| Wednesday 10th April 2024 What is Enlightenment? |
| Dear all, In my last letter I shared with you how I stumbled upon enlightenment while teaching at the University of Birmingham many years ago. It feels like we’re in a renaissance of spiritual knowledge at the moment, causing people to be more awakened. Meditation courses and teachers everywhere are guiding people to ‘enlightenment’. This is exactly what I want to delve in to. What exactly is the ‘enlightenment’ that we are heading for? This word alone might take a lifetime to understand. It can be hard to find a teacher who can explain in simple language what enlightenment is. People are trapped in a spiritual labyrinth. They are eager to be enlightened, and try their best to meditate, but they still don’t know how or where exactly they need to ‘go’. What is the precise ‘goal’ they need to achieve in their spiritual journey? Once we close our physical eyes and open our inner eyes, we enter another universe which is much more profound and complex than the physical universe in front of us. But it’s not as if Buddha or Jesus are waiting at the door ready to give us a tour of our inner universe, pinpointing our exact destination. No matter how good your meditation guru is, once you close your physical eyes you are on your own in venturing into your inner universe, which can be perplexing and full of traps, pitfalls, cliffs and abysses into which you can easily fall. Once you’re trapped, there is no guarantee you can get out by yourself. It is these spiritual traps within that eventually surface and affect the entire world we’re living in now. It causes problems from the domestic, societal and racial, to the religious, political and environmental. In fact, you can say that every problem on earth is the result of those pitfalls within because our physical world is the direct manifestation of our inner world, concocted by our thoughts and feelings. All these symptoms are the result of one common cause: we don’t know what enlightenment is, or where to ‘go’ once we close our eyes. Enlightenment is the ability to perceive the world as it is without judgement, in other words ‘Innocent Perception’. The term ‘innocent perception’ is unique and can help you understand life as a whole. This is the spiritual destination Buddha and Christ wanted to lead us to by what they called Nirvana and God. I hope this has connected some dots for you. I look forward to sharing more next time. Warm regards, Supawan |