by Harvey Kraft
Providing necessary leadership an inner circle of leaders had formed around the Buddha. The Great Council of Disciples consisted of the ten foremost followers who attained the state of one Worthy of Enlightenment (Skt. Arhats), each exemplifying unique talents in embracing and sharing the Buddha’s insights. Whenever Sakamuni spoke to a gathering Sariputra and Maudgalyayana (Pali Sariputta, Moggallana) flanked his sides. Sariputra quickly established his credentials for fathoming the Buddha-wisdom by asking Sakamuni the most perceptive questions. Maudgalyayana, excellent in reading psychological conditions, showed great skill in discerning what the disciples needed to know.
The pair had been childhood friends and former fellow ascetics. Together they had encountered one of the original Indus forest mendicants who had met the Buddha immediately after his Great Awakening under the Sacred Tree. Impressed by the sage’s calm and radiant demeanor, they were overjoyed when he shared with them an excerpt of Siddhartha Gautama’s Teachings.
They learned from that sage that during the Buddha’s infinite wisdom vision, the Great Enlightening Ones (Skt. Bodhisattvas-Mahasattvas) expressed their enthusiasm for the opportunity to study under the Buddhas of the Ten Directions. Because their light-bodies could cross space-time-scale at will they were able to quickly travel to any cosmic location where they might be needed. Thus the two ascetics learned that Bodhisattvas manifested in celestial Reward-bodies by putting the Buddha-Dharma of compassion into practice. The celestial Bodhisattvas, the sage relayed, were dedicated to spreading Buddha-wisdom to anyone ready to receive it. But, he concluded, to be exposed to the immeasurable depth and scope of a Buddha in one’s present lifetime was an opportunity that may come only once in millions of lifetimes.
As soon as they heard these words, Sariputra and Maudgalyayana determined immediately to seek out the Buddha. Tracking down Saka-muni, they became devotees, each bringing hundreds more disciples with them. Quickly the two achieved the station of Worthiness, and impressed Sakamuni with their motivation for learning Enlightenment.
As leaders of the Great Council of Disciples, the Buddha expected them to adopt the Selfless Way. Unlike the other two vehicles (of Learning and Realization), Selflessness did not promise liberation from birth or any other reward other than the personal satisfaction of enlightening others. Those disciples who chose to adopt this Third Vehicle would embrace compassionate action and dedicate their life to helping the needy. Prior to that time, in all the preceding religions in history, never once had there been such a total selfless commitment to the salvation of others as the path personified by a Bodhisattva.
Volunteering to work with or for individuals and communities in the midst of daily crises, their focus would be to impart the Buddha’s Dhar-ma-wisdom as the means for saving people from suffering. Bodhisattva candidates passed on to others brief passages, epithets, and incantations from the sutras and offered practical guidelines by which ordinary people could find refuge from harshness and sorrow. Hard-working laborers, after meeting a Bodhisattva, would joyfully till the land while repeating words the Buddha had spoken.
On occasion these Bodhisattva missionaries spread good news. One such story was the recent arrival of a Great Enlightening Being in the Buddha’s camp. A celestial Bodhisattva named Sweet Voice of Wisdom, Manjusri, had appeared in order to assist Sakamuni in the training of new Bodhisattvas. Having memory of events throughout Cosmic Time, Manjusri was able to confirm the Buddha’s past life tales.
The role of Bodhisattva Manjusri appears to have been inspired by the mythic Manu, the Vedic messenger from Heaven, the first man and savior of humanity. Manjusri similarly possessed unlimited knowledge of the past from the beginning of Cosmic Time.
As the leader of the Sangha, Sakamuni Buddha expected the disciples closest to him to be self-disciplined and to set an exemplary standard for others. He might question them to test their acumen on a difficult subject, or without notice ask them to preach to a group gathered in front of him. He might praise them for their strengths and talents, or admonish them, as merited. If one of them showed a lapse in awareness, exhibited a lackluster or false demeanor, or thoughtlessly took something or someone for granted, Sakamuni would bring attention to such behavior by direct scolding or asking the person to leave his side or by taking leave of him. Or he might point out to such persons that their weakness came from a relationship in a past life and encourage them to rewrite their Karma in the present, reminding them that he also struggled and aspired to overcome his challenges in this lifetime.
During his days as Prince Siddhartha and Chief Magus he had achieved a state known as “Just Short of Enlightenment.” This level of enlightenment served as a launch pad for his grand achievement of Buddhahood under the Sacred Tree of Illumination. From that moment forward Sakamuni never lost sight of his mission to inspire humanity’s evolution, nor would he forget for a second to encourage his disciples to deepen their commitment. Similarly, he proposed, the Three Vehicles would lead them either to become Worthy of Enlightenment (Arhat-Enlightenment) or achieve Compassionate Enlightenment (Bodhisattva-En-lightenment). But most importantly, he cautioned, these practices were not an end in and of themselves. They should be used as a foundation to aspire for Buddhahood.
THE PEAK
Having reached the age of fifty-five, Sakamuni needed a personal assistant. He chose a householder devotee, Ananda, a cousin from his Saka hometown of Babil. Ananda’s duties included managing Sakamuni’s travel agenda, such as making arrangements for his stays at householder homes. But he would decline to reside under the same roof as the Buddha, insisting that he was only a servant and did not want to leave the impression that he was taking personal advantage of his proximity to the World-Honored One.
Due to his highly likeable personality, humble Ananda was well trusted with messages or requests for the Buddha. As Ananda possessed a special talent, a savant-memory, he never forgot to relate a single message. Able to readily recall the Buddha’s every word, Ananda also served as his recording secretary. Attending Sakamuni for twenty-five years, Ananda became the official narrator of the Buddha’s sermons after his passing when the sutras were later set to writing. He opened each one with the phrase, “Thus have I heard,” an invocation commonly used among Sakamuni’s listeners to share the Buddha’s wisdom.
In his lifetime the community of practitioners had grown substantially to thousands of men and women practicing the Three Vehicles. Yet Sakamuni Buddha repeatedly encouraged them to seek the state of Perfect Enlightenment with all their being. But, how could they do so? The Buddha Eye appeared to them to be a stature beyond the reach of mere human beings. Only a few were able to set aside their limitations and accept on faith the possibility that they could attain such an impossibly lofty state. On occasion, these disciples would be able to see through his Eye when the Buddha shared his visions.
“Fix your minds on Perfect Enlightenment,” Sakamuni said, “and you will be able to see with my Buddha’s Eye.”
Whenever he was ready to share a cosmic vision, he would be seated on higher ground overlooking a vast open field filled with adherents. From this elevation, all could see him and hear his voice. His favorite meeting area was the sacred mount of Vulture Peak (Skt. Gridhrakuta).184 This location, however, should be liberally construed to represent more than one physical place, possibly many spread as far apart as Babylon to the Ganges. No matter where or when the disciples gathered at Vulture Peak, in mythic terms they had assembled at the gate of liberation between life and death.
In Zoroastrian funerary customs, vultures played an important role as devourers of impure flesh particularly during “sky burials.” Zoroas-trianism blamed decomposition on the invasion of a deceased body by Demons (Per. Daevas). They invited vultures to consume a corpse, because they believed, only this bird could purify a deceased body without being contaminated, an echo of Egyptian animal iconography where the vulture had been designated as the carrier of souls to Heaven. Based on this view of purification, the birds
were served dead bodies on “Towers of Silence” (Per. dakhma), a remnant of the ancient wooden excarnation towers used by the prehistoric vulture shamans of Cappadocia.
While Zoroaster referred to followers of the Buddha as Daevas, Vedic Demons, they in turn avoided calling him by his proper name or title. Knowing that his own believers referred to him as Devadatta, “Messenger of God’s Law,” or, literally, “Gift of the Gods,” some Buddhists gave the author of the Guide to Exorcising Demons (Vi-Daeva-datta) the name “Dae-vadatta” or “The Exorcist.” Zoroaster had modified the word Deva in the Rig Veda to Daeva, thus changing its intended meaning from Illuminating Spirit to Devil’s Disciple. In this way he associated other believers with evil spirits, “infdels,” who did not believe in the Supreme God, Assura Mazda.
The image of the Vulture was also associated with the presence of Mara, the Lord of Death. One time at Vulture Peak, Ananda feared he had seen Mara appear in the body of a vulture and worried that it was an omen threatening the death of his spiritual life. The Buddha assured him that the vulture signaled only that Ananda would soon witness a renewal of his life.
In the Arya tradition of the Lion-Sun Fellowship, the vulture’s role was associated with shamanic skills. Shamans could raise or lower their body temperatures while in meditation, and so could the vultures. And just as shamans were bound to do no harm, vultures were peaceful scavengers. They did not kill their prey. Like mendicants holding out their bowl for food, the vultures also accepted what they were given. For Buddhists, this meant that the “noble birds” were pacifists.
The Buddha admired these visionary birds for their profound relationship to the element of air. In the context of mythic symbolism air equaled wisdom. The vulture, the master navigator of air and wind, symbolized the ability of the Buddha to wisely navigate the world of life and death. Like the large soaring bird, the Buddha had a view from high above with total awareness of what happens on the ground. As the master of wisdom, the Buddha, like the vulture, exhibited endless patience.
Vulture Peak figuratively depicted the site of the Buddha’s loftiest insights for the sake of navigating the Cosmos without distinction between life and death, here and there, now and then.
Vulture Peak, in regards to air, referred to the “Peak of Wisdom.”
One day, the shining Buddha in the “Peak of Wisdom” emerged from meditation and surveyed a gathering of 1,250 disciples Worthy of Enlightenment and 500 liberated householders. Entering the Universal-Mind, he opened a communications channel with innumerable, fully accomplished Celestial Bodhisattvas, all chanting enlightening sounds and fixing their minds on Perfect Enlightenment.
To demonstrate the veracity of what he was about to reveal, the Declarer of Truth unrolled his tongue, the luminous “Tongue of Universal Truth,” until it reached clear across the “Great Three-ThousandFold Universe.” Each potential word sitting on his tongue appeared as a golden lotus flower with anthers of precious gems and thousands of petals. Numerous rays of light burst out of the lotus blossoms. Countless Buddhas were seated on these myriad numbers of lotuses. Seeing this image the entire audience fixed their minds on Perfect Enlightenment.
The Buddha seated upon a Lion-throne, roared, causing the Universe to shake in six ways: trembling back and forth, tossing from here to there like a wave, rising up and down. Sounds of explosions, rolling thunder, and crackling firewood heralded his triumph over the Cosmos of Relativity. The earthshaking movement conveyed the importance of the Buddha-wisdom he was readying to impart. The shaking and uproar released the hold of ignorance on the Universe. His roar had softened the “Great Three-Thousand-Fold Universe,” purified it throughout, and eased it into the Eye of the Buddha, whereupon, for the moment, all beings everywhere came to rest from their sufferings, all the sick and disabled were healed of afflictions or detrimental habits, and all the hungry and thirsty were nourished. All beings became immersed in the kind of happiness that originates and arises from within.185
Buddhas across the “Great Three-Thousand-Fold Universe” acknowledged all the “Good!” that Sakamuni had done.
His Tathagata body, the body of the Declarer of Truth, in its aspect as the formless Truth-body, appeared to span over the entire Universe for all to see.
Bearing gifts such as lotus flowers and garlands, perfumes and incense, ointments and powders, robes, parasols, fags, and streams, they placed them at the feet of the Tathagata’s gloried body. Then, collecting many kinds of colorful flowers from land, water and air, the Tathagata created a colossal, pointed Tower of Flowers, of such magnitude as to fill the entire “Great Three-Thousand-Fold Universe.” Silken tassels hung like joy from the beautiful cosmic tower, and from it sweet aromas exuded wisdom into the air.
The Tower of Flowers echoed the visionary axis channel of ziggurats and pyramids connecting Heaven and Earth. It embodied the peak of the Buddha’s enlightened wisdom connecting the mortal world with Universal Truth. Witnessing it, each person in the audience felt in their heart that the Declarer of Truth had beautified the Universe just for them.
Reveling in the cosmic celebration all attending were awed by the intergalactic scope of the glorious body of the Declarer of Truth, resplendent in beauty, calming power, universal joy, perfect purity, and luminosity.
And because the brightly shining golden color of the Declarer of Truth streamed forth in the ten directions, in each direction countless world systems were ignited and illuminated.186
The Declarer of the Truth had brought forth a new Cosmology. He smiled sending rays of light to illuminate the Universe with the “Perfection of Wisdom.” The cause of the smile, he explained to Ananda, was due to a forward vision he had of a future time in eons yet to come wherein he saw countless creatures evolving into Buddhas. Just as he did now, each of them would also reveal the resplendent body of the Declarer of Truth.
Seeing the Buddha articulate this vision of Perfect Wisdom before his eyes, Sariputra inquired of him: “How should a Bodhisattva endeavor to achieve the super-knowledge of Perfect Wisdom?”
The Buddha replied in this way:
A Bodhisattva, a great being, should train in Perfect Wisdom. Wishing to transcend [relative] thoughts, he should produce a single [pure] thought containing countless world systems in each of the ten directions . . .
A Bodhisattva, a great being, should train in Perfect Wisdom. Striving to see the Buddhas in each of the ten directions, in all the Buddha-fields . . . he should know the thoughts and doings of all beings, remember their former lives, and call forth the super-knowledge (of Reality) . . .
A Bodhisattva, a great being, should train in Perfect Wisdom. Wanting to produce the five eyes: the Mortal eye, the Heavenly eye, the Wisdom eye, the Dharma-eye, and the Buddha-eye, he should enable sight, across each of the ten directions with the Eye of the Buddhas.187
Sakamuni Buddha declared that an aspiring Bodhisattva trained in the perfection of wisdom would be able to see the peak of wisdom with the Eye of Buddhahood. Thus, the conjuring of the Tower of Flowers, the epitome of the beautiful mind of the Buddha, symbolized the Selfless Way as the training ground for Buddhas.
TRAINING
Several disciples gathered to discuss the meaning of this cosmic vision.
A senior among them refected back to his former days as an ascetic when he had aspired to achieve purification of the soul by eliminating physical desires, believing that it would result in the extinction of the cycle of mortal rebirth. But once he saw the luminous body of the Tathagata in the vision of the Tower of Flowers, he finally understood that instead of extinguishing the self-referential self, the Buddha transformed it by displaying his True Self. In this way he conveyed to this disciple that training in the perfection of wisdom was the Selfless path that led to the discovery of the universally liberated True Self.
“I have now fully embraced the life of a Bodhisattva,” the senior said.
But another disciple disagreed. He felt that the glorious body of the Declarer of Truth showed the
Buddha in his state of extinction as he would appear in Nirvana. Among the practitioners of Learning and Realization many believed that Nirvana was the best state of Enlightenment they could hope for, and so this disciple thought the Buddha had transported them all into Nirvana.
But the Buddha never declared Nirvana to be the ultimate goal, the senior one objected.
He reminded his colleagues that they had witnessed Sakamuni scolding some of the disciples Worthy of Enlightenment for becoming gratified with having achieved pure consciousness, calling it a selflsh resolve. Challenging their mistaken notions the Buddha had clarified that a “pure” being was not simply one who had purified his mind from “attachment to illusions.” He defined a “pure” being as one who exhibited “pure compassion” for the salvation of others. Sakamuni himself embodied this principle by traveling far and wide to teach Buddhism to as many people as possible.
The senior disciple reminded his fellows that whenever the Buddha recalled his past lives, he spoke of practicing the Bodhisattva Way for 750,000 lifetimes and more. Across eons and countless world-systems he practiced the Selfless Way on behalf of mortals. If he wanted his disciples to achieve purity in order to go to Nirvana, the senior said, why does he now urge them all to adopt the Vehicle of Selflessness as their primary practice?
During the training course of perfecting wisdom, even the most reluctant disciples learned that the Vehicle of Selflessness was designed to redirect strictly personal pursuits of Nirvana toward liberating other people from suffering. The Buddha urged them all to seek out folks in every direction, and distribute to them the medicine of the Buddha Dharma without expecting any reward for doing this work.
From this point forward Sakamuni’s ethical-philosophical-psychological-metaphysical-cosmological views converged into an actionable training of Bodhisattva practitioners. This course sought to move the goal of Buddhism away from the pursuit of non-birth, and instead, motivate disciples to aspire to repeated births as Selfless beings.
