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The Zen sudden-enlightenment doctrine seem a newer teaching/dharma/interpretation than enlightenment by stages, distinct from it, and no less valid by any objec

The Zen sudden-enlightenment doctrine seem a newer teaching/dharma/interpretation than enlightenment by stages, distinct from it, and no less valid by any objective measure I can think of. I think Jainism and Hinduism also have some notions of enlightenment or concepts close or related to it, like moksha. The sudden enlightenment view seems closer to the root of western "new age" conception, so it seems rather uncharitable to pick an older and more restricted definition for dramatic effect on the claim of cultural misappropriation. But the word "enlightenment" seems too overloaded from different conceptions/traditions, so it hardly seems worth splitting hairs over--using the word itself seems like a barrier to clear communication at this point unless you have a clearly defined context, like the enlightenment of the Buddhist Pali canon, or whatever. I just find your view narrow and uncharitable, and we should focus on what we know the author means rather than quibbling over the definitions of words. Language isn't that precise, evolves, and is meant to communicate, and is adequate if it gets the idea across. Personally, I think we more or less know what the author means here without going back to Buddhist canon, so we should probably just leave Buddhist canon out of it.

alexmingoia 6y ago
I don’t know what the author means, that’s kind of my point. I wanted to state that the Buddhists do have a well-defined rather specific concept of enlightenment, because many people don’t know that. Many people in the West think it’s some mysterious vague state of spiritual awareness, as does the author of this blog post. I don’t think it’s uncharitable to point out that the word largely entered popular culture through people importing Buddhist, Hindu, and Vedic ideas, such as Alan Watts, Robert Thurman, Chogyam Trungpa, Richard Alpert, hippies returning from India and East Asia, and Tibetan refugees. Ideas from these people all got loosely meshed together to form what many call “new age” spirituality. I do think there was a lot of misappropriation in the sense that these ideas were taken out of context. A perfect example of that being Timothy Leary reinterpreting the Tibetan Book of the Dead to describe an acid trip. And here we are, a Rabbi talking about enlightenment as something that can be born into, which contradicts the Buddhist and Hindu concept. I’m sure he means well, but it seems to me he’s talking about this “new age” notion of enlightenment, which is arguably a misappropriation of Buddhist and Hindu ideas.

alexmingoia 6y ago

I don’t know what the author means, that’s kind of my point. I wanted to state that the Buddhists do have a well-defined rather specific concept of enlightenment, because many people don’t know that. Many people in the West think it’s some mysterious vague state of spiritual awareness, as does the author of this blog post. I don’t think it’s uncharitable to point out that the word largely entered popular culture through people importing Buddhist, Hindu, and Vedic ideas, such as Alan Watts, Robert Thurman, Chogyam Trungpa, Richard Alpert, hippies returning from India and East Asia, and Tibetan refugees. Ideas from these people all got loosely meshed together to form what many call “new age” spirituality. I do think there was a lot of misappropriation in the sense that these ideas were taken out of context. A perfect example of that being Timothy Leary reinterpreting the Tibetan Book of the Dead to describe an acid trip. And here we are, a Rabbi talking about enlightenment as something that can be born into, which contradicts the Buddhist and Hindu concept. I’m sure he means well, but it seems to me he’s talking about this “new age” notion of enlightenment, which is arguably a misappropriation of Buddhist and Hindu ideas.