by Harvey Kraft
This exploration may have been at the heart of a critical debate within the Magi Order. The Naturalists led by Gautama promoted harmony with the wisdom of Universal Truth as the way to advance civilization. The Moralists championed by Zoroaster espoused the view that alignment or misalignment with the true divine dictates of Universal Truth result in reward or punishment.
This was the backdrop to Siddhartha Gautama’s challenge of the mendicants in their struggle against original sin. He had observed that human sorrows were natural conditions best dealt with by aligning one’s mind with the harmonic resonance of cosmic fulfillment. Surrounded now by a handful of stunned listeners, he called upon them to achieve their liberated state in their present body—not by escaping from desires, but by restoring the mind to its natural state of being. Through the process self-transformation, he said, they could infuse their mental, emotional, physical and spiritual aspects with a tranquil and balanced joy that is to be found within.
Believing as they did that attachments and habits caused rebirth, they initially resisted the idea that detachment could not accomplish liberation. But Sakamuni insisted upon the inseparability of body, mind and spirit. Observing that in life any one of these aspects could not exist without the others, what then, he asked, was the basis for thinking that they could exist separately in the afterlife? Listening to his reasonable and natural approach, they had to admit the possibility that he was right.
They sat before him in wrapped attention as he offered the liberating doctrine of the Four Noble Truths realizing for the first time that indeed he was the One-Who-Comes to Declare the Truth (Skt. Tathagata):
The Four Noble Truths now offered by the One-Who-Comes to Declare the Truth is a middle way . . . Its path brings clear vision and insight; it makes for wisdom that leads to tranquility awakening, enlightenment, and Nirvana.127
Through the elucidation of his “Four Noble Truths of the Lion-Sage” (Skt. calvary arya-satya-ani), the Buddha introduced his disciples to a new path for pursuing liberation from the ubiquitous bindings of mortal complications. He revealed that from birth to death infinite permutations of sorrow emerged from just a pair of sources.
The first two Noble Truths revealed that the origins of all sorrows were caused by: (1) unpleasant, and (2) pleasant associations. Invariably, the effect of these two sources led to four common outcomes of emotional and psychological pain (Pali Dukkha; Skt. Duhkha)—suffering, anxiety, stress, and dissatisfaction. Pain is a ubiquitous condition. In varying degrees and circumstances human beings experience its outflows in body and mind.
The first Noble Truth revealed that sorrows were derived from “unpleasant experiences” related to fragility and vulnerability. Physical pain, natural disaster, ill health, aging, grief, regrets, anguish, depression, shock, loss, fear of mortality, or death of a loved one were setbacks that triggered serious mental, emotional, and physical crises and suffering.
The second Noble Truth identified sorrows originating from “pleasant experiences.” They were the consequence of the common pursuit for satisfaction through desires for pleasure, sex, fertility, intoxication, and wealth, or cravings for euphoria, security, recognition, power, safety, or salvation. All pleasant desires harbored unwanted side effects. Attachment to pleasant physical, mental, or spiritual gratifications invariably led to pain and suffering when one experienced their diminution, loss or the possibility of losing them. In extreme cases, a temporary euphoria associated with beliefs, belongings, wants, or unrequited relationships could escalate into compulsion, fixation, coveting, clinging, and addictions resulting in destructive or depraved behaviors.
Sakamuni suggested to his disciples that they meditate on the two origins and four outcomes of sorrow so that they can be better prepared to receive the Buddha’s offer of a solution to these challenges.
To illustrate his point, he entered a state of contemplation. Suddenly the newly emerged Buddha shined a beam from his forehead. It shed light on numerous vignettes of people caught up in a range of obsessive behaviors. Scenarios displayed against the night sky showed how people in various circumstances fell into the pitfalls of suffering due to pleasant desires and unpleasant experiences.
Commenting on the universal range of the scenes, Sakamuni said that no one was immune from sorrow. He recalled his own disappointment when he had failed to achieve liberation through ascetic practices. Similarly he encouraged his listeners to reflect on their personal frustrations. By becoming fully aware that sorrows were common to all human beings, he said, they would be able to appreciate the powerful psychological hurdles and compelling emotional forces operating at the subterranean levels of the human condition.
With receptive minds, his listeners ravenously consumed his insight. Thirsty to learn about the next two Noble Truths, they wondered what other powerful wisdom he could reveal for dealing with the causes of sorrows.
The third Noble Truth the Buddha unveiled was the power of resolute determination to cause a turning point. This Truth recognized that the establishment of a hopeful and confident frame of mind was step one in overcoming any challenge one faced. While the first two Nobel Truths revealed the profound difficulties arising from instincts and interactions, this Noble Truth simply declared that courageously calling forth the desire to overcome these challenges would open a path to mitigating sorrowful influences. The goal of the third Noble Truth was to face one’s self-indulgent, sorrow-making, patterned behavior by conjuring the determination to be liberated from it.
Making a vow to overcome the patterns of sorrow was the essential catalyst for overcoming suffering. Forming a mindset open to new possibilities and the determination to achieve that goal, no matter what, invoked a confident vow, operating as a targeted projectile needed for the actualization of a goal.
Executing the vow with confidence in the Buddha’s Teaching was the basis of the fourth Noble Truth. Once the seeker had vowed to overcome sorrows due to his own deeds, thoughts and feelings, he would be ready to begin the journey toward a state of liberation. The fourth of the Noble Truths, the path for cultivating, strengthening and attaining a liberated mind, required the application of eight attributes and practices.
This Noble Path is a synergy of eight forms of conduct folded into one.128
The Fourth Noble Truth was the Buddha’s Eightfold Noble Path composed of the following four states-of-being: (1) holding truthful views, (2) conjuring lofty aspirations, (3) producing kind-hearted speech, and (4) cultivating good behavior. There were as well four practices or acts to follow: (5) do no harm, (6) work to do good, (7) aspire to learn, and (8) search for profound wisdom by applying oneself to skillful concentration, devotion, and initiative. By applying this actionable Eightfold Noble Path the seeker of Nirvana could become free from pain, eradicate the causes of sorrow, and open the gate to fulfillment.
The Eightfold Noble Path constituted the initial step for a seeker embarking on Buddhism’s journey of liberation based on the principle that practice makes perfect. It set forth the Way toward the rewarding goal of Nirvana, a serene, transcendent space of perfect stillness, a boundless realm of pure bliss, where the “winds” that buffet existence no longer blow. Nirvana was a state of enlightened peace, a state-of-being absent of life’s ups and downs, free of instincts, conditions, distinctions, and sorrows—free of dependencies on people, time, place, mobility, materials, or even food and breathing.
At the time various teachers in the Indus offered other paths to Nirvana. Some methods to achieving it could only be accomplished by a special few, those willing and capable of extraordinary self-sacrifice. Others required skills in religious rites. But the Buddha’s Way was bereft of any ceremonies, such as sacrifices, rituals, or charms; did not require or foster belief in any deities, supernatural beings, or soul-entities; and did not demand allegiance to moral stipulations, religious canons or priestly powers. Its only requirement was that a seeker be sincere. Without the need for social credentials or the ranks of birthright and without any
special requirements of talents, skills, or intelligence, all one needed to embark on the Buddha’s Four Noble Paths was a self-motivated resolve and willingness to pursue self-development.
The first mendicants to join this noble journey were struck by the Buddha’s open-door policy of accepting anyone willing to adopt exemplary behavior and seek liberating wisdom. The Noble Paths were based on a Doctrine of Self-Determination, the embarkation point of the Buddha’s Way. Instead of a defensive struggle to escape life’s compelling experiences, he encouraged a process of recognition and acceptance followed by determination and training focused on reforming one’s inner self. Step-by-step, his new recruits became stronger and stronger, increasingly fortified with indestructible peacefulness.
In contrast to the arduous practice of mental and physical detachment, the pursuit of Nirvana through self-transforming action appeared to be more achievable, although not easier. The degree of difficulty in achieving Buddhist Nirvana would be defined not by the ascetic challenge of withstanding pain but by the challenge of acquiring profound wisdom. In either case, a long road of dedicated work stretched ahead for the seekers.
FIELDS OF EXISTENCE
New adherents converting from the practice of detachment to self-actualization wondered: If body and spirit cannot be separated, how could one cross from the physical to the divine world?
In place of the duality of Heaven and Earth, the Buddha offered an alternative cosmogony.
He proposed that Existence was a single universal framework composed of three integrated and inseparable facets—the Threefold Field of Existence. Everything in Existence, without exception, was composed of the fields of Form, Formlessness, and Desire.
All forms of phenomena, matter and energy, inanimate and organic beings, space-time, or other dimensions, were manifestations of Form, the field of actualized Existence.
All expressions of Form, however, emerged out of the Formless field, the information underlying Existence, including memories and potentials.
The third facet, the field of Desire, converted potentials into actualized phenomena and back again, bridging Form and Formlessness.
As all things were made of a blend of manifestations (Form), possibilities (Formlessness), and transformations (Desire), every phenomenon in this holistic, interactive super-system, from a thought to a rock, a person, or a spirit, whether defined as an entity or a constituent component, existed simultaneously across the Threefold Field of Existence.
The Threefold Field of Form, Formlessness, and Desire undergirded the Universe like a scaffold. It allowed the formation of a physical Universe to arise out of a potential Universe as it became impelled by a desire to take form. From Sakamuni’s perspective, all of the information required of a fully realized Universe existed in a formless state as a potential-seed. Desire was the triggering agent that caused the seed to germinate and manifest into being. That process applied to an entire Universe as well as to a person.
Bewildered, the mendicants listening to this had walked away at first, but soon changed their mind and returned to learn more. Although initially they had been overwhelmed by the scope of his concepts, they felt drawn by his personal stature and sensible reasoning. Even with a partial understanding they had to admit that his wisdom appeared to bear out the predicted arrival of the One-Who-Comes to Declare the Truth.
After some contemplation, the five kinds of mendicants to hear the Buddha introduce the Threefold Field of Existence were able to leverage this comprehensive vision of a cosmic platform to achieve a higher state of consciousness.
Quickly, word of his colossal insight spread in the forest and speedily attracted a growing audience. Hundreds and more came to satisfy their curiosity. Some were teachers; many were students. All had questions and clamored for explanations:
Who was the Buddha?
Where did he come from?
What was the source of his Perfect Knowledge?
Was he the only Buddha or were there others?
What would be required of those who undertook to follow him on the journey to liberation?
What was the goal of the Buddha’s Teachings?
The answers would come from the Buddha himself over the course of time.
But learning about the Buddha and his insights would require seekers to commit to a journey of discovery. He would teach them a course, the Buddha Way, and each sermon would be encapsulated in the form of a sutra. The term had a familiar ring to his listeners. In the Vedic hymns, the word “sutra” referred to “condensed speech,” the concentration of thoughts, a “profound line of thinking,” or great wisdom delivered in a dense and brief form. In addition, the Buddhist definition of “sutra” also referred to “good news,” or “a gate of liberation,” or a harmonic vibration aligned with Universal Truth.
Step-by-step, the Buddhist sutras would shine the beam of enlightening insights on the puzzling mysteries of life. Like gold, a small amount of Buddha-wisdom carried great weight.
In his next sutra, in response to the curiosity of a growing audience about the origins of the Buddha, he would invite them to join him in a shared vision—unveiling a grand cosmology of such design, scope, and scale that not a single person among them could have ever imagined anything even remotely like it.
Three weeks after he gave chase to Mara, Sakamuni Buddha again took his lion-throne seat under the cosmic illumination of the Sacred Tree. In meditation he closed his eyes and entered the unlimited realm of sight.
The Arya symbol of a beam emanating from a lion’s forehead symbolized the ability of a seer to open a cosmic channel with his lion’s roar. But Sakamuni took this spotlight a step further—sharing his vision with those around him. He leveraged the receptive skills of the mendicants to give the entire congregation simultaneous access to his projections. Unifying the audience in a telepathic concert of inner voices and inner visions, Sakamuni allowed them to watch in their minds as if a spotlight emanating from his forehead projected moving pictures on to a screen in front of them. They all participated in a profound visionary assembly. The shared vision inside their heads tapped into the Buddha’s Universal-Mind of infinite wisdom, a super-cosmic consciousness.
The former Magus “stargazer” who studied the celestial bodies from the peremptory at the Esagila Watchtower, having now achieved an unrestricted vision of the cosmos with the boundless scope of his inner eye, pulled aside the curtain of revelation and brought into view a Universe of inconceivable scale, scope, and dimension.
The sky opened like a flower, revealing a deeper and closer view of the starry cosmos than any his audience could have ever seen even on the clearest of all nights. Awed at the dramatic vision of a boundless Universe, they gasped as his vision took them close enough to see the stars emit immense light, much like the sun. They sat stunned by the majestic scope and magnitude of radiance stretching in every direction. At that moment hundreds of seekers vowed their allegiance to follow the Buddha forever more.
Ancient shamans using megalithic observatories explored the movements of bright stars. Sumerian stargazers made the connection between the celestial bodies and human destiny. The Egyptians saw that the stars were instrumental in the alignment of Universal Order. Vedic seers looked into the origin of the Universe and divined the cycles of Cosmic Time. His Babylonian predecessors mapped the cosmos using astronomical measures and mathematical data. Working with his cohorts at the Magi’s Watchtower observatory at Esagila, the Chief Magus, Siddhartha Gautama, had cultivated a fervent predilection for unraveling the secrets of an astral grand design.
But now the Buddha was taking his audience far beyond the views apparent from Earth. His enlightened skills as a Buddha-visionary would transport them to the very formation of the Universe and the emergence of a mind-boggling expanse filled with luminous world systems.
STAR WORLDS
His audience raised their heads in unison as they watched Sakamuni Buddha open a portal in the night sky. From it emerged a hidden cosmos of breathtaki
ng universal scope. His visionary beam seemed to take everyone closer and closer to the center of the Universe. As the focus approached its destination, a fabulous image came into view.
In the center of space a galactic-sized golden bright Buddha named Universal Radiance (Skt. Vairochana)129 sat motionless atop a mammoth lotus flower with one thousand petals or more extending outward. Legs crossed, back perfectly upright, the manifestation of his body represented the source of an emerging Universe.
Emanating from the forehead of Universal Radiance Buddha, a stream of light as bright as millions of suns illuminated innumerable Buddha-worlds in the Ten Directions.130 Everywhere the beam shed light upon myriad astral worlds each also with a beaming Buddha shining forth from the middle of that realm.
In this vision the Universe was a Buddha, and the Lotus pedestal he sat on indicated that a Buddha-centric Universe composed of countless Buddhas had flowered from a Buddha-seed. This grand vision announced that the Universe was intricately interwoven and populated with innumerable expressions of wisdom across an infinite scope:
And, as space extends everywhere, Universal Radiance Buddha entered all worlds equally. His body forever sat omnipresent in all sites of enlightenment. . . He constantly demonstrated the production of all the Buddha-lands, their boundless forms and spheres of light appearing throughout the entire cosmos, equally and impartially . . . His body extended throughout the ten directions, yet without coming or going. His knowledge entered into all forms and realized the emptiness of all things. All the miraculous displays of the Buddhas of past, present, and future, were all seen in his light, and all the adornments of inconceivable eons were revealed.131
