Enlightenment Day / Enlightening experiences
Enlightening experiences
Eight accounts of awakening, and what each one gave the world.
The theme of Enlightenment Day 2026 is celebrating enlightening experiences. These are the accounts the day starts from. They come from Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Muslim and Sikh tradition and from two modern Indian teachers. We have tried to tell each one in the terms its own tradition uses, including where a tradition would not use the word enlightenment at all.
The teachers named here are subjects of the day's talks. Naming them does not mean that they, or the institutions that carry their work, take part in or endorse this event. Corrections are welcome at [email protected].
Bhagwan Shri Krishna
The Bhagavad Gita is part of the Mahabharata. It opens with two armies drawn up at Kurukshetra and the archer Arjuna refusing to fight, because the men facing him are his teachers and his family. His charioteer is Shri Krishna. What follows is a conversation of seven hundred verses in eighteen chapters.
Krishna answers Arjuna in stages. He speaks first of the self that is not killed when the body is killed, then of karma yoga, the discipline of acting without clinging to the result, then of devotion and of knowledge. In the eleventh chapter Arjuna asks to see what Krishna really is, and is given the vision of the Vishvarupa, the universal form in which all beings and all time are contained. He is overwhelmed and asks Krishna to return to the form he knows.
What it gave the world: action without attachment to its results, done for the welfare of all. Read the full account of Bhagwan Shri Krishna.
Bhagwan Mahavira
Vardhamana was born into a ruling family at Kundagrama, near Vaishali in present day Bihar. At thirty he gave away what he owned and left home. Jain tradition records twelve and a half years of wandering, fasting, silence and meditation, during which he accepted hardship and abuse without retaliation.
At the age of forty two, on the bank of the river Rijupalika near the village of Jrimbhika, seated under a sal tree, he attained Kevala Jnana. The term means knowledge that is complete and unobstructed. From then on he is Mahavira, the great hero, and the twenty fourth Tirthankara, a ford maker who shows others the crossing.
What it gave the world: ahimsa, non violence towards every living being, and the many sidedness of truth. Read the full account of Bhagwan Mahavira.
Gautama Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama was born at Lumbini and raised in comfort. The sight of old age, sickness and death led him to leave home at twenty nine. He studied with two meditation teachers and then spent six years in severe austerity, which brought him close to death and no closer to an answer.
He gave up the extremes, took food, and sat beneath a pipal tree at Bodh Gaya on the full moon night of Vaisakha. The texts describe the night in three watches: he recalled his former lives, he saw how beings pass on according to their actions, and he understood suffering, its cause, its end, and the path to its end. The word Buddha means one who has woken up, and bodhi is that awakening.
What it gave the world: forty five years of teaching the middle way, and compassion for all beings. Read the full account of Gautama Buddha.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)
Muhammad ibn Abdullah, peace be upon him, was born in Mecca around the year 570 and was known in the city as al Amin, the trustworthy. In his late thirties he began to withdraw for days at a time to a small cave called Hira, on the mountain now known as Jabal al Nour, the mountain of light.
In the year 610, during Ramadan, when he was forty, the angel Jibril came to him in the cave with the command Iqra, which means read or recite. The words that followed are the opening verses of Surah al Alaq, the first of the Qur'an to be revealed. He went home shaken. His wife Khadijah, may God be pleased with her, comforted him and became the first to believe.
What it gave the world: a message of mercy, justice, and care for the orphan, the poor and the traveller. Read the full account of The Prophet Muhammad.
Guru Nanak Dev Ji
Guru Nanak was born in 1469 at Talwandi, now Nankana Sahib. As a young man he worked as a storekeeper at Sultanpur Lodhi and bathed each morning in the river Bein.
Around 1499 he went into the river and did not come out. The town searched for three days. When he reappeared he stayed silent for a day, and then said: there is no Hindu, there is no Musalman. Sikh tradition holds that in those three days he stood in the presence of the One, and that the opening words of the Japji Sahib, Ik Onkar, come from that experience.
What it gave the world: one Creator, honest work, and langar, the kitchen where all sit and eat as equals. Read the full account of Guru Nanak Dev Ji.
Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
Gadadhar Chattopadhyay was born in 1836 in the village of Kamarpukur in Bengal. In 1856 he became priest of the new Kali temple at Dakshineswar, on the Ganga north of Calcutta.
Worship was not enough for him. He wanted to see the Mother. By his own account the longing became unbearable, and one day he reached for the sword that hung in the shrine, meaning to end his life. At that moment, he said, the room and the temple disappeared and he was lost in an ocean of light, with the Mother present in it.
What it gave the world: the harmony of religions and, through his disciples, service to people as worship. Read the full account of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.
Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi
Venkataraman Iyer was born in 1879 at Tiruchuli in Tamil Nadu. In July 1896 he was a schoolboy of sixteen living in his uncle's house in Madurai, in good health, when he was seized by the certainty that he was about to die.
He did not call for help. He lay down on the floor, held his breath, stiffened his body like a corpse and asked himself what was dying. The body would be carried away and burnt. Was he the body? He later said that the answer came as a direct fact and not as a thought: the I is not touched by death. The fear never came back.
What it gave the world: one question that anyone can ask, Who am I, and a door that was open to all who came. Read the full account of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.
Sadhguru
Jagadish Vasudev, known as Sadhguru, was born in Mysuru in 1957. By his own account he was a sceptical young man running a business, with no interest in spirituality.
He has often described the afternoon of 23 September 1982. He rode his motorcycle up Chamundi Hill, sat on a rock with his eyes open, and found that he could no longer tell what was him and what was not. The rock, the air and his own body felt like one thing. He thought ten minutes had passed. It was more than four hours, and his shirt was wet with tears.
What it gave the world: yoga taught at scale, and large volunteer efforts for rivers, soil and rural communities. Read the full account of Sadhguru.