Enlightenment

I was wondering what the term "enlightenment" means to me. The Buddha reached it and it is the aim for all Buddhists to reach it. But what is it?

They say it cannot be put into words but I am going to try. At least, I will present my take on it.

The Internet says that enlightenment is the escape from the karmic cycle of multiple births and deaths. Now what is meant by "multiple births and deaths?" Surely they don't mean reincarnation! The concept of people coming back as snails, frogs and cats etc. Maybe they mean people living as humans again as some point in the future. What good will this do to anyone's wisdom if you are unaware what you learned in the lives prior to this? I think that people who believe in reincarnation or people who apply reincarnation to Buddhism are misguided and delusional. They are straying away from reality and entering into the dangerous territory of belief and faith. I have a book called "Buddhism for Beginners." This book teaches the reader about karma and rebirths. It teaches that reincarnation is real. Their best evidence was the old, "do you remember the story about the little girl from England that was able to accurately describe a place she'd never been to?" Apparently this girl remembered a past life and gave all these details she couldn't possibly have known and when they went there it was all true. What a load of cobblers. After all the effort that went into publishing the book in the real world they go and spoil it by putting forward that nonsense. If that's supposed to prove to me that reincarnation is scientific fact then they are stupid-er than I thought!

I read elsewhere that the Buddha did not care to indulge in discussion of what happens after you die. It was an un-answerable question and therefore an utterly pointless discussion. A waste of time and energy. I tend to agree with this. I don't mind touching on the subject but to attempt to offer an explanation is idiotic. I would stay on the topic long enough to bring it to an end.

To me, the karmic cycle is cause and effect. This cause and effect is understood only by people living in a universe where there is already something to cause something else. This is the limit of our understanding. The idea that nothing can come from nothing is only relative to a thinker that lives in the realm where the law of cause and effect is already in existence. If you think outside the box you will start to wonder if there is an entirely separate rule for a non existent universe. How do we know that nothing can come from nothing? If this universe and the physics and logic that it runs on is all we know, then it’s also all we can use to compose our theories and base our understanding on.

Going back to enlightenment, I would define birth and rebirth as the continuous chain of causes and effects and your own physical body being continuously replaced by new cells. The passage of yourself from one present moment to the next is the dying away of one moment and the new present moment arriving. This is what I would accept as “multiple births and re-births.” I would base my understanding of enlightenment as breaking away from the cycle of cause and effect. So how do you achieve that?

I can visualize myself as living in such a way where my interaction with the world has as near to zero effect or impact on the world around me as possible. For example if you decide to talk to someone you first acknowledge the motivation to engage that person in conversation, then you decide how you are going to word it, hopefully mindfully, so that you don’t insult them. Then, after you have said what you want to say you observe the effect your words have had and receive a response if one is offered. This is a basic example of how your desires, your actions and presence affects the rest of the world. The potential impact of a single sentence could have massive consequences and we’ve seen this happen to public figures quite often in the media.

If you were to escape from the karmic cycle you would have to live an entirely neutral life where you were at one with the universe and did not do anything that had any effect whatsoever. That would mean not forcing your presence on to anything or interacting in any way at all. You would need to break away from the idea of being a human on a planet separate and distinguishable from other things and become everything at once!

This is my interpretation of enlightenment..