[Buddha-l] Re: Pennsylvania and crying Buddhas

[Mitchell Ginsberg]

hello Jamie and all, 

Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 11:16:26 -0400
From: Jamie Hubbard <jhubbard at email.smith.edu>
Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] Re: Pennsylvania and crying
Buddhas

So, I take it that you know some Buddhas--how many
Buddhas do you know? Care to give up their names? And
how do you know them when you see/meet them? IOW, what
are the characteristics of a Buddha that you work with

in order to recognize them?
BTW, I am entirely serious about this-- I am offering
a seminar on "Buddhahood 101" next semester, and the
question of just what constitutes Buddhahood is the
entire topic, all of which is somewhat in service of
answering the question of whether or not anybody is a
Buddha these days. I ask this to just about everybody,
and Bhante Gunaratana answered just the other day that
he hasn't met any Buddhas, then quickly qualified
himself to say that he has met some that he considers
arhats. 
. . unfortunately, there wasn't time to find out what
he meant, much less who these folks were.
I am not myself sure of my own answer-- I certainly
have never met any Buddhas as described, for example,
by John Mackransky in his "Buddhahood Embodied." I
guess I first need to decide what I think a Buddha 
is--hence the seminar :) . . .
In any case, yours and others comments would be great!
Jamie

==========
I notice that Beni spoke of not knowing many buddhas
and you asked about how many Buddhas he knew. Ditto
with comments from Gunaratana (with his addendum about
knowing some arahats). 
So, if we take the distinction between buddha and
Buddha (capitalization in English) seriously, I have
found that in Theravada contexts, buddha is usually
taken to be referring specifically to one of the
eon-buddhas, that is *the* buddha for any given age. 
Since we are still in the age of Shakyamuni Buddha (to
refer to Siddhattha Gotama by another name/epithet),
to know a buddha would be to know this individual. 
Arahats are those whose psychological processes have
been cleared of certain sorts of unskilfulness (as per
various discourses and stock phrases/definitions). 
So in that way, to talk of arahats in a Theravada
context is somewhat parallel to speaking of buddhas in
other Buddhist traditions. Of course, when we have
oneupmanship coming into play (where buddhas are more
buddha than arahats and so forth), then the field gets
to be pretty messy. 
While a buddha is a buddha (someone who has woken up
is someone who has woken up), what this indicators of
this may be (from the silly long ears to the more
psychological lack of agitated confusion) do vary from
text to text. 
What is your tentative read on all of this, before
your class starts?
Best of luck coming to a set of readings that can help
here, and some ideas of paths to encourage discussion
in your course! 
Mitchell

====================
http://www.geocities.com/jinavamsa/mentalhealth.html with links to 
my home page, info on The Inner Palace (3rd ed.) and The Far Shore 
(3rd ed.), further links to  psychotherapy, to my current teaching, 
to the Insight Practice (Vipassana),  Chishtiyya (Sufi), Creative 
Solutions for Peace, and Nasrudin discussion groups, and to the 
Collective Dharma Insight project.


		
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