How shall we be "immortal"? (video)

Soma Thera (Bodhi Leaves 79), Buddhist Publication Society; Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; MostAmazingTop10 (Instagram)

Top 10 people who claim to be immortal

The oldest human being to ever live was Jeanne Calment, born in 1875, died in 1997 at the age of 122. Everyone agrees this is the longest a human being has ever existed… well, not everyone. Some people say there are others much older than that.
 

Great Marley's ghost! You survived death!

Some people say there are humans who have become immortal. Some people even say that they themselves are immortal. Should we believe them? Let's find out. This is the Top 10 People Who Claim to be Immortal.
  
Buddhist "immortality"? The Deathless

"Truly, it will be not long before this body lies in the earth, bereft of consciousness, like a useless log, which is thrown away."
 

Usually, uninstructed worldly minded people do not think of death and do not like any pointed reference made to it by others.

Such unreflecting, uninstructed people often shut their minds deliberately to the fact that death is waiting for us. They reject the possibility of a future life (rebirth), and occupying themselves only with things of this life, they immerse themselves in the ephemeral joys of the five strands of sense desire.

To make such people think seriously on what is perhaps the most decisive event of life they have to reckon with -- an event [the "impossible possibility"] that will determine their future lives in no uncertain way -- the Buddha said, "Every householder and everyone who has gone forth [as a monastic], should constantly reflect, 'I am subject to death.'"
 
The uninstructed worldly-minded person sees others dying all around but through intoxication with the pride of life acts as if we were immortal.

We see the victims of disease all around but due to intoxication with the pride of health we act as if we were immune from disease. Enjoying the first flush of life's springtime, we see many an old person in the last stages of decrepitude but owing to pride of youth, through becoming intoxicated with it, we act as if we might never grow old.

And we see many people losing their wealth and becoming paupers suddenly, but through being intoxicated with the pride of power or position, we pity them not, do not sympathize with them, and do not think that we too might be overtaken by similar misfortune.



Thus intoxicated by these, and many other intoxicants, we behaves like a people beside ourselves, heedless of right and wrong, heedless of this world and the worlds beyond, enjoying fleeting pleasures, like a crab in a cooking pot before the water heats up.

Even in our dreams we do not suspect that harm might befall us, but when we actually do, we lose control of ourselves, weep, and bewail our lot.
 
Reflection on death if rightly practiced by a person open our eyes to the individual essence of every form of being, its true nature, and remove the poison of pride, which makes us heedless of others' welfare.

We see them according to the words of the Buddha, "Uncertain is life, certain is death; it is necessary that I should die; at the close of my life, there is death. Life is indeed unsure, but death is sure, death is sure."

One who thinks often of death becomes ardent in the fulfillment of duties. Therefore it is said, "The meditator who is given to the practice of [mindfully] contemplating death becomes diligent."

Visnusarman says, "In the wise [person] who thinks again and again of death, the terrible penalty, all activity, becomes lax like leather bindings soaked with rain."

"In [one] who ever and again

Reflects on death's hard hand of pain

The drive for gross material gain

Grows limp like hide [soaked] through with rain"

- Soma Thera

Thus, in those who seek immortality, all kinds of endeavor, exertion, to acquire worldly power and possessions become slack, through the perception of death, but they do all that has to be done for attaining the Deathless State [nirvana].

In the teachings of the Buddha the contemplation on death is intended to turn the mind/heart away from the accumulation of mundane power and treasure and to increase the energy of the aspirant for highest freedom.

Even at the moment of death, one has to do one's duty well. Reflection on death quickens the heart/mind and makes it develop unremitting ardor for the extinction of ill. Such reflection can never make one negligent of actions leading to freedom from craving.

Who thinks often of death thinks thus: "Now is the time to endeavor to realize the goal. Who knows that Death will not come till tomorrow? What covenant have I with Death and its hosts to keep them at bay?"

SUTRA QUOTES
What did the Buddha teach about consciousness, often thought to be the one thing that will survive death to be immortal by incessant death-and-rebirth?

The Buddha taught: "If, in any manner, meditators, an illusionist (stage magician) or apprentice were to produce an illusion, at a junction of four great roads and an intelligent person were to see it, reflect on it, and thoroughly examine it, then, to that person who sees, reflects on, and thoroughly examines it, worthless would that illusion appear, empty, and without essence!

"Indeed, meditators, how can there be essence in an illusion?

"In the same way, meditators, a meditator sees, reflects on, and thoroughly examines consciousness of any kind -- past, future, or present, internal or external, coarse or fine, low or high, far or near. To the meditator who sees, reflects on, and thoroughly examines it, worthless would consciousness appear, empty [impersonal], and without essence.

"Indeed, meditators, how can there be essence in consciousness [which is only an impersonal process not a thing]?

"The instructed noble disciple who sees thus, turns away from form, and also from sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness [these are the skandhas, the Five Groups of Clinging]. Turning away one lets go, detaches oneself.

"With detachment one becomes free. When freed one knows, 'I am freed,' and understands, 'Rebirth has been exhausted, the excellent life has been lived, what ought to be done has been done, and there will be nothing more to come of this [no more karma will cause rebirth].'"
 
Further, the Buddha said that one whose turban or headdress is on fire should be one who aspires to the deathless act, to nirvana. There is no excuse for delay in working for deliverance from ill (suffering of all kinds); Death is trying to take us always.
 
On a certain occasion the Buddha went to a certain house set apart for sick monastics and, having sat down on a seat prepared for him, said: "Mindfully and with complete awareness should a monastic meet his/her end. This is the advice I give you."
 

Again and again, the seeds of grain are sown;
Again and again, the devas send down rain;
Again and again, the farmers plow the fields;
Again and again, the country is enriched.
Again and again, the alms-seeker asks for alms;
Again and again, the kindly givers give;
And giving repeatedly, the givers make.
Again and again, for happy worlds above.
Again and again, the milk is drawn from cows;
Again and again, the calf goes to its dam;
Again and again, a being tires and quakes;
Again and again, the fool returns to the womb.
Again and again, comes birth and death to you;
Again and again, men bear you to the grave.
But one who sees clearly, having known the path
Which leads not to rebirth, does not arise again.
 

Samsara = endless wandering 

Vibrant with compassion for suffering humanity, the wise being bent on supreme enlightenment, the Sam-Bodhisattva thought:
 
"My forbears accumulated much wealth and passed away taking nothing of their wealth with them; nor did they return to enjoy the treasure [they stored up here]. Alas! they have been destroyed; they have missed the fortune of getting the best out of a good rebirth" (Jataka I, 2).

Thus do the great beings in search of liberation from suffering look upon life, and they having made a gift of their possessions to the world go forth to endeavor for self-mastery that leads to final enlightenment.
 
Penetrating into the centuries, the millennia, and the aeons (kalpas) with unclouded knowledge, the Master saw by means of clear insight to the limits of the knowable and declared:
 

"In this [continued] wandering on, this journeying through incalculable time, the suffering by a person is unimaginably, inconceivably vast.
 

"How can one reckon all one's sorrows life after life, through partings from the loved, through union with the detested, through the death of dear ones, and through the loss of one's own health and wealth, limbs, and life?

 
"In this sweeping on of life's stream, hard it is to find another who has not been a person's own father, mother, brother, sister, son, or daughter. Truly, every living being might well have been associated closely with every other in this long trail of woe" (SN 11.180).
 

"Where in the whole wide world could be found a spot unpolluted by the dead? Sometime in becoming's endless flux a living being has died wherever life manifested itself" (Jataka II, 5-6).
 

To a Brahmin who was searching for virgin ground where no corpse had been burnt, the Master said that 14,000 corpses of that Brahmin's clan had been burned on that very spot on which he stood and that there is not any place on earth that is not a cemetery.

Every brand of suffering does one undergo through rebirth in diverse planes of becoming. And there is nothing in the world that arises that is fully pleasant. Everything is mixed with suffering in such a way that for the thoughtful all pleasure appears as menaced with suffering/disappointment or moving on to it because of impermanence. More

I want to live forever, you stupid son-of-a-mother-fathers! Why should I have to die?!!

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• [How any words are enough words to lead to disenchantment? How many are enough to lead to yearning for enlightenment-and-liberation, the Deathless (immortality in a sense)? If it is not enough, there will be endless rebirth and suffering to come.]

Making nirvana Christian-Hindu immortality
Wisdom Quarterly Wikipedia edit

The Buddha reclines into final nirvana-without-remainder, final liberation (Cambodian art)

 
"I can't stand a Buddhism that doesn't promise me "eternal life" like Christianity and Hinduism do!" 

Then you might well like Mahayana Buddhism, the most popular form of the religion which is thoroughly saturated with Brahminical, Vedic, Hindu, and Universalist (catholic) Messianic Christian ideas. Look how nirvana, the "Deathless State" (deathless because there is no birth/rebirth and therefore no more possibility of death) has been transformed into immortality:

Pre-canonical Buddhism?
Stanislaw Schayer, a Polish scholar, argued in the 1930s that the Nikayas [volumes, assemblages of the Buddha's teachings] preserve elements of an archaic form of Buddhism which is close to Brahmanical beliefs (Lindtner 1997, Lindtner 1999, Akizuki 1990, p. 25-27, Ray 1999) and survived in the Mahayana tradition (Reat 1998, p. xi, Conze 1967, p. 10).

Contrary to popular opinion, the Theravada and Mahayana traditions may be "divergent, but equally reliable records of a pre-canonical Buddhism which is now lost forever" (Reat 1998, p. xi). The Mahayana tradition may have preserved a very old, "pre-canonical" and oral Buddhist tradition, which was largely, but not completely, left out of the Theravada [Pali language] canon (Conze 1967, p. 10).
 

Nirvana as consciousness(?)

Regamy has identified four points which are central to Schayer's reconstruction of pre-canonical Buddhism (Ray 1999, p. 374-377):

1. The Buddha was considered as an extraordinary being, in whom ultimate reality was embodied, and who was an "incarnation" [a "soul" or spirit entering or becoming flesh] of the mythical figure of the Tathagata [or perhaps Lord Vishnu];
2. The Buddha's disciples were attracted to his spiritual charisma and supernatural authority;
3. Nirvana was conceived as the attainment of immortality, and the gaining of a deathless sphere from which there would be no falling back. This nirvana, as a transmundane reality or state, is incarnated in the person of the Buddha;
4. Nirvana can be reached because it already dwells as the inmost "consciousness" of the human being. It is a consciousness which is not subject to birth and death.

Conze mentions ideas like the "person" (puggala), the assumption of an eternal "consciousness" in the Saddhatu Sutra, the identification of the Absolute, as descriptors of Nirvana to mean an "invisible infinite consciousness, which shines everywhere" in the Digha Nikaya (XI 85), and "traces of a belief in consciousness as the non-impermanent center of the personality which constitutes an absolute element in this contingent world." More

Buddhism before Theravada (audio)

John Peacock (audiodharma.org)  "Buddhism Before the Theravada"; Wisdom Quarterly

(Auto_Mattic/flickr.com)

 

The Buddha did not teach in a vacuum. His teachings were directed to those who shared the social world in which he lived. 

John Peacock, a British scholar who studies and translates in more than a dozen languages and is familiar with the philosophical environment of the Buddha’s day, maintains that by framing the Buddha’s teachings in their original context, it is possible to RECOVER the original meaning of teachings that have been ignored and lost by later Buddhist schools -- including the Theravada.

• Thera + vada = "Elders' Teaching" or "The Teaching of the Elders." Who are these "elders"? They are the immediate enlightened monastic disciples of the Buddha, the monks (theras) and nuns (theris) of ancient India.

These talks examine many of the ways in which Buddhist practice was radically different from the Brahminical and Upanishadic thinking of the time and, indeed, how it differs in substantive ways from much present-day understanding of the Dharma. 

This exploration details the Buddha’s shift away from metaphysical thinking to a focus on internal experience and ethical activity. In the process there will be consideration of how the Buddha’s earliest teachings diverge from much of the Western philosophical tradition and often from what has become the traditional view of the Dharma today as well.

 

Part 1	John Peacock	2011-09-03	1:36:43	Download Stream
Part 2	John Peacock	2011-09-03	0:42:32	Download Stream
Part 3	John Peacock	2011-09-03	1:53:13	Download Stream
Part 4	John Peacock	2011-09-03	1:13:40	Download Stream
Part 5	John Peacock	2011-09-04	1:16:31	Download Stream
Part 6	John Peacock	2011-09-04	1:54:06	Download Stream

Theravada Buddhism (video)

Wisdom Quarterly (ANALYSIS)

The video ends with time for a short personal meditation guided by music (TheBuddhaLight).

This video attempts to describe the earliest existing Buddhist school, the Theravada ("Teaching of the Elders"). Its description, however, suffers from common mistakes:

The tradition is not part of the Hinayana ("Lesser Vehicle") schools that Mahayana ("Great Vehicle") Buddhism sought to ridicule, such as the Sarvastivada, which were successfully wiped out and replaced by Hindu-influenced Mahayana. But as the oldest tradition closest to the defunct schools, explaining the deep philosophy and facts of this major Buddhist lineage.

Buddha at Sukhothai, Thailand (Aidan McRae Thomson/Flickr.com)

The Northern School/Southern School distinction is also misleading. Hinduism went everywhere Buddhism, but in most places did not catch on, except as a major unnamed influenced in Mahayana.

Theravada began in India, spread to the Indian island of Sri Lanka (the southern tip of the subcontinent), and spread east to encompass pocket from Israel (a metropolitan place far in the west) to Vietnam (far in the east). Two empires in particular helped it spread, Asoka's empire of Greater India (Maha Bharat) and the Khmer empire now limited to Cambodia). Jesus (St. Issa) was influenced by Theravada and Mahayana (see Holger Kersten) and his teaching seems to serve as the basis for Christianity.

The Three Wise Men (or Kings) from the East were Buddhist monks in search of a tulku (reincarnating lama). This is not to say that this actually happened, just to say that it became part of the mythology around Jesus ("Zeus' son" according to St. Constantine at the Council of Nicea). The search for the Messiah seems to be the search for the Buddha-to-come Maitreya. As Kersten's scholarship reveals, there was a well established Jewish settlement (trading outpost) in Kashmir, India to which Jesus traveled with a Silk Route trading caravan.

The countless similarities between Buddhism and Christianity (even as it was reshaped and made almost unrecognizable by the Greek and Roman empires) in both the Greek Orthodox and European Catholic monastic traditions is no accident at all. But what Christianity teaches is far more a Chinese-style imperial Mahayana, a covert kind of Hindu conception rooting it back to Sumerian, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian astrotheologies.

Jordan Maxwell reveals the shocking truth about Jesus and most religion
fed to us: Astrotheologically, it is the same old Sun and star worship.

Theravada differs from most religion in that it attempts to uphold the message of the historical Buddha. Mahayana, by contrast, takes the old Hindu (and Vedic civilization) pantheon and rebrands it as countless buddhas. The gods of old were extraterrestrials from heaven with their own back stories. Mahayana kept these gods, but by calling them Buddha this and Bodhisattva that, all the same worship continued.

The historical Buddha brought something altogether new to the practice of spirituality. A reliance on oneself as a lamp and an island guided by the Enlightened One (while he lived and taught and established a dispensation), the Teaching of Enlightenment (the Dharma), and those who had successfully followed that Path and confirmed its efficacy (the noble Sangha).

While Mahayana is much more about devotion and looking outside oneself for worldly success and a heavenly rebirth -- just like most of the religions of old -- with an emphasis on the wonderful Divine Feminine (Mother Goddess) Kwan Yin (Christianity's Virg Yin), Theravada kept to a more focused aim: enlightenment in this very life and final nirvana within seven lives.

The first stage of enlightenment (stream entry) used to be the focus of both traditions. But Mahayana philosophically veered far from it to a sort of messianic complex (everyone is a bodhisattva, and bodhisattva vows are the only acceptable career for new Buddhists to take, for anything else would be "selfish." And all the Buddha's original disciples, the theras (elders) who were arhats (enlightened in this very life) must, by implication, be "selfish dummies" relying on "expedient means."

And the Buddha himself could not have really entered final nirvana (parinirvana) because that could be interpreted as "selfish." The bickering between modern Mahayana and "Hinayana" apologists can get absurd. There was no division in ancient times when Mahayana ideals were closer to the root tradition.

(seattle.ibtimes.com)

But Hinduism (which was really Vedic Brahmanism before Adi Shankara came along long after the Buddha to create it) was always hostile to the Buddha's liberating message and human potential. It always preferred a heaven-centric philosophy, relying on Great Brahma, supplicating devas (light beings from space and nature), and centering around a hierarchical-patriarchal (often quite sexist) temple establishment.

What does Theravada offer instead? Imperfectly it tries to retain the Buddha's original message. Asked if he were a god (extraterrestrial deva), a yakkha (powerful extraterrestrial being), or what, he answered simply, "I am awake" (buddha simply meaning "Awakened One"). He had not relied on the gods or come as a heavenly "savior."

Starting here and rooted here on the human plane, he found the Path to freedom from all suffering. This Path is not limited to humans but also is the way for devas, brahmas, and all beings. Other beings generally do not have the opportunity to strive all the way to the final in the present life, but all would benefit along the way.

Humans and lower devas (within the Sense Sphere) are the ones the Buddha focused on teaching because they are capable in this very life of gaining absorption (purifying serenity) and liberating insight by following the guidance of the Three Gems (Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha). Mahayana has made each of these three something else:

The "Buddha" has become countless buddhas, any king or philosopher or messiah; the Dharma has become 80,000+ teachings (mixed with Confucianism, Taoism, and even the Brahmanism the Buddha rejected); the Sangha has become any Buddhist "community." Is it any wonder Mahayana practice looks very little like the historical Buddha's dispensation?

Mahayana is wonderful. It is rich and cultural. It is philosophical and exalted. And it has the best art.

But if one would seek enlightenment (understanding it to be a very unselfish thing to free oneself from greed, hatred, and delusion and help and inspire others to do the same) in this life, one would certainly investigate Theravada and the unimaginable riches of the Pali Canon.

Pali is the exclusively-Buddhist language. It is closest to the Prakrit or Magadhi language the historical Buddha spoke, while the brahmin priests around him had their secretive Sanskrit for mantras and aloof scholarship, which served a role quite like Latin in the Catholic Church.

Zen has been a push to return Mahayana Buddhism to its essentials -- just sitting to reach satori (an epiphany). But most Americans misunderstand what "Zen" means and take it to mean a free-for-all without rules or guiding ideals when it is anything but that in Asia.

It is therefore no wonder that Zen Buddhism, according to Wisdom Quarterly, the most popular type of Buddhism in the West and in America in particular. (See the myth-shattering work of UCLA's Prof. Buswell a former Zen monk in Korea who also studied Theravada monasticism).

Famous Women of Buddhism

The School of the Elders

Borobudur.tv

Following the Buddha’s parinirvana, the Buddhist community continued to orally pass down the Teachings from one generation to another. The first written versions of the Buddha’s message of liberation did not appear until two hundred years after his departure from the world. Some of the oldest Buddhist texts to survive into modern times were written in an ancient Indian dialect called Pali.

These works came to be called the “Pali Canon.” The living oral tradition (used in one-to-one meditation instruction) and these documents form the heart of the Theravada (“School of the Elders”) tradition. It is the dominant form of Buddhism practiced today in the Southeast Asian countries of Burma, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos, and Indonesia. This tradition is also sometimes simply referred to as the "Southern school" of Buddhism.

The Pali Canon consists of three distinct collections called the Tripitika (“Three Baskets”). It consists of the Buddha's discourses (Suttanta), the rules of conduct governing monastic life (Vinaya), and various studies governing the development of spiritual insight (Abhidhamma). The Pali word sutta--like the Sanskrit word sutra--literally means “thread” or “string.” It is often compared to the plumb line of masons and carpenters, used to ensure the accuracy of the work.

The disciplinary texts, which set forth the rules of conduct for monks and nuns, describe Buddhist monastic life in great detail. Boys and girls had to be at least seven years old before they could become novices. In addition, a male had to be at least 20 years old before he could receive full ordination as a monk.

Prior to the ordination ceremony, the candidate’s hair and beard were shaved off and the initiate was garbed in saffron-colored monastic robes. During the ceremony itself, the candidate saluted the monks present and thrice chanted the following:

Buddham saranam gacchami,

Dhamman saranam gacchami,

Sangham saranam gacchami.

("I go for guidance to the Buddha, I go for guidance to the Dharma, I go for guidance to the Sangha.")

This is the Buddhist "trinity" known as the Three Gems, which some say represents the body (Buddha), speech (Dharma), and mind (Sangha) of Sakyamuni (a title for the Buddha meaning the "Sage of the Sakyas.")

Precepts calculated to, as much as possible, remove desire from the human equation governed all aspects of monastic life. For example, monks and nuns were required to remain chaste at all times. Members of the Sangha also had to refrain from dancing, singing, or otherwise participating in frivolous entertainments. In addition, the monastic precepts set forth rules concerning the clothing and personal items monks and nuns were allowed to use.

The survival of each monastic community was completely in the hands of local laypeople, who obtained spiritual merit by bestowing food, clothing, and other offerings upon the monks and nuns. Monks and nuns were barred from participating in any business activity and could not accept money. All food had to be obtained on alms round, door to door, as freely offered by people wishing to give. In addition, ascetic dietary codes were established that restricted the intake of solid food to a single meal which had to be consumed prior to the “horse-hour” of local noon.

Each monastic community held regular meetings on the 8th and 14th of the lunar half-month, at which time the members confessed any infraction of the monastic rules in front of the monastic community. In addition, monks and nuns were not allowed to travel during the rainy season. These are just a few examples of the rules that ensured the survival of a monastic community, the Teachings, and the possibility of successful meditation leading to the attainment of the highest bliss, nirvana, in this very life.