Proof of Enlightenment
admin January 15th, 2009
Submitted by : Prof Ilchi Lee
The only way that you can know the truth is to become the truth. The only way you can know life is to experience it through your body and become one with its flow. How? Ki is one way. Until now. Ki training was known as the secret to immortality in the Orient, considered to be incredibly beneficial to health. However, working with Zen koans (those puzzling questions) was considered necessary and essential to reaching a deep meditative state. The effect of koans and other meditative tools is to deactivate the logical circuit in your brain, thereby helping you sink easier into a world of no-language and affording you a glimpse into the eternal process of life.
However, what good is it if you could reach such an experience? What can you do with it, however profound, deep, and enlightening it is? What benefits can such an individual and isolated experience bring to the world? Since such experiences are by definition beyond language, they cannot be transferred to anyone else through language. But what else is there except for using language as a means of communication?
If an experience cannot be communicated so as to concretely change the society in which the experiencer belongs, then the experience has no power, even if the experiencer might be loath to admit it. We call a good experience that has no reality-based effect a dream. You just had a good dream. You can put a name to this dream. You can even name it “enlightenment,” but nothing will have changed. Generally, people who have such an experience become attached to maintaining the feeling of this experience and grasp at its fleeting remnants. Although it is their choice whether to live in this dream world or not, the most truthful life I know of is to come back to everyday life and live it diligently to your utmost ability.
- Ilchi Lee
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