I have never heard a Buddhist monk respond "Yes" to the question "Are you enlightened?”. The reason seems pretty clear to me: It sounds egotistical to say so. This, in my view, implies an admission that the concept of "enlightenment" is to some extent fraught with egotism/ self importance when applied realistically to oneself. One can only ignore this if one postulates some ideal or hypothetical individual "out there" or "in the past" who was enlightened, as it is easier to imagine and rationalize it in the world of symbols, than in the world of flesh and blood, defecating, flawed humans. And of course, we are all familiar with lay people pridefully letting others know how farther along the path they are. Now, it is obviously possible to achieve a certain relaxedness in respect to one’s ego. A certain reduction in ego defenses. But this, I think entails being honest about our inevitable need for ego gratification. To use an every day simile: admit that you're always going to end up eating at least a slice of chocolate cake from your fridge before you end up eating the whole cake and pretending it was lettuce. This honest awareness about inevitable ego allocation should extend to the belief in countless reincarnations as well, which does entail an indefinite postponement of dissolution/ death - an indefinite preservation of some part of oneself, of one’s ego. This is not to assert a purely materialistic description of the world––denying the possibility of some metaphysical reality. The tremendous creativity of the universe we are part of leaves open the door to many possibilities. Nor do I want to downplay the great benefits of Buddhist practice. But in terms of ego allocation, we do know that former Buddhist monks (like Stephen Batchelor), who had serious doubts about doctrines like karma and reincarnation, almost invariably disrobe, maintaining some buddhist practices, but reaching more instead for other earthly sources of ego gratification like technophilia, artistic achievement or perhaps for some alcohol and psychedelics as well (which deal with the ego in a different manner). From the perspective of Ernest Becker and Terror Management Theory, the ego is largely a reflex of some unconscious fear of death. Death represents, in our minds, finitude and insignificance. So we try to achieve importance and cultural durability to compensate. And we do so with the small, flimsy constructs of culture, since it is hard to not feel insignificant when looking out into this vast and mysterious universe. But we are part of it, and as such, we should learn to at least partially accept the anxiety (& awe) it evokes. While of course also accepting the need for those flimsy constructs of culture, and the need to allocate our ego therein ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrgfsnMRQnc

A study says 3 billion will catch omicron, which is of course not the last variant. https://www.king5.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/university-washington-ihme-forecast-covid-19-omicron-variant/281-5a05658d-eb48-4046-9be9-b10529eb6f7b Then another recent University of Michigan study says: “The empirical findings suggest a global PASC prevalence of approximately 43%.” “Globally, the pooled PASC prevalence estimate was 0.43, whereas the pooled PASC prevalence estimate for patients who had to be hospitalized due to COVID-19 was 0.57.” It also mentions that “a German study found 34.8% of COVID-19 patients with only a mild acute infection had PASC at 7 months.” https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.15.21266377v1 That means over 1 billion people with Long Covid. Unfortunately, the rate of Long Covid in breakthrough infections is the same as that of the unvaccinated https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/long-covid-risk-no-lower-with-breakthrough-infection-covid-19-survival-improves-2021-11-24/ ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf2P6SsoSIw

An excerpt from Gondry's: "Is the Man who is Tall Happy?" ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6o7ZSaSObQ

Something that we lost long ago https://youtu.be/FBFToDoxYX0 ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQDiI_3XgDc