DICTIONARY

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Definition[1]

enlightenment: bodhi (q.v.). - The 7 elements of e.: bojjhaṅga (q.v.). - A being destined for e.: Bodhisatta (q.v.).

Source
Buddhist Dictionary, Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines, by NYANATILOKA MAHATHERA
Definition[2]

Enlightenment. After the religious wars, turmoils, and controversies of the 17th c., educated people in Europe tended to be disenchanted with religion as they knew it, especially what they saw as its "supernatural" aspects and its propensity for divisiveness. In Germany a movement expressive of this general rationalistic mood was developed and was called the Aufklärung: a term later anglicized as Enlightenment and used of the 18th c. attitude prevalent in France, England, Germany, and elsewhere. Among its ideals was that of religious toleration, represented in Lessing Nathan der Weise and expressed in the political policies of Frederick the Great. This mood was predictably the one that inspired the outlook of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. It was not an anti-religious mood in the sense of being hostile to all religious sentiment, but it was one that purported to exalt and to rely upon reason as the category in terms of which "true" religion is to be judged. Bitter hostility to both "Catholic" and "Protestant" forms of dogmatism was general among the educated classes and ridicule of the Middle Ages as full of superstition, stupidity, and general "darkness" was fashionable. This mood persisted through the end of the century, along with a belief in the fundamental goodness of human nature: a view that was especially championed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau but was a very widespread attitude in the period of the Enlightenment. The attitude of the Enlightenment did not exclude poetic and artistic fancy, for reason was not the only idol of the period; nature, especially in the second half of the century, was another and it inevitably spawned a more romantic spirit. For example, when in 1739 the poet Thomas Gray visited the Grande Chartreuse (the mother house of the Carthusians, near Grenoble, France, he waxed ecstatic in these terms: "Not a precipice," he wrote in a letter, "not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry." Not, however, till early in the 19th c. did the Romantic Mood begin to supplant the mood so typical of the 18th-c. Enlightenment and to affect not only poetry, drama, and the visual arts, but also religion and philosophy, where it produced fruit of the most diverse kinds, e.g., in Kierkegaard's vitriolic satire against Hegel's rationalism, in the appreciation of patristic and medieval Christian values among the English Tractarians and others, and in the emphasis on religious feeling in the work of Schleiermacher and Chateaubriand.

On the whole, however, the distrust prevalent in the age of the Enlightenment for authority and tradition in religion and everything else left a permanent mark on European and American thinking, although duly modified by the correctives of 19th-c. thought. Goethe, for instance, is an outstanding example of an intellectual genius who combined in his thought and work the values of both the Enlightenment and the subsequent Romantic Movement. The Enlightenment should not be seen, however, as an entirely new development in the 18th c. Its concern for "reason" and its respect for scientific investigation and discovery were of course foreshadowed in the work of the "old" rationalists ( Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza, for example) and the rise of modern science in the 17th c.

Source
Geddes MacGregor, Dictionary of Religion and Philosophy, New York: Paragon House, 1989
Definition[3]

enlightenment

 

Common English translation of the Sanskrit term bodhi, which strictly means ‘awakening’ rather than ‘enlightenment’. Some scholars have criticized the translation ‘enlightenment’ as possibly misleading in view of its Western cultural and historical associations, although it has become widely established in the secondary literature. Enlightenment is the state that marks the culmination of the Buddhist religious path. The archetypal enlightenment was that of the Buddha when he attained nirvāṇa under the Bodhi Tree at the age of 35, although many disciples subsequently achieved the same goal. In Japanese Buddhism (see Japan) the experience of awakening is known as satori or kenshō.

Source
A Dictionary of Buddhism, Oxford University Press, 2003, 2004 (which is available in electronic version from answer.com)
Definition[4]

enlightenment : (f.) sambodhi. (m.) saccāvabodha.

Source
A.P. Buddhadatta Mahathera, Concise Pali-English and English-Pali Dictionary [available as digital version from Metta Net, Sri Lanka]
Definition[5]

Enlightenment  覺悟  "Enlightenment" sometimes refers to the attainment of Buddhahood, as the "Enlightened One" means Buddha. If one is enlightened, one has a complete and perfect understanding of the reality character of everything.

Source
漢英-英漢-英英佛學辭典字庫
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