So Buddha is a state of mind? Can I became a Buddha? Or its more like a no-no. Thats a long dead person whose teachings we study.... I always thought the Buddha is us. Because we are one.
Yes, you can become Buddha. You just have to let go of ego to reach the state of Bliss. (but I digress, there are many different schools of thought in Buddhism)...
Im asking because sometimes I hear the word Buddha as someone would use the word Jesus. And that got me confused for a moment. It was mixed into a western religion model. There are many different versions of Buddhism? Anyone can list some? What is the difference in the Buddhism that is practiced in the west and the Buddhism that is practiced in the east? is it all based on the Tibetan book of the dead or are there other books worth reading? After reading the Tibetian book of the Dead I dropped lsd. Most incredible acid trip of my life. Indescribable. I have considered myself a Buddhist after that. But I got confused for a moment. I'm gonna get heavier into it. I need some reading material. Thanks for the answers!
Buddha was a real person who lived in India 2500 years ago. But sometimes when people say Buddha they mean Buddha-nature, which is a spiritual state we can all attain. No, it is not all based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I would recommend as the best beginner's book.
I doubt you hear the word Buddha like Jesus - people don't say Jesus Fucking Buddha! Big difference really.
I've found some really great helpful books. I've read a couple of books by Steve Hagen and he writes simply and helpfully, I recommend!
I have always liked the idea of Buddhism and followed it the best I could for a year or so when I was younger, I found it helped me in lots of ways.. very hard to follow it properly at times.. hopefully one day I can lol
You already have the Buddha nature inside you, you just have to look within. A book called "The three pillars of zen" really helped me understand it better when I was looking for answers..It taught me the answers are inside us all we just have to drop what we think we know and start over. Meditiaton is the real key. Wish you luck
Yes! That's a great book. It has first hand accounts of meditators achieving enlightenment. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
All of the Law at being rediscovered for social reality is wholly inside you. That is the Buddha nature. The law out of range of that Willed/will is on the outside and incapable of judgment. It is as it is, and the Nature of kharma is binding for It. If you are rich it was not your fortune as much as becoming poor again.
Buddha is a title, not a name. It is derived from the root bodh- which refers to waking up. "Buddha" means essentially "the Awakened One" in English. A similar word is bodhisattva, sattva meaning "being/creature/person," with bodhisattva meaning a being on the way to awakening, THE Buddha before he became a buddha, or a being that works for the awakening of others. Depending on context, and most appropriately in English when preceded with "the," Buddha can refer to what scholars and some religious people refer to as the historical Buddha. The Buddha lived approximately 2500 years ago, give or take a couple centuries, in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent. According to historians, he is the earliest known figure to preach the Dhamma/Dharma, that being the tenets of the religion that we today call Buddhism. According to the Buddhist community, he is but one in a potentially infinite number of such beings, but the Dhamma is inevitably lost over long stretches of time until such a special being appears and rediscovers it, to teach it again. The buddha of our world and age, the historical buddha, the Buddha-with-a-capital-B, is known also by another epithet, Sakyamuni. Sometimes you'll see it spelled Shakyamuni, but either way it is pronounced like an sh. Awakening is understood differently by different teachers, different schools, different students. Buddha can refer to the person mentioned above. Buddha can also be used to refer to any buddha generally. In Mahayana schools especially there is a rich tradition of veneration of other buddhas, about which great works of religious literature have elaborated. Such figures are Amitabha/Amitayus, Bhaisajyaguru, Aksobya, and so on. These are buddhas about whom some people believe the historical buddha taught, and depending on what they understand about these figures some may even be venerated above Sakyamuni Buddha himself. Some types of Buddhism, especially in East Asian Mahayana tradition, have a belief in what might be termed Original Enlightenment. This is fairly much what it sounds like, sort of an opposite of the Christian idea of Original Sin. Rather than being born base, and having to work very hard (usually over an extended number of lifetimes) to achieve awakening, we are all assumed to be awakened already on some level, and there is just something that prevents us from getting in touch with that. In this sense, we are all buddhas already - according to this type of thinking. It is very closely tied in with doctrines such as Buddha Nature and Tathagatagharba, which are so similar that it's just fine to consider them the same thing if you're not seeking to become a scholar of Buddhist studies but just want a little more understanding In most schools of Buddhism, though, this may not be considered the case. Rather, you have to work very hard for a very long time, but still it is possible that anybody could in theory become a buddha - but there is only one buddha per world per age, and a new one does not appear until the last remnants of the Dhamma have vanished from a world. Considering that human life is precious and understood to actually be very, very rare (formal Buddhist cosmologies are mostly made up of things like hell realms and ghosts - humans and gods are few in number by comparison to all the other realms), it might be seen to be difficult to expect to become a buddha. Here is a major point of distinction between Mahayana schools and the Theravada school: since buddhas are so special, the Theravada school teaches that you can and, if possible, should achieve awakening in this very life if possible, and it comes as a perfect understanding of Dhamma coupled with a cessation of suffering. Such people are Arahants, and they teach the Dhamma to their disciples, both monks and laity. Mahayana, on the other hand, teaches that the awakening of the Arhat (different spelling, it's a matter of Sanskrit vs. Pali) is of an inferior quality to that of a Buddha, and that seeking Arhatship can be understood as selfish because it is seeking personal liberation before the liberation of others. Rather, Mahayana seeks the perfect Buddhahood of all beings. My personal take is that both ways of thinking are supporting the same basic goal of awakening, and that the alleged difference on this point is merely an artifact of differing definitions of arahant/arhat. It's also worth noting that for all the speculation of the great theologians and philosophers of Buddhist history, it still remains fairly unclear of what exactly it is like to be awakened perfectly, to be a buddha. There are, unsurprisingly, conflicting claims, most of which can be backed up scripturally depending on the canon. However, the Buddha (and all Buddhas, and even Arahants and Bodhisattvas, depending) may by many, many people be understood not to have simply dissipated into nothingness upon attaining final nirvana (which appears as death of the body), but that while he didn't exactly die and definitely wasn't reborn, he is somehow still around and capable of interceding in human affairs. This, of course, depends upon the interpretations of given schools and teachers, just like everything, and doesn't always hold true - and even within any given schools, prominent teachers may dissent from the main stream a bit. So, I'm sorry to have rambled on so long, but my point is that you may very well hear people refer to Buddha as a person. Or you may hear people refer to buddhas, plural, as specific groups of persons. Or in some really interesting types of Buddhism, there is one true, universal Buddha from which all things and all other buddhas emanate (Vairocana). Yet at other times, buddha may be treated as a state of existence, a state of being, a state of mind, or a quality innate in all people, all sentient beings, or even all beings regardless of sentience (such as, for instance, mountains and chairs). The word is used in many ways, and there's a very good chance that whatever you understand it to mean, someone else understands it to mean something totally different.:sunny:
