[Skybird]

Originally Posted by u crank

What you are saying here is the very basis of Eastern religion/philosophy. There is no answer or the answer is right/wrong. Whatever thoughts I have are the right/wrong answers and it doesn't matter any way because you can't know the right/wrong answer. All is relative to what makes 'me' happy or satisfied that all is well.

Is this enlightenment or is it madness?

Its your summary that does not match the thing you claim to have summarised.

Enlightenment is an all-or-nothign at-all thing. It cannot be gained step by step, but in total completeness only, suddenly. And it is nothing that is gained, but is something that is left behind. It is no qulaity, and no divine reward for doing the right things and living the right life. It is a state of mind. And this mind is fully aware of itseld, of life and world, and it does not overshadow these by its own judgements. In the words of socalled radical constructivism, it is the mind that is free to stop the construction process of perception - or to run it freely by own will and in full understanding of the process (miost people are totally unaware of the mechnaism by which their mind censors their perception, and how their intrinsic motivations influence it further: we do not find the "reality" in the process of perception, but we construct, and invent it).

Such a mind accepts responsibility, because somebody knowing how he himself is the cause of the way in which he organises and constructs perceptions, cannot claim somebody else as guilty for having caused it. Such a mind is free and unhindered, because it can arrange the perception patterns any way it wants. And such a mind is tolerant, because the freedom it experiences in its free choice to construct in this or that way, or not at all, it necessarily must realise to be the basis for the other'S mind, too.

Western psychoanalysis claims the automatic link between perception and reaction - which most often is an act of judging something - cannot be broken. Eatern mediation shows that one can absolutely learn to break up that automatism very well, but that takes discipline and dedication. And thus, learnign this taskes time. Many years in most cases. I would even say most people learn this all life long. Almost all.

I just have destroyed a long reply to somebody else, accidentally, when correcting some of my usualy many typos. Too bad. Will come back to it later. Ignoring how local sectarians have turned it into religion nevertheless for poltiical and control ambitions, Buddhism by core and essence is no religion. Like atheism is no religion, too. But Buddhism is atheistic. It does not tell you what to believe - it tells you not to believe at all, but to test and check and analyse yourself, and after empirically checking your own experiences, you then shall make a decision based on the common sense ethics of what is good both for the one and for the many, where as "many" here can refer to a context going beyond that of human community, and can include other life, nature, the ecosphere that we share with so many others). There is no deity whose commands are to be obeyed, and there should be no rites and rituals keeping people locked like running hamsters in a wheel, running al, the time, but not getting anywhere. But the busy mind is the mind that does not think about asking questions - and that is what religions really want: to prevent sovereign, educated, independent. own thinking. At least it is what they acchieve, and they seem to be not too unhappy with it.