Becoming enlightened, in the Buddhist sense of the term, would entail wholly ridding yourself of the twin illusions from which people tend to suffer: the illusion about what’s “in here”—inside your mind—and about what’s “out there” in the rest of the world.† Just in case this state of perfect understanding doesn’t sound appealing, I should add that another term used to describe it is liberation, as in liberation from suffering (or at least from dukkha, however you choose to translate that multifaceted word). And yet another term for this state is nirvana. Surely you’ve heard of nirvana? There
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