Works by important French and German Enlightenment thinkers for example, Voltaire's Traité sur la tolérance (1763; A Treatise upon Toleration) and Immanuel Kant's "Was ist Aufklärung?" (1784; "What Is Enlightenment?")—embraced the cause of toleration in matters of religion and provided a template for the Enlightenment's championing of free inquiry and freedom of thought and speech.
In his classic text, What Is Enlightenment?, Kant contrasts "public" and "private" use of reason – "private" is for Kant the communal-institutional order in which we dwell (our state, our nation …), while "public" is the transnational universality of the exercise of one's reason: "The public use of one's reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among men.
In other words, I did it (enlightenment) and you can do it and even go further than I.
For years I lived in my glass box in the Hollywood Hills, striving to live under Modernist oppression, I mean, enlightenment, but ultimately I couldn't bear it another moment.
Is that enlightenment?" "Perhaps," Suzuki replied.
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I walked out into the sore air of Mayfair, not exactly imbued with the spirit to run home and write the next 'Voodoo Child' or 'Messiah,' but still I sensed enlightenment.
What I am stating is that I discovered that enlightenment is when I very self-consciously give priority to the experience of the oneness of nature that is always enjoyment, the pleasure of being a self-conscious part of the universe rather than a rock, carrot, or moose.
Before I started on this path of enlightenment, I would tell myself that I wanted to be more like her.
Kûkai's claim was that this esoteric method of ritual-bodily-meditational practice — involving the three media (or "mysteries") of body, speech, and mind — will allow one to realize one's direct embodied participation in the Dharmic samadhi of the hosshin, i.e., "enlightenment in this very embodied existence" (sokushinjôbutsu).
I hadn't achieved enlightenment, but I did transcend into a pickle-like state of being.
