Enlightenment: Terror-Management & Hedonism For the Intellectually Inclined

[Joshe]

@UnbornTao - As to not derail the other thread:

I’ve started seeing enlightenment as mostly just a terror-management strategy + hedonism for the intellectually inclined. Seeking insight provides its own kind of high and pursuing "the ultimate" is the terror mgmt/meaning-making strategy. 

It's the pursuit of meaning, relief, beauty, and excitement through insight. I can get very excited from insight myself, and I’ve used this same meaning-making strategy before. But when I started questioning why I wanted it so much, I found it was because I wanted my life to mean something and I wanted escape from raw reality.  

Enlightenment feels more like a bucket-list item than a transformation. Because, presumably, the transformation ends at death. So at best, it seems a transient luxury. Not to trivialize it - I'm sure there's profound utility, but ultimately, I don't see much of a difference in a life of relative ease and a life of suffering. The enlightened monk and the drunkard both end up as ashes, along with their hard-won insights and understanding. Sure, the quality of the journey matters, but there are plenty of other ways to improve the quality. 

The entire field of experience: joy, pain, enlightenment, ignorance, it's all the same to me - transient experiences. All is impermanent - including our knowing and insights. Maybe enlightenment is only “the highest thing” if the absence of suffering is your definition of highest. But if suffering is held similarly as happiness, how could it be the highest thing? Maybe exploring the depths of beauty and love? But again, those experiences would be transient. 

It seems it's just another way to spend your finite time, but not "the absolute ultimate" way to spend your time. 

I could be wrong, since I haven’t seriously pursued enlightenment as many here, but when I project forward using my experience, all the information, models, and anecdotes - I can't help but to see it as just another terror-management/meaning-making strategy, and conveniently checking all the boxes that save us from what ails us + providing psychic hedonism (joy from deriving insight). 

I think what I'm trying to get at is there is pathology involved with the majority of enlightenment seekers. White-knuckling their way through it like they're escaping a burning building, even though they live in relative ease. 

"There's something deeply ironic about suffering in pursuit of the end of suffering, when you're not actually suffering that much to begin with. It reveals that it's not really about relief - it's about achievement, specialness, distraction from death, and being one of the few people who "got it." This is the pathology that drove me in my 20s. 

I'm sure there are some holes in my thinking, but curious how this might be rebutted. 

[Hojo]

It is. But that its point.

Without God you logically have nothing. With God you logically have nothing but it gives meaning to the term.

Without God, logic and death will spiral hard when questioned, as  you will feel yourself coming up with unanswerable questions.

With God your logic can settle as your ego is no longer threatened.

 

But seeing God gives you something else. It gives you incredible peace. Seeing nothing means you arent that.