I think most would agree that we cannot directly experience another person’s experience amounting to a kind of super telepathy. This is not to say that it is completely impossible. If we claim to have had the experience of awakening (sambodhi), it would be difficult to share with others except indirectly through words. Others might even suspect that we're deluded.
It almost goes without saying that there are many sharable things but gnosis, sambodhi, or jñâna are not. We can even share ideas and fellow-feeling but sharing the first hand experience of awakening to true reality is unsharable.
For Buddhism, its soteriological path, which is open to all, is supposed to lead to awakening. However, the task of communicating this path to others by which they might save themselves through gnosis proves extremely difficult, even for a Buddha. To fully awaken, one must transcend the allure of the temporal world and the psychophysical body (skandhas). This is extremely difficult. Few wish to do it.
Faced with such a difficulty, religion as we know it begins to take shape and grow as a consequence. If the direct experience of awakening to the absolute is at the heart of mysticism then religion, by contrast, can only teach an ungrounded mysticism which never gets past sensory consciousness; which relies, instead, on symbols, robes, rules, certification, religious buildings, music, art, etc., in which piety leads the way. With all this, religion ends in devotion to the community which is opposed to the life of the muni or anchorite. This community interest, which can only minister to worldly concerns, is really the fall of true religion (sad-dharma) where mysticism or gnosis should dominate but has been shut out. This has already happened to Judaism and Christianity but not entirely to Buddhism.
Would this ice Buddha qualify as idolatry? http://allezallie.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/ice-buddha-at-the-rubin-museum/
Did the Buddha complain about idolatry? I thought that was mostly an Old Testament problem.
Posted by: Bob Morris | August 30, 2011 at 06:17 PM
I fervently disagree with Imperishable Night regarding statues of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. They are precious vehicles for teaching, just like the Canon(s). Go to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology http://www.penn.museum/about-us.html and spend some time in the Buddhism Gallery for a taste of stolen treasure.
Posted by: Bob Morris | August 30, 2011 at 06:04 PM
(Apropos of the documentary: it's rather awful to watch all those giant Buddha statues. If they demolished every single "Buddhist wonder" verily a great service would be done to the buddha-dharma. People and their idolatry. The more golden Buddhas they build, the further from them will be the truth that this Mind is the Buddha. And the woman that presents the documentary seems to be excited about every damn thing, even if it's worth as much as pigeon shit. Oh a king built a giant Buddha, orgasm! I think the documentary does a disservice to the buddha-dharma because it presents it as a cult of clueless shavelings worshipping golden statues.)
Posted by: Imperishable Night | August 28, 2011 at 01:37 AM
Clyde, the triple gem sangha includes only ariya-puggala - never puthujjana or worldlings. One who is ariya-puggala is at least a sotapanna (a stream winner). They have entered the supermundane path to nirvana.
Posted by: Kojizen | August 27, 2011 at 07:54 PM
Imperishable Night; You wrote that a “true sangha” consists of “noble ones (arya-pudgala)”. Is it your view that noble ones are awakened human beings, so that a true sangha consists of only awakened human beings? It is my understanding that the Buddha’s sangha includes both those who are awakened and those who, as best they’re able, practice the Buddha’s Teachings – which means that they’re not perfectly ‘noble’.
Posted by: clyde | August 27, 2011 at 06:01 PM