Enlightenment is Real:

Student: What if this "enlightenment" stuff is the game of the mind or the ego or whatever?

Master: Wrong.

Watts said that trying not to get it is still a way of trying to get it. Enlightenment is not to be confused with self-entitlement. In short: just being is not enough. So to speak of enlightenment as one's natural state is insufficient; one has to work to actualise one's nature, and to maintain it, lest it fall into decay. It's in man's nature to act.

That being said: obviously suffering has a reason, and that reason is ignorance. As such ignorance has its opposite, which is enlightenment. Whilst all opposites are illusory so is the distinction betwixt illusion and reality. So duality is real.

Buddhism seeks the ideal state of non-duality. But Taoism acknowledges that life is in constant flux so such a state does not exist. Paradoxically Taoism arrives at the mindset that Buddhism theorises.

To resist the urge to heal and purify the Soul is to resist humanity. That is a mistake. It is not the ego but the Soul that seeks transcendence. The ego is perpetually self-content, even though it strives. It is content to strive. But the Soul interjects and subverts the ego. This is enlightenment. It can occur spontaneously, but it can all so be attained voluntarily. This voluntary attainment is not an egoic goal, though the ego may be involved and ultimately transcended.

Dm.A.A.