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Will you be a buddha?
Jeffrey
Veteran
Perhaps @lobster got me thinking as he is trying for Buddhahood this year.
But my train of thought was I was getting a glass of water and it occured to me that one day I might be a Buddha. It was comforting to think that all the hard things I deal with such as a mental illness and distressed subtle body (medication) was going eventually to become a Buddha. All of the suffering I feel and it could all go in the direction of a Buddha. There are countless people suffering and think what a wonderful thing to forever head in the right direction and do what we can do to help self and other.
But my train of thought was I was getting a glass of water and it occured to me that one day I might be a Buddha. It was comforting to think that all the hard things I deal with such as a mental illness and distressed subtle body (medication) was going eventually to become a Buddha. All of the suffering I feel and it could all go in the direction of a Buddha. There are countless people suffering and think what a wonderful thing to forever head in the right direction and do what we can do to help self and other.
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Comments
If not, call me a sentimental mahayanist but I will keep popping into existence until such time as everyone is Buddha pop corn . . .
I am sure if a Buddha in training, you would develop similar sentiments :clap:
You can run, you can hide but eventually . . . There you are . . .
Ya still can't go there with out being here.
When releasing from the tree, you are carried where the wind blows.
Thoughts of controlling where you want to land is just the ego dearly hanging onto that branch.
Like some perk you gain in a video game after gathering enough XP (experience).
Becoming some super human floating around, humming, with flowers suddenly appearing everywhere?
I like the Brad Warner approach. Farting on the couch, hoping your partner won't smell it, that's enlightenment. Bumping your litte toe against the side of the bed, hurting like crazy, that's enlightenment. Lighting up incense, making you sneeze, that's enlightenment.
All is enlightenment, it's just a proces becoming aware of that.
Drugs, girls, rampant indulgence in all the sensory pleasures?
I don't understand the leaf/wind analogy.
The future, like the past, doesn't exist. There is only this moment and what you choose to realise in it.
Belief (or lack thereof) has nothing to do with it. Our problem is that we have beliefs and views in the first place, and we get easily stuck on them and our dualistic thinking. And so we end up chasing enlightenment around no different than how we chase wealth, sensual pleasure, fame, a god or heaven, anything. Buddha is not somewhere else, separate from us. It is only our thinking that makes it seem that way:
Who looks for me in form
who seeks me in a voice
indulges in wasted effort
such people see me not.
~Diamond Sutra (chapter 26, translated by Red Pine)
Is that not the case?
In zazen, thoughts are not to be chased not repressed, but observed and then dropped. When there is nothing left to drop, not even dropping, what is left?
(...And yet I currently understand this only from the point of view of samsara myself!)
I see your point as well I have heard that suffering is illusory. But it sure fools me with the illusion!
I just remembered the beautiful story of the prodigal son in the Lotus Sutra (chapter 4), which I think is very relevant here:
A young man left his father and ran away. For long he dwelt in other countries, for ten, or twenty, or fifty years. The older he grew, the more needy he became. Wandering in all directions to seek clothing and food, he unexpectedly approached his native country. The father had searched for his son all those years in vain and meanwhile had settled in a certain city. His home became very rich; his goods and treasures were fabulous.
At this time, the poor son, wandering through village after village and passing through countries and cities, at last reached the city where his father had settled. The father had always been thinking of his son, yet, although he had been parted from him over fifty years, he had never spoken of the matter to anyone. He only pondered over it within himself and cherished regret in his heart, saying, "Old and worn out I am. Although I own much wealth - gold, silver, and jewels, granaries and treasuries overflowing - I have no son. Some day my end will come and my wealth will be scattered and lost, for I have no heir. If I could only get back my son and commit my wealth to him, how contented and happy would I be, with no further anxiety!"
Meanwhile the poor son, hired for wages here and there, unexpectedly arrived at his father's house. Standing by the gate, he saw from a distance his father seated on a lion-couch, his feet on a jeweled footstool, and with expensive strings of pearls adorning his body, revered and surrounded by priests, warriors, and citizens, attendants and young slaves waiting upon him right and left. The poor son, seeing his father having such great power, was seized with fear, regretting that he had come to this place. He reflected, "This must be a king, or someone of royal rank, it is impossible for me to be hired here. I had better go to some poor village in search of a job, where food and clothing are easier to get. If I stay here long, I may suffer oppression." Reflecting thus, he rushed away.
Meanwhile the rich elder on his lion-seat had recognized his son at first glance, and with great joy in his heart reflected, "Now I have someone to whom I may pass on my wealth. I have always been thinking of my son, with no means of seeing him, but suddenly he himself has come and my longing is satisfied. Though worn with years, I yearn for him."
Instantly he sent off his attendants to pursue the son quickly and fetch him back. Immediately the messengers hasten forth to seize him. The poor son, surprised and scared, loudly cried his complaint, "I have committed no offense against you, why should I be arrested?" The messengers all the more hastened to lay hold of him and brought him back. Following that, the poor son, thought that although he was innocent he would be imprisoned, and that now he would surely die. He became all the more terrified, fainted away and fell on the ground. The father, seeing this from a distance, sent word to the messengers, "I have no need for this man. Do not bring him by force. Sprinkle cold water on his face to restore him to consciousness and do not speak to him any further." Why? The father, knowing that his son's disposition was inferior, knowing that his own lordly position had caused distress to his son, yet convinced that he was his son, tactfully did not say to others, "This is my son."
A messenger said to the son, "I set you free, go wherever you will." The poor son was delighted, thus obtaining the unexpected release. He arose from the ground and went to a poor village in search of food and clothing. Then the elder, desiring to attract his son, set up a device. Secretly he sent two men, sorrowful and poor in appearance, saying, "Go and visit that place and gently say to the poor man, 'There is a place for you to work here. We will hire you for scavenging, and we both also will work along with you.'" Then the two messengers went in search of the poor son and, having found him, presented him the above proposal. The poor son, having received his wages in advance, joined them in removing a refuse heap.
His father, beholding the son, was struck with compassion for him. One day he saw at a distance, through the window, his son's figure, haggard and drawn, lean and sorrowful, filthy with dirt and dust. He took off his strings of jewels, his soft attire, and put on a coarse, torn and dirty garment, smeared his body with dust, took a basket in his right hand, and with an appearance fear-inspiring said to the laborers, "Get on with your work, don't be lazy." By such means he got near to his son, to whom he afterwards said, "Ay, my man, you stay and work here, do not leave again. I will increase your wages, give whatever you need, bowls, rice, wheat-flour, salt, vinegar, and so on. Have no hesitation; besides there is an old servant whom you can get if you need him. Be at ease in your mind; I am, as it were, your father; do not be worried again. Why? I am old and advanced in years, but you are young and vigorous; all the time you have been working, you have never been deceitful, lazy, angry or grumbling. I have never seen you, like the other laborers, with such vices as these. From this time forth you will be as my own begotten son."
The elder gave him a new name and called him a son. But the poor son, although he rejoiced at this happening, still thought of himself as a humble hireling. For this reason, for twenty years he continued to be employed in scavenging. After this period, there grew mutual confidence between the father and the son. He went in and out and at his ease, though his abode was still in a small hut.
Then the father became ill and, knowing that he would die soon, said to the poor son, "Now I possess an abundance of gold, silver, and precious things, and my granaries and treasuries are full to overflowing. I want you to understand in detail the quantities of these things, and the amounts that should be received and given. This is my wish, and you must agree to it. Why? Because now we are of the same mind. Be increasingly careful so that there be no waste." The poor son accepted his instruction and commands, and became acquainted with all the goods. However, he still had no idea of expecting to inherit anything, his abode was still the original place and he was still unable to abandon his sense of inferiority.
After a short time had again passed, the father noticed that his son's ideas had gradually been enlarged, his aspirations developed, and that he despised his previous state of mind. Seeing that his own end was approaching, he commanded his son to come, and gathered all his relatives, the kings, priests, warriors, and citizens. When they were all assembled, he addressed them saying, "Now, gentlemen, this is my son, begotten by me. It is over fifty years since, from a certain city, he left me and ran away to endure loneliness and misery. His former name was so-and-so and my name was so-and-so. At that time in that city I sought him sorrowfully. Suddenly I met him in this place and regained him. This is really my son and I am really his father. Now all the wealth which I possess belongs entirely to my son, and all my previous disbursements and receipts are known by this son." When the poor son heard these words of his father, great was his joy at such unexpected news, and thus he thought, "Without any mind for, or effort on my part, these treasures now come to me."
World-honored One! The very rich elder is the Tathagata, and we are all as the Buddha's sons. The Buddha has always declared that we are his sons. But because of the three sufferings, in the midst of births-and-deaths we have borne all kinds of torments, being deluded and ignorant and enjoying our attachment to things of no value. Today the World-honored One has caused us to ponder over and remove the dirt of all diverting discussions of inferior things. In these we have hitherto been diligent to make progress and have got, as it were, a day's pay for our effort to reach nirvana. Obtaining this, we greatly rejoiced and were contented, saying to ourselves, "For our diligence and progress in the Buddha-law what we have received is ample". The Buddha, knowing that our minds delighted in inferior things, by his tactfulness taught according to our capacity, but still we did not perceive that we are really Buddha's sons. Therefore we say that though we had no mind to hope or expect it, yet now the Great Treasure of the King of the Law has of itself come to us, and such things that Buddha-sons should obtain, we have all obtained.
It's a good question.
In the process of transiting from ego/identity to it's absence, ( Buddhist practise) you go from feeling your own inertial significance to knowing that there was never any real individual you that had any significance. Classically referred to as being a bubble in a stream, a phantasm, a dream but most of that is just an issue of context.
In the absence of a dominant ego identity, one feels no more the captain of ones ship than a leaf would, being carried in a Buddha blown wind. As a monk does not decide what offering he'll accept in his begging bowl, likewise an unsui abandons his likes and dislikes for whatever the path to the cessation of suffering offers.
To be fully present and open in the moment is to surrender to where ever the meditation carries you. Trying to assert one arrival point over another, is just identity remnants still in need of being let go off.
In the leaf/wind analogy.. Your skandhas are the leaf, and the wind is just the wider reality that is experienced with the dissipation of our attachments to those skandas.
To the ego it's chaos, to the unsui it's home.
Remove the conditioning, buddha appears.
Does this guy know what to say?
http://the-wanderling.com/awakened.html
Do or Do Not. There Is No Try
yoda - enlightened puppet?
If you tell people they are inherently unrealised Buddhas
They feel justified in non action
Tell them work is required and they tighten into 'polishing a stone to make a mirror'.
Relax your tightening
and tighten the lax
and the thread my become a string
and find the right note
I think it would be depressing to say I am already a Buddha, because I am unhappy and I want to feel better. I find the direct opposite. If you have a diamond in your back pocket why would you be careless with it? Don't take the analogy to far to a John Steinbeck the Pearl reference.
Till then we shall polish the mirror.
And for those who can drop mind and body into this clear function. Well then that is ceaseless enlightenment. Thus Dogen figured out that practice-enlightenment is the way after realization.
Taking that to account: there is gradual cultivation prior to and after satori. And this is possible because there is no-thing to begin with.
The breath comes in and the breath goes out.
(Sorry Jeffrey, off topic on ur thread)
Don't wish to be Buddha, don't hope to be Buddha, don't talk of being Buddha, simply BE Buddha.
It will catch on and soon we ALL will be Buddha...
You simply act as if.
Simple. And hugely difficult without input from a hands-on teacher.
Yea, it is simple... and if one can read and comprehend the Precepts, 4NT and 8FP, there really is no absolute need for a teacher, hands-on or otherwise.
The only reason people think there is a need for a teacher, is because people think there is a need for a teacher....
So I have to respectfully and gently disagree with that.
As Situ Rinpoche says in a much quoted sound bite;
" Show me a person with twenty years experience in meditation without a teacher ,and I might show you someone who has had one years experience...twenty times."
I have seen this in action a number of times. People who are becalmed at some point in their practice and who cannot lift themselves out of the hole by their own bootlaces.
You see some of the people who assure everyone that they have never needed a teacher ( this is not personal MaryAnne, I dont know your circumstances ) neglect to mention two things ..one the fact that they have had a teacher in the past..which amounts to the sentiments expressed by a well known Brit saying " pull the ladder up Jack, I'm all right "
And two the large numbers of those without teachers who simply give up the whole kit and caboodle after a year, or after five years.
I much prefer trying my best to allow the Buddha's teachings to inspire my actions. It gives me a nice buffer for when my humanity messes it all up. Maybe someday I'll look back and realize that it's been a long time since I've messed things up... that'd be nice.