Awakening from the spell of rebirth

Last week Johannes Bronkhorst’s book The Two Traditions of Meditation in Ancient India (1993) finally arrived in the mail.  Scholarly, but certainly not difficult to read, it had some interesting material in it.  Here is one notable example I put an “X” next to with my trusty Ticonderoga pencil.

"The majority of versions of the long account of the enlightenment of the Buddha describe three insights:  memory of earlier lives; knowledge of the births and deaths of beings; knowledge regarding the destruction of the intoxicants.  Only the third insight has an obvious connection with liberation, which consists of the destruction of the intoxicants.  The first two insights make the impression of having been added to the text which underlay these versions, and which was therefore without these first two insights.

And indeed, one version of the long account of the Buddha’s liberation survives in which only the knowledge regarding the destruction of the intoxicants precedes final liberation:  a Sutra of the Sarvastivadins (MÂc p. 589c14-23).  A closer study of all these parallel versions—undertaken by Bareau (1963: 81f.)—confirms that the long account of the Buddha’s liberation originally made no mention of his earlier lives and the knowledge of the birth and deaths of beings” (pp. 119–120).

While it is probably true that the first two insights are later additions, this should not be construed to suggest that the Buddha rejected, altogether, rebirth/punarbhava.  Bronkhorst makes the point that the two were added “in order to press a point which was considered essential to the teaching of the Buddha” which “is the belief in transmigration determined by one’s earlier behaviour or state” (p. 120). 

The Buddha’s gnosis which came with the destruction of the intoxicants by which he beheld the absolute as distinguished from its phenomena contains the key to ending rebirth.  One can simply think of rebirth or punarbhava as ‘re-samsara’ or ‘again-samsara’ in which we are continually in bondage to phenomena which are always, without exception, impermanent, suffering, and not our self.  On this same note, when this psychophysical body of ours dissolves we, again, enter into samsara in some form to experience suffering, again, because we haven't broken the spell by which we are made slaves to our own phenomenalizations which are only the substance of pure Mind.  There is no end to this samsaric process except to awaken from it.

 

Comments

[Paul]

“There is no end to this samsaric process except to awaken from it.”

Okay. BUT, how did the Buddha come to ‘know’ this? Or at least, how can we come to know that he really did come to know this as being the capital ‘T’ Truth? Who, today -- living, can I contact who really has come to know this empirically?

[Vaccha]

It strikes me as odd that Bronkhorst does not see the direct connection with liberation in the first two insights or any progressive liberation from the first to the third.

[minx]

My master told me;

"Those who pay no particular attention to Substance and Function of the uncreated Mind, in their zen training, are barred entrance into the stream of arhats. A bright light is needed to reveal the One Reality of the One Mind, and this light has no origin in this or any other apparent reality of impermanent and everchanging conditions."