Enlightenment
ENLIGHTENMENT. In the context of Asian religious traditions, especially of Buddhism, what is often translated as enlightenment typically refers to that existentially transformative experience in which one reaches complete and thorough understanding of the nature of reality and gains control over those psychic proclivities that determine the apparent structures and dynamics of the world. As is consistent with a general South and East Asian notion that final truth is apprehended through extraordinary "sight" (hence, religious "insight" or "vision"), enlightenment is often depicted as an experience in which one is said to "see" things as they really are, rather than as they merely appear to be. To have gained enlightenment is to have seen through the misleading textures of illusion and ignorance, through the dark veils of habitual comprehension, to the light and clarity of truth itself.
The English word enlightenment usually translates the Sanskrit, Pali, and Prakrit term bodhi, meaning in a general sense "wise, intelligent, fully aware." Thus, bodhi signifies a certain "brightness" (again, a visual theme) to one's consciousness. The term bodhi is built on the same verbal root—Sanskrit budh ("awaken, become conscious")—as that from which derives the adjective buddha ("awakened one"). Thus, an enlightened being, a buddha, is one who has dispelled all of the personal and cosmic effects of ignorance and has become fully awake to reality as it truly is.
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