Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Should I be a Buddha or Bodhisattva?
lobster
Crusty Veteran
Can we progress in Dharma without renunciation?is a question Sharonsaw asked in another thread. As someone destined to become a Buddha in 2013, I have to consider the options of renunciation.
Did the Buddha become a Bodhisattva after his enlightenment? Certainly seems that way.
Obviously for the sake of all beings (including the fish) I will have to renounce any renunciation to not become.
One of the vows of a Bodhisattva is to save every 'blade of grass'. I have noticed there is a lot of grass. :-/
What I may need is a dharma lawn mower? Every Buddha has to have a vehicle.
Maybe a grass seeder would work as well . . .
May all beings gain awakening.
Me especially.
:om:
0
Comments
So peaceful nirvana is a waystop and Buddha eventually calls on you to set out and complete the journey. The six paramitas are studied with resolve and wisdom. They are perfections in that they are non-grasping endless Buddha activity.
Some traditions say otherwise and this is off the top of my non-monk head.
But it is like a parent who could have peace but they take someone else into their heart and labor to make things the best for their kids. This has the side benefit of destroying ego. The bodhisattva path is the path to destroy ego and it is a path to become a Buddha.
I think it's a myth that a bodhisattva puts of becoming a Buddha without the distinction of peaceful and full nirvana. It's a myth just like telling the Theravada is only/mostly for monks which my 1970s encyclopedia had said is true.
One of these lifetimes I will state the victory cry of the Arahants -
"Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world."
Hey, but many, many thanks!!!
:rocker: :om:
I found your post interesting @Jeffrey. My teacher (Tibetan) explains it as Bodhisattva's being those who basically choose to not be enlightened until all beings can also be enlightened. They take vows to work specifically on behalf of others, not just themselves. I went to a retreat with Lama D. Dorjee and he basically said the same things. I found interesting that you stated it as renouncing peace in favor of love. I have never heard it described that way so it's something I am pondering. My teacher has said more than once that Bodhisattvas work towards the liberation of all beings. Of course, no one can liberate anyone else. I took it to mean, as far as he was saying anyhow, that they usually become teachers to help people along. It is up to me to liberate myself, but I am not sure I would have gotten very far in my practice without my teacher. Whether he is, or is working towards Bodhisattva and has taken vows, I do not know.
What does that mean?
........................................................................................................................................
(If I weren't averse to posting double posts, I'd have stopped there and then reposted this post in its entirety.)
Letting go of surety and abandoning yourself to loving all things? All creatures? I don't mean to narrow the scope here, though.
I think I understand Rumi's "Sell all your cleverness and pursue bewilderment," but I've also heard it said that those who know don't speak and those who don't know do speak.
The reason I mention Rumi's words here is that I think embracing bewilderment is embracing everything, which is love.
Find your way and follow it with all your heart... Open your mind to all possibilities and be mindful, and the Truth will be presented to you...
But actually the real bodhisattva path starts once two fold emptiness is realized. Because then the individual mindstream recognizes that actually one's life is the activity of compassion and that all things are already in completion. This life is the Buddha and the five skandhas are the activity of enlightenment. Then one gladly work towards Buddhahood by working on the paramitas/bhumis.
From another view point there is only one bhumi. Either you realize Buddhahood or you don't. But still we must assert a progressive path because of our karmic seeds of the past. It is empty but the appearances still manifest as the activity.
So what does this all mean in easy, simple talk?
It means everything already is accomplished if we stay in the knowledge of this. And it isn't something we can just fake, we must intuitively touch this fact of existence. And the path required of one will manifest as ones life.
But that is an idealistic view and for the most part not practical for most individuals.
The Buddha became the Buddha because of his countless lives as a Bodhisattva.
One suggestion I have is:
why? and what is this "I". And more importantly how is the "I" constructed?
I often see this as a "How many Angles can dance on the head of a pin" kind of issue, since those discussing it never look like they are currently in a position to choose either..
Where are the boundaries between self and other that even allow for a distinct Buddha or Bodhisattva. Choosing either, as an identity, is my definition of spiritual hubris.
Has anyone here really found themselves on the cusp of that fork on the spiritual path?
IMHO, Buddha and Bodhisattva are just two teachings to embrace within this very moment.
It's not Peace or love. It's about how not to choose one over the other.
Mostly I see Bodhisattva teachings as admonishments to practitioners to not stray towards Prechekka Buddha tendencies just as buddhahood teachings are the admonishment that says that only by transcending the self can you really help others.
In my studies, Bodhisattva teachings arose at the same time that large Buddhist centres were having problems with those who had became too comfortable with their own spiritual achievements. The Bodhisattva teaching was the perfect kick in the ass for those so afflicted.
Basically emptiness of phenomena and the compassion aspect was being neglected in the early schools. The early schools posited a thing that is remained after one attains the emptiness of self. The highlight of this would be an Arhat who attains individual nirvana all while the world burns and crumbles.
The view inherent in such schools is dualistic. Freedom is always apart and independent from everything. Samsara and nirvana do not touch.
The view inherent in Mahayana is nondualistic. Samsara and nirvana are the same. Individual freedom is only relevant to help the broader world's vehicle towards freedom, all while maintaining the realization that everything is completed thus infinite lifetimes as a helper is all one can do.
I do think they both lead to the same arena which is freedom from suffering. But they are stylistically different and different individuals will feel drawn towards each vehicle based on their karma.
But anyone who has practiced the dharma understands that the differences are completely conceptual.
The way I understand it, in classical Indian/Asian terms samsara is a great recycling circle through which even gods get recycled into worms and such until nirvana/extinguishment frees the being from this endless round of being chained to either a bodily or other confining existence.
Therefore nirvana is the ending of samsara, or the escape from it.
But I think taiyaki was saying that nirvana is transformed samsaric conditioning (is that right word?) resulting in nirvana which is complete wisdom and compassion.
The Buddha reached nirvana under the Bodhi tree at the approximate age of 35. If nirvana was the end of 'being chained to either a bodily or other confining existence', as you put it, then surely he would have simply ceased to be at that point? However, the story goes that he lived to the age of 80 and it was then that he was released from the cycle of rebirth (parinirvana).
About samsara and nirvana being the same, I recall that being a part of the Two Truths Doctrine, specifically taught in Mahayana Buddhism (?). The doctrine also being taught in Theravada, but not in relation to nirvana and samsara being the same.
You cannot understand this intellectually, the dualistic mind won't allow it.
But it is something one can experience and realize through practice and immersing oneself in this instant with total trust.
I cannot give you an adequate answer but the metaphor above should do.
The five skandhas apprehended as inherent existent or having independent existence is the cause of samsara.
The five skandhas apprehended as empty of inherent existence is the cause of nirvana.
The activity of enlightenment is the skandhas when correctly apprehended.
Becoming a Buddha is just releasing an imaginary hand that believed that there were imaginary objects. No coming and going, no arising, unborn, unfabricated appearances.
This is very difficult to accept if one follows a dualistic vehicle.
The very heart of longing is both the seed of enlightenment and the seed of ignorance.
This is the view of Mahayana and Vajrayana but those are built on the view of Hinayana.
So I understand your confusion and conflict.
Nice.
something along these lines perhaps . . .
There may be trouble ahead
But while there's moonlight and music
And love and romance
Let's face the music and dance
oh the humanity
So the emergence of Buddha, Bodhi or 'Super-cructacean' is something to give up.
. . . Gosh such wisdom . . . I could almost be a Buddha . . . :wave:
Peace Be on You!