Today, on the full moon of May, we celebrate the Buddha’s Awakening, his full and perfect Enlightenment. Our FBA Podcast is a passionate look at our true nature and our deepest yearnings. “The Ideal of Human Enlightenment“, by Sangharakshita, was given in 1975 and is as relevant now as it was then.
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The Ideal of Human Enlightenment
(upbeat music) This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for Your Life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. - Mr. Chairman and friends, for the last few days, I've been staying not in Auckland itself, but outside Auckland. I've been staying up in the Waitakari Hills. That is to say, staying in green hills, covered with what I've come recently to recognize as typical New Zealand bush. That is to say, bush which resounds with the cheering of the cicadas and especially at night with unfamiliar bird calls. And familiar, that is to say, to me. Bush also from which the opossums come out sometimes at least at night. And as I was staying outside Auckland, staying up in these green Waitakari hills, on the second day of my visit, on the second day of my stay, someone brought out to me a copy of the poster announcing these lectures. So I naturally took it with some interest, looked it over and at once noticed something. I noticed that the three lectures, which I shall be giving in this place, in the course of these three weeks, were announced as Buddhist lectures. In other words, they weren't announced as lectures on Buddhism, but as Buddhist lectures. Now I don't know whether this was intentional on the part of the organizers or not. I don't know whether they deliberately arranged it in this way, but whether or not it was intentional on their part, it certainly is significant that these lectures have been announced as Buddhist lectures. Because we may say that Buddhism is not just a subject, it's not just a body of facts that one can talk about without being personally involved in the ultimate significance of those facts. In other words, without being a Buddhist in the true sense of the term. So these aren't just lectures on Buddhism, as one might have to say lectures on biology or botany or archeology, these are Buddhist lectures. And they were therefore convey not merely facts about Buddhism, whether historical or doctrinal facts, in them, in these lectures, one individual Buddhist will be seeking to communicate some of the results of his own personal contact, his own personal involvement with Buddhism. A contact extending over a period now of more than 30 years of more than 30 years, both in the East and in the West. Now, when a Buddhist thinks about Buddhism, about what we call the dharma, usually the first thing of which he thinks is the Buddha, the enlightened. And strange to say, the first thing of which the non-Buddhist two usually thinks is the Buddha. One may not know anything at all about Buddhism, about the teaching, but one has at least seen an image or a picture of the Buddha. And one may even be quite familiar with that image or picture. One may even in fact have a definite feeling for it. So what is that image? What is that picture? It's an image, a picture of a human figure, of a man in the prime of life, world-built and handsome. And the figure is seated, cross-legged beneath a tree. The eyes are half closed and there is a smile on these lips. And looking at the figure, one sees, one feels, that the figure as a whole conveys an impression of solidity and stability, also of strength, conveys an impression of absolute calm and absolute repose. But what attracts us most of all, attracts us even more than the total figure itself. What most of all attracts our attention is the face, because this can raise something which it is very difficult indeed to describe in words. As one looks at it, as perhaps one concentrates on it, one sees that the face is alive, that the face is alive. And in that light, we see reflected, as it were, an unfathomable knowledge, a boundless compassion and also an ineffable joy. And this is the figure, this is the image of the picture of the Buddha. The enlightened one. And usually it represents the figure of Gautama, the Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. The great Indian teacher who lived approximately 500 years BC. But the figure has also a wider significance. He represents the subject of our talk tonight. In other words, it represents the ideal of human enlightenment. Now we may say that human enlightenment is the central theme, the central preoccupation of Buddhism itself. It's what Buddhism is basically concerned with, both theoretically and practically. It's what the Buddhist is basically concerned with. And the greater part of this lecture will therefore be devoted to this theme, the theme of the ideal of human enlightenment. And in the course of the lecture, which will be trying to understand what is meant by enlightenment in general, and in particular, what is meant by human enlightenment. But before going into this subject before entering upon this theme, I want to say a few words about the third term in our title. In other words, about the word ideal. We speak of the ideal of human enlightenment, but what does the word mean? I don't want tonight to go into merely dictionary definitions, much less still into what are really philosophical questions. We'll confine ourselves tonight to the ordinary, everyday usage of the word. In the first place, ideal means the best imaginable of its kind. For instance, in London, every summer at Earl's Court, there's a famous exhibition. An exhibition calls the ideal Holmes exhibition. And it's sponsored, I believe, by the Daily Mirror. And every year, in the course of the week, or two weeks that the exhibition is on, hundreds, thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people visit it and have a look around. Go from section to section and from stall to stall. And what is it that they see? They see all sorts of things. They see ideal kitchens, ideal bathrooms, ideal garages, ideal cupboards, ideal shaving mirrors, ideal kitchen knives, ideal refrigerators, ideal detergents, ideal pin cushions, ideal lawnmowers, ideal table mats, ideal egg wicks, ideal lawn chairs, ideal grandfather clocks, hundreds and thousands of different items. Each one of them, the best imaginable of its kind, where, of course, different manufacturers may have different ideas as to what is the best. Each of them fulfilling its particular function in the best possible way. And all of these things together, adding up to the ideal home. In other words, the best imaginable home. The home that perfectly fulfills the function of a home. The home everybody would like to live in, if only they could afford it. In the same way, we speak of various other things. We speak of the ideal wife. That is to say, the wife who is a good cook and manager who keeps the ideal home in perfect condition, who drives her husband to work every morning, never asks him for extra housekeeping money and laughs at all his jokes. We even speak of the ideal husband. Though he is, of course, much rare. Similarly, we speak of the ideal couple, the ideal holiday, ideal weather, ideal arrangement, ideal job, ideal employer, ideal employee, ideal conditions, and so on. In other words, we speak of something as being the best imaginable of its kind, as best fulfilling its natural function. But what is believed to be its natural function. This is the first usage of the town. In the second place, the word ideal means a model, or a pattern, something that can be taken as an example of its kind, or for its kind, and imitated. Pop it, if you like. This usage is perhaps nowadays less common than the first, though it does overlap it to some extent. So in this way, for instance, we see that the ideal home is not merely the best imaginable kind of home, but is also the model of the pattern for all homes. It's the model of the pattern for your home. It's what you should try to make your home look like, or be like, at least to some extent. To this sort of usage, the ideal suggesting a model, something to be copied, something to be imitated, a pattern, this sort of usage suggests a sort of comparison, a comparison between the ideal on the one hand and the real on the other. In other words, in this case, between the real home that we actually have, on the ideal home that we would like to have, if, of course, we could afford it. But there's a third usage of the term. For instance, you ask someone, you ask a friend to have what he's going to do, of what he would like to do when he retires. It may be 10 years ahead, maybe 15, maybe 25 or 30 years ahead, but you ask him, what he'd like to do when he retires. So he might say that what he'd really like to do is to go away to some beautiful, tropic island with absolutely marvelous climate with beautiful sunshine, beautiful beaches, beautiful sea, beautiful sea, and just live there for the rest of his life. Just get away from it all in this way. This is what he'd like to do. But then, perhaps, he says, oh, well, I don't suppose I ever shall. It's just an ideal. So here, ideal represents a state of affairs which is regarded as highly desirable, which is certainly immeasurable, which you can certainly conceive even quite clearly, but which is regarded for some reason or other as impossible of attainment. So this is what we mean by the word ideal. This is the way in which we use the word ideal. Three, the different ways in which we use the word ideal. So perhaps we've got some idea now of what this word usually means in ordinary everyday usage. So having understood this, having got some idea of what we mean by this word ideal, we come to a very important question. And with this question, we start coming to the heart of our subject tonight. The question is this. We've spoken about the ideal hope. We can all understand what that might be. We've even mentioned the ideal wife, the ideal husband, the ideal job, even the ideal egg whisk. But we've forgotten perhaps one thing. We've left out of consideration one thing. What about the person who uses all of these things? What about the person who enters into all of these relationships? What about the individual human being? We seem to have lost sight of him or of her. And this very easily happens in the midst of the complexity as it often becomes of modern life. So the question that we are really asking is, what is the ideal man? We all know what is meant by an ideal home. We all know what is meant by an ideal wife or ideal husband. But have we ever thought? Have we ever considered this question? What is the ideal man? What is the best imaginable kind of man or human being? Not just the best kind of husband or the best kind of wife or the best kind of employee or the best kind of citizen or the best kind of member of a particular social group, particular age group. But the best kind of man, per se, the best kind of man as man. Have we ever really seriously considered this question? Because we are men. And this question very seriously concerns us. What is the ideal for our lives? And the wittest answer through this question comes very clear, very categorical, certainly very unambiguous. The ideal man is the enlightened man. In other words, the ideal man is the Buddha. That is to say, the Buddha is the ideal of, or the ideal for humanity or individual human beings. Enlightenment is the ideal for humanity, for individual human beings. Now, how do we arrive at this? This raises three questions. And with each of these three questions we have to deal in time. And the three questions are, in the first place, what is enlightenment? What is this state which Buddhism says is the ideal for man? What is enlightenment? What is Buddhahood? Secondly, how do we know that this state that we call enlightenment, this state that we call Buddhahood is the ideal for man? How do we know that? Thirdly, where does this ideal of enlightenment come from? Which do we derive it? Which does it originate? So these are the three questions with which we have to deal. What is enlightenment? How do we know that enlightenment is the ideal for man? And where does the ideal of enlightenment come from? And once these three questions are answered, we shall have perhaps quite a good idea, at least a general idea of what is meant by the ideal of human enlightenment. So first of all, what is enlightenment? Buddhist tradition of all schools speaks of enlightenment as comprising mainly three things. Now to begin with, enlightenment is a state of pure, clear, even radiant awareness. And some schools, some teachers go so far as to say that in this state, there is pure, clear state of awareness. There is not experienced the duality of subject and object. There's no out there, there's no in here. That subject, object distinction, as we usually call it, is entirely transcended. Only one continuous, pure, clear awareness, extending as it were in all directions, pure and homogeneous. And it's further an awareness of things as they really are, which of course is not things in the sense of objects, but things as it were transcended, this duality of subject and object. So that this pure, clear awareness is also spoken of as an awareness of reality, and therefore also spoken of true as a state of knowledge, not knowledge in the ordinary sense, but of intuitive, spiritual, even transcendental knowledge. Not what we ordinarily understand as knowledge, which functions of course within the framework of the subject, object duality. We can speak of it true as a state of direct, of unmediated, spiritual vision. A seeing of things directly and clearly and vividly and truly. A spiritual vision, even a transcendental vision, which is free from all delusion or misconception, all around crooked thinking, all wageness, all obscurity, all mental conditioning, all prejudice, free from all these things. So a state of pure, clear, awareness, of knowledge, of vision, spiritual, transcendental. And secondly, it's spoken of no less importantly as a state of intense, profound, overflowing love and compassion. And sometimes this love or compassion, which together with knowledge, constitutes enlightenment, is compared to a mother's love, to a mother's love for her only child. This comparison occurs, for instance, in a very famous Buddhist text called the Discourse, the Sutra, on loving kindness. And in this Sutra, in this discourse, the Buddha says, in the same way that a mother feels, from her only child, in the same way to my fellow, to my disciple, feel towards not just one person, or even just towards two or three people, but even to all living beings. This is the sort of feeling, this is the sort of attitude that one must cultivate, of love and compassion towards all living beings. And one notices that the Buddha says, not just all human beings, but all living beings. All that lives, all that breathes, all that moves, all that is sentient, all that living beings. So the enlightened mind feels love and compassion in this way to all living beings, throughout the universe. And that love and that compassion consists, we are further told, in a heartfelt desire, even a deep, even a burning desire, we may say, for their well-being, for their happiness, a desire that they should be free from suffering, free from difficulties, that they should grow, that they should develop, that ultimately they should attain enlightenment. Buddha would. So love and passion of this kind, infinite, overflowing, boundless, directed towards all living beings, this too, is part of enlightenment. And thirdly, enlightenment consists in a state or experience or inexhaustible, mental and spiritual, energy. We see this very well exemplified by an incident in the life of Gautama, the Buddha himself. As you might know, he gained enlightenment at the age of 35, and he continued teaching and communicating with others until the ripe old age of 80. And his body, his physical body eventually became very frail, and he said even on one occasion, that my body is just like an old, broken down cart, which has been weak, had many times, and it has kept going only with the help or bits of stream as it were. He said, "My old body is just like that." But he said, "My mind is all right." He said, "My mind is as vigorous as ever." And he said, "Even if I had to be kind from place to place on the litter, whoever came to me, I would be able to answer his questions. I would be able to teach him." He said, "My intellectual and spiritual vigor is undiminished, despite the infibrill state of the body." So, energy, vigor, is characteristic of the state of enlightenment. The state of enlightenment is one of tremendous energy. Or we may say absolute spontaneous, continually bubbling forth, a state of uninterrupted creativity. In a word we may say, the state of enlightenment is a state of perfect, of absolute, unconditioned freedom. Freedom from all subjective limitations. So, this is what is meant by enlightenment, as it is understood in the Buddhist tradition. At least enlightenment, so far as it can be described, so far as it can be tabulated in this way. Really, we may say, knowledge passes into love and compassion. Knowledge into compassion, compassion into energy. You can't really and truly split them up in this way. But traditionally, this is the sort of account which is given of enlightenment. Just to convey to us some hate of this experience, some little idea or feeling of what it is of really like. And if we want to have a better idea than this, then we shall have to read, perhaps, some more extended, more poetic account. Preferably one found in the Buddhist scriptures, or we shall have to take up the practice of meditation and try to get at least a glimpse of this state of enlightenment in our own experience, as we meditate. So, this is what is meant by enlightenment in Buddhist tradition. When Buddhism speaks of enlightenment or Buddhahood, or of Nirvana, this is what it means. It's speaking in terms of knowledge, love and compassion, energy. So, this brings us to our second question. How do we know that this state of enlightenment, this state of supreme knowledge, love and compassion, and energy is the ideal for man? How do we know this? Now, before attempting to answer this question, we shall have to distinguish between two kinds of ideas. There aren't any actual terms for them in circulation, but we can call them natural ideas and artificial ideas. A natural is an ideal which takes into account, which takes into consideration the nature of the thing or person or for which it is an ideal. The artificial kind of ideal, on the other hand, does not do this. The artificial ideal imposes itself from the outside in an arbitrary manner. The artificial idea ignores the nature of the thing or person or for which or for whom it is supposed to be an ideal. For instance, if we go back to our ideal home, the ideal home, however beautiful, wherever luxurious, or ever convenient in other ways, would not be an ideal home for, say, a crippled person. If it contained several flights of steep steps, for him, it would not be an ideal home at all. And in the same way we may say that the life of Henry Ford would not be an ideal for someone who was by temperament, an artist. Now enlightenment is not an artificial idea. It's not something as it were imposed upon man from outside, something that doesn't belong to him, something that doesn't accord with his nature. Enlightenment is an actual ideal for man, even we may say the natural ideal for man. It's not an artificial ideal. It's not arbitrary. The ideal of enlightenment corresponds to man's nature and to his needs. Now how do we know this? How do we know that for a man the ideal of enlightenment is a natural ideal, not artificial? We know it in two ways. I've spoken about the nature of enlightenment, and obviously it has seemed, though intelligible, something very, very rarefied indeed, even something very, very remote from our own experience. But the qualities that constitute enlightenment, that is to say knowledge, love and compassion and energy, these qualities are in fact already found in man, in a German or form, they're not completely foreign to him. They're in a sense, we may say, not true to man. In every man, in every woman, even in every child, there's some knowledge. Some experience of reality, however remote, however removed, the some love, the some compassion, however limited, however confined, however exclusive, the feeling is there, German, and the some energy. However gross, however unrefined, however conditioned, however unspontaneous, these qualities are all there already, German. In fact, it is these qualities that distinguish man from the enemy. But in the state of enlightenment, these qualities, these qualities which generally are natural to man, in the state of enlightenment, these qualities are fully and perfectly developed, developed to a degree that we can hardly imagine. But still, even so, in however embryonic form, they are present in man already. And it's for this reason that man has, as it were, a natural affinity to enlightenment, or for enlightenment, and can respond to the ideal of enlightenment when he encounters it. So even when one speaks in terms of this absolute knowledge, this vision of reality, one can get some idea of what is meant. It's not completely foreign. Even when one speaks in terms of this boundless, this unlimited love and compassion for all living beings, it isn't just words. One can feel, one can experience something. And this is because the germ, the seed, is already there in one's own experience. So one can respond through the ideal of enlightenment, whenever, however, one encounters it. Even when one encounters it, in comparatively weak, comparatively limited, or comparatively distorted forms. Also, we know that enlightenment is the natural ideal for man because, in the long run, man is never really satisfied by anything else. You can have all sorts of experiences, all sorts of success, all sorts of pleasure, all sorts of achievement. But in the long run, you will still feel something within yourself dissatisfied, non-no-satisfied. And this is what in Buddhism is called dukkha, unsatisfactoriness. Even sorrow, even suffering. This is one of its forms. Traditionally, one speaks in terms of three kinds of dukkha, three kinds of suffering, three kinds of unsatisfiness. The first is, importantly, the suffering which is suffering, is obviously suffering, as when you touch your finger, or someone upsets you or disappoints you. This is the suffering which is suffering. And then, there's what is called suffering by way of transformation. You have something, you enjoy it. You get a great deal of pleasure from it. But by its very nature, that thing cannot last. Or your relationship with it cannot last. And eventually, the thing goes, the relationship with it breaks up. And because you've enjoyed it, because you've become very attached to it, suffering results. This is the suffering which comes apart as a result of transformation, change, time. And then, there's what is called the suffering of conditioned existence itself. The suffering in the long run, ultimately, of everything which is not enlightened. Even if you get it, even if you go on possessing it, having it, enjoying it, the sun corner as it were of your heart, which is not satisfied. Which wants something more, which wants something further, something greater. And this something is what we call enlightenment. So from this to we know that enlightenment is the ideal for man, the natural ideal, because in the long run, for man, the true man, the real human being, the real individual is not satisfied with anything less. We may say, in the somewhat theistic language of Saint Augustine, thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in thee. All right, sadly, where does the ideal of enlightenment come from? Well, the ideal of enlightenment comes from human life itself. Couldn't come from anywhere else. It comes from human history. Cannot come from any other source. The ideal for man, we may say, can come only from man himself, come only from another human being. So if we look back in history, we see various people who have actually reached enlightenment, who have as it were closed the gap between the real and the ideal. So if our human existence is concerned, the existence of the individual, we see people who are fully actualized, all those spiritual qualities, which in most men, in most women, are only potential, or at least only German. If we look back in history, we see people, individuals, who are as it were, the living embodiment of the ideal. And in particular, as we look back in history, as we look back in the history of the east of India, in particular we see the figure of the Buddha, the figure of Gautama, the Buddha. We see the figure of the young Indian patrician or aristocrats, we may say, who, 2,500 years ago, gained enlightenment. Or as the Buddhist scriptures call it, Bodhi, knowledge, awakening, and who, after gaining that state of enlightenment, inaugurated the great spiritual revolution, the great spiritual tradition that we now call Buddhism. Now having reached this point, I want to try to clear up certain misunderstandings about the Buddha. Also certain misunderstandings about Buddhism. As said at the beginning, that even the non-Buddhist has at least seen the image or the picture of the Buddha. Does he even be quite familiar with it? No, it really well. But though he may have seen it many times, he may not have in fact a very clear idea of what it represents, may not know who or what the Buddha is. In fact, we may say that on the part of many people, there are quite serious misunderstandings about them, and these misunderstandings are mainly truth. One, that the Buddha is an ordinary man. Two, that the Buddha is God. Now both these misunderstandings are the result of thinking, consciously or unconsciously, in Christian terms, or at least in theistic terms. That is to say in terms of a personal God, a supreme being who has created the universe and who governs it by his providence. For orthodox Christianity, as most of us know, God and man are entirely different beings. God is up there. Man is down here, and there is a great gulf as it were between them. God is the creator. He has called man into existence out of the dust. Man is the created. He has been created, according to some accounts, much as a potter creates a pot. And God is pure. God is holy. God is sinless, but man is sinful. And man can never become God. That sort of language, in the theistic tradition, in orthodox Christianity, is quite meaningless. And with one exception, God can never become man. The exception, of course, is Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate, for orthodox Christianity. So the Christian has, as it were, three categories with which to operate. God, man, to say sinful man, and God incarnate, or Christ. So where does the Buddha fit in? When the orthodox Christian is confronted by the figure of the Buddha, how does he apply his categories? How does he think of the Buddha? How does he classify him? Obviously, the Buddha isn't God for the orthodox Christian. There's only one God anyway. Thankfully, obviously, he isn't God incarnate, because according to orthodox Christian teaching, God incarnated only once as Jesus Christ. So that leaves only man. So orthodox Christians, confronted by the figure of the Buddha, classify him as a man, as an ordinary man. Essentially, just like everybody else, even as a sinful man, though better, perhaps, than most people, but still immeasurably inferior to God, and immeasurably inferior to Christ. So much then, for the first misunderstanding, and the second arises out of it. It is said, and even some Christian scholars working in the field of Buddhist studies have said this, that though the Buddha was only a man, an ordinary man, his followers made him into a God. This is the sort of thing that one often hears, but even reads in books, even now, that after his death, the Buddha's followers de-fight him, we are told. And how are we supposed to know this? Well, it's indicated by the fact that Buddhists worship the Buddha, so we are told, and worship is due only to God. If you worship someone or something, you are treating him or it as God, at least so Christians think. Now, both these misunderstandings can be quite easily cleared up. All that we have to do is to free ourselves from our Christian conditioning. And this Christian conditioning affects, at least unconsciously, even those who no longer think of themselves as Christians. We have to stop trying to think of the Buddha in what a really non-Buddhist terms. We have to remember that Buddhism is what we call a non-theistic tradition, that it would say it doesn't believe in the existence of a personal God. In the existence of a supreme being who has created the universe, in fact Buddhism distinctly denies the existence of such a God. And it even goes so far, the Buddha even goes so far as to treat such a belief in a personal God, a supreme being, a creator, as a delusion, as a hindrance to the living of the spiritual life. So, who or what is the Buddha? How do Buddhists think of him? How did he think of himself? In the first place, the Buddha is a man, a human being, but he is not an ordinary man, he is an extra ordinary man, he is an enlightened man. A man who is the living embodiment of perfect knowledge, the living embodiment of unbounded love and compassion, the living embodiment of inexhaustible energy. But he wasn't born an extraordinary man, he became an extraordinary man, became an enlightened one, became a Buddha as a result of his own human effort. His effort to make actual what was potential in himself, to develop to the full what was only German in himself. So, Buddhism has two great categories, the category of ordinary man and the category of extra ordinary man or the category of an enlightened man. Now, although the gulf between the enlightened and the unenlightened man is not unbridgeable, as is the gulf between God and man and Christianity, the distance between them. The distance between the enlightened and the unenlightened man is very, very great, and it takes tremendous effort through traverse the gap between them. Many Buddhists indeed do believe that this effort has to be maintained through a succession, a series of lives, whether here on earth or in higher realms. And for this reason, the enlightened man is regarded as an independent category of existence. The enlightened man in Buddhism is regarded as the highest being in the universe, higher even than the goddess. And for this reason, the enlightened man is worshipped. Worshiped our gratitude for setting an example, for showing the way, for showing us what we two are capable of becoming. In other words, the enlightened man, the Buddha is worshipped as teacher, as exemplar, as guide, as show of the way, not as God. And in this connection, Gautama the Buddha is traditionally known as Lokajastha. Buddha is only the best known of Gautama the Buddha's titles in the West. There are quite a few others, well known in the East, one is the Thavagavana, one is the Bhagavana, one is Arahant, and also there is this title of Lokajastha. So what does Lokajastha mean? Lokajastha means the elder brother of the world, or elder brother of mankind. So what does this mean? Why is he called the elder brother? He's called the elder brother because he is born first, born spiritually first. And we are born spiritually afterwards, born of the teacher, born of the truth. Very often the Buddha is represented as saying to his disciples in his own lifetime, "You are my own through sons, born of my mouth, born of the teaching, the heirs of spiritual things, not heirs of worldly things." And sometimes it's said in the Mahayana Futras that it's like a clutch of eggs. One chick emerges first, and the first to emerge from the shell is the eldest. So what does this little chick do? I don't know whether this is one isologically correct, but this is what the scriptures say. What does this little chick do? The first to be born, the first out of the shell. He starts tapping on the shells of the other eggs with his little beak. He helps the other chicks to emerge. So we are told in the Mahayana Futras that the Buddha is like that first chick. He's the first to emerge from the shell of ignorance, the shell of spiritual darkness and blindness, and then he taps on our shells. And he wakes us up with his teaching. He helps us to emerge. So from all this we can say that the Buddhist conception of enlightened man would represent a category for which we have no equivalent in Western thought or Western religious tradition. The enlightened man Buddha is neither God nor man in the Christian sense. He's not even man without God. A man left on his own without God as it were. He's something in between and above, even very far above. Perhaps we can best think of enlightened man in evolutionary terms. Man is an animal, but he's not an ordinary animal. For want of a better term, he is a rational animal. He represents a new mutation, a new species, a new category, an animal, yes, but at the same time infinitely more than animal, a human being. A man. In the same way, a Buddha is a man, but he's not an ordinary man, he's an enlightened man. He too represents a new mutation, a new species as it were, a new category of existence. A human being, yes, but at the same time infinitely more than a human being, an enlightened human being, a Buddha. So much then for misunderstandings about the Buddha. Now, more briefly, for misunderstandings about Buddhism. As one might have expected, misunderstandings about Buddhism are closely connected with misunderstandings about the Buddha. For instance, as I've said, Buddhism is non-theistic. It does not teach the existence of a personal God. In fact, it teaches the opposite. In other words, Buddhism is not really a religion, that is not religion in the ordinary western sense. Sometimes it's difficult for people to understand this. They think of Buddhism as a religion. And perhaps they've seen it classified as a religion in an encyclopedia, or on TV. And of course they have a vague idea that religion means belief in God. So they think that Buddhism teaches belief in God, but this is just moral thinking. And some people even think that there must be a God in Buddhism somewhere, so they do their best to find him. And sometimes they even accuse the Buddhists of somehow mislaying him, or losing him, or even trying to hide him. But at this point, a question arises. If Buddhism is not a religion, at least not a religion in the Christian sense, then what is it? How is it to be defined? The best way of answering this question is to go back to our distinction between the ideal and the real. Back to the difference between the enlightened man and the unenlightened. Buddhism, or as it traditionally calls it, the Dharma, is whatever helps us to transform the real into the ideal. It is whatever helps us to bridge the gap between the state of enlightenment and the state of ignorance. In other words, Buddhism is whatever helps us to develop, whatever helps us to grow. So we find the Buddha saying, in his own day, in his own lifetime, to his aunt and foster mother, Maha Prajapati Gautamini, we find him saying, what so ever teaching can use to dispassion, to detachment, to decrease of worldly gains, to frugality, to content, to solitude, to delight in good. Of these teachings you can be certain that they are the teaching of the Buddha. So the criterion is not theoretical, it's practical. And in the course of its long history, Buddhism has developed very many different philosophies, as we may call them, many different methods, many different institutions. But they all have one soul purpose, and that purpose is to assist the individual human being to develop from the state of an ordinary human being to a state of an enlightened human being, a Buddha. Next week, next Thursday, we shall be dealing with one of the most important of the methods, or while the groups of methods, that is, we'll be dealing with meditation. And the week after that we'll be dealing with the central institution of Buddhism, that is to say, the spiritual community. Meanwhile, this week, let us close as we began, let us close with the figure of the Buddha, the figure of Gautama, the Buddha. With the figure of the Buddha seated under the ability tree, the tree of enlightenment, a few weeks after his great awakening. And according to some of the oldest traditional accounts, at that time, some few weeks after his enlightenment, he looked out over the whole world, over the whole of humanity. And he looked not with the ayafmesh, but with his spiritual eye and his spiritual vision. And what did he see? How did he see humanity? How did he see mankind? He saw them with his spiritual vision, with what is called his divine eye, saw them like a great bed of lotus flowers. And he saw that some of the flowers were deeply immersed in the mud. Some he saw were half out of the water, and some were standing completely clear of the water. In other words, he saw all these flowers, all these human beings, as being in different stages of growth, different stages of development. And that, we may say, is how Buddhism has seen humanity ever since. As plants, capable of producing shoots, the shoots capable of producing buds. As buds, capable of opening into flowers, into lotus flowers, even into the thousand petals lotus itself. But in order to grow, in order to develop, human beings must have something to grow into. We can't grow unconsciously as a plant does. We must grow consciously. In fact, we may say for human beings, growth is growth in consciousness, growth in awareness. So we need an ideal. And not an ideal for this or that aspect or relationship of his being only. Not an ideal for himself simply in this or that relationship of life, but he needs an ideal for himself as a human being, as a man. An ideal moreover, which is not artificial, but which is natural. Not imposed upon him from without, but which is implicit in his own nature, in the depths of his own being. An ideal which represents, indeed, the fulfillment of his nature in the deepest possible sense. And is this ideal, the ideal of human enlightenment, which I've tried to communicate to you this evening. Nowadays, we have to recognize many people are skeptical about ideals. Perhaps many of you are skeptical about ideals, and especially perhaps about spiritual ideals. Skeptical about the possibility of transforming the ideal into the real. But Buddhism, we may say, is not skeptical. It has faith in the ideal, in the spiritual ideal, in the ideal of human enlightenment, and it has faith in it because it has faith in man. In the creative potential of man, and because it has faith in man, it asks man to have faith in himself. It doesn't ask him to believe, these two of all to believe, in Buddhism. It asks him to take the ideal of human enlightenment as a practical working hypothesis. It asks him to make the experiment. It asks him to thrive. We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]