Kaj, are you familiar with the idea of a plurality of enlightenments? Both in the sense of a difference in degree (à la the Theravadan 4 path model) and a difference in kind (à la Jack Kornfield’s Enlightenments). Wondering what your take on it is and how this series is going to navigate that. I suspect this is one reason I’ve noticed meditation practitioners trending toward the term awakening rather than enlightenment.
Yes. I currently think that there is no one enlightenment, but rather a wide variety of dimensions that one can explore, which lead to different kinds of outcomes depending on what you focus on and what you do with the things that you find. My intent is to cover enough of different things to give a taste of what’s out there and what kinds of outcomes might be possible, while acknowledging that there’s also a lot that I have no clue of yet.
I think the early discourses are referring to a specific thing, namely the elimination of what has been translated as ‘fundamental ignorance.’ That term makes it sound like it involves a metaphysical claim about knowledge of reality, but my best guess is that it has to do with the whole perceptual stack being ignorant of fundamental aspects of its own functioning. There are recurring passages referring to a specific endpoint with people knowing when ‘what needed to be done has been done.’
Kaj, are you familiar with the idea of a plurality of enlightenments? Both in the sense of a difference in degree (à la the Theravadan 4 path model) and a difference in kind (à la Jack Kornfield’s Enlightenments). Wondering what your take on it is and how this series is going to navigate that. I suspect this is one reason I’ve noticed meditation practitioners trending toward the term awakening rather than enlightenment.
Yes. I currently think that there is no one enlightenment, but rather a wide variety of dimensions that one can explore, which lead to different kinds of outcomes depending on what you focus on and what you do with the things that you find. My intent is to cover enough of different things to give a taste of what’s out there and what kinds of outcomes might be possible, while acknowledging that there’s also a lot that I have no clue of yet.
I think the early discourses are referring to a specific thing, namely the elimination of what has been translated as ‘fundamental ignorance.’ That term makes it sound like it involves a metaphysical claim about knowledge of reality, but my best guess is that it has to do with the whole perceptual stack being ignorant of fundamental aspects of its own functioning. There are recurring passages referring to a specific endpoint with people knowing when ‘what needed to be done has been done.’