Friday, October 19, 2012

What is Enlightenment?


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Tackling Enlightenment will always be a Lie for me. So I was hesitant at first to spout words what it is. But seeing that the word Lie has never been lesser nor greater than the concept of Enlightenment, for these two are mere ideas, I came to juggle thoughts about enlightenment with joy in me that there is no harm and no benefit, no loss and no take to be made. Make no mistake because the play of juggling is no more than like when birds sing or when trees move with the wind with no desire whatsoever. It is just is.

So what is enlightenment? Enlightenment is a realization that there is nothing to be understood; there is no place to arrive at; and there is no goal to be achieved. It is to see that there is no other moment other than what your presence shows it is. It is to grasp that you can never be where you are not. Is to embrace the fact that you can never go to where you are now.

Understanding enlightenment may require you to decipher the underlying crypt on a lot of concepts about time and space. Time concepts like Now, Present, Past, Future, wrong time, right time, untimely, in a short while, a little while, yesterday and a lot more. Space concepts includes, here, there, where, far, near, center and many more. You will come to understand that these concepts no matter how varying they may seem at first always converge into a single point of the mind. Everything is just a thought. Without a thought arising, there can never be any concepts at all. But there will always be a vantage position no words can be used to describe it. This will show you that everything you think, glamorous or not, sad or happy, terrible, horrible, glorious or hell, including your idea of who you are, are nothing but mere thoughts. What remains is the only the sense you exist in which rationalization is never required at all.

If you are confined alone in a perfectly dark box that no slit of light can enter, no glare of day can appear, you will still feel that you are there. You have the perfect sense you are there. It can never be otherwise. You just know you exist. And you don't have to interpret that you indeed exist.

Understanding the concept of Now may also bring the understanding of Enlightenment. Now is not the same as Present. Now contains the moment of Present. Now is the Presence, the Awareness wherein Present passes by. Enlightenment is therefore an understanding that awareness is all there is. What appears before your awareness are mere happenings wherein it can never be possible to be aware of without awareness first. What appears  is not a separate phenomenon from you being aware of it. Your awareness is what makes the happenings possible. Without your awareness, how can we tell what? Reading this piece can never be possible if you did not wake up from your last sleep.  And there is no way for you to know that this piece exists while you're on bed lying dead. How can you know?  It is not even possible to know what does it feels like doing something else than what you  are perfectly doing right now. So, you are just an awareness.

Enlightenment is to see that we are not what we think we are. You, I, Me, Us, They, Them, Mine, We are just thoughts. What we think we are are just thoughts, like all other thoughts which passes by while we are aware of it. What then? Answering that will bring in more thoughts. Discover it for yourself.

If you think enlightenment is to always feel nice, you got it right until you see it clearly that you got it wrong. Go inside you and see that enlightenment is a feelingless Feeling; choiceless Choice and a selfless Self. 

Property Rights for Beginners Like Me


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On your way back home you saw on the dirt a lustrous pebble. You picked it up and called it your own. Supposed another man saw what you got and said he wants that pebble too, you wouldn't give it up for nothing. You found it first, therefore you feel you own it. The other man might acknowledge your assertion and he will leave you alone with a pebble you call your own. Or insist on his demand that he owns the pebble and might beat you to a pulp just to get it from you and then, as you did, call it his own.

The dispute over the pebble can be solved by laws of property rights. It is a convention to materialize on paper the ownership of a property or economic goods. PR is a legalized assertion of possession of anything just to avoid protracted disputes over property ownership and disposal. 

Why disputes occur by the way? The short answer is that economic goods are scarce. If only there were two lustrous pebbles, the dispute would be less likely to happen. Property rights therefor exists to settle the issue of ownership over scarce economic goods. The air we breath is not scarce, so property right issues would not naturally arise. However, if such air comes in forms of purified air in a specialized packaging for special purposes, the manufacturer has the property right over those scarce packaged purified air.