Enlightenment & Realization

Enlightenment & Realization can be found in the most unusual of places. Many of those that profess to seek Enlightenment are often going in the wrong direction, their very seeking, as they cling to words, scriptures and sutras like one would a raft that is forever missing the beckoning shore.
Buddhists do not have a monopoly on Enlightenment. Enlightenment is of itself, nothing more than a word. Those that have attained Enlightenment often point, nudge and suggest that this is so. However, Buddhism does map out a path that can be followed. A path that is the opposite of fundamentalism; albeit many Buddhists follow the path forever trudging the underbrush where thickets and thorns are aplenty. I have smelled the stench of religion in Christians and Pagans, as well as in Buddhists.
The Buddha gives the simile of a mountain, in which he describes two friends walking through the jungle, which is a Buddhist metaphor for sense-pleasures. They come upon a mountain slope, and one friend climbs to the top of the mountain and then shouts down to the other that from his new vantage point he can see delightful stretches of level ground and lotus ponds—a metaphor for nibbana. But the one at the bottom of the mountain, still in the jungle, doesn't believe him. And what the Buddha says is that he could, like the one at the top, go on adamantly claiming that what he says is true, or he can come down to the foot of the mountain, take his listener by the arm and gradually lead him to the top, where it is possible for him to see things for himself. And this is what I think the Buddha does. When he's causing someone to gain right view, he comes down to their level and gradually leads them to a position where they themselves have sight of things as they really are. This is why he is spoken of as the "good physician who gives men back their sight."
Peter Masefield
Good physicians are all too often hacks and back of the bar room dentists seeking to root out from you a few dollars and decay that only they can see.