Encountering the Secular: Philosophical Endeavors in Religion and Culture

5. Enlightenment

5 ENLIGHTENMENT Now he knew why he loved her so. Without ever leaving the ground, she could fly. —toni morrison, song of solomon It is a question most of us never ask: What exactly is enlightenment ? Even if one is a practicing Buddhist, the concern is more likely to be how to become enlightened; the object of knowledge being fully revealed only in attainment. Such a question, of course, would not occur to the enlightened. As a word, as a concept , enlightenment stimulates desire. It signifies, at the very least, a desire to be “something” else, to be “somewhere” else; within it resides an urge toward transcendence. Thus, enlightenment is an object of attainment only for those of us on this side of the river, to use the Buddhist image, those of us who are not enlightened, and presumably, with attainment the desire for enlightenment disappears. On the other hand, investigating this concept, making it part of a practice of philosophy, shifts it from a transcendent to an immanent mode. Now the point is not attainment, but seeing, looking at an idea as if it were an old photograph of a loved one that does more than remind you of what you already know. The revelations of the concept are no longer those of attainment but of emergence, seeing the new that emerges but does not fall from the sky. Of course, one can never see it all or get a comprehensive 93 E N L I G HTE N M E NT view; the question never finds its final answer. This means desire will continue to flow—a promising and frightening condition. Asking, What is enlightenment? indicates a discomfort willing to go unrelieved and an openness to the surprises of attention. * * * Sometimes, when we are not paying attention, the movies can ask our important questions for us. Such is the case with Ang Lee’s art-house, martial-arts romance Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The film seems to act as a cipher for the question of enlightenment : How does one get it, certainly, but also what is it? Enlightenment is that awkward English word that attempts to roughly correspond to the Buddhist notion of bodhi, a term often used synonymously with nirvana. But in the context of the film (and the concerns of this chapter) the word also has overtones of mastery and empowerment that spill over into many realms, including the martial arts and the politics of social structure. One can be enlightened (and unenlightened) in all kinds of ways. My thesis, such as it is, is this: there are two kinds of enlightenment in this film. One is enlightenment as a general structure of mastery, a blend of the enlightenment of meditating monks and martialarts masters with the enlightenment of reasonable philosophers and bourgeois sovereigns. The other enlightenment swimming through the images and text of this film is one that refuses to be itself, that refuses to be anything—as if enlightenment were the frustration and stimulation of desire rather than its transcendent goal, a concept that keeps desire moving along an immanent plane; in other words, this enlightenment belongs to the earth and demonstrates how we do too. * * * Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is something of a mythical tale. Lee describes it as his dream of a China that probably never existed, a dream that he cannot shake: “You can’t remove China from the boy’s head, so I’m finding China now. That’s why I’m 94 E N C O U NTE R I N G TH E S E C U L A R making this movie . . . , to talk about things we know and that practically don’t exist.”1 Crouching Tiger may be a dream for Lee, but it would be wrong to consider it a product of simple nostalgia. It is part of the tradition of wu xia, medieval legends of masterful warriors who not only have supernatural fighting ability but also a heightened sense of ethical awareness, greater than that of a commoner and corrupt government officials. As tales highlighting individual skill, integrity, and righteousness—all good Confucian values—wu xia are a way that Chinese culture dreams alternatives to its large, complex civilization and the bulky, burdensome bureaucracy that it requires. And then there is Buddhism. The film does not represent the religious tradition in an explicit way. (There is only one scene in which the...