Although there may be different ideas about enlightenment within different lineages, what Kaj describes is pretty consistent with the way we think about enlightenment within Soto Zen. That is, enlightenment is just the state of always being awake to what’s going on (Looking as Val put it), or as I would probably put it, to be able to hold as subject only intentionality and hold everything else as object. It doesn’t give you special abilities or anything like that; it just means you notice what’s happening.
That said, noticing what you’re up to can have pretty profound effects on you over time because much of how we operate depends on hiding from ourselves, which is why Hanson sometimes talks about homo hypocritus, LW talks about heuristics and biases, and psychotherapy may talk about the shadow. I’ve certainly seen myself change a lot as a result of past subject-object shifts (a more technical term I would use for kensho, which also highlights that there is more than one level of awakening) as I’ve detailed to some extent here.
Although there may be different ideas about enlightenment within different lineages, what Kaj describes is pretty consistent with the way we think about enlightenment within Soto Zen. That is, enlightenment is just the state of always being awake to what’s going on (Looking as Val put it), or as I would probably put it, to be able to hold as subject only intentionality and hold everything else as object. It doesn’t give you special abilities or anything like that; it just means you notice what’s happening.
That said, noticing what you’re up to can have pretty profound effects on you over time because much of how we operate depends on hiding from ourselves, which is why Hanson sometimes talks about homo hypocritus, LW talks about heuristics and biases, and psychotherapy may talk about the shadow. I’ve certainly seen myself change a lot as a result of past subject-object shifts (a more technical term I would use for kensho, which also highlights that there is more than one level of awakening) as I’ve detailed to some extent here.