I hate to fly in the face of what a lot of smart people think (ok, not really) but nothing I've ever seen or read from Jiddu Krishnamurti made any sense whatsoever, or was profound in the least.
What's the difference between awakening and enlightenment, in your view?
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awakening is when you get your first experiential proof that you are not all that crap. So, for example, my first awakening got me "I am not my personality". Didn't get me "I am not my body." Further awakenings got me other stuff.
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as for enlightenment. /shrug/ there are a fair number of definitions that seem reasonable "I am everything/nothing", Jiva-mukti (end of new conditioning), the dissolving and reassembly of sense data, etc... Not sure which is "enlightenment". Am sure I am not enlightened.
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however, other people use the words in other ways, and I am not saying they are wrong. This is just how I used them. I will say that this causes problem. My first main teacher told me I was enlightened. I said "uh, don't think so". He meant what I mean by awakened.
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Let's not forget that "enlightenment" is a late western translation of "bodhi", which is also exactly where the term "awakening" comes from. So the distinction is, at best, a little murky. There isn't even a consensus among Buddhists as to what the Buddha "woke up" from (or to).
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Personally I don't like these terms. They only start Buddhist flame wars and confuse people. Seems to me that "enlightenment" is just a placeholder for some vague notion of an "ultimate" attainment. The meaning changes depending on a tradition's language, culture, or metaphysics.
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Trying to get enlightened is a fool's errand, because it's a completely arbitrary goal. If you want insight into impermanence, do the specific practices that bring about that insight. If you want to glimpse emptiness or no-self, do the respective practices for these insights.
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Obviously it's a bit more complicated than that, but it's much more useful than lumping together 2,500 years of spiritual development across a variety of cultures.
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