I am enlightened and disappointed with enlightenment.
For nearly 40 years I have sat zazen, which is the Zen Buddhist practice of sitting on a pillow (zafu) cross legged, without moving, for 40 minutes every morning with eyes slightly open. There are many variations on this in Buddhism and several major categories of Buddhism.
I became enlightened within the first few years of sitting including several weeklong sessions of all day sitting, and didn’t recognize it until I was sitting outside in the fog (covered with a blanket) on a cruise ship.
To be enlightened is to see the world in front of you with clear open eyes. Just seeing the world in all its detail and splendor. No ideas, no dreaming, no TV stories… just what you see, hear, smell, feel and sense. As long as you can do that fully, for minutes, hours, days you are enlightened. I can be ‘present’ pretty much indefinitely.
What can I say about Zen practice? I like it. I’m glad I don’t live in my mind, my fantasy world any more. It gives me great power to deal with the world and emotions. Most of all it has allowed me, personally to see the world around me more clearly than I think most people see it. I also think it is good for my health.
What is disappointing? It doesn’t seem to have much serious impact for most other people. I know seven Zen abbotts and dozens of other Buddhist practitioners. All of them have the same view of the world they had when they were 17 years old. They are squishy peaceniks who have the same trite Marxist view of the world. Life has not taught them anything of consequence.
We have lived to see the total collapse of Marxism in the USSR, Mao’s China and several other national communist disasters. So have these Zen practitioners. But it never had an impact on their worldview. That is disappointing.
I have observed that humans, like other primates, are able to learn voraciously when young and we totally stop learning when we reach adulthood (about age 23).
I find that only 1 out of 250 humans is capable of new thought after age 23, I am disappointed that Zen meditation and probably all meditation does nothing to change that.