Enlightenment
Imagine finding yourself in a pitch-black room filled with dangerous obstacles, pitfalls, and traps. You literally cannot see your hand in front of your face, and yet you have no choice but to move through the room searching for an exit that may or may not exist. This is the unenlightened state.
Now imagine yourself in the same room with the same dangers and the same need to find an exit that may or may not exist, except this time you have a penlight with you. This is the enlightened state.
The room is your life. The darkness arises from your sense of being apart from, rather than a part of, Reality, God, Tao, Nature, et cetera. The obstacles are what the Buddha called the suffering of birth, sickness, old age, and death. The enlightened and unenlightened face the same existential reality. The only difference is the quality of their navigation.
It isn’t by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world . . . by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves.
KEN KESEY, Kesey’s Garage Sale