In celebration of Wesak, the Buddhaand#8217;s Awakening, todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte takes us right to the heart of the matter: What is Enlightenment? and#8216; From the 1975 lecture by Sangharakshita titled and#8220;The Ideal of Human Enlightenmentand#8221;, we are concisely and beautifully reminded of the three aspects of Awakening in the Buddhist tradition: i. radiant, pure clear awareness entirely transcending duality; ii. an intense, overflowing love and compassion for all that lives; iii. an inexhaustible mental and spiritual energy, absolute spontaneity and creativity continuously bubbling up.
This talk is part of the series and#8220;Human Enlightenmentand#8221;.
[music] Dharma Vites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you, and happy listening. [music] So first of all, what is enlightenment? Buddhist tradition of all schools speaks of enlightenment as comprising mainly three things. 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, this 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 distinction, that subject, object distinction, as we usually call it, is entirely transcended. There's 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 transcending 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 too, 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 too 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. An Indian sutra, in this discourse the Buddhist face, in the same way that a mother feels from her only child, in the same way to my color, 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 live, all that free, 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 have now remained in enlightenment at the age of thirty-five. And he continued teaching and communicating with others until they ripe old age of eighty. 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 repaired many times. And it has kept going only with the help of bits of string, 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 infibrable state of the Buddha." 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. 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 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. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
