mathewjgano

Some thoughts from reading your great posts (thank you for the great reading!):
I tend to think of enlightenment as a series of endless steps and suspect those who feel like they experienced some kind of enlightenment simply enjoyed the rather emotional eureka effect. It's enough to make you jump out of the bath and run through the streets naked, after all.
So I picture this Indian fellow sitting under a tree, struggling with understanding the "why's" of suffering and happiness; finding an answer and enjoying a new, transcendant (insofaras it radically changes his perception of things), point of view he attained; wanting to share this understanding and to continue refining it through contemplation. Over time the idea takes on a variety of interpretations as other apply their own forms and degrees of understanding, "et voila!" The tree gets moved to some remote location at the top of a nearly inaccessible mountain, instead of down in the low lands where it began.
A few years goes by and a new guru of sorts comes along, has his own profound eureka moments related to understanding the scheme of things and people are still putting that proverbial tree up on yonder mountain. I can't help but wonder that, if this is true, if placing it so far away causes people to reach right past it without realizing it.