Enlightenment

  Questioning “What is Enlightenment?” Enlightenment is something to accomplish in a moment of time,. an experience of absolute awareness—but awareness of what? perhaps that’s the question, or perhaps, How can I describe the experience? (Good luck!)

  The Buddha never specifically defines Perfect Enlightenment he attained under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya. Ultimately in the One Vehicle Sutra, the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law, Chapter 16, he will declare his “Perfect Enlightenment” has existed eternally, addressing the Bodhisattva in the great assembly,

  “Listen then all of you attentively to the secret, mysterious, and supernaturally pervading power of the Tathagata. All the worlds of gods, living beings and asuras consider: ‘Now has Shakyamuni Buddha come forth from the palace of the Shakya clan, and seated at the training place of enlightenment, not far from the city of Gaya, has attained Perfect Enlightenment.’ But, my good sons and daughters, since I veritably became Buddha, infinite, boundless hundreds of thousands of myriads of  hundreds of thousand kalpas have passed.”

  At the close of the chapter, enlightenment is defined as something accomplished, the Buddha asking himself how he shall cause all the living to accomplish it speedily.

  "I, ever knowing all beings,

  those who walk or walk not in the Way,

  according to the right principles of salvation

  expound their every law,

  ever making this my thought:

  How shall I cause all the living

  to enter the Way supreme

  and speedily accomplish their buddhahood?"  (enlightenment),

  As a member of Rissho Kosei-kai in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, I came across a back issue, July 1982, of their monthly publication, DHARMA WORLD, Volume 9, © 1982; Kosei Publishing Co., Tokyo. Hui-neng's Enlightenment—Here and Now by Pracy Pugh, committee member of the Buddhist Society of N.S.W., Australia.

  Here’s an eloquent answer to What is Enlightenment?

  The absence of all thoughts to cease discriminating indicates the mind adheres to no "object" but relaxed in self-expression, appreciates itself in pure mirror-activity and stilled perception.

  “Here lies the ultimate, subtle, and elusive truth of all Buddhism: enlightenment occurs in the realization of one's own inner primal nature, which, as the buddha-nature, is infused with all experience, is absolute and universal—purest being—the totality of all things, a spontaneous awakening occurring at the root of consciousness that comprehends the entire manifold world. Moreover, this primal vision encompasses the opposites of existence, including the darkness of non-being. So it is ineffable and mysterious. Here, says Hui-neng, rejoice in your primal nature where samsara is nirvana, and nirvana is samsara. . . becoming is being, being is becoming.

  “This remarkable doctrine of self-salvation centers on the identity of one's own nature with the Buddha. It is the Buddha (or the Tathagata) in the minds of the aspirants who save themselves. From this insight a charity and a morality arise, because the individual and the totality are one ecological organism, mutually dependent.”