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Little confused with this some enlightenment stuff
EDIT: it's late and I'm rather tired, so please excuse the grammatical error in my thread title.
I keep hearing these words like "arahant" or "ahrat" referring to people who reached enlightenment. and I think, but I'm not sure, that they're somehow different from the buddha. indeed, when reading about the buddha's life he had many of these "ahrats" (or however you spell it) following and working with him, but it seems guatama was still above them in some sense. am I missing something? if one reaches enlightenment do they not become a buddha themselves?
I keep hearing these words like "arahant" or "ahrat" referring to people who reached enlightenment. and I think, but I'm not sure, that they're somehow different from the buddha. indeed, when reading about the buddha's life he had many of these "ahrats" (or however you spell it) following and working with him, but it seems guatama was still above them in some sense. am I missing something? if one reaches enlightenment do they not become a buddha themselves?
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Hope this helps....
Hope you slept well too.... very lucid of you to psot such a question with a sleepy Mind - !!
http://www.newbuddhist.com/forum/showthread.php?t=641
So he hid for twenty years. Is this the enlightenment you are looking for ? The question to ask is why they wanted to kill him and why the fifth was the one that told him to hide.
The simple answer is this:
A Buddha is the first being of any age to fully realize, understand, and teach the Dhamma (Truth). The Buddha, besides this, has perfected the Ten Paramis (Ten Perfections) throughout many, many rebirths.
An arahant is anyone who has practiced the Path until they have reached 'Awakening', or Nibbana (Cessation).
Bodhisattas/Bodhisattvas are beings who strive to become future Buddhas in some future existence. The idea is that eventually people will be lulled into forgetfulness, and the Dhamma will be lost. When this happens a new Buddha must re-discover these profound Truths and re-teach them to the world.
The Dhamma is the 'Law' or 'Truth' of conditioned reality. It is not created by anyone, but the very nature of phenomena itself. A Buddha fully realizes and understands these Truths so that they may be taught how to be 'seen' for oneself. Once a sentient beings does this, they are free from suffering and birth, sickness, old age, and death.
I hope that this explanation helps.
Jason
Dana (generous action)
Sila (virtue)
Nekkhamma (renunciation)
Pañña (wisdom, discernment)
Viriya (energy, effort)
Khanti (patience)
Sacca (truthfulness)
Adhitthana (determination, resolution)
Metta (loving-kindness, goodwill)
Upekkha (equanimity)
The difference is not in the 'Awakening'. Awakening is Awakening. Arahants are equal to a Buddha in this respect, however, a Buddha also has perfected the Ten Paramis and practiced the Path to this Awakening without any teacher at all.
All in all, these titles are merely conceptual labels. They don't mean much really. Buddha means "Awake". The Buddha is just the name given to the first being to fully realize and teach the Dhamma. Arahant means "worthy one". An arahant is anyone that has achieved the goal of Release, Cessation, Nibbana, Enlightenment, or whatever you wish to call it. In fact, by definition the Buddha was also an arahant, but only the Buddha was the Buddha.
The added respect he gets is that he suffered throughout many, many lives striving and perfecting his virtue, concentration, and wisdom until he was able to grasp the essence of the 'Unconditioned', and teach others how to do the same thing. It was a great gift that was given to the world.
Jason
I don't know...
Why did Devadatta want to kill his own cousin (the Buddha)?
Perhaps it was because of greed, hatred, and delusion.
Jason
Not as I understand it, Elohim. Gautama of the Shakya Clan is called Historical Buddha but many traditions have ascribed Buddhahood to other great enlightened teachers as well, such as Padmasambhava. In addition, there is the whole question of the Buddha(s) of the future, the Maitreya.
Buddha is a descriptive, not quite a title, certainly not a name.
Well that is fine. I was only going by the generally held definition of what a "Buddha" and "arahant" were in context to the original question (i.e. a Buddha opposed to an arahant).
Buddha: The name given to one who rediscovers for himself the liberating path of Dhamma, after a long period of its having been forgotten by the world. According to tradition, there is a long line of Buddhas stretching into the distant past. The most recent Buddha was born Siddhattha Gotama in India in the sixth century BCE. A well-educated and wealthy young man, he relinquished his family and his princely inheritance in the prime of his life to search for true freedom and an end to suffering (dukkha). After seven years of austerities in the forest, he rediscovered the "middle way" and achieved his goal, becoming Buddha.
Arahant: A "worthy one" or "pure one"; a person whose mind is free of defilement (see kilesa), who has abandoned all ten of the fetters that bind the mind to the cycle of rebirth (see samyojana), whose heart is free of mental effluents (see asava), and who is thus not destined for further rebirth. A title for the Buddha and the highest level of his noble disciples.
- Taken from Glossary of Pali and Buddhist terms
Since only "Buddha" and "arahant" were mentioned I kept my answer to the Pali uses of such. 'Buddha', most often, is the title used to differentiate the first Turner of the Wheel in any age (at least in the Pali texts), as well as 'Tathagata', 'Blessed One', 'Worthy One', etc. The word is also used by others to label the nature of Awakening in a person (i.e. Buddhanature) and so and and so froth, but I am not really interested in debating the multitude of meanings and uses of it.
The question revolved around the difference between a 'Buddha' and an 'arahant', so I answered accordingly. If the question had delt with other matters that I was not knowledgable about I would have refrained from answering, or if it had delt with the other uses of 'Buddha' I would have answered differently.
As I said, it was a simplified answer.
Jason
The reason why I made the point that I did is because the Christian 'cult of personality' has led some to make the person of Gautama into some sort of "Christ figure", unique and separate from the ordinary run of humanity. Whilst having deep and abiding reverence for the Shakyamuni Buddha, I am aware that the descriptive word is applicable far more widely.
Of course, for many of us, the word "Christ" also applies more widely than simply to Jesus. It is, as I am sure you know, an Latinism for the Greek word for "anointed" and thus can be applied to any person who has been ritually anointed. For some of us, it also applies to the "christ nature" which we believe is the essence of all that is. In this, it is similar to the Buddhist "buddha nature".
I would definitely have to agree with you there.
In fact, if one were to look at the Suttas/Sutras they just may find a bit of that already. In all truth, we will never know what the actual historical Buddha was like. Did he really possess all of those unique powers? Could he see other worlds? Was he really able to read the minds of others? Was he something more than a 'man' after his Enlightenment?
The only thing I know for sure is that he discovered something amazing. He taught something wonderful and profound to the rest of the world. To me the Buddha was a great man, but it is the teachings which he left behind that are truly important. 'Buddha' is as varied as 'Christ' in its uses. The word itself was around well before the historical Shakyamuni was even born. It's meaning of "Awake", however, was taken by the Buddha and used in a ground breaking way:
A brahmin once asked The Blessed One:
"Are you a God?"
"No, brahmin" said The Blessed One.
"Are you a saint?"
"No, brahmin" said The Blessed One.
"Are you a magician?"
"No, brahmin" said The Blessed One.
"What are you then?"
"I am awake."
Jason