The Meaning of Awareness

We may ask, "What is the meaning of enlightenment? What is the difference between being enlightened and not being enlightened? Is there any difference in life if one is enlightened? First of all, why do people need to be enlightened? Tens of thousands of years ago, when we were fish in the sea, why did we have to go ashore? Was it to escape from the dangers of the sea? Or for the curiosity of the world on the shore? What's wrong with being a caterpillar for the rest of your life? Why do you have to transform into a butterfly? What's wrong with living in a cave on top of a mountain? Why do we have to come out of the cave to open up the world and create it? Enlightenment is a prerequisite for changing oneself drastically.

The reason given by evolutionary theory for why creatures are trying to change themselves is to survive. This is an extremely obvious mistake. Survival should go backward, not forwards, and it is for survival that the tortoise retracts its head back into its shell. Survival is the opposite of evolving to complex physical structures and complex behavioral activities; it is more conducive to survival to throw away one's armor and retreat to simple survival activities. Never awaken, never change, remain stable, that's the way to survive, isn't it? This is true of all long-lived creatures, and the faster the change, the greater the change, and the shorter the life span of the creature, which proves that the meaning of biological change, i.e., awareness itself, is not for the conservative purpose of survival, but to gain a newer and larger space and scope of existence, to gain more and more efficient perceptual information.

The requirement to maximize perception drives creatures to change, that is, to evolve, and it drives us, humans, to become aware of ourselves so that the act of changing ourselves can occur. Why do we want to become aware? To gain access to a wider, new world, to a better self and a better life. So, every enlightenment of human beings is a qualitative leap, from microorganisms to mollusks to fish to land-based animals, from going up into trees to become apes and monkeys to going down into trees to become upright walking people, from drinking blood to slash-and-burn farming, from a primitive communist society to feudal family society, from ancient civilization to modern civilization, from agrarian civilization to modern civilization, from the age of obscurity to the age of science ...... How many times have humans gone through the process of enlightenment and change? What have these realizations and changes brought us? They have brought us a broader, more complex, more vivid, and a higher level of life. This leads to the conclusion that change in ourselves because of enlightenment is a powerful driving force of our existence, a necessary act of human existence.

Awareness is so significant that it gives us a reason to keep changing ourselves, and awareness rejuvenates us powerfully. Awareness adjusts and changes the form of existence to make it more conducive to an existential being. Why do we live ashore in the form of a fish? Because we are severely limited by the range and form of fish life, that is, we can no longer or do not want to be a fish anymore, so we make the effort to come ashore and start a land-dwelling life that we have never lived before. In this way, every major change in human beings stems from different degrees of awareness of ourselves. The greater and more complete our awareness, the greater and more advanced our changes. All of the major and minor changes that have taken place over thousands of years in humanity have been caused by small and major human realizations. Our constant enlightenment has led to constant change and development, directly and powerfully contributing to the great process of human civilization.

However, why must the act of enlightenment occur in human beings? Where does the essential motivation for enlightenment come from? It comes from dissatisfaction with the existing state of affairs, for the momentum and vitality that comes with every change in humanity is exhausted over time, and the inertia and residual nature of existence becomes apparent again, and we become bored and suffocated, at which point new enlightenment begins to brew and occur. Why does the act of enlightenment occur? This means that our existence is imperfect or highly imperfect, and this imperfection urges us to become aware to change the problems caused by our imperfect existence. Without the remedial correction of our imperfections, human existence would have collapsed long ago. Because our existence is so imperfect, we are, by far, the most imperfect species of existence among living things.

How short duration of existence has human civilization had only? And the stable existence of all living things is only how many times the history of our civilization? Can these two histories of existence be compared? Our imperfection is reflected in the unreasonableness of our lives, and the rationality of human society is greatly questioned. Do we live reasonably and satisfactorily? Do we live a stable, harmonious, and happy life? I am afraid that the opposite is true. Our extremely contradictory and irrational ethical logic directly leads to the inherent suffering of our life, and our extremely imperfect life form, life pattern, and life order make us suffer enough. We have lived in this state of silence for a long time, and what are we waiting for? We are waiting for another awakening of ourselves, for a new awakening to bring us new changes, for new changes to save us from the misery of life. This is the only hope we have for the future, for our enlightenment.

This is what enlightenment is all about, and the greatest enlightenment we look forward to changes the suffering paradigm of our existential competition and saves us from the cycle of life's suffering. Is this possible? The greatest characteristic before the coming of enlightenment is the chaos of society and the feeling of suffocation of the human heart.