---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: S.B.Asoka Dissanayake <asokasb@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 20 May 2022, 18:12
Subject: Fwd: Who Buddha was and what he was not?
To: <asokasb@gmail.com>
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Anuruddha Dissanayake <anuruddd@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 20 May 2022, 17:50
Subject: Re: Who Buddha was and what he was not?
To: <asokasb@gmail.com>
Cc: <asokaddd@yahoo.com>, <asokaddd@gmail.com>
On Fri, 20 May 2022, 17:47 Anuruddha Dissanayake, <anuruddd@gmail.com> wrote:
Who is Buddha and what he is not?
It is very difficult to answer this question either in positive or negative sense.
BUT;
I will start with the negatives.
1. He was not a philosopher and Buddhism is not a philosophy.
2. He was not a scientific scholar.
The science and technology were not his domain.
In fact, it was a bane by his subtle insinuations of scientific goals which are by nature local or global in nature and not absolutes truths.
In fact, rational investigating mind is a hindrance to mental awakening, which he prescribed for understanding of the uncertainty or the unsatisfactoriness of the greed, ignorance and selfishness within every human being.
What it means is basic understanding of nature is OK but looking for absolutes is a vain exercise of no use except of temporary benefit.
3. He did not proclaim a rigid dogma of God and a Creator of the Universe.
He was part of the cosmos and all living beings are part of this cosmos and not outside (this cosmos).
Simply put God is outside of this cosmos and the God is not part of it (in literal sense, he cannot exist on his or her own domain apart from becoming part of the cosmos).
The god is only a clumsy and flimsy human creation with no substance at all.
Coming to positive side of Buddha's teaching he was one of us and was a perfect human being.
1. He lived in the present moment (of mind and associated mental formations of infinite variegation) not in the past or in the future tense.
No two human beings are alike and no two thought moments are alike.
2. He was a born environmentalist and lived all his enlightened life (except the rainy season) under a tree and not away from the nature.
3. He gave equal opportunity to all living beings and a wild cat living on another living being for survival was not an antithesis.
In other words, wild cats were born of their own karmic exposition and escape from that predicament is possible at the time of patisandhi citta or linking to the next life.
It is not eternal hell but escape is possible from animal kingdom to a better life BUT not being born again is his ONLY goal to eternity.
It is not a Void but a Signless existence of eqanimity.
4. It is an individual responsibility of each and every individual to seek for his or her own salvation of the inescapable "human suffering and bonding".
I have exluded some difficult areas of Pali rendering and unfortunately English is inadequate to explain the *Wisdom of Buddha* I have put the conceptual framework of Buddha's thinking would have been.
By the way, I do not claim I understand all of them clearly.
Do not hang on to Kalama Sutta and questioning the Kalama Sutta itself, is the entry point to Enlightenment.
Buddha was never a saviour of humanity but who showed the way of compassion, boundless kindness, sympathetic joy and above all equanimity.
In his world there is no ground for Killing and War whether due to ideology or religious sects or humiliation of a different faith or sector.
Religion by all means a Brain Virus.
