Scott Aronson wonders whether attaining enlightenment is worth it given the sacrifice of time. Are there better uses of one's once-in-a-lifetime time? I wholeheartedly agree with his decision to go with all the other pursuits and accomplishments of knowledge or investigation. After all, enlightenment is a selfish goal, it benefits only oneself whereas understanding the world in its many systems and puzzles not only benefits others, it augments the mind beyond oneself. Nirvana isn't all it's cracked up to be.
But I disagree with Aronson that there's a sacrifice. When I was 13 or 14 or so, I wondered about this enlightenment question after looking into the nirvana goal. The result of enlightenment was characterized by several testimonies of those who claimed to have achieved it, as leaving experience just as it was except no more striving to attain enlightenment. Being of a logical cast, I concluded that if I stop trying to achieve nirvana, I'd be in nirvana. And so it was!
From time to time -- when I'm frustrated with my own struggles -- I have to remind myself that I'm enlightened. Then I have a good laugh and get back to figuring out how to manage whatever struggle is before me. Nirvana, you know, doesn't write blog posts, and posts don't write themselves. :-) (Being in the state of nirvana is kind of useless, to be honest. At least for my purposes.)
I gotta say, though, nirvana is seriously lacking in personality. If you value nothing, grieve over nothing, nothing to worry over, never doubt or ever want, what are you and who are you and why are you alive? I say, grieve and worry and doubt yourself and rage and be stupid. That's personality! Better yet, take a leaf from the Bhagavad Gita -- find your role in society and play that role to the hilt. That's freedom from your selfish concerns (including nirvana) and an opportunity to play the role with style, rendering all the depths and struggles and doubts as mere surface style. A Nietzschean Gita!
Maybe if I'd thought about enlightenment a few years earlier at an even more tender age, I could have been the Dali Lama, but that would not be my preference anyway, so no regrets. Politics is not really my thing. I find politics tawdry. Cognitive science, linguistics, behavioral psych, evolutionary psych, information, semiology, complexity, mind -- all the topics listed in the blog title -- that's what I'm spending my nirvana on. It's a different notion of "enlightenment", the Western notion, synonymous with science "scire" to know, or in the context of this blog, to understand or explain.
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