What is enlightenment?

the supreme knowledge conforming to reality

>>534078
Enlightenment is the overcoming of genetically inherited tendencies through the application of willpower. A simple example -- let's say a person is born to a couple who both have a strong addiction to alcohol. And let's say this person is descended from many generations of alcohol addicts. This person inherited the genetic factors that make them prone to alcoholism. A form of enlightenment for this person would be to understand all of this and through the application of willpower avoid becoming addicted to alcohol throughout their life.

>>534135
The hardware can't be changed but the software can. Enlightenment is the self-rewriting of one's own software.

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>mfw made serious insights into willpower in the last few weeks.

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>>534135
>willpower
literally false. willpower leads you to failures through hedonism. Do you have the willpower to change your body so that you do not get sick, since you do not wish to get sick in the first place ?

>>534190
Willpower cannot change everything and neither can enlightenment. Willpower is what you practice when you meditate.

>>534135
>>534194
Willpower? Maybe you're looking for a different word.

>>534078

Not enlightenment.

>>534213
No, the word I used is willpower. That is how you become enlightened. Enlightenment is a form of discipline and willpower is a form of discipline. They are interchangeable words.

>>534078
A rotten tomato.

>>534078
A broken mirror never reflects a single image again. Fallen flowers never return to the branches.

>>534078
enlightenment is when you realize everything you learned in school about history is mostly wrong and biased.

>>534245
So enlightenment is realizing time moves in only one direction?

>>534387
Time doesn't move. Only your mind moves.

>>534391
kant pls

Finding a winning lottery ticket on the bottom of your long lost father's shoe - Yahtzee

In some Buddhism it is the realization that there in no self

Which as far as I can figure is realizing there is no free will, but with eastern window dressing.

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>>534078
>>534135
>>534142
>>534185
how does it feel that the aharant daniel ingram bfto ajhan bhram ?

>>534505
>There is no self
>There is no free will
Boy why don't Buddhist just become fucking Nihilist?

>>535635
Probably because they still believe in morals and a purpose to existence. Also potentially the possibility of knowledge. So they can't be moral, existential, or epistemological nihilists.

>>534505
>Buddhism it is the realization that there in no self
Correct

>Which as far as I can figure is realizing there is no free will
You are missing the point. "Do you have free will" is not a valid question in the most literal sense if we accept there is no self. There is strictly speaking not a "you" to have or not have free will. "You" is a formality.

Think of it this way. The roots are part of a tree but they are not a separate thing from it. The root does not have an aspect independent of the tree's existence. This is how the various consciousness of the universe are.

If I smoke whatever the Buddhists are smoking in order to understand/just simply nod at this confusing as fuck philosophy with will I too become enlightened?

if you can say it that isnt it

so your thread is kinda pointless

>>534385
>The only Buddhist in this thread
This anon summed up everything in one post.
/thread
/thread
/thread

>>535899
One afternoon a student said "Roshi, I don't really understand what's going on. I mean, we sit in zazen and we gassho to each other and everything, and Felicia got enlightened when the bottom fell out of her water-bucket, and Todd got enlightened when you popped him one with your staff, and people work on koans and get enlightened, but I've been doing this for two years now, and the koans don't make any sense, and I don't feel enlightened at all! Can you just tell me what's going on?"

"Well you see," Roshi replied, "for most people, and especially for most educated people like you and I, what we perceive and experience is heavily mediated, through language and concepts that are deeply ingrained in our ways of thinking and feeling. Our objective here is to induce in ourselves and in each other a psychological state that involves the unmediated experience of the world, because we believe that that state has certain desirable properties. It's impossible in general to reach that state through any particular form or method, since forms and methods are themselves examples of the mediators that we are trying to avoid. So we employ a variety of ad hoc means, some linguistic like koans and some non-linguistic like zazen, in hopes that for any given student one or more of our methods will, in whatever way, engender the condition of non-mediated experience that is our goal. And since even thinking in terms of mediators and goals tends to reinforce our undesirable dependency on concepts, we actively discourage exactly this kind of analytical discourse."

And the student was enlightened.

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>>535935