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French Voters Abandon Macron
In a stunning rout, French President Emmanuel Macron lost his absolute majority Sunday to the resurgent right and ascendent left.
In French, they call it, “étonnement,”- it means, “a sudden wrenching self-beholding.”
There are other words for it: Enlightenment, epiphany, satori. Lots of world languages have felt the need to vocalize the concept. Hence, there are many words dedicated to communicating it.
Most major religions and famous philosophers have had a word for it, too; a way of describing one of the central experiences of a human life.
Fans of Oprah know it as an, “Ah-ha Moment.” Writers like Eckhart Tolle describe it happening in a single, blinding flash; a thunderclap instant of sea-change akin to a mountain falling into the sea.
Plato might have called it, “Leaving the Cave.” Schrödinger might have expressed it as, “Opening the Box.”
Taoists might call it the Tao, since the nature of the Tao is returning; beholding a familiar thing and truly seeing it for the first time, new. But, “the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao,” as it says in the very first lines of the Tao Te Ching, so perhaps not.
Tibetan Zen Buddhists like the late Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche might have even called it, “Dharma,” as in, “The body of teachings that…