...ut it would be more far more accurate to consider enlightenment as a continuum rather than an endpoint. FWIW we can identify numerous levels of enlightenment that correspond to how completely a human being has psychologically disappeared into the flow of life.
1. Someone who has experienced one's true nature--oneness--even once, and only briefly, is more enlightened about the nature of reality than someone who still thinks the universe is composed of separately-existing things being seen by a separate self. In Zen this breakthrough is called "kensho." In other traditions it is called "an experience of cosmic consciousness" or "an existential epiphany."
2. Someone who has completely seen-through the illusion of selfhood and become significantly detached from selfhood has gone deeper still. Usually, people who reach this stage are no longer searching for anything; their search for truth has ended. This realization or experience is what Zen calls "satori."
3. Someone who, having attained satori, has left satori far behind and no longer feels any sense of attainment whatsoever has gone yet deeper.
The final ox-herding pictures are the only descriptors I've seen that point to the continuing maturation process beyond satori.
During the last twenty years I've met about fifteen people who have attained satori. Fourteen of them were teachers. Nine of them appeared to have gone beyond satori; the others had not.
1. Someone who has experienced one's true nature--oneness--even once, and only briefly, is more enlightened about the nature of reality than someone who still thinks the universe is composed of separately-existing things being seen by a separate self. In Zen this breakthrough is called "kensho." In other traditions it is called "an experience of cosmic consciousness" or "an existential epiphany."
2. Someone who has completely seen-through the illusion of selfhood and become significantly detached from selfhood has gone deeper still. Usually, people who reach this stage are no longer searching for anything; their search for truth has ended. This realization or experience is what Zen calls "satori."
3. Someone who, having attained satori, has left satori far behind and no longer feels any sense of attainment whatsoever has gone yet deeper.
The final ox-herding pictures are the only descriptors I've seen that point to the continuing maturation process beyond satori.
During the last twenty years I've met about fifteen people who have attained satori. Fourteen of them were teachers. Nine of them appeared to have gone beyond satori; the others had not.
