Open Enlightenment

Building a New Tradition: Part 4

This conversation brought to my attention the vast number of questions that need to be addressed and considered when it comes to developing a community or tradition (or whatever it is), and in the video you can see the very beginnings of my articulation of how I envision this tradition taking shape (a big thank you to Vinay for facilitating this). I hope to flesh out the details (and the language) over the coming months before presenting this ‘new model’ for feedback.

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Building a New Tradition: Part 3

Relevant links:

Governance

Cohousing (also see the UK Cohousing Network)

Holacracy

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Building a New Tradition: Part 2

Relevant links:

Commune movement

The Farm

Stephen Gaskin

Guru

G.I. Gurdjieff

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Building a New Tradition: A Conversation with Vinay Gupta

A week ago I was fortunate enough to be joined in my flat by Vinay Gupta, inventor of the Hexayurt, founder of the Bucky Ghandi Design Institution, editor of The Future We Deserve, and state-failure guru, where we explored the various aspects of organisation and infrastructure necessary to develop my ideas for a new enlightenment tradition.

I video’d the conversation using my Flip HD, which has a narrow focus so you’ll have to excuse my head being partially in shot, and after ruthlessly editing down the talk I can now present the best bits in a 20 minute video.

I know what you’re thinking: without some violence, tits or CGI to hold your attention, you’re going to find it difficult to concentrate for that long. And that’s why I’ve also cut the film up into small bite size chunks, the first of which you will find below the full length film. I intend to post a new segment (of which there are 3 more) over the coming days (it might also make for a more structured conversation around the points made in each segment).

So if you’re feeling brave (or you’re particularly interested in this topic) here’s the full thing:

Building a New Tradition: A Conversation with Vinay Gupta from Alan Chapman on Vimeo.

Alternatively, here’s Part 1:

Relevant links (for part 1):

Lahiri Mahasaya

Earth ships (one example of off grid sustainable living)

Right livelihood

Note: In the video, we touch upon stepping away from a ‘corrupt economic system’. It should be emphasised that this is not a knee jerk and all too common reaction within the ‘spiritual scene’ to money in and of itself; rather, the current economic model or system is what is being called in to question and rejected wholesale. I’m all in favour of investigating initiatives such as the Totnes Pound or even a Resource Based Economy, but exploring alternatives such as these are a natural conclusion if we take a mindful approach to money, our behaviour and the consequences of our spending seriously. Check out Hokai Sobol talking about this topic over at Buddhist Geeks.

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Lost in Translation

I’m only five satsangs in to my teaching career, but I think it’s time for a course correction.

In the past I‘ve always considered the irreverence for authority prevalent in the West to be a good thing. Authority is prone to abuse, and is often faked; respect should only be forthcoming when genuine authority is demonstrated.

In the past I’ve found the offense Eastern teachers take from the Westerner’s failure to acknowledge position and status a quant example of culture shock. I’ve also considered Westerner teachers who bemoan our irreverence to be suffering from their own power trips.

But then I had never tried to teach before; I had never encountered how easily people’s issues can co-opt a session (to their complete ignorance); how the failure to honour a teaching hierarchy (especially on my part) can allow others to sabotage the time with their own lack of integrity by holding forth with their opinions; how a student first needs to recognise the teacher’s function and their own reason for being there before any real teaching can commence.

I’ve experienced all of these things (and more) in my very short time as a teacher. And all of this is due to my own naivety!

My plan was simple: I would adapt a traditional Eastern method of teaching by holding a weekly satsang, where those wishing to explore enlightenment could come and ask me questions as a means of facilitating their own enlightenment. It would be relaxed, open and informal. As I was just starting out, I thought adopting a donation model would work best: the room was cheap, and maybe if everyone gave a couple of pounds, I could cover the room hire and perhaps save a bit of cash that could eventually go towards hiring a bigger and better venue, or perhaps allow me to buy a few cushions for our sits, or even organise a weekend retreat.

But the sad fact is very few people are interested in enlightenment, many cannot and do not recognise the function of a teacher, and some couldn’t care less if the cost of the room is covered if they don’t really have to pay.

I’ve come to the conclusion that we Westerner’s only really respect one thing: what we have paid for.

About turn

I like to think of myself as a quick study rather than a failure, but the truth is I have come realise that I am doing my students or the attendees to my teaching sessions an incredible disservice by not honouring the fact they are Western, thereby failing to offer them:

a). a structured, easy to digest teaching (perhaps in modules or stages).

b). a structured, formal teaching environment.

c). the facility to pay a set price for a given service. Let’s face it: you’re only going to pay for something you actually want, and if you’ve paid for it, you’ll definitely try and get all you can out of it!

So I’ve cancelled my forthcoming satsangs, and I hope in a short while to return with a series of talks/workshops that will cover my teaching in a structured, easy to understand manner, and with a set ticket price.  I hope this will naturally follow on to weekend and week long retreats.

I have gained a few formal students in this period (and I will continue to accept prospective students) with whom I maintain frequent, personal contact on a 1-2-1 basis (which is a bonus as no money is involved). If you were intending to come to one of the cancelled satsangs, and you are genuinely interested in enlightenment, feel free to e-mail me: alan at (replace with @) openenlightenment.org (no spaces) and we’ll see where we go from there.

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Micro-patronage is a macro-flop

Spurred on by the success of other sites employing the micro-patronage business model, I had hoped to finance the Open Enlightenment project with recurring low monthly donations by generous readers. However, this approach has always sat uncomfortably with Dunc, and so after a good deal of debate and deliberation, I have relented and cancelled the forthcoming micro-patronage drive.

This does mean that certain objectives have been put on the back burner, but we are still open to donations and – as Duncan has been fond of telling me recently – we are still going to be doing everything we have planned anyway!

Onwards and upwards…

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The Myth of Lineage

There is a common misperception in the West regarding tradition, especially as it relates to lineage within a school that facilitates enlightenment. The two main elements of this misperception are:

In the East, there are unbroken lineages of enlightened teachers/students that transfer the dharma successfully from generation to generation, evident in many of the schools of Buddhism.

In the West, there is and never have been any awakened lineages to speak of. As a result, no Western ‘tradition’ really has anything to offer comparable to the Eastern schools.

But what exactly is meant by ‘dharma’?

Is the dharma the teachings of Siddartha Gautama (563-483 BCE)?

If this is the case, then dharma transmission is nothing but the teaching of concepts, method and culture that have accumulated over the last 2,500 years since the historical Buddha lived. This is completely divorced from the actual experience of awakening, and transmission of the dharma would not require direct, personal experience of enlightenment in order to become a ‘dharma heir’.

Indeed, we can see such a culture evident in Japanese Buddhism, where certain Zen schools are owned by families who pass down the ‘possession of the dharma’ from father to son. This is dharma transmission as family business.

Furthermore, it is common scholarly knowledge that there exists no authentic record of any lineage dating back to the historical Buddha, none whatsoever. Any lineage claiming such a thing is a result of an attempt at some point in the past to raise the profile of the school in question.

Is the dharma the order or law of the universe?

Again, this is not the experience of enlightenment, but a conceptual model or framework of reality. Does the ‘transmission’ of such a model equate with the direct personal experience of awakening?

Is the dharma the transmission of awakening itself?

The Record of the Transmission of the Light reports:

Once, the World-honoured One (Buddha) held up a flower and blinked his eyes. Kashyapa broke out in a smile. The World-honoured One said, ‘I have the Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma, the ineffable mind of nirvana. I entrust it to Mahakashyapa.’

The moment that Kashyapa smiled is the moment he became awakened in the presence of the Buddha. Regardless of the historical accuracy of this record, the phenomenon of the transmission of enlightenment from one person to another is not just reported by Buddhism; for many Advaita Vedantist’s, it is the only way to achieve enlightenment.

However, although it may appear as if ‘something’ is transmitted from a teacher to a student, the truth of the matter is that what is recognised during enlightenment is not a ‘thing’ locatable in space/time, nor is it something that is ‘missing’, ‘lost’ or ‘lacking’ that the newly awakened student ‘receives’ from outside of him or herself. Similarly, it is not that the Buddha or any awakened individual has ‘gained’ that which is recognised at enlightenment, and so it is not possible for that person to ‘give’ it to anyone either.

This does not mean that awakening cannot and does not occur in the presence of someone already awakened, as my own experience is testament to. But a more fitting understanding of the phenomenon might be the idea of resonance, as if something about the behaviour of the awakened individual can cause another to resonate in a similar fashion to foster a recognition of his or her own, much like a vibration at a particular frequency can cause objects to vibrate in a similar fashion (note that this is just a metaphor; I am not positing ‘enlightenment vibrations’).

It follows then that the dharma as direct, personal awakening is not something that can be possessed, owned or given by any lineage; but a lineage that teaches an understanding of enlightenment – dharma as the teaching of the Buddha and as a model of reality – and helps to facilitate enlightenment in students – which includes the presence of awakened individuals – is certainly something of value.

However, exactly how many lineages match such a description?

Genesis of a tradition

What are the possible origins of a tradition, school or lineage? Here are a number of elements that may play a part in their creation:

• An individual’s experience of awakening
• An individual’s particular understanding and model of reality
• Politics
• Greed for power/money/sex
• Business
• The kudos of being a holy teacher

No doubt there are many more, but this is enough to understand that there is a staggering number of possible combinations of the above that may go in to the creation – and revision – of a tradition.

For instance, someone who has a good model of reality after years of sitting and study might start teaching for the kudos and the access to easy sexual conquests.

Or a genuinely awakened person might decide to make a lot of money out of the fact they are the real deal.

Or someone who really wants to help others experience enlightenment might also enjoy wielding political power.

Even if we leave the question of motivation out of the equation for the moment, and just focus on the authenticity or quality of a teaching or school, we should be aware that:

• Just because an individual has had a genuine awakening, it doesn’t mean he or she can produce an accurate understanding of the experience or a useful model of reality, nor does it mean he or she will or has helped anyone else experience enlightenment, even if a lineage is produced in his or her name, and even if to this day it remains ‘unbroken’.
• Just because an individual has spent many years with awakened teachers, and has a firm understanding of an accurate model of reality and enlightenment, it doesn’t mean he or she has had a genuine awakening, even if he or she decides to set up a school or lineage.
• Just because a lineage teaches a model of enlightenment, it doesn’t mean it is accurate or helpful, that any of the teachers have any direct experience of what they are talking about, or even that the lineage began with an awakened individual.

Given everything considered above, the idea that we should simply look to the East to find ‘unbroken’ lineages of enlightened, ethical and wise individuals is naive at best. A failure to consider the many possible variables involved in a school that promises dharma transmission is no doubt a large enabling factor to the countless abuses perpetrated by guru after guru in the late 20^th century (and which no doubt still occur today).

Next time you come across an ‘unbroken’ lineage, you should ask yourself exactly what is ‘unbroken’: a certain view of the world? A business model? An empty, irrelevant and unaccessible culture? Superstition? Abuse?

Or that rare thing: a group of genuinely awakened individuals, with a good understanding of the phenomenon, whose main concern is helping others to wake up too?

Right on our doorstep

We can now offer a slightly revised definition of the dharma:

The signifier: a model that describes reality based on awakening/enlightenment

And the signified: That which is recognised at awakening/enlightenment, including our relationship to ‘that’, the resulting view of the world, the way we live according to ‘that’ and the beliefs we hold about ourselves, each other and reality.

Although there is much historical evidence to suggest the ‘unbroken’ lineage of a number of occult or secret traditions of enlightenment in the West, we have no way of knowing just how many authentically awakened individuals were a part of these lineages, what was transmitted, what the motivations were behind many of them and their members, or even who the traditions started with. Sound familiar?

However, we do have many surviving Western teachings or models of reality – examples of the signifier – in the works produced by the Greek philosophers, such as Plato, Plotinus and Proclus; the Christian mystics, such as Pseudo-Dionysius and St. Theresa of Avila; the Medieval alchemists, such as Paracelsus and Agrippa; the Renaissance Hermeticists and Christian Cabalists, such as Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Giordano Bruno; the Elizabethan magicians and alchemists, Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley; the Rosicrucians and the countless mystery schools; the Freemasons, such as Elias Ashmole; the Traditionalists, such as Julius Evola and Rene Guenon; the Fourth Way and G.I. Gurdjieff; and the traditions of Thelema and the A.’.A.’., founded by Aleister Crowley and continued by Robert Anton Wilson.

(Of course, there have been many ‘pseudo-traditions’ in the West, such as Theosophy and the Typhonian O.T.O., but again, this is just as prevalent in the East.)

I have to agree with Pierre Grimes when he claims that there is not any metaphysic – produced by anyone, anywhere – as profound as the one offered by the Greeks; and I have personally found the models offered by all of the above Western schools helpful, accurate, challenging, insightful and rewarding. And many of them speak in a very profound sense to my experience of enlightenment.

What this means is that there have always been people in the West experiencing enlightenment – albeit underground for a good millennia and a half – creating a spiritual culture as colourful and as rich as any found in the East. If you are interested in awakening, might there be something of value to be found here?

Ultimately, I don’t believe in tradition; unless there is another type of human being on this planet, with a different brain or mind or heart, the answer to the questions ‘Who are we?’ and ‘What is the truth?’ is the same for all of us. It doesn’t matter whether we are born in Burma or Birmingham, whether we are Hindu or Atheist, whether we are a part of a tradition or not, whether we know someone awakened or not; enlightenment is a human phenomenon, it’s everyone’s birthright, it’s possible for anyone to experience it and there are no definite limitations to who might provide a useful, accurate and helpful view of awakening and reality itself, regardless of lineage, culture or geographical location.

So I think it is time we dropped our naive infatuation with the East as somehow more ‘spiritual’ than the West, as well as our naive disregard for the Western pioneers of enlightenment who more often than not taught awakening at great risk of torture and murder. Rather than investing in the silly notion that the Buddha magically appeared in the East as the very first awakened individual and produced a number of unbroken lineages of realised humans right down to the present day (only coming to the West very recently), we should instead consider enlightenment as a human phenomenon that has occurred to many people all across the globe – as it did during the Axial Age, in three other places besides India: Greece (Philosophy), Israel (Monotheism – but not as we know it today!) and China (Daoism) – that is not dependent on adopting any single culture or religion.

Enlightenment is a human phenomenon, not the product of any lineage or school; isn’t it time we approached it as one? What might we be missing if we pigeon hole ourselves as ‘belonging’ to a ‘tradition’?

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New Developments

Things have certainly moved on in the last few weeks. In my last post I mentioned the desire to set up a bone fide Western tradition of enlightenment, and coupled with recently learning how to use the internet properly, I now have a more fleshed out business model for Open Enlightenment and my other projects.

Site #1: Open Enlightenment

This site has always been about discussing enlightenment in an honest and sane manner, with a view to presenting enlightenment to the public as a very real and natural human development. This project is very much a product of the times we live in, and in some sense is also reactionary, and so it is not the ideal basis upon which to build a tradition.

I have therefore separated out the teaching side of the equation (see below), leaving OE to its original aims. This also means that the conversation facilitated by OE can be opened up to many different viewpoints and traditions, without any ideological inconsistencies getting in the way.

I’m currently excited by how the internet and the growing New Marketing is effecting spirituality and what this means for the future of teaching enlightenment, and my work for OE will be dealing with this topic in the near future.

I see OE growing into a digital magazine with many contributors, a repository of resources (written, audio and video), and an events facilitator for many great cutting edge spirituality teachers. And yes, that centre is still a dream.

I would like to fund all of the above on a micro-patron basis. I have it on good authority that approximately 2% of an audience can be expected to take part, but I have every confidence that the audience for OE will grow dramatically over the coming years.

Teachings have been removed from this site, revised and will be presented on a new site shortly.

Site #2: The Baptist’s Head

I originally considered closing down this site after the original aim of the project was fulfilled: the completion of the Great Work by two contemporary magicians. Duncan has painstakingly edited, polished and indexed the best material from the BH into three books (one for each stage of the magical process), with the first two available soon (self-published – and not ‘on demand’ – too!).

But ending this project would be ending a conversation when there are a growing number of people who have only just joined in. The BH is a movement (even if it is small), not a just a website, and so the plan is to scale down the site to a blog, so that the conversation around Advanced Magick for Beginners and the three BH books can continue, as well as having a portal for new articles, videos (Scrying an enochian aethyr is coming soon!) and new titles.

Funding wise, the BH will continue as it always has, as a labour of love.

Site #3: Original Nature

This is the name of my teaching and tradition. I’ll be giving away all of the teachings and practices for free on the website, but I’ll be charging for group sessions, workshops and retreats. I’m currently looking in to setting up an online instruction course that offers a degree of one-on-one tuition, without incurring the usual costs of conference calls, or venue hire in meat space. I’ll also be doing a lot of work in the real world too, as well as having a book in the pipeline.

The pledge bank group mentioned to your right is the beginnings of an Original Nature meditation group in London.

The teaching includes everything I’ve learnt from every practice and tradition I’ve used personally, but presented in an easily understood and contemporary fashion. It will include work with daydreams, dreams, understanding how the mind is always meditating and how best to approach using it, working with Providence and synchronicity, and all within the context of a coherent psychology and philosophy.

But what really excites me is the ethical practice involved, and I would very much like to begin introducing the benefits of enlightenment into the real world, perhaps as a form of activism, working with the poor, prisoners or the sick and dying. I’m currently inspired by the ID project.

Moneywise, Original Nature will work on a membership basis, although on and offline events can be paid for individually. And of course, donations will always be welcome.

Site #4: My personal site

I thought it would be a good idea to have all of this stuff – plus everything I’ve ever done and will do – in one place. I’ll probably blog about anything that interests me that isn’t relevant to any of the above conversations here. No funding necessary.

New Marketing

I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that the internet is not just an online extension or presence for real-world services or products; it’s a completely new way of doing things. I’ll be exploring this a lot in the future on OE, but the general gist is that the internet is about genuine interest and honesty, and communication between everyone. The internet is about conversations, not advertising or products.

This realisation is responsible for everything I’ve outlined here, as well as the revelation that building whizz-bang sites with their own forums and stuff is a symptom of approaching the net as if it were just another advertising channel. All the sites are (or will be) in wordpress, which is free, and I intend on using the already available social media instead of trying to re-invent the wheel (you may have noticed a new social bookmarking function at the bottom of each thread to aid in the conversation).

Design for each site is coming, and thankfully I won’t be doing any of it! Woohoo!

Updates will be coming as soon as each site becomes available.

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Doubt and Faith

The last few weeks have been disappointing.

Website

First of all, people just do not want to do things unless money is involved. Three designers have promised to help, one because he owed a favour, and two on a gift economy basis.  Not one has delivered anything.

Someone promised to build a salesforce back end, with an additional site for an online community with all kinds of whizz-bang features. I learned how to write copy, then wrote all the copy for the new site, and fleshed out the IA, all in time for the deadline….which came and went.

As a result, I’ve given up on the idea of a bespoke site with a bespoke design; we’re going to stick with word press and apply a nice skin. Out of sheer desperation, I downloaded GIMP the other day in the hope that I can learn how to use a graphics package, and knock up a logo myself. How sad.

Then, instead of re-inventing the wheel, we can just use facebook, twitter and other social networking services to aid in the cause.

Detractors

Boy, have they been coming out of the wood work this month! I’m not talking about people who question stuff on this site (and elsewhere) as a genuine inquiry into the subject; I’m talking about ignorant, lazy, and patronising people who in some cases haven’t even bothered to read what they are criticising. Having an inbox full of such e-mails and websites full of such comments can really begin to challenge your faith in humanity. I have wondered a few times if I’ve really wasted the last few years of my life in trying to demonstrate that magick is a genuine enlightenment tradition, and if I’m wasting my time now in trying to demonstrate that enlightenment is a very real, accessible experience for everyone; because so many people seem not only ungrateful, but actually resentful! I’m feeling quite tired of defending my position at the moment, when I’m not quite sure why I have to. Explains why a lot of teachers don’t answer comments or e-mails in person.

Anyway, to alleviate the burden I’ve written a little FAQ for detractors so I don’t have to keep repeating myself.

Online communities

The Dharma Overground is a great idea: an online community for discussing the practicalities of enlightenment, such as what to practice and what to expect in terms of states, events and stages, run by people who have actually experienced enlightenment.

Sadly, anyone can go on there and call themselves an arahat (someone who has experienced enlightenment), and although there are some genuine arahats on there, there are a few who I believe are not, based on how their experience sounds like mine prior to enlightenment, and therefore nothing like my actual experience of enlightenment, or the Buddha’s, or Daniel Ingram’s, or Adyashanti’s, or Ramana Maharshi’s, or Lao Tzu’s, or any other respected teacher’s description of it.

These pseudo-arahats are into a movement called Actual Freedom and (I’ve chosen my words very carefully here) it is absolute dog shit. It is vile, anti-enlightenment, counter-initiatory guff. And it really saddens me to see other members of the Dharma Overground check it out and buy into it. I am absolutely baffled how intelligent people actually think psychosis is desirable (and I’m not just calling it psychosis because I don’t like it; the specific types of psychosis – such as ‘permanent’ depersonalisation – are listed on the site).

Now there is an Actual Freedom forum for people interested in the anti-enlightenment movement on the Dharma Overground, a site dedicated to honest and practical discussion of enlightenment. I’m at a loss for words.

Faith and Tradition

All of this leads very nicely to my new found appreciation for faith and tradition. To practice in order to engage with enlightenment requires faith in both the description of enlightenment offered by those who claim to have experienced it, and their ability to describe it accurately enough as to not be misleading.

There are so many individuals throughout history and alive today who have described a phenomenon called enlightenment in similar ways that mustering up the faith in enlightenment is not very difficult to do. If practice begins in earnest, that faith is vindicated to an extent by even a small degree of progress on the path. But no matter how great an experience might be, if it does not match the deep features of what has been described as enlightenment by this body of peers, then it is not what they are describing. Faith is required right up to the end of ignorance.

The value of an accurate description of enlightenment (that we can have faith in) is its ability to take away the focus from the attainments of the teacher. Either your experience matches the description, or it is not recognised as enlightenment by the body of peers that ascribe to that description. No ifs, buts or maybes. No questioning the teacher’s ability to accurately describe enlightenment, or even the teacher’s own attainments. This doesn’t mean we end up with teachers who have no experience of enlightenment; on the contrary, if the teacher’s experience doesn’t match the description, then they cannot be a teacher.

My primary task at the moment is to create a description of enlightenment that we can have faith in. That is not to say that such descriptions haven’t been provided before (I’m very much enjoying Dogen at the moment), but we need a clear, honest 21^st Century description for Westerners, by a Westerner.

I then want to start a tradition, where people can have faith in the teachings and the teachers, which can then eventually give way to direct, personal knowledge of enlightenment. I’ll be starting my first group soon in London, just as soon as I’ve created these damn banners…

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‘For-Benefit’ Enlightenment

Shortly after describing enlightenment as knowledge of, say, the Absolute Truth or the Non-dual to people who are unfamiliar with the subject, I am invariably asked, ‘What’s the point?’

Indeed, what is the point? Why would anyone in their right mind want to get ‘all non-dual’? Sounds confusing. Why would anyone want to sit every day for years in order to discover emptiness? Sounds nihilistic and quite boring. And what’s with this Absolute Truth? Postmodernism has proved that everything is relative…

Of course, given 20 minutes or so I can elaborate on a particular model in order to demonstrate the benefits of knowing the Absolute, or that we’re really non-dual, or that Emptiness is actually Form, but of course by then I’ve lost them. I’m usually left feeling a little bit self-important and quite irrelevant.

I’ve been considering the language of enlightenment for some time, and it seems that the labels we use have the tendency of leaving the world ‘over here’ and enlightenment ‘over there’. We cannot seem to escape a fundamental division in our thinking. Some examples:

• Relative vs. Absolute
• Form vs. Emptiness
• Profane vs. Divine
• Duality vs. Non-dual
• Ego vs. Impersonal
• Ignorance vs. Truth

Whenever defining enlightenment to someone who has never experienced it, or someone with only a cursory interest, we automatically put them – and everything they hold dear – on the ‘wrong side’ of reality: the relative, profane, dualistic, egotistical, ignorant; and, crucially, for them enlightenment is left in the realm of the purely speculative or conceptual. Irrelevant indeed.

I don’t believe that the only option for engaging with enlightenment is to spend years studying New Age guff, wasting time with dead ends and enjoying one disillusionment after another, all the while not really knowing what you are looking for, until you eventually sift the small amount of good information from the bad. I’ve recently become interested in evolution, genetics and astronomy because I’ve been exposed to each subject in a meaningful and accessible way. I’m pretty sure I would have been similarly interested many years ago if my initial contact with each of these topics had been relevant and interesting; but they weren’t. It follows that if we can demonstrate that enlightenment is relevant and interesting – which it most certainly is – then more people, who would already like to engage with it if they just knew what it was, will have the opportunity to.

So what am I advocating? That we ‘sell’ enlightenment?

Things have moved on since the Buddha. We don’t need to sit on a mud floor and listen to someone read a sutra; we’ve got powerpoint and auditoriums. We don’t have to rely on the Four Noble Truths, esoteric symbolism, and cultural indoctrination; we’ve got copywriting, design, and New Media.

That’s right: we can use the best methods of communication available today to teach enlightenment, and in a language that everyone understands. I know quite a lot about female beauty products despite the fact I’ve never been interested in them nor will I ever use them. This is due to effective copywriting: a tool so powerful it can educate everyone about the latest mascara, not just the intended audience. Why can’t it be put into the service of educating the public about enlightenment? I’m not talking about scamming the public or treating enlightenment as a commodity; I’m talking about presenting the truth about enlightenment in a way that makes sense to humans living in the 21^st century. We can find a few solutions to the problems of introducing enlightenment to a larger audience in the advertisers’ tool kit, such as the first rule of copywriting:

Sell the benefits, not the features.

Sectors

So what are the benefits of enlightenment? Why should anyone take an interest?

There are some teachers – such as Bill Hamilton, Shinzen Young and Daniel Ingram – who are unsure that there ARE any benefits to enlightenment. This view is a bit like a not-for-profit organisation: enlightenment is about working towards an end that promises no personal gain, although everyone is pretty sure it’s for the common good.

Then there are some teachers – particularly the ‘Direct Path’ Advaitists – who are convinced that enlightenment is all happiness, joy, freedom and bliss, and the sooner everyone gets there, the better. This view is a bit like the private sector: the event of enlightenment is all that matters – an end in itself – and the faster it happens, the happier everyone will be. And damn anything that might get in the way: give all your possessions to your guru, sleep with the boss, and abandon any unsympathetic family or friends.

And the public sector? That might be mainstream Buddhism: a huge, lumbering ‘official’ organisation that looks like it’s doing something, but isn’t actually getting the job done.

All of the above generally present enlightenment in terms of features, not benefits (such as – respectively – techniques and maps, Non-duality, Buddhist dogma).

I would like Open Enlightenment to resemble the emerging For-Benefit fourth sector in this analogy (see what I’ve done there?). That means OE will promote enlightenment just like the private sector, but without lying or selling a fantasy, without comprising on ethics, without treating enlightenment as an end in itself, and by focusing on the benefits, not the features, we will refrain from indulging the gung-ho goal mentality, and demonstrate the relevance of enlightenment to not only our personal lives, but to the community (just like the not-for-profits), straight off the bat.

Everybody’s building

Out of all the labels for describing enlightenment, there is only one that is immediately recognisable as a benefit, and it is the label I used when enlightenment occurred for me. I’m talking about Wholeness.

If someone were to ask, ‘What is enlightenment?’, and I were to say, ‘Enlightenment is the sudden and irrevocable knowledge of your Whole Nature’, it is immediately obvious that a). enlightenment is a growth in self knowledge and b). it offers some form of completion. Note however that the beginner and his or her current life are not left on the ‘wrong side’ of reality, and enlightenment is seen as an addition, not a substitute. The beginner is left wondering, ‘Do I want to grow and build on my life?’ instead of feeling that they now need to defend their current position.

With this definition the beginner is already considering the possible benefits, before they’ve had a chance to ask, ‘What is the point?’. Of which there are many (I really am confused by those teachers who can’t see the benefits. Perhaps that’s down to creeping normalcy.). Enlightenment offers the opportunity to:

• understand yourself and the world at a fundamental level.
• discover your direction and purpose in life.
• heal old emotional and psychological wounds.
• develop the ability to face anything that life can throw at you (including death).
• exercise ethics based on your true nature.
• fall in love with the world.
• realise the joy and beauty of simply existing.

I could go on. Of course, the degree to which these benefits are reaped depend upon the quality of the teaching and the methods and models used to mediate the experience, but the good news is we already have these. By focusing on the benefits instead of the features, the practitioner can begin to enjoy all of the above from the very beginning of the journey, instead of getting hung up on the feature of enlightenment that will occur somewhere in the future. And for the person whom enlightenment has already occurred, the growth of these benefits never ends.

We can still be honest about enlightenment; but we should at least do it with some wisdom. Who would have guessed that advertising could be used for good as well as evil?

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