What is Enlightenment?

It is a way of viewing reality.

Once you have met someone really enlightened you see the world differently if you listen to them carefully.

However, there are many ways to be enlightened, and each of us tends to become enlightened in individual ways. I suppose in some ways it is getting a PHD in life experience.

But, this can come instantly or take a lifetime, a month, a day, a year to achieve. And since there are so many kinds of enlightenment one must be watchful to even know when it happened.

For example, my wife's mother died and I thought I might lose my wife because of this. So, one day she was very quiet and didn't talk that day. Since she is very talkative usually I was concerned and went outside in the garden where she was working on something.

I said "What's wrong?" She said, "I see the whole world and everything in it and I don't like it."

I looked at her because this is how someone enlightened often talks. I said to her, "This is one of the descriptions of what enlightenment actually is."

She said, "But I don't like it!"

I said, "You don't have to like it but you have to realize if you can see everything good and bad just how it is that is what it is to be enlightened."

Once again she said, "But I don't like it".

I said, "It's like a car. Imagine You just saw what makes a car work. You don't have to like it but now you see how it works. That's enlightenment. You don't have to like it but you do have to accept that now you know how life works. And knowing how life works is a good thing because now you can help yourself and all beings more because of this."