Buddha is a name given to a person who has awakened to the absolute which is transcendent. The word ‘Buddha’ is a passive past participle which is derived from the root budh which can mean to wake up, awake, rise from sleep, to come to one's senses, to revive, restore to life, etc.
Gotama (S., Gautama) was given the name Buddha because he had realized ultimate reality or we could say because he had attained enlightenment. However, he did not call himself the Buddha. He generally called himself the Tathāgata (the true state or real nature). His followers called him Bhagavat, meaning the blessed one. He said he was the supreme teacher, one who has attained the most perfect awakening. He also said:
“Brahmin, I have abandoned those taints because of which I might have become a deva; I have cut them off at the root, made them like palm stumps, obliterated them so that they are no longer subject to future arising. (2) I have abandoned those taints because of which I might have become a gandhabba … (3) … might have become a yakkha … (4) … might have become a human being; I have cut them off at the root, made them like palm stumps, obliterated them so that they are no longer subject to future arising. Just as a blue, red, or white lotus flower, though born in the water and grown up in the water, rises above the water and stands unsoiled by the water, even so, though born in the world and grown up in the world, I have overcome the world and dwell unsoiled by the world. Remember me, brahmin, as a Buddha. (A. ii. 38-39).
Buddhists today look upon the Buddha as not being much different from themselves. Secular Buddhists, especially, don’t consider Gotama’s realization to be uncommon or superhuman.
Yes, modern Buddhists are right in one respect, the Buddha looked like any ordinary person in the India of that time, just like Einstein looked like some common, ordinary person. But this is where the comparison stops — at the external form. Becoming a Buddha or awakening is not the transformation of the conditioned, carnal person. In fact, the carnal person is old karma. A Buddha has realized that which is beyond karma. Being a Buddha is a spiritual transformation, in other words. It’s looking at the world sub specie aeternitatis, i.e., in its essential nature. This is the overcoming of the soiled human world—humans judging themselves which is only relative knowledge.
I just returned from a 10 day vipassana retreat under goenkas teaching of gautama buddhas teaching of vipassana technique he is purported to have used to achieve final full realization and escape from the bondage of shankara creations, the eradication of karmic sins and the dharmic justice of the natural law. I am well versed presently in the buddhist philosophy underpinning the process of liberation, and why it is asserted to be the ONLY path to liberation - because it alone does that which the buddha claimed in your post: extinguished/cut-off the roots of the process of defilements, wrong-attachments/identifications, wrong-understanding, reactiveness, and the karmic wheel. It is said the vipassana technique is all that the buddha taught in his school from age 35-90. That the Satipatthana Sutta lays out this the only way to extinguish the sankharas embodied within all unliberated beings, and that ONLY by equanimously observing these sankharas can the roots of futures defilements/moral trespass of the dharma, of the natural law be extinguished and liberation achieved . I am curious what you think of this in relation to your own path, and whether you see the ultimate need to explore this and experience this oneself. I will add that I got caught or blocked within it by the absolute demand of faith in the teaching and the philosophical underpinnings of the process/technique, without which one cannot truly fully practice and experience it. Faith in the claims are absolutely necessary to truly practice Buddhas technique of purification and realization.
an excellent link-
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/soma/wayof.html
Posted by: smith | June 09, 2019 at 10:26 PM