namaste
Enlightenment is an illusion. The Path is an illusion. The only way to get off the Path is to realize that it doesn't exist. The only way to reach Nirvana is to realize that you've been there all along.
To say this one is further along the Path than another is illusion, meaningless. If All is One, if we're all walking the same Path and we all end up in Nirvana eventually anyway, and Time and Space and the Universe and the Self are all illusions created by a Universal Self, then the Path is an illusion too. As is the reaching of Nirvana. I might as well say, at last I've reached my brain. The ancients thought the location of human thought was the heart. Now we "know" it's the brain. But the brain was there, and we "were" the brain, all along.
If the Path doesn't exist, a destination of the Path can't exist. Enlightenment is also an illusion, a useful metaphor, a convenient deception, a creation of our own Being. It's meaningless to say that I, a nonexistant self, am further along a nonexistant Path than another nonexistant self.
The Path to enlightenment is thus not inherently better than the striving for worldly success. What's the goal of worldly success? To amass a fortune. The ultimate goal must then be to have all the money and possess all things that are possessable. Suppose one accomplished that. Once you have possessed everything that is possessable, what will you do? You will strive to possess that which is not possessable. You will struggle to understand why that is not possessable, and you will struggle to understand why you want to possess it, and eventually you will understand the Truth. And you will be enlightened.
However, I thwart your attempt at reaching enlightenment in that way, because I will not give you my stuff. Thus, I thwart my own attempts, because in resisting you, I refuse to release my attachment to my stuff. Thus, we are both on the Path of striving for worldly goods, and in our attempts to thwart each other, we become one: entangled like photons, each unable to act without affecting the other.
Namaste, you greedy fucker.
To say this one is further along the Path than another is illusion, meaningless. If All is One, if we're all walking the same Path and we all end up in Nirvana eventually anyway, and Time and Space and the Universe and the Self are all illusions created by a Universal Self, then the Path is an illusion too. As is the reaching of Nirvana. I might as well say, at last I've reached my brain. The ancients thought the location of human thought was the heart. Now we "know" it's the brain. But the brain was there, and we "were" the brain, all along.
If the Path doesn't exist, a destination of the Path can't exist. Enlightenment is also an illusion, a useful metaphor, a convenient deception, a creation of our own Being. It's meaningless to say that I, a nonexistant self, am further along a nonexistant Path than another nonexistant self.
The Path to enlightenment is thus not inherently better than the striving for worldly success. What's the goal of worldly success? To amass a fortune. The ultimate goal must then be to have all the money and possess all things that are possessable. Suppose one accomplished that. Once you have possessed everything that is possessable, what will you do? You will strive to possess that which is not possessable. You will struggle to understand why that is not possessable, and you will struggle to understand why you want to possess it, and eventually you will understand the Truth. And you will be enlightened.
However, I thwart your attempt at reaching enlightenment in that way, because I will not give you my stuff. Thus, I thwart my own attempts, because in resisting you, I refuse to release my attachment to my stuff. Thus, we are both on the Path of striving for worldly goods, and in our attempts to thwart each other, we become one: entangled like photons, each unable to act without affecting the other.
Namaste, you greedy fucker.