Open Enlightenment

Buddhist Geeks

Buddhist Geeks is a cutting-edge Dharma podcast hosted by my good friend Vince Horn. Since 2007 the Buddhist Geeks have interviewed many leading authors, teachers and entrepreneurs in the field of Buddhism, covering diverse topics from the future of Buddhism in the West to the possible Buddha nature of the internet. Here are some of my favourites:

Episode 138: Reflections on 21st Century Dharma

Episode 133: Erik Curren: The Buddhist Politician

Episode 122: The Evolution of the Mind and Life Dialogues

Episode 112: Vajrayana in Plain English

Episode 62: Reverberations from The Shamatha Project

Remarkably, Buddhist Geeks is produced on a part-time basis, and is offered for free.

If you are serious about 21^st Century Dharma, then you need to get serious about Buddhist Geeks. Please consider supporting this amazing project: become a micro-patron.

In the future, Vince hopes to offer a digital magazine, and a TED style BuddhaDharma 2.0 conference. I can’t believe how lucky we are!

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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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