by Harvey Kraft
DISTANT GOALS
He touched the grass with his hand.
Closing his cosmic eyes, his mortal eyes opened.
A deer stood near staring at the radiant golden-skinned Buddha. The old Lion-Sun shamans had equated this animal with truth, integrity, and innocence. Its appearance symbolized the newborn dawn lifting the veil between worlds. The deer seemed to acknowledge that Siddhartha Gautama had broken through to the Perfect Enlightenment he had sought.
From his childhood days in Babil, it was clear to all who met the prince that he was destined for greatness. As his profound capacity for wisdom became apparent he acquired the moniker Sage of the Saka nation (Skt. Sakamuni). Now as he looked at the deer, the animal barked. The sound seemed to mimic the title—Sakamuni. Indeed, Sakamuni had broken through the veil of mortality. Sakamuni was now the Buddha.
Immediately, he reflected on the challenge looming before him.
Rejecting the option to retire from rebirth, he crossed the dark chasm of cosmic Reality into an all-seeing state without physically leaving this mortal world. He had successfully chased the great seducer Mara away in horror as he vowed to guide all of humanity to enter through the gate with him. To do so now he would marshal the forces of evolution to advance the human condition to the next level. Feeling invigorated, he saw himself as an infinitesimal speck within a boundless Universe and, in turn, saw the full scope of the cosmos residing within his self.
As people were relatively ignorant of their actual capacity for wisdom, they created societies engrossed in various illusory appetites, consumed by fear, anger, greed, and violence. Most people endured a life of suffering in one form or another until they died. Laboring to survive, many never stopped to wonder even for a moment how they could live a more fulfilling life within. Resolved to help mortals everywhere confront patterns of both unconscious and conscious behaviors that universally lead to difficulties, Sakamuni Buddha vowed to guide those who would follow him on a liberating quest.
The Buddha foresaw a future when human cultures would be liberated from corrosive tendencies. Rather than aiming at social change, however, he would focus his efforts at awakening human consciousness on an individual level. He would undertake a mission that no religious figure before him had ever tackled—to help people differentiate between reality and illusions.
He was preparing to set into motion a long journey in pursuit of an evolutionary ideal: the eventual pacification of the whole mortal world through self-transformation. The premise: individuals awakened to their own true identity, dignity of life, and cosmic wisdom would produce harmonic future societies. Although the actualization of an enlightened civilization would appear to be a long way off, his arrival would ring the starting bell for creating happy lives without toxic obsessions, wholesale violence, unrequited hungers, virulent anger, or dominating fears. He would lead people on an internal journey of discovery in pursuit of the indefatigable peace and happiness at the center of their being.
Sakamuni Buddha, now having climbed to the supreme panorama of Existence sought to advance the human condition by lifting others to higher states of being. To do so he would need to make this goal comprehendible, accessible, and doable.
The moment he accomplished Perfect Enlightenment, alone with his thoughts, he resolved to recruit spiritual followers from among the companion groups of mendicants roaming the Indus forests. Because most of them were already well trained in trance travel, he would be able to direct their skills to achieve new levels of in-depth comprehension.
Where was he taking them? Knowing that various levels of Enlightenment existed universally below the surface of consciousness, he would lead them to actualize it. In due course they would be able to manifest ultimate liberation. But first, new followers must learn to conceive of such as a possibility. Before they could begin to move their minds in the right direction, he would need to help them hurdle the self-imposed limitations they placed on the capacity of their own minds.
For ordinary people, survival was a great achievement. Nearly every moment of their lives was filled with some sort of desperate quality. Boxed-in by relatively small desires, circumstances, and reactions, it would be unrealistic to expect that they could believe in the possibility of their own enlightenment. Even among the most intellectually gifted and insightful seekers it still would be inconceivable to imagine that they could accomplish enlightenment equal to that achieved by the Buddha.
How could the Buddha awaken anyone, skilled in meditation or not, when their conscious minds immediately rejected the notion that they could achieve enlightened wisdom?
He saw behind the mortal veil, a fundamental ignorance of life symbolically expressed as the darkness of Mara. The time would come, however, when it would be necessary for him to unveil a superb future to them. But that would have to wait until his followers were ready to accept it. It would require of them an awakening to the possibility of awakening. But eventually, at such a time as he foresaw it, the human psyche would rise to the challenge. The Buddha envisioned this as a future time when human beings would turn the world into a Buddha-land.
For now, however, he must start at the beginning.
He would have to adopt a phased-in method of education based on their capacity to advance (Skt. Upaya). He would craft a step-by-step course that over time would inspire disciples to adopt the practices he offered and in this way they might eventually be ready to embrace their true destiny.
Determined to start this grand journey immediately his ears perked up as he heard a red muntjac deer barking. The sound carrying far into the park brought several other deer out of the thicket. As Siddhartha Gautama took his first determined step forward as Sakamuni Buddha, they stopped and followed him with their eyes. Sunbeams reflected from the silhouette of his plain robe as he ventured over a distant hill. The deer pranced in a circle for a moment before disappearing back into the woods.
THE NEW NOBILITY
During his first sojourn in the forest an emaciated prince Siddhartha had accepted food from a kind woman. His fellow ascetics were shocked by this indiscretion. Five types of mendicants—variously espousing meditation, asceticism, skepticism, ritualism, and nihilism—now approached him from a distance. They immediately recognized his figure, having received word that he had returned from the bowels of civilization. In whispered tones they agreed to be polite and not bring up the past.
As he neared, although he had left behind the trappings of royalty, he walked with the gait of a king. Transfixed by his grand stature, they could not help but be impressed by his astounding demeanor. He stood right in front of them, tall and exuding a tranquil joy, yet it was as if he was beyond their reach. Words did not appear to emanate from his mouth; rather, he was telegraphing pictures from his mind to theirs. Compelled by his remarkable presence they could not help but listen so intently that their surroundings seemed to have disappeared.
“The physical body, the spiritual self, and human desires are indivisible,” he gently said, “and know that views to the contrary are nothing more than an illusion. Any attempt you make at mechanical separation of these factors will fail to lead you to liberation. The road to real freedom lies in the indivisible harmony of these aspects. Only with the cultivation and application of a life-affirming wisdom,” he offered, “could you hope to address the ignominious consequences of unbridled material, emotional, and spiritual extremes. Do you want to know more?”
As they sat to listen, he engaged them in his first oral sermon— Sutra for Setting the Wheel of the Dharma into Motion (Skt. Dharma-chakra-pravartana Sutra).123 Addressing the five types of mendicants, he challenged their ability to enter the state of transcendent bliss, Nirvana.124 On the contrary, he warned, what they were doing spiritually was as self-deluding as any ordinary kind of self-indulgence:
There are two extremes in this world that a devotee of transcending wisdom should not follow as they are both unprofitable . . . the habitual and irresponsible pursuit of desires and indulgences
engrossed in self-serving instinctual reactions . . . and the habitual pursuit of spiritual separation from the body through the self-punishing exertion of hardship and self-torture.
Human beings, as a matter of course, after just a brief sampling of gratification, whether of a physical or spiritual nature, invariably tended to acquire a taste for it. In extreme cases, their craving could grow into a habit or obsession. The attempt by ascetics to mentally disassociate themselves from all gratifying experiences was a futile cover-up. The Buddha exposed the use of spiritual thoughts to mask subconscious desires.
They looked stunned as he continued.
The belief that a soul or spirit-self could be separated from the body, either in life or death, had been built upon the idea that physical gratifications were detrimental to the purity of the spirit. Clearly, those who espoused physical denial failed to consider that the pursuit of spiritual gratifications could be equally harmful.
His listeners believed that from birth people suffered from a compelling need for material and social attachments. The burden of original sin carried from past lives was largely to blame for the cycle of rebirth people had to endure. Among the various ascetic doctrines, one suggested that desires produced microparticles that formed a “sticky spiritual substance” (Skt. Bandha Karman). This Karman tarred the soul like a stain. It kept the soul weighed down from ascending to the Heavens in the afterlife, forcing human beings to be reborn in the mortal world where their sufferings would continue. Even relatively unimportant or minor desires, such as a momentarily pleasant feeling, could produce a certain amount of this tar-like film.
As long as this ethereal substance was attached to a soul, some contended, it forced rebirth in a reconstituted material body. Again and again, over a cycle of lifetimes, the stain of original sin doomed the soul to re-manifest in various primitive states. The mortal-bound soul could reincarnate either in the earthly plane or underground world. But, were it to be purified of all sin, it would be reborn in the abodes of Heaven along the upper reaches of the Cosmic Mountain. Only a liberated spirit cleansed of all impurities could hope to alight to the divine realm of immortality. To do so an ascetic seeker must reject all desires and utterly dispel the compelling influence of sin’s continuous regeneration.
Sakamuni Buddha challenged their dissociative practices as nothing more than “attachment to detachment” resulting in little to no progress towards Nirvana. He went on to offer a different approach, a course change that recognized spiritual extremism to be just as habit-forming as any other desire.
The practice of denying one’s physical needs for the sake of liberating the spiritual self only traded one kind of obsession for another. Weakening earthly attachments through eradication of desire did not work, he declared. Liberation cannot be accomplished in this way. The wise seeker should redirect his focus to strengthening his willpower and desire for wisdom so as to mount the instinctual mind. Using this alternative Way (Skt. Maga) forward the seeker could accomplish the ideal state of Nirvana.
Some of the listeners began to realize that Sakamuni had their best interests in mind. He might be the one, after all, to guide them in the right direction toward their sought-after destination. Could he be the long awaited One-Who-Comes to Declare the Truth? Could he teach them how to acquire the great power they needed to transcend the side effects of desire? Sakamuni, looking at their wishful faces, assured them that abandoning their old practices for the sake of embracing the Buddha’s Way would be the right course for achieving a healthy state of mind free of all sorrows, without dying. They began to be open to the possibility that liberation could be achieved in one’s present lifetime.
With this promise, Sakamuni initiated a new Buddhist Order (Pali Sangha; Skt. Samgha)125 composed of a handful of mendicant disciples (Skt. Bhiksus).126 Employing his Middle Path philosophy, he called upon them to reject extreme practices in favor of a different path that would actually give them clear vision and the wisdom to successfully access Nirvana. Once they were ready to listen, he introduced these first disciples to the Four Noble Truths, representing the Buddha’s initial turning of the Wheel of Universal Truth (Skt. Dharma). The aspiration for and actualization of these “Noble Truths” would define the character of the Buddhist community and encapsulate its purpose from its first gathering forward for all time.
In the secular world the noble class, usually wealthy landowners, formed the aristocracy surrounding a king. But the Buddha would reframe this royal model in setting the stage for his fledgling movement. Noble in Sanskrit means Arya, or Lion-Sun seer. According to the mythic language of Aryan iconography, from the Lion-throne of wisdom, the Seat of Enlightenment, the Buddha reveals the ultimate Truths of the Lion-Sun seers. He thus unlocks his Buddha-land, the state of enlightened wisdom.
His noble court would be defined by quality of character, personal dignity, and the integrity of his mendicant followers. Despite the sharp contrast between his homeless community and the economic bastions of past religions, the Buddha regarded his disciples as nobles. His symbolic monarchy and its nobility owned nothing of material value, neither held nor sought to own physical property and did not carry or amass any assets. Their “wealth” would be composed entirely of intangibles: wisdom, realization, compassion, peacefulness, and liberation from sorrow. The only power they would ever wield was to be that of exemplary self-transformation.
His experiences as the former Chief Magus and King of Babylon presiding over an empire that ruled most of the civilized world served him well in understanding the political strategies and ethnic divisions exploited by powerful men. In the corridors of power “Truth” was often an expedient design used to manipulate perceptions or beliefs and sold to impressionable people. Fresh in his mind were the stealthy Persian conspirators who had skillfully shaped public perceptions against the Magi Order. Artfully spinning their deceitful calculations, they thought only of satisfying their insatiable hunger for domination. Not only did they covet the throne and the lands of their neighbors, they also had the audacity to claim the higher ground of moral Truth.
Siddhartha Gautama had no illusions about the dangers of political interests.
Clearly the grandiose perversions of truth by those who controlled public discourse made the meaning of the word suspect. However, from the boundless perch of the Buddha’s enlightened wisdom, Truth transcended perceptions, circumstances, or the intoxications of power. Regardless of beliefs or intentions, Truth, as the Buddha defined it, was universal and pervasive. It encompassed an accurate view of the cosmos and its underlying works, free of illusions, contrivances, or self-aggrandizing motives. The Universal Truth the Buddha planned to share with his new Order was to be boundless, ubiquitous, and liberating—the unadulterated Truth of the Reality of All Existence.
With his very first Teachings, Sakamuni would establish a religious community built on the pillars of Four Noble Truths. Upon this foundation he would inspire a mindful, selfless, and creatively dynamic movement. The Buddha envisioned a future era when the nobility of wise leaders would replace the ravages of greed and wars. He foresaw the demise of oppression and war and the emergence of free and peace-loving nations.
LIBERATION
The religious classes of Gautama’s time subscribed to harsh interpretations of the age-old Doctrine of Reward and Punishment. They tied the burden of sin to every human being. The only antidote to this ubiquitous affliction would be the cleansing of the soul. This difficult undertaking required both the stopping of additional accumulations of sin and ridding oneself of its inherent archival content.
The practitioners of asceticism believed that detachment from all sources of sin would purify and release their soul from the cycle of rebirth. Brahmins believed that ritual practices, such as reading the hymns and donating gifts to a temple would open the gate for their soul to enter the Heavenly realm. In either case, devotees would achieve a blessed afterlife. The rest of humanity, however, was doomed to a future of bedevilment, fated to endur
e suffering in this lifetime and the next. Or worse. Humans guilty of degrading activities could be reborn in a lower, more terrible world or suffer the ultimate punishment for evildoers, the annihilation of their soul.
Siddhartha Gautama questioned the afterlife scenarios limiting the possibility of liberation exclusively to those with special skills, or belief in a particular deity, or a bloodline. During his service as Chief Magus of Babylon, he had acquired a world-renown reputation from Aryana to Greece for his advancement of a provocative, alternative approach. He offered the philosophical premise that awakening a person’s consciousness to self-revealing wisdom would prompt their self-transformation in the present life. This reasoning emerged from the Philosophy of Naturalism, a rational search for harmonious existence through alignment with nature.
As the leader of the interfaith Magi Order he had been involved in directing the organization’s initiative to uncover the True Nature of Existence by observing the natural behaviors of objects, celestial bodies, and human beings. Their research repeatedly confirmed that the dynamics of motion in elemental, astronomical, and psychological properties were rooted in Universal Laws.
Gautama had been a proponent of the concept that natural laws were harmonically integrated and cyclical, and, therefore, phenomena could be predictable and measurable through the use of reason and mathematical formulas. The Babylonians had long been collectors of astronomical data relative to human events, including the geometric, celestial and numbering systems initiated in Sumerian times. Advances made under the Magi Order had allowed for the measurement and synchronization of the motion of celestial bodies in concert with human thoughts and activities.
By discerning the way the Universal Laws worked in one case, one could learn how they worked in all cases. Conversely, by observing a pattern across numerous cases, one could understand any case, and predict likely outcomes. That reasoning led to the discovery of harmonic alignments tying the cosmos, nature, society and the person. It substantiated the shamanic principle that in aligning the mind with the Universe, one may find a way to unlock the hidden secrets of the Dharma—the Reality, Truth, Laws, Teachings, and Cosmology of All Existence.
