Part 1
For the purpose of this post I am defining enlightenment as a kind of practico-theoretical dream wisdom in line with what we're discussing here on this sub.
First, substance. One way to define substance is to say it is that which allows observation from multiple perspectives. And the corollary to this is that if we say things lack substance, we are saying things appear as they appear to a single perspective, yours, and whatever other perspective observes, is not the same thing at all. Or in effect, you're not observing things! You are observing only the emanational consequences of your own commitment. Because a different perspective will involve a different commitment (the total state of one's volition, conscious and unconscious regions thereof), they observe something almost entirely unique.
So when I see a chair, I am looking at a consequence of my own commitment rather than some external object. Therefore when someone else observes a chair what actually happens is that I observe both the chair and the someone else, and I myself grant that the someone else has a valid narrative input on the chair. But all this is 100% internal to my point of view. If I were to grant true being to external observers, I would no longer have the authority to take their narratives as informative, because I would then not be able to tie up all the loose ends myself. Ironic.
Now what about perspectives themselves? Can these be said to have substance? Again, how can one's perspective be observed externally? If you realize that you're always observing consequences of your own commitment, then you know you're not observing something called "Nefandi's perspective." My perspective is my way of relating all things, but that's only knowable to me. To see something called "Nefandi" from the outside you have to have your own way of relating things where Nefandi is but one tiny element of a bigger network, so the Nefandi you know is not whatsoever the Nefandi that I know. The Nefandi I know is my way of relating all things. It is my subjectivity itself in its generality and specificity. But the Nefandi you know is just some sensory phenomenon, and nothing more. Those are two very different "things."
That's the background. It's the plate.
Now the fried potatoes that go on that plate.
Your own enlightenment is partway realization and partway practical perfection of that same realization as it occurs inside your own perspective. This by its very nature will make things better for you. You will become less dependent on society and on circumstances as a result. You will become less influenced by praise and blame. You will become less controllable, which is good for you. And how this feels on the inside you can only know once you get "there." In fact no one can even know if you got "there" or not, it's something only you know (or decide).
But looooong before you reach a decent level of enlightenment you are guaranteed to fantasize about enlightenment as a remote possibility. When you fantasize about enlightenment as a remote possibility you imagine other people "out there" are enlightened. That's the sensory symbolic representation of your own future enlightenment. But this imagination by necessity is based on a gross misunderstanding of enlightenment! You're imagining all this while in the throws of gross ignorance. Thus all the so-called "enlightened people" are nothing but hopes of a feverishly ignorant mind. And those hopes are just wrong in so many ways, but you won't know how or why until you're a long way into the process yourself, and then you'll start to realize how stupid you were for thinking Buddha or Zhuangzi or anyone else (I do mean anyone) were even remotely enlightened. Such suggestive sensory phenomena accompanied by narratives are nothing but the products of your own pre-enlightened (read: largely ignorant) perspective. These fragments can never be enlightened (nor can they be ignorant or unenlightened, lol, they're just not anything specific at all, but they're helpless victims of whatever dark pre-weird dream you're having).
Put another way, your own enlightenment is your own idealization of the best way of being. Whereas other people's enlightenment is your own idealization of the best possible way you can be treated by an (believed to be) external being. These can almost never be the same thing.
So for example, if I am always insecure, the best thing I can imagine from an ordinary point of view is to be surrounded by people who constantly boost my confidence and put winds in my sails. So I then might imagine how people who do this flawlessly are enlightened. Why? Because that's what a perfect servant would be. An externally enlightened person is a perfect servant of myself. They boost my confidence when I am insecure. They chastise me when I get reckless thus saving me from accidents. They feed me when I am hungry, even selflessly sacrificing their bodies to feed me. They present their wisdom in the form of entertaining and easily digestible tales. They teach me how I can become stronger in a step by step manner tailored to my needs. These folks take the time to familiarize themselves with the peculiarities of my unique ignorance so that they can speak to me in a way that will connect with me. So that's the ideal of an external enlightenment.
External enlightenment is a servant of all your flaws. You're insecure, so external enlightenment is there to dote on you. You're becoming reckless and mindless and external enlightenment is there to put the breaks on you so you don't have to do so yourself. You're bored, and external enlightenment is there to entertain you all the while also giving you spiritual calories that are good for you. Basically the idea of external enlightenment is someone who is totally your bitch. They exist totally for you. They have no self interest because it's a full time job to serve your interest.
But what about internal enlightenment? Does anyone really dream of becoming a slave? Think about it. Do you want to become more free or more bound? Do you want to have more obligations or fewer? Do you want more options in your life or fewer options? Do you want a greater scope for your volition or a narrower scope?
Also consider this. If everyone reached perfection in terms of an external enlightenment ideal, who would be the beneficiary? The whole point of external enlightenment is that you serve those who are less enlightened than you. But if everyone is equally 'external-ideal' enlightened, whom do they serve? They're like slaves without a master. They fall by the wayside. The ideal of external enlightenment is basically a dead end. The ideal of external enlightenment requires ignorant and spiritually inadequate people to be valid. A bottle cap requires some bottle to be a cap of. Without the bottles bottle caps are just piss poor tiny tea cups or something. Probably just landfill.
Internal enlightenment has no such flaws. Once you become internally enlightened you become liberated in every sense of the word. You no longer depend on any specific scenario to be useful. You can create and abolish any scenarios. You can be useful to yourself and to others and even to other internally enlightened people (enlightened according to an internal ideal), and if there are no people at all, you can still be useful to yourself. You know how to keep yourself happy. It's an endlessly resourceful and endlessly rich state of being. It leads toward infinity. You're nobody's and nothing's slave. This is something very scary to normal people. Think about it...
Originally posted by u/mindseal on 2016-05-02 01:12:09
Part 2
Imagine a friend who feels no pain. Can you trust this friend to understand your pain? Can you trust that this friend will play nice with you? We as conventional people need others who are tightly bound by ignorance and fear. And the ideal of external enlightenment is the very pinnacle of such bondage. Not only do externally enlightened people feel our pain and understand our ignorance, they become absolute servants of that pain and ignorance, always patient, always polite, always available. They become a salve on our pain for us. They are selfless because we are selfish. They become salves because we have wounds we don't know how or don't want to heal. These externally enlightened people feel our pain even more severely than we ourselves feel it. They're total bitches. Total slaves. They throw their lives totally in the direction of my desires. They're polite because they know how easily my tiny ego is injured. They never show too much wisdom or strength around me because they know how depressed I will be if I see other people better than myself. They must hide their virtues to make me feel good. That's the ideal of external enlightenment. And this ideal permeates this dream in a very profound way if you're someone who needs to encounter external enlightenment.
Once you have a halfway decent inner recognition you will no longer want to encounter external enlightenment. Then all your perceptions and conceptions will change radically. You'll realize once and for all that what feels good to be and what feels good to be done to are often two different things. Internal enlightenment is profoundly selfish. You cannot become enlightened for anyone or anything else. Making your own perspective internally perfect will only be noted as "perfect" internally to your own perspective, duh. And nowhere else. You can't impress upon a truly external perspective something of your own perspective. It's not even theoretically possible.
So all those private buddhas are the real deal, while the lone self-sacrificing Buddha who shares with everyone, that's only a student. :) It's also an anomaly. It's rare. But that doesn't mean it's good. It's not just diamonds that are rare. Stillborn are also rare. When there is a smoothly functioning process rare is that which fails the process. If enlightenment is a smoothly functioning process in the mind, then stand-outs from that process are probably failures. So if most Buddhas are pacceka (private) Buddhas, then probably that's what's healthy and good. And the lone Buddha that deviates is somewhat broken. And of course there is some benefit and usefulness from being somewhat broken, but it's still broken from a greater perspective. And in any case, if you think someone is enlightened, it's pretty much a guarantee that you're wrong. Once you get halfway toward internal enlightenment you will no longer think or even care about who is or isn't enlightened. You won't need a symbol of hope "out there." You'll only care about making your own dream better, and nothing else. And no, other people won't necessarily like that about you. But you won't care and besides, you can emanate a crowd of sycophants anyway, if that's your style, if you want that sort of ornament in your dream, but you know you ain't playing fair anymore. You know there is no such thing as "objectively deserving" sycophants. There is nothing fair or nice about freedom unless it's you who is free.
Originally posted by u/mindseal on 2016-05-02 01:12:09