Quest Magazine

Printed in the  Winter 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "From the Editor’s Desk" Quest 109:1, pg 2

Full disclosure up front: I know nothing about the topic of this issue.

The theme is Enlightenment, and although I’ve read and heard a good deal about it over the years, I realize it is a subject about which I am entirely ignorant.

In his article in this issue, John Cianciosi quotes the Buddhist monk Ajahn Brahm, who says there are nine things that an enlightened being cannot do: “store up possessions, intentionally kill any form of life, steal, perform sexual intercourse, tell a deliberate lie, and act improperly out of desire, out of ill will, out of delusion, or out of fear.”

This settles the matter. I am nowhere near this level, and I have never met anyone who was. Moreover, according to the literature, full enlightenment—if there is such a thing—is a radically different state of consciousness from any we are familiar with.

All these things suggest that what I think I know about enlightenment has little to do with the actuality. Moreover, what I think I may know about enlightenment may be an impediment to realizing it.

I write this a month before the elections, so polls are thick in the atmosphere. Every poll shows a sizable group of people who answer, “Don’t know,” to whatever question is asked.

Once I used to think that these people were ignorant not to have opinions about the most vital topics of our times.

At this point I’m not so sure. I remember too many times over the years when I was upset about some major issue. In the long run, I often learned that my opinions were based on supposed facts that had nothing to do with reality. As a result I have become much more consciously agnostic about many of the great concerns of our times, no matter how obvious the “right” answer may appear to be.

Clare Goldsberry, in her Members’ Forum piece, discusses not knowing. How could not knowing be an approach to enlightenment? After all, avidya—usually translated as ignorance but perhaps better translated as nescience or even obliviousness—is, according to Buddhist teaching, the primordial cause of suffering.

Clearly we are dealing with something different here than ignorance, say, of historical facts or the laws of physics. The classic answer to this problem appears in a story about Socrates, recounted in Plato’s Apology. Someone sent to the oracle at Delphi—then held in the greatest esteem, consulted even on matters of high state—and asked whether there was anyone wiser than Socrates. The oracle replied that there was not. Socrates was puzzled by this reply: he could not understand what it meant, yet he was convinced that the god could not lie. Finally, he concluded, “None of us happens to know anything beautiful and good, but they think they know, knowing not; but I do not know, and don’t think I do. So by this little bit I might appear to be wiser.” Yet Socrates was so wise that all the philosophers that came before him are lumped together as the pre-Socratics.

On a more homely note, the nineteenth-century American humorist Josh Billings wrote, “I honestly believe it iz better tew know nothing than two know what ain’t so” (a quote often attributed to Will Rogers).

Of course there is a more active nescience—not knowing and actively refusing to know. Often it is a matter of knowing “what ain’t so” and refusing to let that be challenged. The difference is that the not knowing of Socrates and Josh Billings admits the possibility of knowing and an openness to it.

Say you come across an unfamiliar word. Your insecurity may lead you to claim that you don’t need to know it and that big words are pretentious. Or you can simply look the word up, and then you know it. Such is the difference between plain ignorance and nescience (a word that to me connotes an active resistance to knowledge).

How does this relate to enlightenment? From what I have already said, it’s clear that I don’t know. But it may go something like this: I look out at the world and assume that my opinion about it is correct. I see the tables, chairs, trees, and flowers and assume that I know what they are. But in reality I see only the past—my past experiences and preconceptions about them.

One way out of this ignorance is to set aside this collection of data in my mind and see the world as it is in its immediacy—what some philosophers have called its “just-so-ness.” At that point the world opens up some of its inscrutable richness.

It would be exaggerating to call this sense of greater richness enlightenment. But it may not be totally wrong to say that it is closer to enlightenment than the whirligig of thoughts, feelings, and preconceptions in which we customarily live.

To conclude with yet another thing I don’t know: is enlightenment permanent, stable, and irrevocable, as certain sacred texts seem to indicate? Or is it just another in an endless series of steps toward greater opening, knowing, and fulfillment?

In short, is there someplace where you stop, or is there always further to go?

Richard Smoley

Printed in the  Winter 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Sorkhabi, Rasoul, "Ancient Wisdom in the Persian Tradition" Quest 109:1, pg 34-38

By Rasoul Sorkhabi

Perhaps the most important contribution that H.P. Blavatsky made to the intellectual and spiritual discourse of the late nineteenth century was her emphasis on a single “Wisdom-Religion” found in various cultures and religious traditions. Indeed the word theosophy in her view referred to this “Wisdom-Religion.” In her 1889 book The Key to Theosophy, she traced the origin of this word (theosophia, “Divine Wisdom”) to Ammonius Saccas, an Alexandrian philosopher of the third century AD, and equated it with the Sanskrit word brahm-vidya. The idea that this “Wisdom-Religion” is found in all cultures motivates us to explore the jewels of various spiritual traditions. This article shares some little-known aspects of “Wisdom-Religion” literature in ancient Persia. (All translations quoted here were made by the author, unless otherwise mentioned.)

Treasured Books in the Royal Court

It is well known that the religion of Zoroaster was the main religion of ancient pre-Islamic Persia (also called Iran). Today this religion is a minority in Iran, and many Zoroastrians live in India, where they are called Parsis (literally “Persians”; Contractor, 2003). However, it would be incorrect to assume that Zoroastrianism was the only religious or spiritual tradition in the ancient Persian empire, which spanned a vast region between the Roman Empire on the west and the Chinese kingdom on the east. Even the Persian courts were open to diverse ideas. Writing in the fifth century BC, during the Persian Achaemenid dynasty, Herodotus in The Histories remarks that “no race is so ready to adopt foreign ways as the Persian” (Herodotus, 63).

The Persian kings seem to have possessed a treasured book, which was read to them for counsel or consolation. The oldest reference to this book is found in Old Testament book of Esther. According to the Bible, Esther was the Jewish queen of the Achaemenid king Ahasuerus (Xerxes) who ruled “from India to Ethiopia” from 486 BC until his death in 465 BC. (The version of Esther in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, refers to this king as Artaxerxes, the youngest son of Xerxes.) The book of Esther says that “during one night, the king could not sleep, so he gave an order to bring the book of records, the chronicles, and they were read before the king” (Esther 6:1, New Revised Standard Version). We also have independent evidence for this book in the work of a Greek scholar of the same time. In his Persica, Ctesias of Caria, who was a court physician to Artaxerxes II (who ruled from 404 to 358 BC), refers as one of his sources to the “royal parchments” or “royal leather record books” in the court (Schmitt).

This book (or books) is not extant, but we can speculate about its contents with a reasonable degree of confidence. It seems that the royal book had two versions or parts: creation myths and histories of kings on the one hand and wisdom teachings and ethics on the other.

The mythological and historical parts provided records and lessons of history, especially for kings. The biblical book of Ezra, which documents how Cyrus the Great (founder of the Achaemenid dynasty) liberated the Jews from their captivity in Babylon and sent them back to Jerusalem to rebuild their temple in 538 BC, also mentions that this history was recorded in a Persian court book (Ezra 6:1).

The ethical and contemplative portion of this book offered practical wisdom and spiritual philosophy for living, not only for the royal court but also for common people. In his Histories, Herodotus devotes a few pages to “certain Persian customs and manners.” For instance, he writes:

The erection of statues, temples, and altars is not an accepted practice amongst them, and anyone who does such a thing is considered a fool, because, presumably, the Persian religion is not anthropomorphic like the Greek. Zeus, in their system, is the whole circle of the heavens, and they sacrifice to him from the tops of the mountains. They also worship the sun, moon, and earth, fire, water, and winds . . . The actual worshipper is not permitted to pray for any personal or private blessing, but only for the king and for the general good of the community, of which he is himself a part . . .

The period of a boy’s education is between the ages of five and twenty, and they are taught three things only; to ride, to use the bow, and to speak the truth . . . They consider telling lies more disgraceful than anything else. (Herodotus, 61–64)

	A page from the 1430 illustrated manuscript of the Shahnameh (“The Book of Kings”) commissioned by Prince Baysonghor in Iran.

Herodotus also refers to the “magus,” the Zoroastrian priest. This word is the origin of the present-day word magic; it is also related to the story of the three magi from the East who visited the newborn Jesus in Bethlehem, according to Matthew 2:1–12.

These two strands of the ancient Persian court book were mentioned in other documents, which surfaced and survived in Iran even after the coming of Islam in the seventh century AD. Here, for reasons described below, I will call these two strands “Big History” and “perennial wisdom.”

Big History and Its Lessons

Over the past two decades, Big History has become a popular term and field of learning—thanks to the efforts of historian David Christian. According to the International Big History Association, “Big History seeks to understand the integrated history of the Cosmos, Earth, Life, and Humanity, using the best available empirical evidence and scholarly methods.” This learning, indeed, helps us to place our cultural and intellectual development in the larger context of the natural history of the world. However, attempts at Big History are not new; they date back to some of the classical mythologies and scriptures in the world, which of course used the knowledge and thinking of their own time.

The Shahnameh (or “Book of Kings”), composed by the poet Ferdowsi, is an epic work. Ferdowsi, who died in 1020 at age eighty, spent the last four decades of his life on this book. With 50,000 rhyming couplets, it is the largest epic work ever composed by a single person. Unlike the Greek epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, or the Indian epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, which revolve around a certain period, war, or hero, the Shahnameh presents a vast expanse of time and space (Davis, xiii). It begins with the appearance of the first man—Kayumars, the first king, who lived in a cave and wore animal skins—and ends with the death of the last king of the Sassanian dynasty during the invasion of the Muslim Arabs in the seventh century AD. All in all, the book chronicles a period of 3,962 years, partly myth and partly history (Robinson, 153–54).

Kayumars’s son is killed by Ahriman (the devil), and thus begins the cosmic conflict between good and evil—a Zoroastrian motif that becomes the common thread running through the entire Shahnameh. Humans, in this perspective, must strive to be on the side of Divine Light (Ahura Mazda), which is characterized by “good thought, good words, and good deeds.”

Geographically, the Shahnameh covers the entire habitable world known to the ancients: China, Central Asia (Turan), India, Iran, the Greco-Roman world, and the Arabian Peninsula.

The Shahnameh did not appear in a vacuum. The book was based on pre-Islamic Persian records, especially the Khotay Namak (“Royal Book”), compiled during the reign of the Sassanian king Khosrow I, who ruled from AD 531 to 579. This book was a popular work of Big History in classical times. The Greek poet and historian Agathias, serving in the court of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I in the sixth century, compiled his Histories partly based on the Khotay Namak. After the emergence of Islam, the Khotay Namak was translated by various persons into Arabic and formed a major source of information for general histories (tawarikh) written in Arabic.

What is most interesting in the Shahnameh, as far as the wisdom religion is concerned, is the manner in which Ferdowsi composes the stories. To use Aristotle’s terms, he divides the story into three stages: theos (or logos: the story itself), pathos (emotion), and ethos (ethics). Each major story begins with the remembrance and praise of the one God, who is the source of everything—the heavens, the earth, life, and wisdom (kherad). Even when Ferdowsi refers to letters written by the kings and heroes, these letters also often begin with theology.

The main part of the story proceeds with the “acts and duties” of courage, hard work, justice, and goodness—all qualities of chivalry. Toward the end of the story, Ferdowsi comments on the perishable nature of life and this world: nothing has a fixed or lasting existence; everything passes; this world is like a guesthouse built in the wilderness; enjoy life and let others enjoy it as well; do your best and plant seeds of goodness. Here are two quotes:

This is the way of the world:
It raises us up from the dust and then scatters us on the wind.
Live in joy with your beloved now,
and contemplate on how this world turns and moves:
It lifts a man to the heights of pleasure,
and then throws him underneath the soil.
The world has no shame in doing this.

This contemplation of the passing nature of life and the belief that it is best to cherish this hour was later developed in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a set of Persian quatrains immortalized in English by the verse translation of Edward FitzGerald in 1855. Here is FitzGerald singing Omar Khayyam’s lines: 

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend.
Before we too into the Dust descend:
Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Songs, sans Singer, and—sans End!

The Perennial Philosophy

It is the turn of the ninth century AD. The Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid, who established the legendary “House of Wisdom” (Bayt al-Hikma) in his capital, Baghdad, has just passed away. One of his sons, Amin, has succeeded him. His other son, Ma’mun, is the governor of the vast province of Khorasan in northeast Iran. Ma’mun’s mother and tutor are Persians. The Persians are supporting Prince Ma’mun for the throne against his brother in the capital. Local governors are sending precious gifts to Ma’mun. The governor of Kabulstan (Kabul in Afghanistan), instead of sending material gifts, dispatches an old man by the name of Zooban.

“What valuable service can this old man offer?” the prince asks.

Zooban replies, “My wisdom.”

Zooban stays in Ma’mun’s court and encourages the prince to march on and capture Baghdad. In 813, Ma’mun triumphantly enters the capital, and his rule marks the beginning of the golden age of learning, translation, and science in Islamic civilization. Ma’mun wishes to reward Zooban and offers him money, but Zooban says, “I want something far more valuable than money.”

Ma’mun asks him, “What?”

Zooban answers, “There is a book hidden in the ruins of the palace of Persian kings at Mada’en, near Baghdad.”

The caliph gives orders to dig and search for the book, and indeed sheets of writings are found in a sealed box. “What book is this?” they ask.

Zooban says, “This book is called Javidan Kherad [‘Perennial Philosophy’; also Khirad]. It was written by Ganjur, son of Ispandiyar, who was the prime minister (vizir) of the king Iranshahr.”

The expression perennial philosophy was popularized in our time by Aldous Huxley’s book of the same name. The first line in Huxley’s book says that the phrase philosophia perennis was coined by the seventeenth-century German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. But it seems that this term, as well as a book of that genre, dates back to the courts of ancient Persian kings.

Scholars have not been able to identify Ganjur, the minister of Iranshahr. But this seems to be a generic name, for Ganjur means treasure, and Iranshahr was the name of Iran during the Sassanian period (AD 224–651).

Back to Zooban in the ninth century. The old man takes his desired book home, but Ma’mun’s prime minister, Hassan ibn Fazl, becomes curious about its content, and requests Zooban to have the book translated into Arabic. A scholar who knows the Persian language of the Sassanian era is hired, and Zooban gives the first chapter (“thirty leaves” of the book) for the Arabic translation. This chapter included the sayings of the king Hooshang (the grandson of Kayumars, the primordial man). As for the rest of the book, Zooban says, “the remaining leaves contain some secrets which must not be made known.” 

Even this partial Arabic translation is said to have impressed Ma’mun so much that when he first opened the manuscript to read, he delayed his prayer because he could not concentrate on it without finishing the book. The Arabic translation found its way into the hands of the Persian scholar and court librarian Ibn Miskawayh (AD 932–1030), who added several chapters on the wisdom sayings of the early Muslim, Indian, and Greek thinkers. Ibn Miskawayh also wrote an introduction to the book (the above story actually comes from his introduction). Ibn Miskawayah’s Arabic work, still keeping the original Persian title Javidan Kherad, is extant and was printed in Egypt in 1952. (Abul Rahman Badawi, the editor of the modern Arabic edition, entitled it Al-Hikma al-Khalidah in Arabic, and subtitled Javidan Kherad—both meaning perennial philosophy.)

The book has been translated into the modern Persian three times: first by Sharaf al-din Qazwini in thirteenth-century Iran; second by Taqi al-Din Shushtrari during the reign of the Indian Mogul king Jahangir (1605–37), and third by Shams al-Din Husayn Hakim during the reign of Aurangzeb in India (1652–1707). All these Persian translations are extant and have been printed in Iran and India.

The Javidan Kherad has not been translated into English. Only its first chapter—the maxims of Hooshang—was translated by Edward Henry Palmer (1840–82), a fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge (Palmer, 1869). Palmer used the third Persian translation and compared it with an Arabic manuscript at the library of St. Augustine’s College at Canterbury.

Over the years, as I have read passages from the Javidan Kherad, I have also thought of the governor of Kabul and why he dispatched Zooban to the court of the caliph. I wish Zooban had been generous enough to share the entire book, but he probably had his own reasons.

Hooshang was the third king of the Pishdadian dynasty, the mythical first dynasty of Persia. The word pishdad means foremost justice or earliest order, and is described in the Shahnameh as the first kingdom. Obviously what is recorded in the Javidan Kherad was not really written by Hooshang, but his name indicates the antiquity of these wisdom teachings in Persia, as Hooshang was also believed to be the person who discovered fire and invented writing. The following are the first lines from his sayings:

The source of all things lies in God, who is also the end of all.
Success and grace come from God, who is the worthy one to be praised.
Whoever knows his humble beginning becomes grateful.
And whoever knows his end becomes sincere and humble.
Whoever understands what success is does not become arrogant, and
Whoever understands what grace is accepts, trusts, and does not cause conflict.
The highest thing bestowed upon humans in this world is wisdom,
as forgiveness is for the hereafter.

Blavatsky and the Javidan Kherad

In her major works, Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, Mme. Blavatsky discusses the Zoroastrian religion but does not refer to the Javidan Kherad. Apparently she was most exposed to Zoroastrianism when she and Colonel Henry Steel Olcott went to India in 1879, arriving in Bombay (Mumbai), where many Indian Parsis live. The third Persian edition of Javidan Khirad was printed in 1876 in Bombay by Maneckji Limji Hataria (1813–90), an Indian Parsi, and he presented a copy of this edition to Mme. Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott upon their arrival in Bombay.  

Blavatsky launched The Theosophist magazine in Bombay (which later moved to Adyar). Thanks to Maneckji Hataria, Blavatsky learned about this book and wrote a review in the April 1882 issue of The Theosophist. (The review is unsigned, but according to Boris de Zirkoff, editor of HPB’s Collective Writings, it can be plausibly attributed to her. See his note to Blavatsky, Collected Writings, 3:463–64n.) She also referred to the Javidan Kherad in an 1882 article on Zoroaster: “There exists among the Persian Parsees a volume older than the Zoroastrian present writings. The title is Javidan Kherad, or Eternal Wisdom, a work on practical philosophy of magic with natural explanations. Thos. Hyde speaks of it in his Preface to Historia Religionis Veterum Persarum” (“The History of the Religion of the Ancient Persians,” 1700: Blavatsky, “Zoroaster,” 463–64). Later, in her 1890 book Gems from the East, Blavatsky extensively quoted from Palmer’s translation, including the following: “Four things increase by use:—Health, wealth, perseverance, and credulity.”

The Shahnameh and the Javidan Khirad are two shining examples of ancient Persian literature, which has much to offer for our enlightenment and well-being in modern times. It deserves more study and even artistic attention, because as Henry Corbin, the eminent French scholar, once remarked: “Persian mysticism can help restore our sense of a beauty which is under attack in the world of today, by a veritable rage of negation and destruction” (Corbin, 236). 

 Sources

Badawi, A.R., ed. Al-Hikmah al-Khâlidah, Jâvidân Khirad, of Abu Ali Ahmad ibn Muhammad Muskawayh. Cairo: Maktab al-Najdh al-Misriyyah, 1952.

Blavatsky, H.P. Gems from the East: A Birthday Book of Precepts and Axioms. London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1890.

 [——.] “The Javidan Kherad, or ‘Eternal Wisdom’.” The Theosophist 3, April 1882: 180–81.

——. “Zoroaster in ‘History’ and Zarathushtra in the Secret Records.” In Boris de Zirkoff, ed. H.P. Blavatsky: Collected Writings, Volume 3: 1881–82. Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1982: 449–68.

Contractor, Dinshaw, and Hutoxy Contractor. “Zoroastrianism: History, Beliefs, and Practices.” In Quest 91, no. 1 (Jan.-Feb. 2003): 4–9.

Corbin, Henry. The Voyage and the Messenger: Iran and Philosophy. Translated by Joseph H. Rowe. Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1998.

Davis, D., trans. Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings by Abolqasem Ferdowsi. New York: Penguin, 2006.

Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt, London: Penguin, 1996.

Palmer, E.H. “The Javidan Khirad; or, the Proverbial Philosophy of Ancient Persia.” In The Student and Intellectual Observer of Science, Literature, and Art 2 (1869): 168–80.

Robinson, B.W. The Persian Book of Kings: An Epitome of the Shahnama of Firdawsi. London: Routledge-Curzon, 2002.

Schmitt, R., “Ctesias.” In Encyclopedia Iranica, 6:441–46: https://iranicaonline.org/articles/ctesias-; last updated Nov. 2, 2011.

Rasoul Sorkhabi, PhD, is a professor of geology at the University of Utah. His life spans both East and West, as he has lived and studied in Iran, India, Japan, and the U.S. His previous articles for Quest are “Garden of Secrets: The Real Rumi” (summer 2010) and “The Priest and the Biologist” (winter 2020).

Printed in the  Winter 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Ravindra, Ravi, "The Purpose of Yoga: And What Stands in the Way" Quest 109:1, pg 30-32

 By Ravi Ravindra

In the Yoga Sutras 2.2, the Indian sage Patanjali states that the practice of yoga is for the purpose of cultivating samadhi and for weakening the kleshas (hindrances or obstacles). The hindrances (kleshas) are ignorance (avidya), the sense of a separate self (asmita), attraction (raga), aversion (dvesha), and clinging to the status quo (abhinivesha).

One common lesson of all the scriptures and teachings of the sages is that if I remain the way I am, I cannot come to the Truth or the Real or God. A radical transformation of the whole of my being is required. And a basic requirement of that transformation is freedom from my usual self, conditioned by all the social forces driven by fear and desire arising from self-centeredness. Christ said, “He who would follow me must leave self behind” (Matthew 16:24). We see in the Yoga Sutras 3.3, “Samadhi is the state when the self is not, when there is awareness only of the object of meditation.”

Samadhi is a state in which the “I” does not exist as separate from the object of attention. It is a state of self-naughting, the state spoken of in Buddhism as akinchan, a state of freedom from myself or a freedom from egoism. There is no observer separate from the observed, no subject separate from the object. Samadhi is a state of consciousness in which there is a steady and nonfluctuating attention so that the seeing, the seer, and the seen are fused into one single, ordered whole. In samadhi, seeing is without subjectivity. Attention in the state of samadhi is freed from all constraints and all functions. Attention in this state is not conditioned by any object, even subtle ones, such as ideas and feelings. Only knowledge gained in such states of consciousness can be called objective in the true sense of the word; otherwise it is more or less subjective.

 Avidya (ignorance) is the cause of all the other obstacles; it is defined as “seeing the transient as eternal, the impure as pure, dissatisfaction as pleasure, the non-Self as Self.” (Yoga Sutras 2.5). In the heart of the Indian spiritual traditions, “koham?” (“Who am I?”) is considered the fundamental inquiry, because in general we identify ourselves with the non-Self and take it to be the Self. According to all the sages in India, the basic source of our human predicament is ignorance of our own true nature. Everything else follows from this. “Avijja parmam malam” (“ignorance is the great blemish”) is a remark of the Buddha in the Dhammapada. In ignorance we mistake the transient for the eternal, the unsatisfactory for the satisfactory, and the non-Self for Self. This leads to illusion, conflict, and suffering, to be free of which is the aim of yoga.

Since the root cause of the problem is ignorance, naturally the solution is real knowledge (jnana, cognate with and similar in meaning to the English gnosis). This knowledge is of a radically different kind than scientific or philosophic or scriptural knowledge. There are several other words to refer to this special kind of knowledge: vidya (to see, cognate with the English video,); bodhi (budh, the root of this word, is the same as in Buddha, meaning awake and discerning); prajna (insight). This insightful and direct perception is possible only when the mind is in samadhi. When the hindrances to the state of samadhi are removed, true insight into the nature of reality results.

The first outcome of avidya is asmita, which is defined as the misidentification of the power of seeing with what is seen (Yoga Sutras 2.6). Asmita is the illusion that I am a separate self, isolated from the Whole, with my own ego-centered projects.

Asmita literally means I am this or I am that, thus separating the small self from the entire vast reservoir of Being, from Brahman (literally, the Vastness). The Self says “I AM”—as in the grand sayings of Christ when he is in the state of oneness with God (whose name is “I AM,” according to Exodus 3:14). “I AM is the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Ego says “I am this” or “I am that,” thus attaching itself only to a small portion of the Vastness.

Asmita is the result of the misidentification of the power of seeing, which is purusha (or atman), with what is seen, namely body-mind. The isolated self regards the vehicle (body-mind) as the real Self. In the movement from asmita (I am this) to soham (I AM), from a limited self to the Self, from the identification with the body-mind to oneness with purusha, the right order is discovered. The resulting insight is naturally full of truth, love, and joy.

To be free of our attachment to the small self, or the ego, does not mean to be against it. Ego also has its place; it can be a good instrument when engaged in the service of the Self. Ego can be a good servant, but disaster results when it becomes the master. When I am not connected with the Self or the real I, ego takes over. As a Chinese classic puts it, “When the lion is departed from the mountain, the monkey becomes the king.” The subtle shift in the meaning of asmita from Sanskrit, where it is close to self-assertion, to Hindi, where it is close to self-confidence, is a reminder of the need to find the right place of the ego.

The other obstacles are raga and dvesha. Raga is the attachment to pleasure; dvesha is the attachment to suffering. The natural tendency to wish to relive pleasurable experiences is understandable, but it is particularly odd that we are more attached to our suffering than to our pleasures. Moments of humiliation or situations in which we were ridiculed or made to feel small come back to us much more frequently and with a larger emotional force than the moments in which we were admired or looked up to. Experiences of suffering, especially psychological suffering, create deep grooves in our psyche, drawing attention to themselves frequently and mechanically. Nations can be attached to their past humiliations and sufferings, perpetuating a sense of victimization from generation to generation. No wonder that, among many other definitions of yoga in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says that it is “breaking the bond with suffering” (Bhagavad Gita 6.23).

Freedom from the whole domain of like/dislike, and pleasure/pain is a very great freedom. Then we do what needs to be done, whether we like it or not. It is possible to say that the whole meaning of the exquisite symbol of the cross for a serious Christian lies precisely in this: even if something is disagreeable or unpleasant or will produce pain, if it is necessary according to a higher understanding, then one would embrace the suffering intentionally and submit oneself to the right action. The outstanding example of this is from Christ himself. On the eve of his crucifixion, he prayed to God in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Yet not my will, but thine be done” (Mark 14:36).

Another hindrance to samadhi is abhinivesha. This is sometimes translated as a wish to continue living, but it is closer to a wish to preserve the status quo. Abhinivesha is what is technically called inertia in physics, as in Newton’s first law of motion (also called the law of inertia), according to which a body continues in a state of rest or of motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an external force. Abhinivesha is the wish for continuity of any state and any situation because it is known. We fear the unknown, and therefore we fear change, which may lead to the unknown. In fact, this fear results from an attachment to the known, because how can the unknown, if it is truly unknown, produce either fear or pleasure?

In Plato’s Phaedo, there is a scene in which Socrates has been given hemlock to drink and he is about to die. Some of his disciples are understandably very sad and are crying. Socrates says to them, “You are behaving as if you know what happens after death. And furthermore, as if you know that what happens after death is worse than what happens before death. As for myself, since I do not know, therefore I am free.”

Freedom from abhinivesha, from the wish to continue the known, is a dying to the self, or a dying to the world, or freedom from the self, as mentioned earlier. The sages have often said that only when we are willing and able to die to our old self can we be born into a new vision and a new life. There is a cogent remark of St. Paul: “I die daily” (1 Corinthians 15:31). A profound saying of an ancient Sufi master, echoed in much of sacred literature, is “If you die before you die, then you do not die when you die.”

What is needed is a dying to the old self, to allow a new birth, a spiritual birth. Dying daily is a spiritual practice—a regaining of a sort of innocence, which is quite different from ignorance, but akin to openness and humility. It is an active unknowing, not achieved but needing to be renewed again and again. All serious meditation is a practice of dying to the ordinary self. If we allow ourselves the luxury of not knowing, and if we are not completely full of ourselves, we can hear the subtle whispers under the noises of the world outside and inside ourselves. A great sage, Sri Anirvan, said that the whole world is like a big bazaar in which everyone is shouting at the top of their voice wanting to make their little bargain. A recognition of this fact can invite us to a true metanoia, a turning around, to a new way of being. Otherwise, abhinivesha, the wish which maintains the status quo, persists.

This wish for continuity is rooted in a search for security and for permanence. Abhinivesha, the wish to hold on to the past, keeps us in the momentum of time. Being present from moment to moment requires a freedom from abhinivesha, and that freedom brings us to a radiant presence where we can be free of the fear of dying or of living.

Patanjali says, “These subtle kleshas can be overcome by pratiprasava—reversing the natural flow and returning to the source. Their effects can be reduced by meditation” (Yoga Sutras 2.10–11). Pratiprasava, the reversal of the natural flow, is required. Since the usual tendency of the whole of creation (therefore also of our mind) is outward, in order to move towards the center a reversal is needed, a turning around, a metanoia.

The spiritual practice of yoga, although opposed to the lower nature (or animal nature) in human beings, is in harmony with our higher nature (or spiritual nature). What we ordinarily regard as natural is what is usual and habitual with us. Our automatic habitual postures, thoughts, and feelings are manifestations of our ordinary state of consciousness, of a state of sleep or of mechanicality. Through impartial self-study (svadhyaya), we become aware of the enormous strength of these tendencies, which we need to struggle against as a part of self-discipline (tapas). We can appreciate the force of the tendencies of our lower ordinary nature during meditation, when the distracted nature of our mind, which runs after one association and then another, is obvious. As we persist in practice (abhyasa), we can gradually acquire an attitude of detachment (vairagya) towards these distractions. As we identify ourselves less and less with these tendencies, realizing that they do not represent our real identity, we can become freer and freer of them. The force of the kleshas can diminish in meditation as we practice dying to our ordinary, habitual self, and orient ourselves to deeper aspects of our being.

Ravi Ravindra is a regular lecturer at Olcott, the Krotona School of Theosophy, and other Theosophical venues. Professor emeritus at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he is the author of many books, including The Pilgrim Soul: A Path to the Sacred Transcending World Religions; The Gospel of John in the Light of Indian Mysticism (originally published as The Yoga of the Christ); and most recently, The Bhagavad Gita: A Guide to Navigating the Battle of Life (reviewed in Quest, fall 2017). He was profiled in the winter 2013 issue of Quest, and an interview with him appears in the summer 2018 issue.

            Quotations from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras in this article are taken from Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide (Sandpoint, Idaho: Morning Light Press, 2009).

Printed in the  Winter 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Cianciosi, John, "What Is Enlightenment?" Quest 109:1, pg 26-29

By John Cianciosi

The word enlightenment can be used in many general ways, such as having an “enlightened attitude,” which may mean being more progressive or advanced in the way we approach life. However, in spiritual circles it tends to refer to some form of exalted spiritual experience or achievement of great significance. There are some who claim to be enlightened, and many more who believe that their teacher, guide, or guru is enlightened. Then there is my favorite meaningless saying: “You are already enlightened, you just don’t know it!” Or the other one: “Those who know don’t speak. Those who speak don’t know.” Obviously whoever said that didn’t know!

I am somewhat familiar with the Theravada Buddhist tradition (which I like to call the “humble vehicle”), which clearly and explicitly discusses what enlightenment means. By referring to some of the early texts found in the Theravada Pali canon, I would like to shed some light on what the Buddha meant by enlightenment. (Pali is the language in which early Buddhist scriptures were written. It is closely related to Sanskrit.)

As many know, Buddha is not a name; it is more of a title, like president, designating a fully enlightened one or a fully awakened one. The man Siddhatha Gotama (Siddhartha Gautama in Sanskrit) was not the Buddha until something extraordinary happened at a specific time and place after six years of spiritual striving as an ascetic. This is what the Buddha is recorded to have said about his experience while sitting in meditation under the bodhi tree:

When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of the destruction of the taints (asavas). I directly knew as it actually is: “This is suffering . . . This is the origin of suffering . . . This is the cessation of suffering . . . This is the way leading to the cessation of suffering” . . .

When I knew and saw thus, my mind was liberated from the taint of sensual desire, from the taint of being, from the taint of ignorance. When it was liberated there came the knowledge: “It is liberated.” I directly knew: “Birth is destroyed, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more coming into any state of being.”

Though this does not actually tell us what that experience was, it does indicate that it was radically transformative: it completely freed the Buddha from the taints (all forms of mental defilements that are dependent on ignorance, including craving, attachment, hatred, fear, resentment, and despair). It also clearly indicates that this experience was the culmination and completion of the spiritual quest, with nothing more to be done. And lastly, the Buddha definitely knew he was enlightened and said so.

It is said that after his enlightenment, the Buddha spent the next forty-nine days in the vicinity of the bodhi tree experiencing the utter bliss of his liberation—certainly not something one would easily forget!

The scriptures also refer to achieving enlightenment as realizing nibbana (nirvana in Sanskrit). When Venerable Sariputta (Sanskrit Sariputra), one of the Buddha’s chief arahants (a Pali word that refers to someone who is fully enlightened), was asked to explain what nibbana was, he gave a very informative and valuable answer: “The destruction of lust, the destruction of hatred, the destruction of delusion; this, friend, is called nibbana.”

In Buddhism, greed (lust), hatred, and delusion (ignorance) are considered the three underlying defilements of mind (poisons, if you wish) that support all other negative mental and emotional states experienced by unenlightened beings. Freed from these defilements, the enlightened person experiences no such negative states of mind. While still living, the fully enlightened person would still be subject to the normal vicissitudes of life, such as painful bodily feelings and pleasant feelings, sickness and health, youth and old age, gain and loss, praise and blame, and so forth, but none of these things would have the power to disturb the enlightened person’s unshakable peace. This is clearly indicated in the following text, which uses the term “uninstructed worldling” for the unenlightened and “instructed noble disciple” for an enlightened person:

When the uninstructed worldling is being contacted by a painful feeling, he sorrows, grieves, and laments; he weeps beating his breast and becomes distraught. He feels two feelings—a bodily one and a mental one . . .

When the instructed noble disciple is contacted by a painful feeling, he does not sorrow, grieve, or lament; he does not weep beating his breast and become distraught. He feels one feeling—a bodily one, not a mental one.

And again here:

Just as a rock of one solid mass remains unshaken by the wind, even so neither visible forms, nor sounds, nor odours, nor tastes, nor bodily impressions, neither the desired nor the undesired, can cause such a one to waver. Steadfast is his mind, gained is deliverance.

So what would enlightened persons be like and how would they behave? We may not know who is enlightened, but based on the above, we can know that there are certain things an enlightened person would not do. In his book Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond, the Buddhist monk Ajahn Brahm writes the following about an arahant or fully enlightened person:

There are nine things that an arahant by nature cannot do: store up possessions, intentionally kill any form of life, steal, perform sexual intercourse, tell a deliberate lie, and act improperly out of desire, out of ill will, out of delusion, or out of fear . . . For instance, since sensory desire has been totally transcended, there is no spark left to ignite the passion for sex. All arahants are “potently impotent.”

Some positive attributes that are often mentioned as natural expressions of enlightenment are the four brahmaviharas, or four divine abodes, divine emotions, or sublime attitudes: lovingkindness towards all beings, compassion for all who suffer, joy with the happiness of others, and equanimity or unshakable peace under all circumstances. The life of such a person would be a blessing to the world. In fact, the Buddha gave the following instructions to the first group of sixty arahants: “Go now and wander for the welfare and happiness of many, out of compassion for the world, for the benefit, welfare and happiness of devas and humans.”

What I have presented so far refers to full enlightenment as experienced by the Buddha and his arahant disciples. However, the Theravada texts refer to four stages of enlightenment. Only the fourth stage is considered full enlightenment: the mind is completely and permanently free of all defilements. Persons of the three lower stages all have perfect view with regards to the true nature of existence, but they are not yet able to abandon all greed, hatred, and delusion. My teacher, Venerable Ajahn Chah, said that this was like someone holding an apple in his hand. The person knows for certain that when he lets go of the apple, it will fall to the ground, but he is still unable to let go. Nevertheless, all of these three stages represent radically transformative experiences, which are unforgettable and irreversible. The three lower stages will ripen into full enlightenment.

What is this realization that is so powerfully transformative? In the Pali scriptures we find a discourse, Upanisa Sutta, on transcendental dependent origination, which presents the following sequence: dependent on concentration (samadhi), there arises knowledge and vision of things as they are (yathabhutanyanadassana).

This is consistent with what the Buddha said regarding his own experience: that the insight only occurred “when the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to imperturbability.” It would seem that only when the mind has attained to such lofty states of concentration (samadhi) will it have the power to penetrate the veil of delusion and allow true insight to arise.

In this case the actual realization or insight is described as “knowledge and vision of things as they are” (yathabhutanyanadassana). This refers to the direct penetrating insight into the three characteristics of all existence: impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha), and not-self (anatta). The realization is that all conditioned existence is hollow or empty. Because all conditioned existence is of this nature, it can never provide security or happiness. Knowing this, seeing this, the mind becomes dispassionate towards all conditioned existence. There is the abandonment of all greed, hatred, and delusion. This is liberation.

So it would seem that enlightenment means a thorough penetration into the true nature of conditioned existence, or samsara. However, the scriptures refer both to sankhata, all that is conditioned, created, or compounded (everything in samsara); and asankhata, usually translated as the unconditioned, uncreated, uncompounded, which is also a synonym for nibbana or nirvana. Enlightenment, being the realization of nibbana, must also be the realization of the unconditioned. As the scripture says:

There is, bhikkhus [monks], a not-born, a not-brought-to-being, a not-made, a not-conditioned. If, bhikkhus, there were no not-born, not-brought-to-being, not-made, not-conditioned, no escape would be discerned from what is born, brought-to-being, made, conditioned. But since there is a not-born, a not-brought-to-being, a not-made, a not-conditioned, therefore an escape is discerned from what is born, brought-to-being, made, conditioned.

Here a misunderstanding can easily arise. As soon as we give something a name, it becomes “something” for us. Even a word like unconditioned becomes something that exists. But the Buddha never mentioned an unconditioned existence. All existence is conditioned and therefore unsatisfactory. So what about the unconditioned? Well, we can know that it is the complete absence of anything conditioned or created, any possible type of existence, and there is nobody in it!

This brings me to the last point I wish to address. From the above it is clear that the Buddha, and all other fully enlightened individuals, are free of defilements and able to live life perfectly at peace regardless of what they encounter. But what happens when they die? Everything that is born must eventually die. And so it is with an enlightened person such as the Buddha. What was born eventually died, at the age of eighty. The important difference is that an unenlightened person, still blinded by ignorance and led by craving for renewed existence, will definitely be reborn again according to the fruits of their karma. However, the Buddha was most explicit in stating that there would be no future becoming or birth for him. The fuel of greed, hatred, and delusion that kept the process of rebirth going has been completely exhausted. The Buddha was not reborn and did not reappear anywhere in any existence. This is also true for all fully enlightened beings.

On many occasions in the scriptures there are accounts of the Buddha being asked to say whether he would or would not exist after death, but he always indicated that these are the wrong questions and do not apply.

According to the Buddha’s teachings, repeated regularly and consistently throughout the Pali texts, what we term a human being is only a mind and body (nama-rupa), a combination referred to as the five aggregates (khandhas) of body, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. These are conditioned and are of the nature to arise (be born) and inevitably pass away (die). Having fully penetrated and realized the not-self (anatta) nature of mind and body, without a trace of attachment remaining, who is it that dies and who is it that could possibly be reborn? When the Buddha or an arahant “dies,” it is simply the dissolution of these aggregates, the stilling of all formations, the end of all conditioning. Only what was born dies. The fully enlightened do not, and cannot, identify with any of it.

Mere suffering exists, no sufferer is found;
The deed is, but no doer of the deed is there;
Nibbana is, but not the man that enters it;
The path is, but no traveler on it is seen.

I hope that what I have written sheds some light on what enlightenment means according to Buddhist teachings. I know that what I have said about the unconditioned and nibbana will not be very satisfying, at least for some people. There are many Buddhist scholars and practitioners who will also feel that it is inadequate and incomplete. This is inevitable and to be expected. The Buddha did say that nibbana was “to be experienced individually by the wise.”

Unfortunately, I cannot speak from direct personal experience, but only as a fellow seeker keen to have a better understanding of the goal of the spiritual life—not to simply satisfy an intellectual curiosity, but because it may provide a clear indication of the path to follow.

John Cianciosi was born in Italy and educated in Australia. In 1972, he was ordained a Buddhist monk in Thailand and trained under one of that country’s most gifted and influential meditation masters, the late Venerable Ajahn Chah. Later he served as abbot and spiritual director of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia. In 1995 he left the monastic life and moved to the Chicago area. He is the author of The Meditative Path: A Gentle Way to Awareness, Concentration, and Serenity (Quest Books, 2001). He has worked at the national headquarters of the Theosophical Society since 2005 and is currently the director of public programs.