The Bhagavadgita thus gives a typology of the three dominant trends of Indian religion: dharma-based householder life, enlightenment-based renunciation, and devotion-based theism.
The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates reportedly adopted the motto "Know thyself" to guide his search for a life of enlightenment and wisdom.
Ms. Caur's "Tree of Suffering, Tree of Life, Tree of Enlightenment" (1998) shows that she can straddle two realms, the political and spiritual.
Fundamental to Adi Da's religious philosophy is the essentially "eastern" religious concept that the purpose of human life is spiritual enlightenment, an awakening to ultimate reality that is the natural state of all human beings (though seemingly obscured).
Early in life, Catherine cherished the Enlightenment ideas of Voltaire and Diderot, both of whom she later corresponded with.
The frontier that must be crossed, from despair to hope, from ignorance to enlightenment, from life to death, is a powerful constant in all our lives.
In such a universe, one might reach personal enlightenment, but life in general can never be perfected — neither politically nor psychologically.
Let lines be a memento mori, cautioning that this is the time of life to seek spiritual enlightenment, not chase the chimera of perpetual youth.
Amazing advances in affluence, opportunity, health and life expectancy since the Enlightenment have been brought on the tide of three great modern forces: science, markets and bureaucracy.
It seems that among the many other facets of contemporary life for which the Enlightenment can fashionably be blamed, high suicide rates now feature too.
The resulting 30-minute film, "In the Marketplace," was inspired by Zen Buddhism's 10 Oxherding Pictures, which describe a cycle of life and search for enlightenment that ends with the old man in the marketplace, "free of all attachments, and you can go into the marketplace literally as a child would, full of that innocent wonder," Mr. Burns said.
