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How Did Buddha Discover the Answers to the Universe Under a Tree?
Transmetaphysical
Veteran
I know that Buddhism revokes the supernatural and anything miraculous, yet one aspect seems to be unexplainable and miraculous. That is, how did Buddha uncover the answers to the Universe by meditating in deep contemplation under a tree?
In meditation, aren't you in a state of thoughtlessness? I think that a commentator in a BBC documentary explained it rather well, but it doesn't fully answer my inquiry. He said that Buddhas mind was like an absolutely still lake and his mind was ultra sensitive and could percieve any disturbance in the stillness.
I think such a feat is just extraordinary and hard to believe.
Thoughts?
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In meditation, aren't you in a state of thoughtlessness? I think that a commentator in a BBC documentary explained it rather well, but it doesn't fully answer my inquiry. He said that Buddhas mind was like an absolutely still lake and his mind was ultra sensitive and could percieve any disturbance in the stillness.
I think such a feat is just extraordinary and hard to believe.
Thoughts?
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0
Comments
not become enlighten necessary, just deep meditations. and you'll know how.
to me, meditation always seemed to be only a practice of calming the mind, nothing else happen.
Until "things" started to happen
if you do not meditate much perhaps just read about Jhanas and the experiences of other mediators.
Absolutely not. That is why meditation in a state of thoughtlessness (though it is possible briefly) does not bring about enlightenment.
I would be more interested in what I am seeing in my own mind than curious about what buddha saw under a tree. Get interested in your own experience. Buddha had no essence that you lack.
The reason is that you have a precious human life. You are entangled ever deeper in karma. Suffering of this world is great. And life is impermanent.
but not unconsciousness.
No, of course not. meditation is stilling the mind, calming it, and being able to control the coming and going of thoughts. But it's not necessarily the elimination of all thought, all together.
Samatha is sometimes compared to making the mind like the surface of a lake. Still, calm, quiet and motionless.... Vipassana is the exploration of the deeper lake....
"You do not believe. And that is why you fail". (Yoda to Luke, in SW - 'The Return of the Jedi')
Thought-less......;)
Re-read the story of his enlightenment. He realized that the state of restful openness he experienced as a child in his father's garden could help him. He sat under the tree and cultivated that state regardless of what he experienced. This led to observation of dependent origination on the basis of his internal recollection and experience. That's it. That's all there is to it. There are no answers to "the universe" in what he did, whatever that would mean.
I was under the impression that Buddha taught the Three Marks of Existence, Emptiness, the 5 Aggregates, 6 sense bases, and many other precepts describing existence.
Buddha: "The Tathagata sees the Universe face to face and understands its nature."
Source: http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/btg/btg50.htm
What about Abhidhamma that was contemplated on the 7th week of his meditation under the Bodhi Tree?
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If the world is an illusion, I daresay the Universe is one too.
back to the suffering-drawing-board, Trans.....
How do you know this when its completely inaccurate?
All traditions of Buddhism have some pretty heavy supernatural elements to them. Whether or not they are useful or used by many practitioners today the scriptures and commentaries of all traditions are absolutely jam-packed with supernatural and miraculous references.
I agree, I think you need to be at least a 3rd level streamstepper before you can use BOLD.
And remember, the first word of italic is "I"....
"I forbid you, O bhikkhus, to employ any spells or supplications, for they are useless, since the law of karma governs all things. He who attempts to perform miracles has not understood the doctrine of the Tathagata."
Source: http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/btg/btg43.htm
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spells seems to fit more in the category of imaginary as oppose to supernatural.
I've been listening to Alan Watts for over a year and several other philosophers and thinkers inspired by Buddhism.
However, I dont think there is an official amount of time to understand Buddhism. People learn at different paces.
Um, I didn't bold my declarations. I bolded Buddhas declarations.
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That's about all I've got to say about that, mmhmm.
Namaste
Nothing more to really say.
True. My post was meant primarily to address the miracles.
Though, the quote implies that nothing can violate the law of karma (cause and effect).
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I never claimed superior understanding. You did. You said I was inexperienced and not allowed to express my understanding of Buddhism.
I don't see why you feel the need to derail my topics and turn them into attacks on me. That's a red herring ad hominem fallacy.
When I express my understanding of Buddhism, I expect others who disagree to explain why, rather than say I'm wrong for not having experience.
I don't want this thread to get deleted so I ask that you stay on topic and stop bringing in my personal life into this.
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Karma is true as is the statement "the sun rises in the east". It is relative, merely labeled, and related to causes and conditions.
I agree.
If you couldn't taste anything for some reason, it would be interesting to read about the taste of an apple, even learn things from those who experienced it, but you can never understand what is the taste of an apple unless you experience it.
I mean, when you come right down to it, the story about the Bodhi tree doesn't even have to be literally true. Call it an "allegory" or a legend, and you still have the teaching. And the teaching either works or it doesn't.
The Buddha put it succinctly in another place, where he said “I teach
only dukkha and the ending of dukkha.” (Alagaddūpama Sutta)
But some think, myself included, that the cessation of dukka is foundationally connected to the true nature of the universe.
That "only" is perhaps a bit misleading?
Exactly. Ignorance/delusion is one of the three poisons and Right View is the crux of the Eightfold Path (as explained by BuddhaNet).
And as I quoted earlier, the Tathagata sees the Universe face to face and understands it's nature.
And even if you want to believe that Buddha ONLY taught the cessation of suffering, you still must acknowledge that Right View and Understanding is part of that.
Understanding reality as it is helps you escape the suffering.
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think of it as a paradigm shift.
lets take the "planet earth is flat" example.
suffering would be the danger that the boats fall off the edge of the earth.
Once you realize that the earth is round, the danger that the boats fall off the edge (suffering) become a non issue.
This is why it is "the cessation of suffering", not "escaping or helping you cope with suffering".
What you can achieve by reading about Buddhism is "escaping or helping you cope with suffering".
Namaste
http://zenhsin.org/zenphilosophy/blake_zen.html
which, not surprisingly, talks about William Blake and Zen.
It's not so much a matter of "the Buddha discovering all this while sitting at the base of a tree" as it is a matter of all the cumulative efforts and insights that had gone through his mind and emotions up to that point "gelling" at that point in his life, and then (apparently) he was able to put that all into words and teachings from then on.
And I would just repeat that Buddhism would still be what it is if it were found that the Buddha was not a real historical figure, and that the writings were compilations of philosophy and other methods of "phenomenological analysis" current at the time.
One thing I keep thinking back to is the simple process of making bread dough. A person gets all the ingredients for bread dough together and puts them in a bowl, and then starts to mix or knead them. At one point it's ingredients, and then somehow through the process suddenly it becomes bread dough, which seems simple enough- but to some people (me anyway) the sudden appearance of bread dough from what was just ingredients a few moments before is one of life's little, well, "miracles". For me, that equates with the Zen saying "before I studied Zen, mountains were mountains and rivers were rivers, but while I was studying Zen mountains were not mountains and rivers were not rivers, but after I studied enough Zen mountains were mountains and rivers were rivers.
It's not like the whole thing came to him all in one whole finished piece while he was sitting under the bodhi tree.
I think fivebells summed it perfectly. The way I see, the Buddha offers a structured approach that's said to lead to the end of suffering and stress, mainly through a combination of self-reflection and empirical observations of human experience. Hence, I see Buddhism as the study of our perceptions (or impressions) about reality in an effort to remove the suffering that faulty perceptions can create, and not necessarily the study of reality in and of itself.
Yes, the Buddha taught what are called the "three marks of existence" (tilakkhana) — dukkha, anicca and anatta — but he never actually called them that himself. The term itself is found nowhere in the Canon. Moreover, if you look at the context in which these terms are used, I think you'll see that the Buddha wasn't talking about anything beyond empirical observations and divisions of experience. The aggregates, for example, aren't simply descriptions of what constitutes a human being, they're just one of the many ways of looking at and dividing up experience that we find throughout the Pali Canon (e.g., aggregates, elements, six sense-media, etc.).
No.
"I think that a commentator in a BBC documentary explained it rather well, but it doesn't fully answer my inquiry. He said that Buddhas mind was like an absolutely still lake and his mind was ultra sensitive and could percieve any disturbance in the stillness."
That's what you get for taking a BBC commentator at face value.
It wasn't a BBC commentator. The Dalai Lama was in the documentary as well, but that doesn't make him a BBC commentator.
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I think Zen would be an exception here, especially modern day western style Zen. Nothing at all supernatural about sitting on a cushion and counting your breath. The OP mentioned that he has been listening to Alan Watts and he is most definitely of modern western Zen tradition. But, what he should have said is "I know that modern day western style Zen Buddhism revokes the supernatural and anything miraculous" Because that would be true.
I don't see how this is relevant to modern western Zen revoking the supernatural and anything miraculous, which Allan Watts does do. Whether or not he is "Zentertainment" is really a moot point. I don't recall anyone claiming him to be some kind of "serious master" or anything like that either, unless I missed something?
I think I hear your question, let me make sure. How could sitting under a tree unlock some kind of perception of the universe? For instance, how could one know about people who lament over death if the Buddha was observing a field of grass? Is it a metaphysical or mystical connection into some higher wisdom/akashic records or whatnot? How does a mind spontaneously move from normal perceptions to omniscience?
It has to do with space. Not space time, in the physics sense... but cognitive space, in the thinking sense. Imagine for a moment that all of our thoughts are like a house we live in, with items, furniture, walls, doors, etc. When we wish to understand something, we have to make it somehow fit into our house.
Try for instance, a Christian mind who attempts to reconcile Buddhism with Christianity. You have to jockey the ideas around, much like you would a couch in a house with many objects already cluttering up the rooms. What you might be able to do is look at a little piece here and there, but never being able to fit the whole shebang in the mind at once, never getting the complete view.
This is where meditation comes in. It can be a slow process, but as you sit and let go of clinging to thoughts and other senses, you slowly detach yourself from your house, and begin to see things dissolving. Walls go, the clutter goes, the furniture, the ideas of self, the bed, the golden idols and whatnot... all become silly and end up donated or on the curb or digested. At some point, you don't even need the house anymore, and you take a big breath and it evaporates.
This is what the Buddha did under that tree. He broke the timbers, emptied his mind. Without something cluttering, there is a lot of space to see the vibrations that resonate from the situations and objects and so forth. The vision wasn't "mystical", it was just happening in an open space, so there was enough room in his mind to fit the entire truth of suffering in it at once, and so it was clearly and directly and completely comprehended.
Emptying the mind isn't about ignoring or forgetting, its about stilled clarity. He could recall past situations, and see them clearly with new perspective. When he witnessed people dying, lamenting, spinning in patterns of suffering, his mind was open enough to fit the whole shebang in at once.
I think this is why you're being told you just don't get it and won't without meditation practice. You're clinging to these tiny pieces of the puzzle, with a clear lack of "the shebang". Without a steady practice, your mind simply hasn't cultivated the space in order to be able to see the answers to the questions you're posting, because you are only fitting little pieces in at one time. This has nothing to do with intelligence aptitude, you seem to me to be incredibly bright... it has to do with the discipline to view things completely without other "stuff" in the way. That stuff could be philosophies, truth, emotions, self-reference and so forth.
I really think you would be better served to ask more appropriate questions, like "how do I overcome my struggles in my meditation practice" or "how could I start a meditation practice" than "how does Buddhism deal with mystical energies." I know you claim disinterest, but doesn't it strike you as curious that you are intrepid in your pursuit of knowledge, but not in your pursuit of the wisdom it takes to use that knowledge?
With warmth,
Matt
I'm currently practicing with a local Kwan Um Sangha and we do chant to Avalokiteshvara. the Zendo we use is owned by the Dharma Drum society of Shen Yen and they are even more inclined to that kind of activity. Whether this constitutes supernatural or not is up to debate. The Siddhis are not cultivated but definitely not denied either.