[skupaemauto]

Karrine,

Thank you for your reply.

You are welcome Bundokji.

The tricky issue is how to test a subjective phenomena objectively??!!! In addition, when we describe Buddha as "enlightened" or "awakened" the power of suggestion here is so strong that might affect our judgement. For a skeptic like me, to tell if the Buddha was or not enlightened is not the important aspect but to where does the teachings he left leads to. Through the careful understanding, practice and evaluation of the teachings it can be inferred that, indeed, Buddha awoke from the delusions of mind. The experience of a peaceful mind it is not a subjective matter. The change in the quality of the relationships with the environment, whatever it happens to be, is an irrefutable fact. A person that acts in an unwholesome way to daily life events is completely different from that one that acts and behaves in a wholesome way, devoid of covetousness, devoid of ill will, unbewildered, alert and mindful.

This is somehow similar to the placebo effect in medicine which is the phenomenon whereby a patient's symptoms can be alleviated by an otherwise ineffective treatment; most likely because the individual expects or believes that the treatment will work!!! I think the contrary, Bundokji. The teachings of Buddha can make us to awake from the endless ways that keep our mind under the suggestive and placebo effects of the wilderness of views that keeps us unaware from realizing the unsatisfactory nature of things, among them, the suggested idea of a selfhood, an "I", a "me" and a "mine".