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Was the Buddha a 'meta human'?
lobster
Crusty Veteran
In the currency of cinema and the emerging and potential training in virtual reality, a new super hero emerges:
X-men, Super-men, Dr Strange and Wonder Woman (now available as a United Nations Ambassador) are all meta humans. Freaks of evolutionary random permutations ...
Are the mystics and Buddhas the reality? People with extraordinary Zennith ordinariness?
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Now that's about what I would expect from people that design virtual reality (isn't all of non enlightened activity just virtual reality, and who wants more of that anyway?) and the folks who make movies, which are yet another form of non reality.
I find that when enlightenment is operating rather than "me", then the world really is magical and super real, and connections occur in real time in a manner that never happens w/o that enlightenment because, as the song goes, it's instant karma. Those connections and sense of magic, which is actually just ordinary reality w/o our ego filtering it, may or may not be being made whenever enlightenment is not operating. Maybe we are just not able to experience that when we're back into small mind operation, but I have no way to know if that is correct.
Buddhas are you, me, the cat (maybe not the dog......mu!), the trees, all that. Unlike "all that", we humans have developed an ego through conditioning and programming that starts up the moment we are born, so getting back to being Buddhas requires de programming and dropping that programming and conditioning, which is what happens in meditation and mindfulness. During those operations we are not trying to do anything about anything, nor are we not trying to do anything about anything, but we are not, not trying to do anything about anything.
Or, in a much abbreviated, Cliff Notes Zen way of answering your question, yes, that is exactly what mystics and Buddhas are, but perhaps not too.
Exactly so @DhammaDragon
To put it another way do the 'super powers' of Nirvana reveal the qualities of our potential?
Are compassion, wisdom, siddhis, right origami (part of the 8 fold path) etc. all a form of super being?
Wisdom, compassion are no superpowers, @lobster.
They are seeds we can choose to allow to sprout.
They may look like superpowers these days because we live in an age where such values tend to get lost down the materialistic and individualistic drain.
But as the Buddha pointed out, any man can achieve through pure human effort, the feat he attained.
Indeed. Just common sense/humanity/grown up behaviour.
I am gonna talk a little about the arising of siddhis as I have experience of those. They seem very natural, almost inevitable. For example you will perhaps be aware of how yoga and meditation makes you more aglow and attractive to people, animals and good karma. This is the 'power' of increased calm. Situations respond to the light.
Another siddhi related to the power of attraction is the result of equinimity. Objectivity, being 'in the world but not of the world' as the Gnostics put it, enables the ability to increasingly do the right thing. This is subtle behavour, it changes. In some situations less is more. In some environments more is required ... In some contra to convention may unfold ...
Serendipity. The universe looks after us when we serve her. We become increasingly in the right place at the right time, in the right way. We have to increase our humility, nobody needs a smart-ass Buddhist ... well maybe as a temporary measure ...
We iz Metta-human. Iz plan!
According to the sutras, it was believed during Buddha's lifetime or at least soon after his death that he had superhuman powers after Enlightenment. Poor Ananda was scolded for not asking Buddha to cancel his own death, something supposed to be in his powers. Other stories of miracles are sprinkled around the sutras.
I think it depends who you believe... in the Jataka tales there is an episode recounted of how Shakayamuni Buddha in a past life met one of the previous Buddha's, and it goes on at great length talking about this Buddha's attributes and signs. So perhaps there is a tendency to create super beings out of the histories of the past, which seem a bit far fetched.
But I don't think the path to compassion, wisdom and so on are part of becoming a kind of super being. Gautama Buddha was just a man, his abilities were mostly in his teaching prowess. It is likely enlightenment and the path to that state transforms your mind, and who knows what that makes you in the spiritual realm.
There is something about command of the body and spirit though. There have been a few instances where the enlightened have been known to choose the time of their death.
By definition, if the Buddha was Meta, then we are all Meta.
Buddha arises from a common being (human being in our cases).
Awakened = Buddha
Unawakened = Common (Ordinary) Person
Now back to contemplation over my coffee.
Peace to all
Wisdom and compassion might not be superpowers, though I suspect maybe they are.
But pondering the facets and implications of the prevailing religion of the land, juxtaposing teachings against observation and perception, becoming uniquely enlightened, developing an entirely new perspective and path, spending decades teaching it, impacting millions of people for millennia to come, in a way not precedented and never repeated, might qualify.
No.
Thanks guys.
I consider ordinariness and realisation two important understandings.
so like this:
or ...
oar paddling?