Pointing the way

While it is true that the Buddha was a founder of a new kind of Indian religion, in the popular definition of religion, the Buddha’s awakening and teaching is not based upon a belief in a creator type god or the same, a demiurge.  The Buddha awoke to something quite profound and transcendent that he called Dharma.  While this term has a number of additional meanings such as mental data, i.e., phenomena, and law, in regard to the Buddha’s awaking it meant ultimate reality or the absolute.

“The Dharma obtained by me is profound, of deep splendor, difficult to see, difficult to understand, incomprehensible, having the incomprehensible as its scope, fine, subtle, the sense of which can only be understood by the wise” (Catusparisat Sûtra).

The Buddha’s awakening allowed him to be able to teach gods (superhuman type beings) and men which tells us that his awakening transcended even the world of the gods.  In this respect, also, the Buddha is a teacher (shastri), not a savior although his teaching is salvific.  A Buddha points the way—he doesn’t carry us to Dharma.  We must tread the path ourselves.

For the Buddha man’s salvation is to be found within, which today we might call the first-person or self which in Sanskrit is somewhat equivalent to âtman and in Pali, attâ.  He said the self is dîpa which can mean an island, a shelter, refuge or nirvana.  He said the self is also sarana which can mean refuge, protection, salvation and again nirvana.  It is in and through the first-person that nirvana or liberation is achieved.  It cannot be achieved outwardly, in the external world which, while seemingly real, from the standpoint of the wise is like a magic show and a dream; which is also conditioned and deceptive.

What makes our own salvation so difficult to achieve; which act as positive hindrances or nivarana are, according to the Buddha, the following:

1. Sensual desire (kamacchanda)
2. Ill-will (byapada)
3. Sloth and torpor (thina-middha)
4. Restlessness and remorse (uddhacca-kukkucca)
5. Skeptical doubt (vicikiccha)

All of these hindrances dominate the average person more or less which is why no real forward progress is ever made toward the eventuality of understanding what, exactly, the Dharma of the Buddha is.  In Western Buddhism sensual desire and, especially, skeptical doubt dominate when the subject of reincarnation is brought up.

There is always the ever present tendency to revise Buddhism in an attempt to make it into something we are already familiar with which assumes that we have nothing much to learn and nothing undesirable to get rid of.

When can only learn what the Buddha taught when we have a more accurate picture of his awakening under the Enlightenment-tree whereby, as the Bodhisattva, he earned the name, Buddha.

 

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[Methexis]

Faith is the basis of the Path, the mother of virtues Nourishing and growing all good ways... Faith can assure arrival at enlightenment.
(T. Cleary, tr. The Flower Ornament Scripture. Vol. I, p. 331.)