Enlightenment
Enlightenment, in Chinese “覺悟” (“jue2wu4”, something like “awake-aware”) or sometimes just “覺”, is a central concept in Zen, right from its Buddhist origins (since the word “Buddha” means, precisely, “awake”). To reach an Enlightened (mental) state is the goal of any unenlightened Zen adept.
As has already been noted, the exact nature of Enlightenment is not easy to describe, and to do so would anyway be contrary to Enlightenment itself. But we can give some ideas for the benefit of minds still not free from dualism.
Enlightenment is a form of liberation: very roughly, liberation from the material world, but that is not an accurate description because it reeks of mysticism. To be Enlightened one must remove the mental barriers one has constructed and the dualism of one's vision. The Enlightened is One with the Universe.
Exactly how difficult Enlightenment is to each, is unclear. Superficially it may appear as a difficult quest, a life goal's accessible only to the happy few. But the answer, and the question itself, is contrary to Enlightenment: for Enlightenment is as difficult as you set it to be. You can travel as far as you will on the path, and never reach the end because there is no end: it is only when you knowyou have reached your goal that you are Enlightened.
Being Enlightened is a very much like understanding a joke: often it makes no sense to spell out the terms of the joke. Either you “get” it, or you don't .
It is also worth mentioning at this point that Enlightenment is not madness or a form of madness.
Zen is no philosophy.
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