Enlightenment in Buddhism - Western Understanding of Enlightenment

Western Understanding of Enlightenment

See also: Buddhist modernism, Transcendentalism, and Perennial philosophy

In the western world the concept of enlightenment has begotten a romantic meaning. It has become synonymous with self-realization and the true self, being regarded as a substantial essence being covered over by social conditioning.

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Famous quotes containing the word western:

    It is fatally easy for Western folk, who have discarded chastity as a value for themselves, to suppose that it can have no value for anyone else. At the same time as Californians try to re-invent “celibacy,” by which they seem to mean perverse restraint, the rest of us call societies which place a high value on chastity “backward.”
    Germaine Greer (b. 1939)