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The future Buddha’s problem
At about 30
years of age, the spoilt rotten Gautama experiences himself in a mental and
emotional firestorm (obviously resulting from burn-out, therefore self-generated).
He dumps the wife and kid, and his parents, then drops out of society to
search for a way out. After seven years of wandering about as a beggar he
attains samma-sambodhi (to wit, full awakening) and sinks into the calm at
the eye of his personal storm. He eventually quits the eye, renames himself Tathagata, and rushes off to Sarnath
to recruit adherents for his new sect. The picture is
455 KB in size, therefore takes a couple of minutes to load. Please be patient.
The
Buddha and his skilful means The violent (i.e. fiery, hence distressing = dukkha) hurricane
represents everyday life. It is driven by energy (according to Gautama.
‘fuelled by desire, lust, stupidity’ and so on). The eye of the storm represents
the calm found upon initial (and temporary) problem (i.e. of life/death and
its distress) solving. There’s no storm/life (i.e. turbulence, heat, hence
distress) in the eye of the hurricane, just the deathly calm of nirvana (i.e. of blow-out of fire). The
hurricane happens as temporary interaction after-affect of the life drivers
(i.e. of energy sources), hence an ‘emerged phenomenon’, which together
produce the (false) experience of an actual reality (or person) with an own,
self-existing core (read: atta). However, once the drivers (of the
hurricane) are subdued (or reduced) to zero, the hurricane ends (i.e. ceases
blowing = nirvana), leaving no abiding core (or atta).
A modern interpretation of the two nirvanas The Fire Sermon (two minute read) The Not Self sermon (Two minute read) The Vedantic variation
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