New Thoughts/Way of Thinking?

I’m not enlightened, but I’m trying to understand enlightenment. Enlightenment doesn’t seem to be a realization, nor does it appear to be a process. Neither a journey nor a destination, but linked to the two. Understanding. Standing. Overstanding. Intra/interstanding? Holonistic? How can I try to explain when the language doesn’t exist? Demonstratively, I’ll try.

How often do we hear the old cliché, “It’s not the destination that matters, but the journey?” Often, but the more I am exposed to that idea the less it seems to explain. And we never ask follow up questions for nuance. We don’t ask, “Is it the journey itself that matters?” or “Is it that we went on a journey that matters?” or “Is it what we experienced on said journey that matters?” Indeed, is it all of those and more that matter? Even then we would be left with an incomplete picture.

Then there’s the idea of enlightenment being some sort of transcendence: The Buddha who transcended desire or the Christian united with their creator. These are just a holon that comes at the end of the journey though – again, we’re left with model that is lacking.

If the journey and the destination themselves aren’t accurately, metaphorically representative of enlightenment then what is? Perhaps your feet? One can have feet but not motivation to use them. But the will that drives the use of feet can just as easily decide to remain still. Would that be meditation? Or intellectual-materialism? These things I can’t answer.

What I can say is everything is everything. It all boils down to one something. One universe, one illusion, one world, one love, one mind, one… And there’s no way of knowing if it’s cyclical like a circle/sphere, or infinitely ever-changing/uncontained, or a failure of our 4 dimensional thought prevent us from finding accurate representation.

From what I can tell though (in inaccurate language), enlightenment is trying to understand. In that sense, Buddhism is not trying to come to terms with death, but to understand it, by contemplating that still, silent, empty, absence of the void.