A Tale of Two Buddhas

In the West there is a tendency to focus on the “do-it-yourself” self-help character both of Shakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment. After all, did he not teach us to work towards liberation though our own effort? We take this mean that we are all alone and on our own. Once again we fail to recognize the fact of dependent origination. No one ever has actually “done-it-himself”.

Buddhists in the West (code for white folk who have an interest in or even adopted Buddhism) often avoid or reject the role of faith and devotion. Even though these components of have been a part of Buddhism from the beginning – as we can see in the practices of bowing to Buddha, bodhisattvas, monks and teachers, lighting incense, reciting copying sutras, and decorating monasteries and temples with sculpture and paintings – many “Western Buddhist centers have abandoned these practices without ever exploring why they were developed in the first place.

From the earliest days of Buddhism importance placed  on devotional practices such as "Recollecting of the Buddha"—bringing the Buddha to mind, reciting his name, and by visualizing his image and/or his Pure Land or field of activity—were evident. With the advent of the Mahayana and its cults of divine Buddhas and bodhisattvas, bodhisattas such as
 Avalalokiteshvara, Manjushri, Maitreya and Kshitigarbha each had his or her own Pure Land. Even the most fundamentalist devotee of the Pali Canon can see a kind of logic in these views. There are hints in the Suttas and certain passages in the Abhidhamma that might lead one to the conclusion that such events are absolutely possible.

Of course, nowhere does the Buddha say that it takes a Buddha to create a Pure Land. He simply discusses “Pure Abodes”, higher states of existence. In Mahayana a “Pure Land” is the field of activity of a certain Cosmic Buddha who seems to be more an archetype than a “personality”.

So let’s begin at the beginning, I’m speaking figuratively, of course. Beginnings are arbitrary points in what might be time but are usually arbitrary points of imagination.

“In the beginning” there was “nothing”, scientists tell us. This is a misnomer. There was never “nothing”. What they mean to say is the “In the beginning there was no thing.” There is a big difference here. Even the “Big Bang” began because some thing was there. It may have been the size of a green pea but it was there. We call it no thing because we wouldn’t recognize it even if we saw it. Our imaginations have nothing to compare this too. Since we cannot label this “thing” we call it a “no thing.” Ah, the foibles of humanity strike again.

If you want to strike terror in a physicist, or Fundamentalist for that matter, mention something called “the measurement problem.” The measurement problem goes like this; an atom only appears in a particular place if you measure it. In other words, an atom is spread out all over the place, perhaps all over the universe, until you make a measurement of it. Then it seems to coalesce before your eyes (or instruments). It doesn’t exist as a singularity until a conscious observer is present. This means that it is the actual observation of an event that creates it. Consciousness creates the reality of the universe we experience. If there is no observer there is no physical reality. That’s “the measurement problem”. This scientifically answers the question; if a tree falls in the woods does it make a sound if there is no one there to hear it.

Try explaining that to the next person bangs on your doors to sell you a Bible. The idea, and the scientific reality, is well out of the realm of “common sense”, or better put, “sense of the commons”.

If only conscious beings can be observers then we are very much hooked into the existence of reality. Otherwise there would just be a super expanding juxtaposition of possibilities with nothing definite actually ever happening.  

"Now suppose that in the last month of the hot season a mirage were shimmering, and a man with good eyesight were to see it, observe it, & appropriately examine it. To him — seeing it, observing it, & appropriately examining it — it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance would there be in a mirage? In the same way, a monk sees, observes, & appropriately examines any perception that is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near. To him — seeing it, observing it, & appropriately examining it — it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance would there be in perception?

Phena Sutta: Foam (Samyutta Nikaya 22.95) 

I’ve been a monk for 43 years (soon to be 44) and everyday the Buddha continues to amaze me. Somehow, perhaps through simple observation, the Buddha had a handle on quantum mechanics 2500 years before the science emerged – but then, he was only the Buddha.

Whatever material form there be: whether past, future, or present; internal or external; gross or subtle; low or lofty; far or near; that material form the monk sees, meditates upon, examines with systematic attention, he thus seeing, meditating upon, and examining with systematic attention, would find it empty, he would find it insubstantial and without essence. What essence, monks, could there be in material form?

The Buddha speaks in the same manner of the remaining aggregates and asks:

What essence, monks, could there be in feeling, in perception, in mental formations and in consciousness?

Samyutta Nikaya 22.95 

Out of all the billions upon billions of photons, electrons and other subatomic matter it is through our observation that the reality of a universe emerges. To complicate matter more, according to the laws of relativity, it doesn’t even exist. Whenever we look at an object, which is an event in reality, the very act of observation changes things exactly as the Buddha predicted.Things exist only in relationship to other things. These can be as obvious as a flower existing only in relationship to shape and color, relationship to its pot or bush, or relationship to you or even the entire universe at large. The flower does not exist on its own. But then, nothing exists the way we think it does; but it doesn’t exist outside of the way we think of it either. (Now there is the topic of a 10-day retreat and possibly some expensive therapy too.) 

The closer we look at what we call reality the more it dissolves into the foam of imagination.