Agenda of the article:
- My short story of choosing to chase enlightenment
- What is enlightenment and what isn’t. Misconceptions and romanticism of enlightenment
- The correct description of enlightenment
- Achieving enlightenment
Note. What I have written here is purely based on my research and study but mostly on my real-life experiences.
Why I chased enlightenment for the last 10 years?
A lot has happened in my life during my childhood that I wouldn’t want my future children to go through due to emotional pain and suffering. And I naturally or forcefully due to my conditioning had become quite and reserved person. Funny thing is whenever I get hurt while I was like 5 or 6, I would try to release and express the pain inside me by talking about what has happened to my parents just to get scolded by them for being a snitch or for not being a man. That was the major point and moment in my life where I had to become cold-hearted monster for a while. What I realized on that day is that nobody really cares about my pain and if I express it like a coward then I would be considered a weakling, get laughed at, get scolded by the very people who I considered my closest and dearest, who should be on my side sharing my pain; thus, I shut-off the valve of a pipeline through which my emotions, feelings and energy flow between my heart and the outside world for good. Whatever happens internally, I would just lock-it up inside and never expose them. Then, for however many years one lives, all emotional pain and suffering accumulate over time to one big chunk of baggage never seeing the daylight, forever locked-up inside in a big dark room at the back of your mind and heart. As soon as a new emotional pain comes in, you just put that inside the dark room and shut the door. Sooner or later, the room is too small to contain everything that is forced inside, and you are standing 247 trying to keep everything in with your back leaning against the door.
But people would complement me saying “Bro, you are the man, you never complain, you are a savage…etc” not really knowing what I am going through inside. I mean this is what really the parents, the relatives, the friends and the whole society expects from us-the men, this soulless, heartless, stone-cold unfazed character who would just take the beating and keep moving forward as if nothing has happened. This kind of man is glorified in literatures, movies and cultures dating all the way back from the beginning of civilization. Even us, dudes, make our friends go through this process of selection which I am 100% guilty of. Unfortunately, we are literally slowly dying inside, being eaten alive by all of these unexpressed and locked pain and suffering to the point where living our lives become meaningless, mundane, just a day-to-day activity. Sooner or later, you start to question why you have to go through all of this suffering where you can just end it by committing suicide. Once this suicidal thought penetrates one’s mind, at first glance these thoughts seem innocent because you just don’t believe that you will actually actualize on this thought. But once this thought settles in your mind, creeps in, creates its refuge and finds its home at the back of your mind, you are going to be dealing with this thought every day, every hour to the point you can’t be just at ease by yourself even in the most relaxed condition.
Now you start fighting against yourself. You start looking for escape routes from this hell of suicidal thoughts and depression. A depressed man can be laughing but the fire in their eyes is already extinguished. You look at a very low energy and soulless individual. You start looking to play video games, start doing drugs, pornography, alcohol, gambling just to forget and create a gap between yourself and your depressed mind which is constantly telling you to end it. When you are in this kind of depressed state, a bottle of beer is much better companion than your best friend because a beer would not judge you but help you forget and make you forget your pain for a while.
In my case, as I wrote earlier, I had quite a tough childhood where I lost my belief in the existence of a God or whatever he may be, wanted time to go so fast so that I can become a mature man who is independent while making my own money to support myself, not having a place to call home so spending days and nights from a relative to another relative and add the accumulated stress of being a cadet at one of the toughest military academies in the world — West Point. I was questioning and asking myself when this avalanche of accumulated pain would end, when I can relax and live a carefree life like WHAT THE FUCK!!?! At one point, I was looking at my life hysterically laughing; the laugh was not a laugh you would expect from a joke, but it was a sinister laugh similar to one insane people in an asylum would do or when Joker start laughing hysterically in his movies.
Any person in this type of situation has only really two options: to end it or to get it together. In one morning, I was brushing my teeth 6 in the morning before going out for my morning formation and I couldn’t recognize this guy I was looking at in the mirror. My ego and pride kicked in saying hey man you are the fucking man, look at this pathetic dude you have become, cut this shit out, get your life together. So, I asked myself how to manage my stress and out of this desperation picked up my iPad, went to the bookstore and typed stress management books and the first book that came out was The Power of Now by Tolle. The book was fascinating talking about people who were living at ease no matter how unfair their destinies were. But what was more fascinating was the ideas borrowed from the eastern philosophies such as Zen and Buddhism. So, I wanted to go directly to the heart of the main sources, and this is how I started on my enlightenment journey. I have read a lot of books on Buddhism and Zen and just like everyone else I was dumbfounded when Buddha says destroy your desire as desire is the source of all pain and suffering. I was asking myself if I would destroy my desire then what the point of life really is? But I thought to myself I am missing something; I am not really getting Buddha’s main meaning, so I continued on my journey. I was learning all of these crazy complicated theories and laws of physics and mathematics but couldn’t believe at the fact that I didn’t have any solid answer to the simplest question: What is the meaning of life? So, I searched for the answer, checked every corner there is on earth, picked up every stone to see what it is hiding underneath and everywhere I looked, I just couldn’t find anything but nothing. The search continued for however many years to the point I couldn’t walk anymore (metaphorically), I was exhausted and just laid down there in that darkness. Then this realization hit me big time. I couldn’t find what I was looking for because I was looking for something that doesn’t fucking exist for this whole time.
What is enlightenment and what isn’t.
Enlightenment is the moment of realization that there is no inherent meaning in life. This is what hit me when I finally let go of my search to find the meaning due to exhaustion. I have exhausted every possibility there is in the whole existence to find that I was looking for something that doesn’t simply exist. This realization freed me from my mental frame. This was the moment I started living freely from the opinions and every dogma there is in the world. My internal world and the world outside were now my own free will. It is I who is going to create my own reality. It is I who is going to create my own future and fate. Truly understanding this single truth cleared all of my confusions and finally there is clarity on which my further foundations and stores can be built upon. Anything that is based off of the truth never needs maintenance and never needs bolts and welding to keep them stable because a truth cannot be destroyed whereas lies need constant maintenance, the hardest bolts and welds to keep them together. But even the hardest bolts can rupture under the correct load.
Understanding the truth is enlightenment. Understanding that there is no inherent meaning in life, but you create the meanings is enlightenment because now you can see the world as is as if in broad daylight whereas a life where there is no clarity but full of confusion and lies, you can’t see shit but storms and thunder and if there are no storms then there would be veil of ignorance sheltered by vast and never-ending fog. In this fog, no matter how hard you to try to distinguish what is in front of you, you simply cannot whereas you can see something that is miles away and most importantly exactly as it is in a broad daylight stillness. A ripple made by a single drop of water can be felt throughout the whole lake if the lake is completely still.
Because there is so much romanticism about the feeling of enlightenment in literature, you might miss the fact that you have already arrived at enlightenment. There is talk of opening the third eye, seeing auras and energy and what not, there are also these videos of people going crazy, yelling, crying in the presence of a self — proclaimed prophets or whatever. All of those are fucking non-sense. Of-course if one becomes enlightened and manages to distinguish the bullshit from the truth and release oneself from all of the impurities of thoughts and mind-made up bullshit emotions which were always clogging the energy flow between that person and the world, then there would be clarity and the sensitivity would feel like it has been upgraded up a few notches. Let’s get real. Any actually enlightened person can distinguish between the bullshit and the truth and can see the reality as is so what he or she feels, sees and what he/she says based off of that awareness and clarity would always be right. What is made up by the mind is bullshit and lies whereas what is said based off of the truth and the reality is correct. An enlightened person says and discusses his or her observations based on the reality whereas regular people would just be blabbering about what they have come up with their mind which can be correct or incorrect. That’s the plain and simple truth. But let’s stop with this word enlightenment. The word enlightenment is actually a romanticism word. It fails to convey the true meaning of the experience.
The correct description of enlightenment
The correct description is actually nothingness. There is no inherent or original meaning to activities. Let’s say today it is raining. For a guy who is trying to lay down an asphalt road, rain is the last thing he wants. But for a guy who is trying to farm some crop during drought, a rain is a blessing from the sky, isn’t it? So, from objective point of view, today just happens to be raining. But for a guy who is trying to sail through the oceans, a rainstorm is hell for him. So, we give the meaning to what is happening in the world but from an outsider’s perspective who doesn’t live on earth, it is just raining. Hence the term nothingness. There is no meaning. Doing the chores and cleaning our house has not inherent meaning. For our lazy side it is pain and suffering but for our righteous side it is one of the most necessary and noble activity to do. But the act of cleaning itself is just an action. Our mind derives the meaning of all inherently meaningless activities we indulge in every day. Let’s say a guy likes to drink sodas more than anything else in the world. He takes one or two sips of his favorite brand and get his dopamine start kicking in; he is feeling good for now. But let’s take away any other drink from him. He may feel good in the beginning but sooner or later, his body has now too much sugar he is craving for water. But let’s not give him water but only the soda. Due to eventual thirst, he may take a few sips but now he is not drinking for pleasure but to quench his thirst. Sooner or later, he is going to start hating even the sight of his favorite soda. As you can see, what was once his favorite drink is now his one of the most hated drinks. Thus, the truth that there is no inherent meaning to anything in life.
Now, this truth that there is no inherent meaning to anything might seem very pessimistic that we are doomed or whatever. But that is how your mind is perceiving the truth because your mind wants to categorize everything into the good and the bad. But that good and bad sides are made up by your mind, by you. These “goods” and “bads” are not absolute. Everyone has their own mind about what is good and what is bad. Killing is never inherently good or bad. It is bad when a killing is done for pleasure. But it is good to kill overly populated insects in order to maintain the balance of the ecosystem. That is why birds eat insects to maintain the balance of the land; otherwise, insects would eat themselves to their extinction. If birds don’t keep the insect population under control, the population of insects would increase to the point where the whole earth cannot sustain the whole population and when the last plant is eaten, then all of those insects would extinct due to starvation.
Thus, for me, the fact that there is no inherent meaning to life is actually a blessing. It means I can live my life however I want. If there was any inherent meaning to life by the God or whoever or whatever, then there would be no free will, we would be just soldiers following the order of the God. But it is a very dangerous truth to indulge in as surface understanding of this truth will only lead to astray which is happening in the world today; men are identifying themselves as women and all this on-going crisis. To me it looks like there is one big confusion of fog covering the world. If someone is born as a man, he is a man and that is a fact and the truth unless he likes other men inherently when he was actually born. It is entirely possible to create homosexuals who were normal from the get-go by indulging him with various movies and activities and what not when the mind is not solidified yet, when their minds can be manipulated and shaped, with food that are rich in more feminine nutrients and such.
Thus, it is the most important and necessary to understand the essence, the actual deeper meaning of the truth of nothingness. When Buddha says desire is the root of all pain and suffering, he is just stating the plain and simple truth. The desire for some outcome creates the fear of it not happening as soon as one starts desiring for one particular end to happen. And this fear creates anxiety. Anxiety creates tension in the body. A tense body and mind are extra baggage to carry on further in life. The tenser your state, the harder it is to bear the pain and sooner or later the stress of tension accumulates and leads to depression, anger, rage and all sorts of unnecessary emotions. So, what do we do? How can we get to where we want to be without a desire? Who says we cannot?
Achieving enlightenment
The essence of life is in living actively. When we were kids, we were always up to something. We just couldn’t sit still. We were too busy unraveling the mysteries of life. If you would look at a toddler, she would stomp on a puddle just to see the water splashing horizontally and vertically, she would be looking at a maggot on the dirt road after the rain, everything she sees is a marvelous event. It was that boiling desire inside which led us to explore everything around us and the experience of experiencing the adventure was what enriched our lives. However, seeking experiences in order to enrich our lives is still slavery. Any desire is slavery. So what do we do? Are we doomed?
I would suggest just try to relax into the current moment, the now, bring yourself completely into the complete relaxation by doing complete inhalation and exhalation via diaphragm not the chest and not the belly. Let your inside space become as the same the most still lake where a single drop’s ripple can echo throughout the whole surface. Feeeel that calm energy flow back and forth, back and forth like a dance. Then from this relaxed state, you can go ahead and do whatever activities you have to do: be it work, house chores, schoolwork, training or whatever game you need to play, you will actually start enjoying those activities once identified as mundane tasks… Ladies and gentlemen this new state is enlightenment, complete ease and relaxation while indulging in activities, seeing every detail in its beauty, completely free from the mind’s categorization, there is just so much interaction between the activity and yourself, the action in itself is enriching your experience of the doing, you are now back with the general flow of life, there is no more veil of ignorance between you and the reality, you are dancing…
