I want to come back to the question "What is Enlightenment and What Does It Matter Anyway?" Not that I have the answer, of course.
Dosho Port says one can find two perspectives on enlightenment. Some say that enlightenment is absolute; seamless and unobstructed clarity. But others describe it as relative; always, something remains hidden. Which perspective is correct? Well, I suspect they both are.
However, being stuck in one side or the other can be a problem. Systems that emphasize the absolute view "tend to have a lot of heat in their practice and a propensity for arrogant teachers and dependent students." But when the absolute view is forgotten, practice gets flabby.
"Here a controlling metaphor is '...the community is the teacher,' or 'Zen without Zen teachers,' " Dosho writes. "The leadership vacuum in such systems is often filled with meetings and consensus-oriented processes. And pseudo-practice."
In most traditions the senior teachers are a kind of benchmark. What is it? As long as the teacher is showing you what you don't know, you are challenged to keep on, to go deeper. Without that, it's too easy for one's ego to decide you're enlightened enough already.
At Buddhist Geeks, Kenneth Folk says "I would like to normalize enlightenment." Huh? Reading his essay, I thnk what he's saying is that enlightenment shouldn't be so intimidating. It's for everyone, not just "special" people.
Of course, a lot of Mahayana schools have said the same thing for centuries now. And whether what Folk calls "enlightenment" would be recognized as such in dokusan is another question, and one I cannot answer.
However, Folk seems to think people should judge for themselves whether they are enlightened or not, and I part company with him on that. Most of the time, such "enlightenment" is just a pretty projection. Dogen said, "Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas; those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings."
It may be that in some traditions enlightenment was reserved for the elite, but I think in the West we are likely to err on the side of making it too democratic; too much "whatever I want it to be."
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