One MU's vanity is another MU's knowledge.

Well friends? After reading every post, and engaging as much as I could, this thread has led me to some realizations:

No one knows what enlightenment is. Instead everyone thinks they know. The difference of opinion on what enlightenment actually is is very telling and leads me to this conclusion. This reaffirms to me that once someone arrives at their own conclusion to what enlightenment means to him/her, they are then able to strive to attain that ideal, and become enlightened in their own mind. Enlightenment remains a personal concept, one fostered in the mind of those who hold onto it and work towards it.

What I enjoyed the most, besides the wit involved, was that people often pointed at the process or path to enlightenment as the true 'enlightenment.' They didn't resort to muddying the waters with abstractions, concepts and platonic ideas, but they pointed to real tangible and possible things, ie. a spiritual path, learning, introspection, experience and the like. Their experience was the goal. This, to me, is the true insight I've learned from the responses here.

What I noticed most when engaging with those who have an opposite opinion than myself, was that confrontation, animosity and insults grew to be more common the more I disagreed. Not many dared to refute my arguments and resulted to ad hominem. But this attitude ceased, and the kindly ones returned to the state of mind I love most about them—that of happiness and joy—as soon as I took that leap of faith and agreed with them (simply by taking their word for it) and held their views as positive, thereby satiating their vanity, and in the end, my own.

The Vanity of Enlightenment.

Thank you for reading.

-LesMis

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
That's called being realistic. The world and its inhabitants are incomplete. This is a fact.

That depends entirely on the purpose of the experience happening here on this world and to these inhabitants.

If the purpose is to experience being incomplete, then that is a complete experience by the very nature of being incomplete and those trying to make them complete are in fact doing a negative deed by trying to "make them" complete.

Movies would be boring if all the characters were complete, healthy, and whole.

It's only a conjecture that the incompleteness isn't as it should be... and there are those who would even argue that it is incompleteness itself that is the only thing worth (or even capable of) being experienced... and our brushes with "completeness" are akin to pacifiers to assure us that everything is "ok" despite appearances.

Nuances.

I have to agree, when I studied Buddhism long ago, I found the were many brilliant concepts, meditation can be an excellent exercise that produces excellent results. Opening of one's third eye opens amazing doors.

However the concept of enlightenment, I felt was too wrapped up in arrogance. One does not become one with God, or the embodiment of God here on Earth or anything like that. That is nonsense. Neither do I believe in Gurus.

Truth is obtaining an accurate perspective of some dimension of the world, but to claim that someone knows the universal truth about the world is nonsense, because the world is infinite, and so is the truth.

I think the Gnostics have a better concept in their view that we all have a tiny sliver of the one true God within us, and that can enable us to pierce the veil of life illusions, but at that point one has only just began.

Passion is immensely critical to growth and evolution, more important than intelligence, talent, beauty, or physical prowess. Passion is potential. We live in this amazing physical plane, it would be folly not to experience everything we can learn from in this place. Meditation is great, but it is not the purpose of life, and neither is prayer. Struggle is more important than both, from my experience.

The more I learn, the less I know.

The more I experience, the more I realize how little I have experienced.