think changing your name to Adyshanti would only add to the unusualness of an unusual subject that he wants to normalize. It’s a minor point though and he’s decidedly not woo woo. I just extracted the parts of the article I found interesting. Go ahead Steve.
When I looked around at the Buddhist tradition, I realized that the success rate was terrible. People were in it for enlightenment, but very few were actually getting enlightened. If this were a business, I thought, we’d be bankrupt.
I didn’t reject anything. I just stopped blindly adhering to the traditional approach, and the energy bound up in following the traditional approach transferred to looking deeply into what’s really true.
Enlightenment is awakening from the dream of being a separate me to being the universal reality. It’s not an experience or a perception that occurs to a separate person as the result of spiritual practice or cultivated awareness. It doesn’t come and go, and you don’t need to do anything to maintain it. It’s not about being centered or blissful or peaceful or any other experience. In fact, enlightenment is a permanent nonexperience that happens to nobody. The separate person is seen through, and you realize that only the supreme, universal reality exists, and that you are that.
The tradition of talking about certain experiences only in private with your teacher keeps enlightenment a secret activity reserved for special people.
We sit around casually and talk about it. What’s happening on the inside for people isn’t kept secret or hidden. This way, people get beyond the sense that they’re the only ones who are having this or that experience. They come out of their shell, which actually makes them more available to a deeper spiritual process. When everything remains open to inquiry, then even the ego’s tendency to claim enlightenment for itself becomes obvious in the penetrating light of public discourse.
In the long run, both ways have their strengths and weaknesses. I’ve found that having students ask their questions in public breaks down the isolation many spiritual people feel—the sense that nobody else could possibly understand what they’re going through, or that they’re so rotten at their practice, or that nobody could be struggling like they are.
When people have breakthroughs and talk about them in public, awakening loses its mystique. Everyone else can see that it’s not just special people who have deep awakenings, it’s their neighbor or their best friend.
The very notion that anybody attains enlightenment is a taboo. We’re all going after this, but God forbid somebody says they’ve realized it.
People are chasing an awakening they don’t believe could happen to them. That’s a barrier, and the biggest one. People want liberation, but they are also terrified of it.
I didn’t leave Buddhism. I just woke up out of the identity of being a Buddhist, as anyone who wakes up will. I’m not teaching to transmit a tradition or carry on a lineage; I’m teaching to awaken whoever may be interested in awakening.