MY OWN WALKING - September Journal 2026

I recently read Neil Postman's book Amusing Ourselves To Death ( You'll find my review else where on this blog )  In it he takes Marshall McLuhan's aphorism that 'The Medium is the Message' and parses it as  'The Medium is the Metaphor'. Proposing that the medium through which we communicate or are communicated too through, has things that it is suited to and things that it is not. The medium through which that communication takes place, can become the dominant metaphor and hence the way we comprehend reality.

This has caused me to ponder on religions as both mediums and metaphors.  Now if the Medium is Buddhism, it communicates it's message largely through it's own particular concepts, words and imagery. Practices and ways of looking at reality, which are pointing you in that general direction, or are in some way considered a preparation for a state called Enlightenment.  Enlightenment is a metaphor for 'a turning in the seat of consciousness', that spawns a multiplicity of further metaphors.

I've been gently reflecting on the usefulness, or otherwise, of Enlightenment as a metaphorical term. Whether Enlightenment is conceptually too neutral, too removed from ordinary experience to function as a motivational ultimate goal. I've had a number of goes at trying to write something useful about this, but on previous attempts ( there have been a few) I was not happy with how they came out. They often ended up with me simply venting a series of personal gripes and long held frustrations. And whilst this was useful for me to know, this was not what quite I was aiming for. I'm hopeful that this time might get nearer to my imagined vision for it.

In the West we bandy the term Enlightenment around as if we understand what that means. As if Enlightenment exists somewhere out there as an entity that can be made knowable. It is literally only one word, that metaphorically stands for something that appears cannot be summed up in one single word. One of the difficulties for us, in using the word Enlightenment is that it shares, an etymological home, with the 18th Century Enlightenment movement. A rational and scientific approach to the search for human fulfilment, and discovering the way reality works. One that does not require a creator God, to explain it. We currently live in a world that is the living expression of that European Enlightenment world view.

Buddhist Enlightenment can, in the Western mind, become entangled and misinterpreted by this rational endeavour. Buddhist practices becoming the religious equivalent of scientific experiments, that if conducted correctly will automatically lead into you becoming Enlightened. This casual relationship obviously is not really how it happens, but I think each of us holds at least the residual concept of such an idea in our imaginative background. Some of the appeal of Buddhism to the Western mind can rest upon it's so called 'rationality'.

There is another question that Enlightenment raises. If Enlightenment is when you see reality as it really is, this is outside the normal everyday experience, so how could you ever adequately linguistically or visually represent that? Particularly to a person who is not yet Enlightened. Well, the truth is, you cannot. And the Buddha himself acknowledged that. There are phrases such as 'being nobody, going nowhere' that encapsulate one presentational approach to spiritual practice. A Zen saying that 'if you see a Buddha on the road, kill him' is another way of saying our ideas about Enlightenment and what an Enlightened being is like, are obstacles that need removing. Whilst Krishnamurti once said that ' becoming Enlightened is a horrible idea'. Thinking you understand what Enlightenment is literally, can be not just perceptually, but spiritually obscuring. In early Buddhism you did not even represent the Buddha. After his death, the Buddha was portrayed by things that represented his absence, like his footprints or an empty throne. His visual representation came much later, in carefully curated archetypal forms, when the need to have a devotional focus in some form, appeared to become overwhelming. Our visual ways of imagining what being Enlightened looks like, became then literally set in stone.

The state of Enlightenment cannot be given anything other than this metaphorical archetypal form. Fundamentally it's not knowable, ineffable to the unenlightened mind. And all the plethora of visual imagery and Rupa forms that Buddhism has developed over the millennia, either work for you as evocative representations of that, or they do not. But they do lead one into behaving as though they are ghostly representations of the Enlightened state. And all the God like devotional practices that these can associatively conjure. Human beings apparently need a visual focus for where they are headed. However, illusory or inaccurate those imaginative horizons might prove ultimately to be.

Judaism and Islam have both stuck to not portraying their God. It's a prohibition, but also a recognition that a true representation is impossible. Christianity and Daoism, like Buddhism, began by forswearing representations for very similar reasons. Though gradually accrued depictions, ofJesus on the cross, saints, sages or archetypal 'God like' figures over the centuries. And I cannot help but believe something rather important was lost at that point. Though this struggle to find potent visual metaphors to represent what is your ultimate aim, appears to be a universal one. Whether this helps or hinders depends upon how spiritually mature the eye of the beholder is. Paradoxically, the notion that ultimately any representation of the Enlightened state is a narcissistic hindrance, is another notion that can become a narcissistic hindrance. But simply sitting with that, like some koan that we need to find the key too, can just be to dispiriting. Graven images, are so inherently problematic.

But then you do have Dogen very clearly stated that even the images and metaphors we use, are as much a manifestation of Enlightenment as anything else in the universe is. Which seems a very pansychist way of looking at reality. Buddhism imagines ultimately that Enlightenment as neither 'out there' nor 'in here' it's not locatable like a hidden treasure chest.  Christian views of where God is, developed a similar dichotomy, for quite similar reasons. How you imagine and conceptualise your goal or divinity, can both aid and get in your way. 

I have to wonder then whether the term Enlightenment itself, is entirely fit for purpose.  Though there is always the background suggestion that nothing ever will be. Whatever terminology we choose to use can be misleading. As can where you place it in relation to you. Enlightenment, is to enlighten, it's like turning on a light in a darkened room. The Buddhist sutras tend to prefer the word Awakening, as though we are asleep to how the world really is, to which we are then awoken. I tend intuitively to lean towards the latter, that anything that places the focus 'in here' rather than 'out there' will prove nearer the truth.  Enlightenment places that truth 'out there', whilst Awakening places it 'in here'. But this is most likely my own prejudices manifesting, where something being 'out there' and remote from my experience, I tend to find unhelpful to me. But then as an unenlightened person, am I really the best judge for what really is helpful to me?  I can't, it appears, help myself from intuiting that Awakening, will start with developing a personal relationship with whatever it is. If there is an obscuration embedded in my current way of practicing it is that it's often far too bound up in the self regarding focus of an inward selfish love. To be it's opposite, which is other regarding, is to focus outwards, to become attracted to a selfless empathic love without any boundary.

Is Awakening just down to me, or is there something much more interactive and multifacted going on in such moments of transformative clarity?  Perhaps we slowly come into alignment, into a relationship with whatever the 'vivid soul of Awakening' is, and this is both within us and universally everywhere. We might see Awakening as this dormant part of us that needs to wake up, that maybe it has always been an active presence in every spiritual impulse we've ever had. Awakening, as a deepening of the human consciousness might easily be the entire purpose of the Universe. Awakening acts as a fortuitous magnetic attraction for faith. Faith being a form of love, a slow burning love affair with Awakening. Once we allow ourselves to surrender and fall deeper into the romantic pull of Awakening, then a fully realised conjugal reciprocal universal love opens out, infinitesimal and vast, with a scope that goes completely beyond all the limitations of our nit-picking small imaginings. We call it numinous, ineffable, an unknowable beyond, that were we to actually experience it, would shake awake our sleeping consciousness from its self fettered dreaming. To see the dawn of a new day as if for the very first time. An experience where terms like Enlightenment or God, don't remotely cover it.