Why do people talk about 'attaining' enlightenment? Surely enlightenment cannot be procured like a shiny new car or the latest television set?

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Proverbs 2:3-4

For if thou shalt call for wisdom, and incline thy heart to prudence:

If thou shalt seek her as money, and shalt dig for her as for a treasure:

When I first ran across this passage I was amazed. Seek wisdom the same way you would seek money! It’s a weird way of looking at it, religion is so used to be seen as being antithetical to material gain. So how could the search for wisdom parallel the search for riches?

But it makes sense. If you read a biography of any rich businessman you see spiritual elements in the storytelling. The hours of hard work, reading, studying about how the market works. Trying over and over again to gain an edge. There’s a lot that’s spiritual in the toil.

No, you can’t obtain enlightenment through toil. But you’ll never find it either if you’ve developed a mental block around that sort of thing. Some situations just call for hard work. And sometimes the wisdom you seek isn’t easy to find.

You need to go outside the self to find it. Outside your comfort zone. How do you stay sane when you don’t understand what’s going on? The same way a businessman keeps going even when he’s not sure whether it’s going to pan out or not. You put your head down and keep going. There’s buried treasure somewhere, it’s just a matter of hanging in there until you find it.

No point in giving up. Of course sometimes the quest for knowledge of spiritual reality is going to feel weird sometimes, like you’re doing it all for some shiny new car. But to a teenager, that shiny new car represents something more than just a hunk of metal. It’s freedom, the ability to roam.

Buying a new TV set every year signifies that you’ve gained economic control over your life. You don’t need to worry anymore where your next rent check is coming from, whether you’re going to eat steak tonight because you want to, or beans and rice again because you have to. Why not celebrate it by keeping up with the march of technology, at least in this small way?