Perhaps you know, perhaps you don't:  December 8 was Bodhi Day.  What's Bodhi Day? It is the day (the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month), remembered by Buddhists around the world, on which the Buddha is believed to have attained his enlightenment, that moment when he came to definitively understand the nature of life and suffering.
     And what did the Buddha decide?  Life, he concluded, is about suffering.  And this suffering, he added, is caused by our craving for things of impermanence.  But we can eliminate this craving, he insisted, by following the Eightfold Path (the most important of these being right mindfulness).
     On many points, the Buddha was right.  Suffering is intrinsic to existence, and we all seek things that do not last.  As to whether all of our suffering is due to this craving, well, maybe not.  But the point remains:  we tend to desire the impermanent things of this world.  Even if we wish to be more "spiritual," we often frame this in the context of the present world, not in what may lay beyond it.
     The Buddha was also insightful in his solution:  right mindfulness.  We must train our mind to focus on things that matter, to concentrate on what lasts.  Mental discipline is essential to personal wholeness.
     On the other hand, history has demonstrated that Socrates' contention that knowledge is virtue, that knowing the right thing is to do the right thing, will never, in this life, be true.  While cultivating right mindfulness is good and proper, mental discipline will not prevent all moral transgression.  Moral error requires a moral response, and morality is not the product of chemical exchange.  It is the fruit of transcendent activity in the human being.
     Real enlightenment requires a real God.