Enlightenment

May 8, 2026

I once accidentally found myself talking with a friend of a friend about the cosmos. My friend’s friend began talking about his image of all living beings as water molecules in a wave — existing as individuals but part of a larger unified system. I asked him how this image affects the way he treats other people; for example, does he feel more empathy, knowing that we are in fact all joined together as parts of a grand whole. He said that he doesn’t. “Because we’re all together in this wave, it doesn’t matter what I do. On a grand scale, it all works itself out.” I realized then that this man has no moral principles, and therefore no true understanding.

As a young person, I thought smart people were those who knew a lot of facts, and could solve complicated problems. But after witnessing enough smart people who were mean, I realized that there was a fundamental contradiction here. I thought, ‘there’s no way it can be smart to be mean.’ I couldn’t justify this logically, for ‘smart’ and ‘mean’ are not precise enough terms for any system of logic. But for whatever reason, I started thinking that the only smart thing to do is to be kind.

I was first introduced to the idea of enlightenment when I read The Tao of Pooh as a twelve year-old, sitting in my backyard on a summer’s day under our giant maple tree. The book had been sitting in our spare room for many years; I had even picked it up on occasion, but after seeing it was full of words and not pictures, had generally set it right back down. Now, as a twelve year-old, I could read words. I knew, therefore, that I could read any book I wanted, if I set my mind to it.

I read that book once, eighteen years ago, and therefore no longer have any idea how exactly it presented the Tao. Regardless, I must commend the author for his success: he had developed a premise that planted the seed of Tao in my mind. I am not, nor likely ever will be, a Taoist. I will likely never be any sort of -ist at all. But of course, I believe in the Tao. And my believing in the Tao has likely made all the difference in my life.

Young people who like books and learning and philosophy and all these sorts of things generally believe they can “achieve enlightenment.” The sense of achievement they believe in is one where you receive a certificate of enlightenment to hang on your wall. At least, this is what I thought. However, my certificate couldn’t just hang on my wall, because I’d need to carry it around with me everywhere I went in order to prove that I was enlightened. And it wouldn’t be enough for people who knew me or talked to me to know; somehow, strangers passing by on the street would need to know too. This certificate would need to take the form of some sort of “look,” whether that meant a facial expression, a wardrobe, a glint in the eye, etc.

Sometimes I think that literally the only thing I know is that it’s good to be nice to people. That’s the only thing I have ever learned, and I forget it all the time, and I have absolutely no way to prove its truth. I’ve read too much Plato to have any understanding of the word “good,” and I get caught in loops when I wonder how to be nice to people. How many people do I need to be nice to? Do I have to seek out people to be nice to, or can I just be nice to the people I happen to cross paths with? It clearly can’t be a question of quantity, for there are simply too many people, not to mention all the other creatures in our world. I can’t be nice to all of them.

This kind of thinking doesn’t make any sense. That’s probably why I’m drawn to it. You take a nonsensical premise and extrapolate into further nonsense under the guise of “analysis.” You end up with the conclusion that philosophy is a study of language, not of thought. It’s about how to say things in the way that most resembles what you are actually trying to say. Spend too much time in this paradigm and you forget completely what you were trying to get at.

I am a fool; this is why I have always searched for enlightenment in books. I think that I can collect more enlightenment by reading more books. I know this isn’t true, and I think it anyway — that’s the beauty of the human mind.

I already know the truth. In a certain sense, I was born knowing the truth. I’m pretty sure all of you know the truth as well. Maybe you’ve read it, and maybe you haven’t; maybe someone said it to you, and maybe they didn’t — you probably know it anyway. We struggle to tell each other about it; in struggling to tell each other about it, we tie ourselves in knots thinking, “If I can’t say it, how can it be true?” Then, we forget we ever knew it.

When I say, “it’s good to be nice to people,” I say this in a world where I don’t always do things that are good. That world is included in the idea, even if it’s not actually in the sentence. I say it in a world where sometimes the way to be nice to someone is to smile, say hello, and just leave it at that. I say it in a world where my cats are people. That’s all there, even if it’s not actually there.

When it comes to the friend of my friend, he’s not the first person I’ve heard use this image of water molecules in a wave. It’s a provocative image. But he told me that he believed all people were like water particles in a wave, all forming one part of a grand cosmic entity, and that in his mind, this had no affect on how we should treat each other. As far as I’m concerned, this man was saying words to me, but he was not attempting to communicate an actual truth. He was just saying stuff.

Look, I know that water molecules in a wave do not act morally toward each other. They bustle about according to the laws of physics, crashing into each other and flowing around each other without a care in the world. The fact of the matter is that this analogy is not meant to communicate our similarity with water molecules. The point is the wave — the point is the single entity formed out of many seemingly individual entities. The point is unity, oneness, lack of self, etc. It’s an image meant to make one think about the supposed boundaries — that are in fact boundary-less boundaries — between beings. This is part of Ch’an/Zen Buddhism. The purpose of the image is to orient one’s mind toward cosmic empathy.

As a nobody, with no qualifications, no certificate, nothing but the ability to write words that you might or might not read, let me tell you this: I am enlightened. I say this lightly, because the truth is that I’m not quite sure what it is I have been enlightened about. Gradually, I find myself gaining insight into the truth behind words I’ve long known, but when I attempt to elucidate this truth, I just find myself repeating those same words again.

Whenever the Ch’an master Chu-Chih was asked a question, he would simply raise one finger. We have to imagine that to Chu-Chih, raising this one finger meant a great deal. After all, it was, in his mind, the answer to every single question. However, for us, it’s just a finger. When an attendant of his was asked about Chu-Chih’s teachings, he raised his own finger. When Chu-Chih found out, he was so mad that he cut off the attendant’s finger.

The attendant knew the gesture, but he did not know what was behind the gesture. He was merely mimicking. To all appearances, it seems like the same thing, like he is repeating Chu-Chih’s teachings, but it’s like repeating words without knowing their meaning. You can’t teach anyone that way. You can’t convey any information at all.

My method is quite different from that of any Ch’an/Zen master. I say far too much, and hope that in all this saying-too-much, I form such a mass of words that it develops into a truth. I am fairly confident that this will work some day, despite it not being the regular way of doing things. Maybe one day I will reach the point where I can simply raise one finger, but I’m definitely not there right now. I’m still figuring it out as I go along. In this way, my method and its results are almost identical — in this way I am, somehow, my own student.