Irritating passages

Who attains the deathless (amata; amrita) or the very fact that deathlessness appears in the canon of Buddhism, can be an irritating subject for modern Buddhists who want their Buddhism served up without any trace of mystical mumbo jumbo.  

Let’s look at some irritating passages from the Buddhist canon that directly have to do with immortality or the deathless as is often times translated. 

"He turns his mind (citta) from these things [the five khandhas/aggregates]; and when he has turned his mind frm these things he focuses his mind on the deathless (amata) element (dhatu), thinking:  ‘’his is the real, this is the excellent, that is to say the tranquillising of all the activities, the asting out of all clinging, the destruction of craving, dispassion, stopping, nibbana’” (M. i. 435–6).

“Whenever one understands thoroughly the rise and fall of the aggregates (khandhânam), he will obtain joy and happiness. For those who comprehend, this is the deathlessness (amatam)” (Dh. 374).

"For whom craving exists not, who knows and does not doubt, who has attained immergence in immortality (amata-ogadham), him I call a Brahmin” (Dh. 411).

“The Lord knows what should be known, sees what should be seen, he has become vision, become knowledge, become dhamma, become Brahma, he is the propounder, the expounder, the bringer to the goal, the giver of the Deathless, dhmma-lord, Tathagata”. (M. i. 111).

“A Tathagata, monks, is a perfected one, a fully Self-awakened One.  Give ear, monks, the deathless is found, I instruct, I teach Dhamma” (M. i. 172).

Some Buddhists have tried to worm their way out of the problem of immortality by ignoring it completely.  This is probably a good strategy since to admit that immortality appears in the Buddhist canon demands a self that attains immortality.  It boils down to no self and no immortality or self and immortality. There is no other alternative. 

 

Comments

[Solon]

Reading some of the latest comments on this blog, I am reminded of Orwells famous sentence and prediction about our current times; Stupidity is knowledge - ignorance is truth.

[Visser]

The self is itself not a thing. It cannot be said to exist as chairs or animals exist. It has the same ontological status as an event. So it can only be actualized. As it exists now, it's only as potential.

Hence Dogen's profound statement that the self arrays itself as time.