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Buddhism
First we should understand what Buddhism is. The definition I give here is in the context of the personal cosmology linked on Book I (click the blue “cosmology” to view -- don’t worry; it’s only 1200 words), which I evolved through the years by this method, also given on the main page. (Click the blue “method” to view how it was derived.)
Definition of Buddhism
The cosmology cited above gives the concept of the human being as a divine form, each one the expression of a unique eternal Buddha-self in Nirvana. Eight billion humans on earth -- eight billion eternal Buddha selves in Nirvana. The number of them is thought to be in the quintillions.
The souls of divine beings reincarnate, evolving as they do so. The entire journey begins as a member of a group-soul which expresses on the mineral level, moves on to the vegetable level when it has gathered all the experience it wants, then to the lower animal level, countless existences, and finally enters the level of divine form (human), at which it first becomes capable of each body representing a specific individual soul.
After a number of lifetimes, realization of this individuality begins to occur. Not right away -- the tribal level is still mostly a group-soul existence, proceeding over many lives to the unfoldment of the individual potentials of higher being.
Intellectual mind appears, and over hundreds of lifetimes gradually unfolds; before the completion of this unfoldment, intuition has manifested; this deepens until the spirit mind, over thousands of lifetimes, becomes also completely unfolded.
Theistic religion is a pursuit of relationship to what most people call God -- the Creator of the universe with all its dimensions and levels. God cannot be understood in human terms, since the human mind is finite, and its thinking proceeds along finite dimensions. As a being, He is simply beyond the parameters ordinarily ascribed to being -- too colossal to understand. When the human mind begins to contemplate the true meaning of Krishna as the knower of the known, it simply blows.
As finite beings, our ability to know each other is limited. Often our understanding of another is incorrect, because we do not know the last ten incarnations of that person, or have any grasp of the next ten. But Krishna does -- He knows everything about each and every one of the eight billion of us on earth, hundreds and thousands of incarnations of each one of us in the past and future, every detail of each and every one, on this planet as on all of the others, not only on the material plane but on six others as well, all at the same time and still has more than enough leisure to have all of the fun he wants to have, and that is quite a lot of fun. And at all times is willing to give attention to any need that any of us might have.
Focusing on Him is the most popular and traditional means of realigning ourselves with reality, when we have strayed from it by our infractions of the set of rules that underlie the reality of this universe which He created. Theistic religion is surely here to stay.
But it is possible to go further. (This does not imply that the journey must begin in theism -- Buddhism, traditionally and wisely, leaves theistic belief optional.) Every one of us, as well as having been created by Him, is also the expression of, each one of us, a separate and distinct eternal individual Buddha-being in a place called Nirvana, which is not in the universe. None of these Buddha-selves are included in the identity of the Godhead. The Godhead is eternal, and so is each Buddha-self.
We are, then, all of us half-brothers to each other. We all have the same Mother, but each of us has a different father, even if we are Siamese twins.
The Buddha-self of each individual, then, is the ultimate identity of that person. Krishna plays the flute, and we all dance to its music, but the steps in the dance are ultimately the domain of the Buddha-selves.
A quest for, and relationship to, one’s Buddha-self, is called Buddhism. To define oneself as a Buddhist is to take eternal responsibility for all of one’s actions. A self-realization that is not based upon Buddhism thus defined is empty and unreal.
A proper pursuit of Buddhism aims at the ultimate attainment of the condition of nirmanakaya, in which the Buddha-self expresses itself directly through the created form on a more or less regular and continual basis. It roughly corresponds to becoming an avatar, on the theistic side.
It is said that when an avatar speaks in his samadhi-state, he is at one with Brahman, and it is as though God himself were speaking. A nirmanakaya is experiencing the Buddha-self similarly. The world has seen a number of avatars, but I do not think that it has seen a complete nirmanakaya. Yet both conditions can be seen as roughly the “goal”, if you will, of on one hand theistic religion, and on the other hand Buddhist.
There has never been a Buddha in the universe, and there never will be, since Buddhas are real, and everything in the universe is imaginary, existing only in the mind of Vishnu.
Calling Siddartha Gautama “The Buddha” is therefor a misnomer; he was was actually a Nirmanakaya, one who has attained the ability to express his Buddha-self, directly and immediately.
I do not think that his attainment of the Nirmanakaya state could have been very complete, since there is basic error -- a wrong view -- underlying his Buddhist philosophy.
The entire notion that the “wheel of rebirth” is something negative, from which one ought to desire to escape, that human life is a condition into which we have fallen, and need to be liberated from, is incompletelly enlightened and entirely incorrect.
It is not a condition into which we have fallen. Where there is fallenness manifest, it is the sin-state that has been fallen into and which needs to be escaped, not human life.
When the sin-state has been entered, our condition becomes “knee-gettive” -- the universe is self-corrective -- and we begin to perceive negativity everywhere.
Thus the “four noble truths” represent the innocent misconception of one who had not as yet left the sin-state completely enough. Big souls -- big lessons.
Siddartha Gautama cast a big shadow. His attainments were much in advance of the spirituality of his day, and he was furthermore, one of the greatest moralists and spiritual teachers the world has known. That he is the figurehead of Buddhism on this planet is completely appropriate and desirable. But all of India succumbed to this notion -- you hear the Hindus to this day chanting the litany -- ...”old age, death, disease... “ -- so negative, actually focusing on the negative and therefor perceiving negativity.
Much of Bhagavad Gita is straight out of his mouth -- he was the biggest spiritual and philosophical influence at the time the Gita went into Sanskrit.
Human life, although it is certainly transcendable, is not something that needs to be escaped from. The human is a divine form, suitable for many purposes, and it is entered by souls for whom it is appropriate, for the experiences which they need, to grow as they, and the Buddha-selves behind them, desire.
A soul has thousands of existences such as your present human one, but souls are finite. Everything that is born dies, and each soul has a beginning, a long life, and, finally, an ending. The Buddha-self is the only part that is eternal.
As a soul has thousands of existences, so each Buddha self has thousands of souls. Each Buddha-self may be thought of as a boy in a bedroom in Nirvana, with millions of action figures all over his floor -- thousands of souls, each of which has thousands of existences such as our human ones.
How each Buddha-self plays with each action figure, or group of them, or anything up to the entirety of them, is unique to that Buddha-self. So that an existence such as our human lives can have significance in numerous others of our incarnations.
Most of the human beings on Earth are, analogously, little kids -- very young in soul age, in the number of lifetimes they have lived. Just as in the age of a given human, it is best to be the age that one is, so in soul age, we have the doings and growings that are right for us at that age. It’s fun to grow, if you don’t go, way too fast, or way too slow. (Fun is an ultimate value in our kind of existence; it is our very reason for being. That life is a dance is simply another way to say this.)
If most of the humans on Earth are analogously ages like 4, 6, etc., with a few 12 and 14-year-olds around here and there, Gautama was more like 20. To be a Nirmanakaya is way big kid. I don’t know anyone on Earth right now who would really be ready for that. We want to do more little kid stuff, the kind appropriate to our age, that is fun for us.
But it is possible to be aware of this, and yet be a Buddhist -- one who is growing toward the Nirmanakaya condition in some future life. You might say that it is possible for a little kid to be a Nirboyakaya Buddhist.
America and Buddhism
America represents the most fundamental revolution in the recorded history of this planet. It was and is a revolution not against a current rulership or type of rulership, but against the power of man over man itself. It is not, at its core, a democracy -- but a constitutional system designed and intended to enable an individual to become and remain, free.
As such, it is the purest expression of the occident, the hemisphere whose keynote is the individual, whereas society is the keynote of the orient. Both of these approaches have value, and if they were not consigned to East and West, the pendulum would swing back and forth forever, with a bloody revolution at each end of the arc. And so, in the Orient, social values rule; in the Occident, individual values are primary.
They are so consigned. East will remain East, and West will be West; the twain will never meet. They are intended to join together in a cosmic love embrace best represented by the t’ai chi tu, the famous yin-yang symbol, each strong where the other is weak, large where the other is small.
Buddhism and America are both about the individual, that is why they belong together. What Christianity claims to be, on the other hand, is a better fit in the Orient; it’s communistic, and actually antagonistic to individual freedom.
Buddhist Religion
All Buddhist sects should be centered on two principles: the eightfold path, and the compassion of the great vehicle (the essence of which is to act at all times in accordance with the best well-being of each soul we encounter). (For the story of how I got the Compassion, click here.)
Beginning with those in mind, we would want a Buddhism to encompass all of the soul-ages that are drawn to it, that would allow belief to be competely the domain of the individual, and that would be a reservoir of the practices that have been shown to be good for various soul-ages at various levels, for the development best suited to each, so that each might be growing at the best, funnest rate for him.
We make a religion for the people; we do not make the people for the religion. And so, we must step back and ask ourselves, what are the needs that people need fulfilled by a religion, and what are the ways that most of them prefer to meet these needs.
The vast majority of younger souls benefitting from a religion are attending some sort of weekly religious service, where there is provision of suggested practice and moral instruction of the young, and in which they can join together with others in harmonious hymn-singing and chanting, and receive some sort of spiritual teaching.
Temple services --and this is true of any religion -- are of great benefit. Temples are our official means of contact with the divine and the supernatural, and regular temple services are invariably attended by higher beings who give beneficial attention to humans. For this reason, to attend such a service is the greatest bargain on Earth, in terms of what you put in and what you gain.
The format given for the Unist Temple services would work perfectly well for an American Buddhism, if it is underscored that there is complete freedom of belief, each practitioner being free to interpret the central symbol entirely to his liking and to his personal opinion. A review of that format can be found here.
This is consistent with the spirit of true Buddhism, since each true Buddhist is ultimately pursuing a relationship with his own unique, eternal Buddha-self. It is the central importance of morality which unites them, codified in the eightfold path -- right understanding, right motives, right speech, right behavior, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right contemplation. For a more complete treatment of the eightfold path, click here.
Buddhist Sutras
This website will offer a number of traditional sutras for chanting. The first is an old Japanesre based on the Lotus Sutra. That section is to be found here.
The next is The Great Heart of Wisdom Sutra. The mp3 and pdf are both available in the Download Section. The sutra can be listened to there without downloading, if you prefer.
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