Author: buffduff
Forum: Dharma Overground Discussion Forum
In his Philosophical Investigations, the 20th century German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that "things which may be thought to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, where no one feature is common to all" (from the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance). His argument is anti-essentialist, in opposition to the idea that there are logical categories with exact boundaries, and criteria for things to be included in those categories, and that these criteria can be discovered. Instead, the anti-essentialist stance is that categories are "fuzzy" mental constructions connected by a series of overlapping similarities, with perhaps no essential criteria at all.
I think this anti-essentialist view may be helpful in determining the answer to the question "what is enlightenment?", and may also stave off a holy war as an additional benefit.

If you seek the one true model, you are looking for the criteria that if-and-only-if one meets, then one is enlightened. But enlightenment seems to me to be more fuzzy than that. Some enlightened folks seem to truly have a limited emotional range, having "uprooted" anger, ill will, etc. Others seem to have truly realized the non-dual nature of everything in every moment, and that there really isn't any solid sense of self. Others are healthy and radiant.
The quest for the one true model of enlightenment--no matter the model you choose--could itself be seen as problematic from the perspective of family resemblances.