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We Arès Pilgrims
are
not Buddhist, but I've got a bone to pick with a friend of my parent,
who had
lived in the Far East, and taught me as a teenager that the Buddhists
were
"pig ignorant numskulls." I used to keep that prejudice as stupid as
summary until 1974-1977.
The Revelation of Arès does
not
mention the Buddha, because he is far away from the
Field that I am allotted to by it (Rev
of Arès 5/5-7), but it has inclined me to think of him as the
first messenger of love, forgiveness,
peace, spiritual intelligence
and
absolute freedom, in other words of
penitence. Not only do I
correct my
prejudice against him in this entry, but also I think that some idea of
his
teaching
comes in handy for my brothers.
It is not easy in only sixty lines—but I'm trying—to sum up the ideas
of a tremendous
complex Buddha,
who lived 2,500 ago. About at the very time Socrates lived in Greece.
Here I
refer to the Theravāda or The Ancients' School or Hinayana Buddhism,
the
Buddha's original teaching at variance with the Mahāyāna, the Great
Vehicle, which was to appear later on, a form of buddhism widely
stepped up
and warped
(religious, theistic and even polytheistic, ceremonial, superstitious)
like
Tibet's Buddhism which is as unlike the Buddha's plain pure teaching as
the
Catholic Church is unlike Jesus' plain pure gospel.
A prince, who was born and raised in the country now called Nepal,
Siddhattha
(Sidhārta in Sanskrit) Gautama was married with Yasodharā
and had a
son, Rāhula.
When he was
29, he
forsook everyone and everything and went in search not for God and the
salvation of his soul, because he
did
not believe in either, but for a solution to global suffering.
When he
was 35, he found it, sat down under a tree—The Bo tree—and became the
Awekened
one = the Buddha. From now onwards he preached all over India for 45
years. What
did he say?
Man can free himself from all bondages. "Each one is his own refuge."
Each one can reach the nirvāna (see below). Unlike some widespread
opinions
Buddha did not found the sangha (the monastic order) and his knowledge,
which
contained nothing esoteric, was destined to humain from all
backgrounds. The
Buddah's broad-mindedness was so much so that he did not teach a
religion, but much
more: a life wisdom. "Never say I believe, but say I see and I
understand." Saddhā is translated as faith, but it really means
confidence
in correctly understood life. Buddha did not acknowledge that anyone
had a
right to the Truth. He thought that sectarianism and even points of
philosophy
and general knowledge of no straight use to salvation should be
ignored. Hence
the "pig ignorant numskulls" of whom my parents friends used to speak.
At the root of the salutary knowledge he saw Four Noble Truths, in Pali
(the
language of the Buddhist canon): Dukkha, Samudaya (beginning of
dukkha),
Nirodha well-known under the Sanskrit name Nirvāna (end of dukkha),
Magga (the
path that leads to the end of dukkha). Dukkha means "pain", but
Buddha overflowed this meaning widely. Here we broach all that is deep,
invigorating, but undefinablewith words and only definable with
real-life experience
in the Buddhas's teaching. He was neither pessimistic (some see him so,
though)
nor optimistic, but yathāboutam = unbiased. He saw no bliss or
sin which
deserved mens' particular attention; it was better to follow the path
of
perfect freedom and peace through which men can evade dukkha. Dukkha is
an
unclear notion in our languages; it is an untranslatable multipurpose
notion,
because life is not defined as bliss and pain, which are relative and
can be
exceeded : "All that is impermanent is dukkha." What we call
"a being", "an individual" or "the self" is a combination
of strengths physical, menta and continuously changing, which can be
divided
in five aggregates (matter, sensations, perceptions, mental formation,
conscience) which all together are dukkha. Conscience is neither "the
self",
nor
"the soul", nor "the ego", because there no such thing as a
conscience, wich is of many moods, and a man has as many consciences
as there
are conditions of their appearances. All never ends up changing. The
Noble
Truths are very complex, shrewdly psychological in places, so I can't
elaborate
on them now, but anyhow"whoever sees dukkha sees the birth and the
discontinuance
of dukkha and sees the path that leads to the discontinuance of dukkha."
Let's turn our attention to the second Noble Truth: Samudaya, and the
third one:
Nirvāna (in Sanskrit) for a moment.
Samudaya is the birth of dukkha caused by the thirst (tanhā) for greed,
pleasure,
power, etc., of which all the misfortunes of the world are the result.
Here the
concepts of kamma (well-known in Sanskrit as karma) and of re-birth.
Buddha saw
kamma as volition (act of willing) but not the result of the karma,
which
Western reincarnationists put forward. An awakened one can't produce
any karma,
because there is no such thing as the self, therefore running after the
self is
never-ending, and he sets himself free from the thirst for continuity.
An
awakened one never meets rebirth. The kamma or karma is by no means a
process
of moral justice or a play of punishment and reward, but a play of
action and
reaction. A being is just a combination of physical and mental
strengths, said
Buddha. Death is the the stopping of the physical strength,but the will
to
exist is a tremendous power which drives all lives and the whole world
and never
stops acting when the flesh dies and appearing in a lot of other forms
which we
can call rebirths, just as we as terrestrial beings never stop being
born and
then reborn repeatedly, because nothing is permanent. We are far away
from the poor
rudimentary concept of reincarnation that our reincarnationnists have.
According to Buddha there are no such things as a self or a soul
(atman) and the
life strengths keep up acting without any soul. This is a string that
goes on
without ever breaking.
Nirvāna is not translatable, just as dukkah isn't, but its Pali
synonyms :
tanhakkaya: the dying out of the thirst, asamkhata: the unconditioned,
virāga: the
lack of desire, nirodha: cessation, give an idea of its meaning. Buddha
said
that "the nirvāna is the end of the future ,the dying out of desire,
hatred, illusion; this is the absolute. "To be free from vanity, to
kill
thirst, attachment, stop the continuity… It is the non-born, the
non-becoming,
the unconditioned… It is where there are no length or width, nothing
subtle or rough,
no good or evil, no name or form, no coming or leaving, no birth or
death, no
object of feeling can't be found in it." Nirvāna is neither positive
nor
negative, because nothing can render it "just as a fish has no words to
describe what's going on out on the ground." The nirvāna results of
nothing, because if it had a result, it had a cause, it would be
conditioned. ne
résulte de rien, car s'il était un résultat il aurait une cause, il
serait
conditionné. A question like, "What is there after the nirvāna?"
can't be asked, because it is the final Truth. If it is final, nothing
can be
found afterwards. " The nirvāna can be reached in the present life, it
has
no relationship to death… Here we are connected to the Buddha's
tremendous inexpressible
wisdom.
The Buddha's teaching was aimed at everyone, monks as well as common
people,
wherever they lived. Sāriputta, the Buddha's main disciple said that a
man can
live as an ascetic hermit and be impure and that a man can have with a
family
and a job downtown and be pure. Besides, a man that spends his life in
loneliness makes a serious error, because love, compassion and being of
help to
others are fundamental actions, even to monks. "To adore is to carry
out
one's duty towards others."
Buddhism is a way to life; nothing is compulsory in it. It is not a
religion. The
Buddha was a realist and said that, had the material well-being not
been an end
in itself, it was designed and even necessary to promote spiritual
life. He incited
people to economic prospérity, financial help for business and good
wages for
workers. He banned the weapon manufacturing. He advocated confidence
(saddhā) in
the spiritual,ethical, intellectual values, respect for life, charity,
wisdom,
nonviolence. He threw out theft, adultery, lies, drunkenness.
An Arès Pilgrim has probably spotted the points that keep him off and
those
that bring him close to Buddha. On the one hand, Buddha did not believe
in God or
in the soul. On the other hand, he recommended a way to salvation
similar to the penitence and
did not found any religion. Whoever thinks can see that, if we are not
Buddhist , we all the same are closer to Buddha than to the
pope and its religion and even all religions. Be that as it may, if we
have a good idea of the job we have to do to bring men together closer
to the very simple notion of the Salvation
of individuals and of the world just as The Revelation of Arès
gives it to us in the Field
that it points out to us, we can also see that the Father has made
Buddha prepare the way for the prophet whom He will send beyond our Field.
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