Expert: Alex Wilding - 11/23/2008

Question
QUESTION: If there is no personal self and if hypothetically speaking everyone reached the highest state of enlightenment how would you describe that state.  In Christianity it is personal beings united with other personal beings infinitely through the infinite Love of God, which is called "the body of Christ." I'm having trouble understanding the point of Buddhist practice in this context.  Does it all just end with the disappearance of all persons into some kind of pure consciousness with no one to know anyone else? Is is true that at the highest level you lose all personal identity, and or physicality?

ANSWER: Hi Clinton,
The answer - or at least a short version - is repeatedly stated in Buddhist scripture: it is beyond description.

To say something all the same, you must first bear in mind that there are different kinds of Buddhism, and not all will give you the same response.

That being said, the point of Buddhism is not to lose or destroy your individual self, ego or soul. The point rather is to *see* that you *already don't have one*, and that you never did! Together with that, the Buddhist is supposed to stop *clinging* to this self as if it did exist.

It is sometimes taught that it is possible, at least temporarily, to go into a kind of blissful oblivion, but that eventually we have to wake up from that and go on to a higher enlightenment.

I hope that helps a bit!

All the best
Alex W

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: What then is the highest form of enlightenment?  And does the physical universe dissolve when all enter the highest form of enlightenment?  Is it like being in the void during deep meditation where there is just spaciousness and emptiness and no-thing and no awarness of any I-thou, is that sort of a description of the final state for the Buddhist?  Or is it more like having that state just mentioned but being able to walk around eating ice cream at the same time?  I ask this question concerning the highest state of enlightenment not some other lower state.  Oh and by the way thank you so much for your time i don't know anyone with experience or knowledge on this subject.

ANSWER: Hi Clinton,
I think the "just spaciousness and emptiness and no-thing and no awarness of any I-thou" is said to be a very "high" meditation experience, but although you put it in an amusing way, the "having that state just mentioned but being able to walk around eating ice cream at the same time", though it sounds paradoxical, is maybe more like it.
The idea seems to be that at that highest state, nobody "needs" to do anything in particular, but we don't need to disappear either, so Buddhas spontaneously appear and do positive things, especially compassionate things.
But it's not something I have any experience of!
All the best
Alex W

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thanks again for your time and i have just one more follow up question although i think you may have answered it already.  Have you ever heard in Buddhist thought the notion that in the end everything will just disappear into no-thing, so that in the end there will only be no-thing?  I thought i read this somewhere but am not certain.  Also if there is no soul or no spirit then what transmigrates, if not the soul or the spirit then what recalls past lives?

Answer
Hi Clinton,
There are different stories, which is not a big problem as the "story of the universe" does not play such a central part for Buddhism as it does in, say, Christianity. Most branches of Buddhism tend to take the Indian model more or less for granted, in which there are innumerable billions of world systems at any one time, coming into existence, flourishing and eventually dying. When this universe is finished, there will already be billions of other in other dimensions, and more being brought into existence. If the being who inhabited this on have "unfinished business" then another system will eventually develop.

As to the second part, I can only answer with a paradoxical question. Remember that Buddhism says that you *already, here and now* have not got a "soul". What is it that remembers last night's dream, or the day before yesterday?