[Buddha-l] Re: Meditating Buddha

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Sat, 2006-01-21 at 12:27 +0100, Benito Carral wrote:

> I think that some individuals, as the  ones  who  first wrote down the
> Tipitaka, tried to preserve  the Old Indian Guy's teachings for us.

Preserving his teachings is quite a bit different from giving us
accurate informtion about how he spent his time. My point is that there
is not reliable support at all for you claim that the Buddha spent most
of his time in deep samadhi. That is a pious fiction.

> I also think  that other individuals have tried and are trying to
> rewrite his teachings to fit their own agendas.

Everybody, without exception, who has told us anything at all about the
Buddha has done so to fit his [sic] own agenda. The redactors of the
canon selected what suited their tastes and promoted their conceptions
of what the properly Buddhist life is. One can either believe them or
not, but it would be tragically naive to believe that they were any less
guilty than anyone else has been in rewriting his teachings to fit their
own agenda.

> Maybe we are entitled to reconstruct the Buddha, but if we want to
> follow the Old Indian Guy's teachings and achieve what he achieved,
> would it be wise to do so? 

We have no choice. It would be hopelessly naive to take at face value
what his followers report he achieved. There is no good reason to
believe that he was able to float in the air at the height of seven palm
trees, to transport his friends across a raging river, to spontaneously
heal the self-inflicted wounds of a woman who fed monks a soup made from
a slice of her own thigh muscles, to instantly transport himself a
hundred kilometers when he sense that someone had a question that needed
answering, and to ascend into the godly realms to teach the celestial
deities. Nor is there any good reason to believe that he was, as he is
described to be, fully and perfectly awakened and free of all kilesas.

> Is it   possible   that   reconstructionists  are  not  so interested
> in achieving what the Buddha achieved as in following  (and  write  an
> honorable justification for)
> their own teachings?

It is possible that people who were trying to promote their own
community embellished the achievements of the founder of their order in
order to make their community seem more legitimate. That is one kind of
reconstruction. Another kind of reconstruction is to try to arrive at a
more realistic understanding of what a person can in fact hope to
achieve. And that can be done by subtracting unrealistic elements from
the traditional myth of Gotama.

> Who  were  the first who rejected rebith and,  by  extension, the
> original goal of Buddhism? 

I give up. Who? If I had to make a guess, I would say the people who did
that were those who were capable of thinking clearly enough to achieve
some freedom from the bondage of dogmatic traditionalism.

> Anyway,  if  Jose  or  Guillermo  wants  to be a bad writer and live
> in his phantasy world believing that it has  come  down  from the
> Buddha, I will be not the one
> who  tries  to  stop him.

No, but you will descend to the level of passing negative judgement on
another person by calling him a bad writer who is living in his own
fantasy. Whether you are willing to admit it or not, characterizing a
person in that way is a subtle way of trying to stop him, or at least to
discourage others from listening to him. But why do that? Why do you
find it necessary to bolster your own sagging ego by describing a person
who may be every bit as sincere as you in such negative terms?

> But I will not buy either his cheap  imitation  of  the  Buddha  when  I  can  have a
> high-quality  and original one that has been tested for more than 2000 years.

That you value a myth that suits your fancy is hardly a justification
for dismissing as a cheap imitation a myth that suits another person's
fancy. If you are willing to live in a world of myth, you cannot deny
another the same privilege, even if the other person's myth of choice is
incompatible with yours.

-- 
Richard