Life of the Buddha
Don’t start about about the miracles and great achievements. Instead start from his humanness.
- Did prince Siddhartha really stop the (painful) tears?
- If yes, how did he succeed at this?
Example: Many people have tinnitus! They want to know about each other’s stories and methods of improvements. This is wisdom — to know where to look for: experience, and knowing they really speak from experience.
Prince Siddhartha could see injustice, nasty conflicts. Not about religion, it’s about reality. Kingdom fights, wars. Then he thought further than his own kingdom, “How can I help people” (1. motivation). Staying in the palace was not an option, since even within it there was also injustice that couldn’t be completely mitigated.
He didn’t know the way, so he searched teachers. The first was acharya Alara Kakama. He reached the same level of realization as the teacher. Siddhartha was very confident with his level of meditation. The student Siddhartha therefore was guided to another teacher, Udraka Ramaputra. He also achieved his level of realization.
“The problem of all beings are still there, I need to find another solution”
6 years following an ascetic way. After that, decided the middle way (no ascetism; no luxury) is most convenient. The wisdom of emptiness is realized in the middle way.
Sofware Hardware Requirements
For powerful software to work on old computer hardware must be upgraded.
This is what we do, we need to sharpen intelligence to be able to accommodate harder concepts.
Covid Vaccine Mistrust
Q: Covid vaccine, despite being produced in 2021, it can’t be marketed, why?
A: It has not been tested, it has to go through trial.
Same with Siddhartha coming up with the wisdom of emptiness. It needs to go through trial.
sugata — He has gone (gata) the place of the perfect purity, the bliss (su); with this experience he becomes extremely confident to protect the beings.
Thought — Buddha Nature and Jesus
Buddha Knows Emptiness Without Teacher
How Did Buddha Discover Wisdom With No Teacher?
How did Buddha discover wisdom without teacher? — There’s two answers: historical and causal.
- Historical: Born a prince, in comfortable way sets on a journey to try to understand the causes of suffering. Some discoveries great scientists did were not because they received it from a teacher, but because they gathered together — through observation — various phenomena that weren’t paid attention in that way previously.
- Causal: in previous lives he received the teachings of emptiness from many other Buddhas. Taking the form of a prince is for inspiring all of us. Oh he is born as a son of a king, and if he didn’t know the wisdom of emptiness then, how can we! So we are not different, and in higher societies they still start from the base!
When he is referred as the teacher:
- It’s because the vision of emptiness is a causal factor for him to become a teacher of the Nirvana for everybody in the future. This causal factor — for him to discover the wisdom of emptiness — gives him that label of teacher to become. That label of “teacher”, at that time it doesn’t make a lot of sense but that later on it does because he is going to teach this subject matter.
- It’s not because he himself wanted to become a teacher.
Quoting as was spoken because I might have noted the paragraph above wrongly:
The teacher shouldn’t be seen as the Buddha himself becoming Buddha and then teaching sentient beings… — no. It’s the causal factor. The initial discovery of the wisdom of emptiness, that was the causal factor for him to become the teacher of the future. So this causal factor was given the label “the teacher” which is — although not fit at that point — the indication that we is going to teach this subject matter: the wisdom of emptiness in the future.
So “teacher” is the causal factor, which doesn’t fit him at that point.
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