A Concept Is Just That

My comments on the Shurangama Sutra caused a bit of a flurry. A couple of Mahayana priests, Zen types, opted out of the newsletter and dropped out of HJCL. That's fine because it is none of my business what people think of me. My business is solely what I think and that’s okay. Although I am always amazed at the lack of intellectual reasoning that goes hand in hand with religion. This is perhaps why the Buddha was opposed to religion and called it “a very bad idea”. (I’m paraphrasing here.)

In Theravada Buddha refers to the person of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha of this dispensation. What he said was the whole of the teaching as we have it. In Mahayana Buddha refers to a concept called “Buddha” and there is no single dispensation, in spite of what the Buddha said. Under the proviso that “buddha” is a concept nearly anything can be attributed to it. It’s strange that nearly every academician and scholar on Earth agrees that the Pali Canon is closest in meaning, if not the actual verbatim speech of the Buddha, than any other record available to us. We even know that precise dates when certain apocryphal “suttas” were added to the Canon. We know when every line of the Abhidhamma came into existence and when it was formulated to be added to the Tipitaka. As scholarship continues we are discovering not just when but even who the probably writers of the Mahayana sutras were. Yet there are people, Buddhists even, who ignore the truth and want to continue believing that Buddhas can be channeled by highly realized beings (whatever that might mean) and should be accepted as the word of Dhamma/Dharma. Eventually we wind up with bizarre ideas that arahants are flawed people, even thought the Buddha called them fully enlightened and maintained that he himself was an arahant. The four levels of arahantship became replaced with the Five Paths and the Ten Stages of Bodhisattvahood. This is not a bad thing. The Stages and Paths mimic the career of Stream Entry.

My feeling is this; if there is indeed a viable conceptualized thing called “buddha” then there are two things we need to understand about that concept. (1) Shakyamuni Buddha is the embodiment of this concept and all subsequent teachings have to conform to his teaching and not contradict them; and (2) if there is such a thing as the “conceptual buddha” then it is just that, a concept and not “buddha”. Paraphrasing the Buddha, a concept of a thing is not the thing itself, it is merely a concept and not real.

As a Mahayana monk I am very willing to accept a Mahayana teaching if it elaborates or restates a teaching that I know is accurate and authentic Buddhadhamma. If the teaching contradicts the original teaching I reject it. The Buddha said he did not teach “with a closed hand”, that is, in secret, but at the same time much of the collection of Mahayana sutras are said to be hidden and given in secret. Nuff said, eh?

I really enjoy the Pure Land teaching and method but when Amitabha is treated as a deity and the Western Pure Land as a real place I begin to question authenticity of the teachings and the teacher. Amitabha we know is an amalgam of ancient deities and meant to be a metaphor for the enlightened mind. The Western Pure Land was named Western because that is where the dead go. What is it that we should be dead of – Ego and defilements. It’s called a Pure Land because the land is a metaphor for life itself. When the mind is pure then the body is the pure land. That is what is said in Dialogues With the Ancient Masters. I can go for the rest.