If you say “spiritual enlightenment does not exist”,
You have denied yourself, and anyone who believes you, a route to end suffering:
“Suffering can end”, thus the wise ones have proclaimed.
If you say “you can be enlightened”, “your suffering can end”
Then by saying ‘you’, you are perpetuating the false concept of self.
Suffering can end, but your suffering cannot end.
‘You’ can be seen through,
And then suffering is cut off at the root:
it withers and dies effortlessly.
Like a cartoon character, you appear real,
But closer examination reveals nothing substantial,
Only a constantly-changing movement,
A flickering succession of thoughts and images,
Without a centre.
Decisions are made. No decision maker.
Thoughts are thought. No thinker.
Actions occur. No doer.
You react! Nobody reacting.
Think about this.
Meditate on this.
You cannot end the ego, for there is no ego.
How can you end that which is non-existent?
Seeing this is called ‘ending the ego’.
Tom Das 
‘Closer examination’ by whom, Tom? And have you considered the possibility that you have no solid substance, yet fully and eternally exist – and that you behave as if you are the very center, decision-maker, thinker, doer, reactor that you deny being? (‘What you resist, persists’) In fact, if you weren’t all these things, how could you ‘meditate’ on this? If you didn’t exist, how could you ‘see’ that ego is non-existent? What awful secret belief about yourself prevents you from admitting that you exist?
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You do not need to deny spiritual enlightenment, actually 🙂
Non-Duality comes from a philosophy called Advaita, Lord Buddah was a crowned prince of a state of India, therefore he had to have the teachings of Advaita because those are part of the teachings of The Upanishads, so if Lord Buddah said that suffering is nothing but an illusion, a sub product of the pursue of pleasure, happiness 🙂 we have that the so called spiritual enlightenment is nothing but trying to get rid of an illusion; if something as great as a spiritual enlightenment, that some people make it to be one of the final goals of life 🙂 is doing nothing but getting rid of an illusion, then we have that such a spiritual enlightenment is nothing but another illusion 🙂 please note that I am not denying spiritual enlightenment, I am denying the goal of it. 😉
As the Native American Indian’s say, PEACE AND BEAUTY
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