I enjoy your posts.

When I was 17 there was a moment when I thought I was hip and cool. (I know those words age me) Anyway one day I mentioned to someone just how cool I was… that was the end of my coolness. It seems if you think your cool you’re not. My thinking on the idea of “Enlightenment’ is the same, if you think, let alone say you are, your probably not.

After the Gautama achieved enlightenment he had a choice to make, end his cycle of “rebirth” and remain in nirvana or return as a Buddha and teach what he knew cannot be taught (only pointed towards). I took from that story that, as you suggest, enlightenment as being in a state of nirvana is not possible as a persistent state of being in life.  Perhaps a monk who lives as a hermit meditating 24/7 might come close to this state of enlightened being but only because life is avoided. (It is un likely that Gautama would have become Buddha had he not left his family)

Its always interesting watching someone who says they are enlightened step in dog crap.

“All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.” Buddha

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” Buddha