Enlightened people are those that have come to realize a deeper truth

Awakened Mind 1.

Bhikkhus [Monks], before I became enlightened, while I was still only an unenlightened Bodhisattva, I too, being myself subject to birth, sought what was also subject to birth; being myself subject to aging, sickness, death, sorrow, and defilement, I sought what was also subject to aging, sickness, death, sorrow and defilement.

Then I considered thus: "Why, being myself subject to birth, do I seek what is also subject to birth? Why being myself subject to aging, sickness, death, sorrow and defilement, do I seek what is also subject to aging, sickness, death, sorrow and defilement? Suppose that, being myself subject to birth, having understood the danger in what is subject to birth, I seek the unborn supreme security from bondage, Nibbana [Nirvana].

Suppose that, being myself subject to aging, sickness, death, sorrow and defilement, having understood the danger in what is subject to aging, sickness, death, sorrow and defilement, I seek the unaging, unailing, deathless, sorrowless, and undefiled supreme security from bondage, Nibbana.'"

Ariyapariyesana Sutta, in The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, trans. By Bhikkhu Bodhi

Awakened Mind 2.

The Buddha's teachings are unusual in that they explain at great length the nature of his enlightenment and the types of meditative disciplines he used to gain his insights. He left us a road map to enlightenment. Indeed, his chief motivation for teaching was to lead others to the spiritual awakening he experienced.

Statements attributed to the Buddha make it very clear that all sentient beings have the capacity to become Buddhas, and that his own realizations occurred by practicing the Dharma he taught. Over the past 2,500 years the Buddha's teachings have been tested experientially by thousands of the greatest sages of Asia. Many have verified for themselves the Buddha's words and have achieved the same realizations he did.

B. Alan Wallace, Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground Up

Awakened Mind 3.

Even before we practice it, enlightenment is there. But usually we understand the practice of zazen and enlightenment as two different things: here is practice, like a pair of glasses, and when we use the practice, like putting the glasses on, we see enlightenment.

This is the wrong understanding. The glasses themselves are enlightenment, and to put them on is also enlightenment. So whatever you do, or even though you do not do anything, enlightenment is there, always. This is Bodhidharma's understanding of enlightenment.

Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Awakened Mind 4.

[T]his enlightenment of the Buddha's was profound and brilliant, accurate and powerful, and also warm and compassionate. It was like the sun behind the clouds. Anyone who has taken off in an airplane on a grim and gloomy day knows that beyond the cloud cover the sun is always shining. Even at night the sun is shining, but then we can't see it because the earth is in the way, and probably our pillow also.

The Buddha explained that behind the cloud cover of thoughts--including very heavy clouds of emotionally charged thoughts backed up by entrenched habitual patterns--there is continual warm, bright, loving intelligence constantly shining. And even though in the midst of thoughts, emotions, and habitual patterns, intelligence may become dulled and confused, it is still this intelligence in the midst of thoughts and emotions and habits that makes them so very captivating, so resourceful and various, so inexhaustible.

Samuel Bercholz, Entering the Stream

Awakened Mind 5.

Most people think of awakening as a kind of magical attainment, a state of being close to perfection. At this level, one can perform amazing feats, see past and future lives of others, and tune in to the inner workings of the universe. This may be possible for a number of special beings, but for most of us enlightenment is much more in line with what Suzuki Roshi describes.

It means having a quality of "beginningness," a fresh, simple, unsophisticated view of things. To have "beginner's mind" in how we approach things is a major teaching. In many ways, the process of enlightenment is clearing away the thoughts, beliefs, and ideas that cloud our ability to see things as they really are in their pristine form.

David A. Cooper, Silence, Simplicity and Solitude

Awakened Mind 6.

In spiritual life there is no room for compromise. Awakening is not negotiable; we cannot bargain to hold on to things that please us while relinquishing things that do not matter to us. A lukewarm yearning for awakening is not enough to sustain us through the difficulties involved in letting go.

It is important to understand that anything that can be lost was never truly ours, anything that we deeply cling to only imprisons us.

Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield, Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart

Awakened Mind 7.

The only way to achieve maximum openness is to arrive at every moment without a single preconception. Otherwise, we resist what doesn’t fit our model. Regardless of how much we know, or how evolved we’ve become, we must put every bit of that aside. We must step into the mystery naked and undefended.

When we truly hate what's happening, our instinct is to flee from it like a house on fire. But if we can learn to turn around and enter that fire, to let it burn all our resistance away, then we find ourselves arising from the ashes with a new sense of power and freedom. Sometimes, without any answers to hold onto, it seems like we're nothing at all.

Other times, overwhelmed by life's roaring torrent, it seems like we're everything at once. These two impressions are actually flipsides of the same coin. They're a taste of what happens when the barriers of our personality become porous. We encounter life directly, without anything to mediate its intensity. We see clearly, in those moments, how the self we carry with us is no more or less than a tool of our organism, a system that allows us to function, but that also, miraculously, we have the ability to step right through.

Raphael Cushnir, from 365 Nirvana, Here and Now by Josh Baran

Awakened Mind 8.

All-embracingness, acceptance of all in equality, recognition of each in its uniqueness, and universal availability and responsibility according to every need--these are the four characteristics of the wisdom of the mirrorlike enlightened mind.

Ruben L.F. Habito in Living Zen, Loving God

Awakened Mind 9.

In a dream you may stray and lose your way home. You ask someone to show you how to return or you pray to God or Buddhas to help you, but still you can't get home. Once you rouse yourself from your dream-state, however, you find that you are in your own bed and realize that the only way you could have gotten home was to awaken yourself. This [kind of spiritual awakening] is called "return to the origin" or "rebirth in paradise."

It is the kind of inner realization that can be achieved with some training. . . . You would be making a serious error, however, were you to assume that this was true enlightenment in which there is no doubt about the nature of reality. You would be like a man who having found copper gives up the desire for gold.

Bassui Tokusho Zenji, "Dharma Talk on One Mind,"