Enlightenment is the complete awareness of life without any mental modifications. It is perfect light, light that has always existed, exists now and will always exist. It's the light that exists beyond darkness. It's the core and the center of all things, and it's in all things and beyond all things.

Enlightenment is a state of consciousness, I suppose. It's a way of talking about it. It's something that we attain -- if we attain things.

There's a mountain. I'd like to climb to the top of it. There's something very beautiful, very wonderful on top of it -- so I hope. So I climb up the mountain and when I reach the top, I have a view. If there's something wonderful there, I've found it -- if that's what attainment is. The mountain of enlightenment, of course, is inside of us. It's inside of our mind. And we're climbing that mountain every day. Our life is that mountain.

The mountain is complicated. It has a lot of sides, a lot of paths. We can traverse them. We can go up the mountain, down the mountain, around the mountain forever and never reach the top. The top is enlightenment -- the complete awareness of life without any mental modifications, the highest viewpoint--not the best, but the highest unobstructed view. And if that's your interest, if you seek enlightenment, then the practice of meditation is the pathway to enlightenment, along with the practice of mindfulness. These are the two things that we do in Buddhism to become enlightened.

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