by Harvey Kraft
In the case of Vimalakirti, his empathy for human sorrow was so deep that it had caused him to fall ill. Vimalakirti’s illness represented the depth of love that the Bodhisattva held for humanity. Further, he represented the four ideal attributes of the Bodhisattva, as follows:
Universal healing The Bodhisattva always prayed for all the sick of the world to get well, even when he was sick, or had sick family members.
Boundless empathy The Bodhisattva cared equally for all beings no matter what. His empathy was such that he never excluded others from his own thoughts and experiences and never sheltered himself from the thoughts and experiences of others. The Bodhisattva saw beyond their differences and illusions and recognized therein that all beings were manifestations of a greater reality wherein every expression of life was equally meaningful and dear in value.
Unlimited commitment The Bodhisattva did not recede in his conviction. His personal considerations were nonexistent when compared to that of helping people secure their happiness.
Endless compassion The Bodhisattva vowed to take upon himself the suffering of all sentient beings. Although mortals experienced retribution for their self-generated destiny, the Bodhisattva was ready to lighten their karmic load, taking upon himself many of their burdens whenever they embraced even one speck of the Buddha’s Law.
When the Buddha visited Vimalakirti’s hometown he had heard that the highly respected lay believer had fallen ill. Sakamuni dispatched a procession of sages to his bedside, including the ten Foremost Disciples along with five hundred disciples skilled in Learning and Realization. He also called upon eight thousand Celestial Bodhisattvas, and one hundred thousand Heavenly Beings (Skt. devas) to look in on Vimalakirti.
Although Vimalakirti convalesced in a small “ten-square-foot” room bereft of any object other than his bed, when the entourage of visitors entered they all easily ft inside and surrounded his bed. All the wise men were astonished by this perplexing situation until Vimalakirti explained:
In the enlightenment attained by the various Buddhas and Bodhi-sattvas there is a doctrine called the Perfectly Endowed Reality. When a Bodhisattva enters this enlightened world, he sees that the entire Golden Mountain world-system has been reduced to ft inside a tiny mustard seed—without leaving out even a little of it. Nevertheless, from the outlook of all beings living in the mortal realm nothing has changed. Even the guardian deities of the Realm of Desire (the Heavenly Kings of the four quarters and the thirty-three Gods of Sakra‘s heaven) who dwell high on the mountain are unaware that the whole of Existence fits into an area no larger than a mustard seed. However, those who are even more enlightened than deities possess the knowledge that a reality free of relativity, wherein the Golden Mountain can be scaled to the size of a mustard seed, is endowed within all. Only these truly enlightened ones can solve the enigma of the Perfectly Endowed Reality.192
Through this scene, Vimalakirti introduced a yet unheard of cosmology that he referred to as the Perfectly Endowed Reality. According to Vimalakirti, when a Bodhisattva advanced to this reality, he was able to experience the flexibility and folding of scale, time and space.
Using this Perfectly Endowed Reality, celestial Bodhisattvas were able to fold space and time crossing the Universe to go anywhere living beings needed their help. Further, he espoused, for the enlightening ones, the Perfectly Endowed Reality was a gateway from the “lands of mortality” (Golden Mountain world-systems) into the “Buddha-lands.”
Although Vimalakirti divulged the concept of the Perfectly Endowed Reality, Sakamuni Buddha cautioned the Bodhisattva disciples in training that it was nearly impossible to enter a concept. But because Buddhas can differentiate actuality from words that are mere shadows of it, they are able to enter the Buddha-land through a Dharma gate called the Perfectly Endowed Reality. However, before entering it you must differentiate this Reality from words that are mere shadows of it.
[Spiritual expressions] such as “Perfect Wisdom” or “Bodhisattva,” or words such as “being,” do not mean that a being can be apprehended in actual reality, because the word “being” is a mere concept; similarly, speaking, the “Dharma” also has the status of a spiritual concept . . .
In addition, [physical organisms, such as] a “body” or its parts, a head, neck, belly, muscles, shoulders, arms, hands, ribs, hips, thighs, legs, and feet . . . (or) a clump of grass, a branch, a leaf, a petal . . . living things [that appear to be physical] are also just conceptual Dharma . . .
Likewise, [virtual notions, such as] a dream, an echo, a mirage, a refected image, a theatrical show, or a mythic parable, also are refections of conceptual Dharma.
PARADOX OF ATTAINMENT
The idea of a Buddha was a concept, seeing a Buddha in person was a concept, imagining a Buddha was a concept. Nevertheless, being a Buddha was real.
To wear the crown of Perfect Enlightenment, to become a king of ultimate wisdom, in actuality, one had to decipher the secrets of Existence. When asked how he had achieved such a state, Sakamuni replied that for countless eons through innumerable past lives he self-lessly devoted himself to the salvation of others. Yet, the achievement of super-knowledge, Sakamuni said, can be accomplished by two other kinds of enlightened beings who are neither a Buddha nor a Tathagata, Declarer of Truth, like himself.
Certain rare individuals were able to achieve Perfect Enlightenment on their own, but they appeared incapable of relating its actualization to others. These Singular Buddhas (Pali/Skt. Paccekabuddha) accomplished Perfect Enlightenment by virtue of their genius without any vehicle or training from a Buddha. Through the ages, brilliant shamans, priests and ascetics using varying beliefs and methods had penetrated Perfect Wisdom, but they were unable to lead others to a state equal to their own.
One day Sakamuni honored a cadre of five hundred Paccekabuddhas who, he recalled, had gone underground at Mount Isigili, one of five hills surrounding Vulture Peak. He described the place where this happened as the “Black Rock That Devours Sages.” Once they entered it, the Singularly Enlightened Ones never came out again. This tale may have been a veiled reference to the original members of the Magi Order who had been brought from many lands to the Esagila Ziggurat in Babylon.
Could Mount Isigili have been an echo of Esagila?193
At the time of the Esagila’s reconstruction, Nebuchadnezzar chose to use very hard black granite that in his day was a common form of masonry reinforcement for tall structures. It would be the right choice for reinforcing the strength of the ziggurat. During the opening ceremony Nebuchadnezzar cited a dramatic episode in Sumerian history. Long ago, he said, a former ziggurat collapsed before its “Head” could be raised. Did he refer to the former tower-temple in Old Babylon, or, possibly, to the collapse of the Anu Ziggurat? Nebuchadnezzar’s topic was the search for immortality. His reference to the prior failed attempt to cap the ziggurat may have been to the fate of King Gilgamesh’s attempt to achieve immortality by trying to raise the Stairway to Heaven to the height of the gods. Consequently, with the completion of the Esagila Watchtower the Emperor Nebuchadnezzar claimed that he succeeded in connecting Earth to Heaven.
This accomplishment also meant the restoration of Babylon as the center of the cosmic channel between clergy and God. Through conquest, starting with the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian Empire forced hundreds of great priests, the religious leaders of their respective nations, to bring their idols or religious relics for enshrinement in Esagila’s satellite temples surrounding the central Temple of Marduk. In time many of these wise men had become members of the Magi Order participating in the interdenominational pursuit of the root cause of Universal Truth, one that all religions could embrace.
Were the many high priests exiled to Esagila also the vanished Pac-cekabuddhas of the so-called Mount Isigli?
The enigmatic Isigili Sutra may have suggested this to be the case. It may have been a record of Siddhartha Gautama’s treasured memory of his time at Babylon when as the Chief of the Magi he h
ad embraced a self-enlightened, interfaith clergy, ensconced there as caretakers of religious relics removed from their homelands.
With the purge of the Magi Order (522 BCE), however, Zoroaster had cleansed its membership of all religions other than his own. In a Buddhist tale about Devadatta, he was said to have enticed five hundred disciples from the Buddha. If Devadatta and Zoroaster were one and the same, the tale of the disappearance of the five hundred inside the mount of Isigili represented the purge of the interfaith Magi of Esagila. The five hundred that Devadatta lured away from Gautama echoed the number that may have disappeared with the establishment of the Zoroastrian Magi following the purge of Gautama as Chief Magus.
In other words, the “Paccekabuddhas of Isigili” may have been a metaphor for the interfaith high priests in Esagila. As Gautama headed for the Indus some may have returned to their homelands, others perhaps went east or west or into hiding. In honoring the memory of his former colleagues in the Isigili Sutra, the Buddha declared that they had achieved the Enlightenment of Non-Birth (Skt. Parinirvana) as Singular Buddhas.
Another group, the Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas, also had a claim to the super-knowledge of Perfect Enlightenment. First introduced in the Flower Garland Sutra, they were skilled teachers capable of teaching the Buddha-Dharma. These celestial beings were endowed with a Buddha-seed, the inherent cause for Buddhahood. Although they potentially could manifest as Buddhas, they humbly chose to forgo the role of a Buddha preferring to be models of Enlightenment and leading mortals by example. As Enlightening Beings they illustrated the teachings of Buddhas by taking on and overcoming sufferings.
With those two exceptions set forth in the Innumerable Meanings Sutra, the preface to the Lotus Sutra, Sakamuni conveyed that only Buddhas could fathom Buddhahood. According to his Paradox of Attainment, it was impossible for anyone who was not already a Buddha to achieve Buddhahood.
This is, namely, the incomprehensible and profound world of Buddhas that . . . Only a Buddha together with a Buddha can fathom it well.194
The Paradox of Attainment made it appear that it was impossible to climb into the state of Perfect Enlightenment. But it included a remote opportunity to get around this hurdle. The logic of the Paradox of Attainment left open these two quandaries:
1. While only a Buddha could fathom Perfect Enlightenment, could there be individuals who were Buddhas but were not aware of it?
2. Although achieving Buddhahood required a steady, burning desire for Perfect Enlightenment, how could one be expected to desire what one could never hope to achieve?
Because of the remote possibility that one might be a Buddha but not recall being one in a past life, this caveat cast the achievement of Buddhahood as highly improbable, rather than strictly impossible. Overall, it seemed very unlikely that a Buddha would be unaware that he was a Buddha.
It appeared that Sakamuni’s disciples were caught in the second quandary. The course on the Perfection of Wisdom was meant to train them to become Bodhisattvas. But even the achievement of a celestial Reward-body did not guarantee Buddhahood. How is it that the Buddha expected them to have a burning desire for that which was beyond reach?
However, in his next Cosmology to be revealed in the Lotus Sutra, Sakamuni would unveil a secret Dharma that would resolve the Paradox of Attainment. Through it mortal beings could make a cosmic leap to higher consciousness and discover that they were endowed with Perfect Enlightenment. But Sakamuni was reluctant to offer this option. He was prematurely concerned that some of his disciples, unable to believe such a thing to be possible, might reject it.
Sakamuni Buddha had spent some forty-two years in preparing his fock. His ultimate intention, however, was as yet unclear.
Through the first three Cosmologies: Infinite Wisdom, Golden Mountain, and Relativity he led them to cultivate, develop, and evolve to higher consciousness in progressive stages. Gradually, to bring them to this point, he taught increasingly sophisticated principles, culminating with many years of training in the Selfless Way.
But he was running out of time. At an age when death loomed nearer, it was time to lead his disciples into the realm of the Lotus Cosmology, wherein the Paradox of Attainment would no longer stand in the way of universal Perfect Enlightenment.
In the Lotus Sutra all the Buddhas from all across the Universe, past, present, and future synchronized with all the Bodhisattva-Mahasattva everywhere would open a colossal tower-temple that housed the treasure of Universal Truth. Therein, the Threefold Buddha-body would appear in the Perfectly Endowed Reality to deliver the audience into Perfect Enlightenment.
He was seventy-two years of age now.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Perfectly Endowed
Wearing light grey robes a sea of eager followers covered the green meadow. The assembly produced sounds from small groups of disciples greeting one another and discussing their progress. Bonfires were lit at various points. With sunset a hush fell on the audience.
Everyone looked up as a procession of leaders entered. Tranquil joy welled up in their hearts. From a promontory overlooking the congregation, a radiant Sakamuni Buddha took his seat on a Lion-throne cushion decorated with a motif of Lotus petals in full bloom.
Watching with quiet anticipation, a disciple in the audience reflected to himself:
“I have learned from the World-honored One to see into myself with the eye of the observing mind. From that perspective I was able to look into the well of my desires. Confronting my all-consuming appetite for the enticements of forms, I awoke one day to the realization that the forms I coveted were empty. Suddenly I understood that such empty things could not give me lasting satisfaction, yet I had allowed their pursuit to cause me to suffer and to put distress upon others. As I deepened my awareness, I discerned the difference between self-centered desires and the universal desires that I awakened at a higher level of consciousness. Slowly I understood that these universal desires emanated from the True Self where the Buddhas reside.
Although the gate to Nirvana opened before me I would not enter it at this time, and instead chose to follow the training course of Perfecting Wisdom. Using the vehicle of compassion for others, we, his disciples, emulated the Buddha, earnestly striving to help sufferers look inside themselves, just as we have. But those willing and able to follow us were few compared to the many people engrossed in conditioned behaviors and insatiable desires. Blown about back and forth by the eight worldly winds,195 due to a person’s pursuit of items they either lacked or coveted. When they had enough, they still wanted more, and when they didn’t get it or lost what they had, they cried out for divine rescue. Drawn to success and recognition, and distracted by the noise of the self-referential mind, most people were unable to hear us when we called out to them. Seeing them walk through life, asleep, and imprisoned in dreams of their own making, I pray that the One-Who-Comes to Declare the Truth now will show us how to awaken them.”
NEW DIRECTION
Word of a momentous revelation, the impending dissertation of the Lotus Sutra, had drawn a large and noble congregation to Mount Vulture Peak (Skt. Gridhrakuta).196
The largest assembly in more than forty years since he had “awakened” under the Bodhi tree included the Buddha’s devoted disciples, as well as various deities and enchanted and cosmic beings. Over the course of the next eight years (491–483 BCE) he would unveil the Lotus Sutra, climaxing with the Lotus Cosmology, the fourth and crowning layer of his universal Buddha-Dharma. This all-encompassing cosmic vision infused with boundless transformational power illuminated the scope, essence, and nature of Buddhahood.
For Siddhartha Gautama, the revelation of the Lotus Cosmology would complete the Magi Order’s quest for the mysterious key that would unlock cosmic wisdom—the revelation of the all-encompassing Universal Truth, the Ma’at, Emet, Arta, Rta, Asha, Arche and Dharma.
Indeed, the Lotus Sutra would allude to Vedic, Brahmanic, and Sramana mysticism, and evoked the mythic symbolism of Egyptian, Sumerian/ Akkadian
, Judean, Zoroastrian, Greek, and Lion-Sun shamanism. From the great minds of the Esagila Ziggurat in Babylon, the brilliant mathematicians, astronomer-astrologers, nature philosophers, divination-seers, and metaphysicians, the Lotus Sutra inherited its “vision language” replete with coded messages, sacred geometry, harmonic frequencies, epochal foresight, profound insight, and cosmic farsight. The former Chief Magus, now the Buddha, would use the mythic language of dreams and seer visions to reveal a super-conscious view of the Universal-Mind.
While Sakamuni invited these cultural antecedents to take their seats of honor for the contributions they made to the wisdom of the ages, he also revisited his own earlier Teachings for the purpose of reexamining and shedding new light on the various practices and assumptions associated with his Doctrines, Laws, and Cosmologies. Leaving the past behind, Sakamuni Buddha would reveal a hidden Truth that none had ever heard before.
Whenever new information was introduced, the Buddha once advised, it caused everything to change. Similarly, once the Lotus Cosmology would be revealed, Buddhism itself would be transformed.
Never before was the grand scope of his Teachings as ineffable. The Lotus Cosmology vision was too beautiful and profound for words. It would unveil the difficult-to-fathom Way of the Buddhas, explore the cosmic fabric of Existence deeper than any Teachings before it, divulge the origin and purpose of life, and open the gate to the self-empowered evolutionary transformation of humankind. In it Sakamuni Buddha would share an unfiltered view of his all-encompassing Cosmology. In it he would offer the universal gift of Perfect Enlightenment to all who would enter the Lotus Cosmology.
