I understand that all things are empty; that all phenomena are devoid of intrinsic characteristics. That they are not created, nor destroyed; that they are not pure, nor are they defiled; that they do not increase or do diminish. I know that there is no such thing as a 'self': that the 'self' is but a combination of the five skhandas (aggregates), and an emergent property of matter that is the result of my biological make-up interacting with the outside world.
So why can't I reach enlightenment, and leave behind all pain and suffering? I know enlightenment is not something to be reached, since there is nothing to be attained, since all things are empty; I know this academically, but how do I realize it, and become empty myself?
You bought into too much bullshit. A lot of those concepts exist just to trick people back into the loop. Trying to reach enlightenment is like trying to get to the top of the stair case in Mario 64. You can run all you want, but you'll never get any closer. It's an instantaneous switch from unenlightened to enlightened. There are no stairs to climb.
Be like me and get depression. At some point you'll become so numb that happiness, suffering or any other feeling will be a thing of the past and you'll just be an empty shell.
But Buddhism teaches that enlightenment is not something to be 'reached'. It cannot ever actually be reached, since there is 'nothing' to be reached. And this is because the nature of everything is Emptiness: or, in other words, all things lack an objective, intrinsic existence. I know this intellectually, but my question is how to realize it?
Nicholas Brown
Buddhism is actually cancer
Jacob Edwards
Yet here you are trying to reach it with steps and rationality. It's not something you reach, because it's instant. There's no steps to take to get there, because it is nowhere.
There is no difference between you or him; you two are just pieces of matter in the void, interacting with the surrounding matter in the same impersonal manner in which a scientist observes chemicals interacting together. You two are empty; because you are both empty, and because everything else is empty, there is no distinction between either you, or him, or even you and anything else.
