Enlightenment or “In”-Lightning-ment?

Enlightenment or “In”-Lightning-ment?
by Shawn Tedrow

[Note: We'd like to welcome Shawn to The Rambling Taoists as a Contributing Writer.]

There seems to be two trains of thoughts regarding what is enlightenment.There is one thought that before enlightenment, one is chopping wood, and after experiencing enlightenment, one still carries on with chopping wood. This little story has been used to imply that enlightenment is just a "sight seeing experience" without internal changes taking place.

To shed a little further blunt-light to this teaching, an American Zen Master once said, "A whore-master could get enlightened, and that after enlightenment, he would still be a whore-master --only free of the attachment". So the whore-master is no longer "attached" to being a whore-master but still IS a whore-master???? In other words, non-attachment to the ego-character-identity-self is just a letting go for a moment, allowing for a transcendental "viewpoint" about oneself. You still live your life attached as before but with a non-attached viewpoint. This experience can even be new-age hyped and embellished as in saying "The person in the theatre is now watching the movie play out".

Pretty cool, but there isn't any real change that takes place. Damn, I one time hung out with a supposed enlightened person that said, "What's wrong with calling an African American a burnt hamburger? What does that have to do with enlightenment?” So this is one way of thinking what enlightenment is. Enlightenment is a cognitive-physic realization of non attachment but one still carries on living their life attached to their ego identity. A wood chopper remains a wood chopper, a whore master remains a whore master, and a racist remains a racist. We still stay the same person but there is an unattached perspective about our life lived.

Another thought about enlightenment is that a realization takes place or many progressive realizations take place that lead to a real non-attachment from the grips of our ego identity. An inward transformation happens that frees a person from his identity "self". A selfish person becomes selfless in the way he lives his life. The old identity passes away while a new inward way to thinking and live begins to spontaneous arise.

I am in the campground that believes that both experiences can occur, one being "seeing" the unattached ego-self and another where the "integration" of this revelation takes place all the way down to the roots of our ego-self. LIVING unattached to our ego identity is experienced.

“In-lightening-ment”. If you can imagine our inward ego identity being a tree and that its tree and roots are hit by lightening. I am not saying that we no longer like fish and chips anymore, but a change occurs.

What are your thoughts?

You can check out Shawn's other musings here.