"Are you a god?" they asked. "No." "An angel?" "No." "A saint?" "No." "Then what are you?"
Buddha answered, "I am awake."
His answer became his title, for this is what Buddha means. The Sanskrit root budh denotes both to wake up and to know. Buddha, then, means the "Enlightened One" or the "Awakened One." While the rest of the world was wrapped in the womb of sleep, dreaming a dream known as the waking state of human life, one of their number roused himself. Buddhism begins with a man who shook off the daze, the doze, the dream-like vagaries of ordinary awareness. It begins with the man who woke up.
--Huston Smith
Via Tricycle.com
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