When slightly modified, this idea is crucial for enlightenment. Every person innately seeks the eternal desire of happiness. The unenlightened person tries to directly reach this goal without creating a plan for how to reach it.
Their approach is equivalent to a person trying to put their opponent in checkmate by only killing pieces. Even though taking random pieces will make you appear successful, it will not help in obtaining victory. In life, acting in a manner that has no directed purpose will seemingly help you reach happiness, but will not get you there.
An enlightened person understands that the utmost goal in life is happiness, but also realizes that true happiness can only be accessed through pursuing more specific eternal desires. Happiness does not come in the immediate form of terminal desires. It comes through always acting in a purposeful manner.
To do anything (eat, have sex, mock, watch TV, etc…) simply for the sake of it and nothing else is terminal happiness. The happiness that satisfying these desires gives you is gone when your desire for the activity dissipates. That is why enlightenment and happiness can only be found through eternal desires. An enlightened person does not only eat a healthy meal because it tastes good, but also because this person seeks to always be healthy.
An enlightened person does not have sex for fun; they have sex to pursue their eternal desire for love. An enlightened person creates priorities and works accordingly from there. To obtain happiness, like success in chess, a person needs a plan. A person must realize what they want to do in life, and constantly work towards it.
The incorporation of priorities is crucial. One may say that my conception of enlightenment seems to be very restrictive. You might be saying to yourself, am I not enlightened because I want to lead a healthy lifestyle but still indulge by eating cake or drinking every now and then? It is true that if a person is a glutton and indulges in cake and alcohol simply for the sake of the taste and affect, that they are not enlightened. However if indulging in this manner coincides with other eternal desires and these actions have a rational justification than they do not negate the fact that one might be enlightened.
My Inspirations (Giving Credit Where It Is Due)
Unfortunately, my conception of enlightenment is not totally unique. It is a good mixture of five of the versions of enlightenment which were read in class. Initially, my enlightenment is Kantian in that it requires a person to be mature; it forces a person to not only realize but also prioritize their eternal desires, and also asks them to be a mature and rational person in deciding which paths they should take to fulfill their eternal desires.
My enlightenment is also a microcosm of Plato's forms. My method asks a person to discover the “forms” (eternal desires) that comprise their life, and to spend their life trying to realize those forms. An eternal desire is very similar to a Platonic form in that it is a concept which is never fully realized. For Plato, true beauty is never actually realized, but it is worked towards. In life, for example, a healthy life can be lived, but it is still unknown what the healthiest life consists of.
In my conception of enlightenment, happiness is the eventual goal, and in Plato's the good is. However, Plato and I both understand that these eventual goals can only be reached by realizing how things really are and what we really want in life.
My enlightenment is theoretically Buddhist in that it asks people to make everything in life interconnected. It tells people that enlightenment is found when a person realizes that all their actions should be united in trying to achieve their eternal goals.
My enlightenment is Augustinian in that it prompts people to pursue the infinite desires in life. My enlightenment is opposed to acting on purposeless impulses, and can be considered a form of ascetic practice. Augustine essentially asked his followers to pursue what he believed to be the eternal desire, God. Augustine believed that the only path to God was by pursuing infinite things. To transform Augustine's conception of enlightenment to mine, the path to God is substituted with the pursuit of happiness, and eternal desires take the place of infinite things.
And finally, my enlightenment is Nietzscheian in that it solves the conundrum of the eternal return. The point Nietzsche is trying to make with the eternal return is that people should always act in a manner that they will never regret. With my enlightenment I am telling people the same thing. If an action coincides with an eternal desire, it is impossible to regret it. To act in the name of nothing is what leads to regret.
The Point!
My progression in chess took a great amount of time and thought. Transforming my status from someone who plays chess to a chess player was not simple, and I am still working on it. As it takes time to discover the way to win in chess, it will also take much time, thought, and sacrifice to become enlightened.
My enlightenment is simple: Discover what you want more than anything in the entire world; realize why you want it; and always act in a manner that implies you have this knowledge.
In chess, giving up a pawn (material/superficial advantage) for position (actual advantage) is known as a gambit. When the proper gambit is implemented, it has a powerful affect. In life, giving up short-term happiness (superficial happiness) for eternal happiness (actual happiness), also has a powerful affect; and it is known as the Enlightened Gambit.
