A state where one directly knows the importance of important things and the unimportance of unimportant things. As example, let's imagine two men who test positive for HIV. The enlightened man goes out to his back yard, and enjoys the beautiful sunny day and the smell of the grass. The unenlightened man, on the other hand, weeps... paralyzes himself with fear... and wallows in self-pity.
I remember the Zen story:
A master knew he was dying. He went to the hall where the monks were training and said "I will die this evening."
"Oh no!" said the monks, beginning to weep. "You won't die!"
"Shut up, you fools!" said the master. "Bring me a shovel. I'm going to save you some work."
"Forgive" me for what may be perceived as the
morbidity of the tales. Western culture has an obsession with the
tragic side of
death that has no necessity or objective basis behind it.