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The (secular)
Buddhist pilgrimage The Noble Art of Ending Life, and
with it Suffering
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Contents
Instant knowledge (bodhi) sans Gautama (the Buddha) The 1, 2, 3, 3 or the
revised 2 refuges How to become a perfect
Buddha In preparation
Please return later |
Critique of Buddhist Pilgrimage
The Buddha:
“Before my enlightenment, while I was still an unenlightened (hence
ignorant, my insertion) Bodhisatta, I thought: ‘House life is crowded and
dusty; life gone forth is wide open. It is not easy, living in a household,
to lead a holy (the original text does not use the term holy but the term
‘Aryan’, usually translated to mean ‘noble’) life as utterly perfect and
pure as a polished shell’.” Buddhist ‘history’
(i.e. derived from a sheer vast collection of hear-say ‘sermons’ and
anecdotes) has it that roundabout the age of 30 Gautama, a warlord’s son,
dumped his wife and kid, abandoned his parents, shaved his head and dropped
out to become a rag wearing wanderer (i.e. a pilgrim seeking to perfect the
noble (too wit: aryan) life). It is
generally accepted that Guatama, a burnt out and very unhappy rich man’s son,
became a dropout, a social outcast. He spent the next several years trying to
make sense of his situation, eventually developing a rationale – for becoming
and remaining an outcast. He survived by begging for food or bartering it for
his ‘wisdom’ (see the Kalama sutta), the latter being almost entirely
derived from the newly emerged religious fashion, namely the flaky and
seriously incomplete meta-physical speculations of the Upanishads. Serious
academic research has attempted to uncover what Gautama (to wit, the Ur-(or
original) Buddha) actually believed and taught. One thing is sure however, he
loathed, indeed abhorred the world (see the Fire sutta),
preached elimination (i.e. cooling, pacification, a latter function
commending itself to the mass murderer and self-proclaimed Emperor, Ashoka)
of desire for the world (see the Anatta sutta) to such an
extent that he would not be reborn (having lifted the notion of rebirth
(actually of ‘no re-death’) from the early Upanishads). The World
Renouncer, as he called himself, taught his escapist (i.e. pilgrim) rationale
and his techniques for avoiding contact with the world (specifically the
self-absorption techniques of the Jhanas) first to like-minded
dropouts, later, in a watered down version, to householders with a low
suffering threshold. The goal of
Guatama’s pilgrimage was clear: “Avoid life (indeed, destroy the very urge to
life) and eliminate the causes of rebirth.” In short, the pilgrim Gautama’s
original message was life denying, daft indeed (i.e. lacking ‘sufficient
reason’ as the perspicacious Nagarjuna and the later Tantrics ‘proved’). Whether or not Gautama’s message (i.e. dharma),
namely to avoid life (in fact to deliberately decay the urge to life) and
prevent rebirth (and re-death) at all costs, makes sense, that is to say, for
the general public rather than escapists (i.e. to the deathless eternal, i.e.
the atman, Pali: atta), is for you to decide. It is vitally
important (if you are intending to become a lay Buddhist pilgrim or a
(professional) bhikkhu) to read
and clearly comprehend the early suttas, thereafter to decide whether or not
Gautama’s belief described therein makes sense, given the miracle of life
that you see before you and experience from moment to moment (and only once
in eternity). Naive and uncritical listening to a committed Buddhist priest
or monk is not helpful since it is his job to produce a convincing pitch. Buddhist pilgrimage
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