On exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum is a panel featuring 16 purportedly spiritually advanced beings, called “luohan” (“arhat”, in the Sanskrit). Every damn one of them looks like a caricature of an actually happy human being. I only saw one that looked even remotely pleased with his life. They were as ugly as sin. The little sign thing they have suggested that maybe the intent was to show that Enlightenment can take many faces. This may be true.
It may also be true that they were simply miserable human beings who happened to live alone in remote places, subsist on bugs, and speak in terms so vague no one could question them (What is the meaning of life, oh Arhat? That my dear one must find out for oneself; Why am I so miserable, Enlightened one? That is because you have not yet found the source of happiness.)
In short, this may have been conscious satire, that nonetheless oonformed, closely enough, to the social conventions of the age.
Was John the Baptist mentally well? Maybe, maybe not. In some times and cultures, the people who lived in radically different ways were considered enlightened, if they attached a religious exterior to their actions. In truth, they may well have been psychotic. Plainly, many, many, many psychoses manifest with religious imagery. There are probably hundreds and maybe thousands of Jesus’s out there (“Two men claim they are Jesus/one of them must be wrong” Mark Knopfler).
To my mind, enlightenment that is useful is invisible. It is achieving mental health that is so robust that it can be shared. It is matching people where they live, so that the distance between you is as little as possible. It is retaining humility with kings, and dignity with “the people”. Hell, dignity with kings and humility with “the people”. It is conforming behavior to a fundamental desire to ease people’s loads, strengthen them, and reinforce good ideas.
Lao Tzu defined a good man as the teacher of a bad man, and a bad man as a good man’s charge. This is nice, in that it permits of endless contexual variations. The most advanced being will be the teacher in the most places and times. To my mind, the good teacher is standing next to the student, never in front of him. There is, in the end, nothing to give, and nothing to learn.
Hey, did you know Hank Williams wrote “I saw the light”. Just popped up on my iPod.
There is some method in my madness.