Is the Buddha a Tragic Figure?

I have not personally read any Suttas that make me make me believe the Buddha was ever sad or frustrated. He seemed to deal with things that needed from be dealt with by implementing rules and if asked again and again he was state factually that he had been asked again and again and would correct the view of the asker.

The definition of Nibbana is the ending of the 3 poisons and so I cannot imagine a scenario where the Buddha would have been sad as he was always mindful and always experiencing the bliss of Nibbana.

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I like this extract from MN36:

Which to me is very telling of his conditions in general.

Then, whenever something required his intervention and when he could do something about it, I have no doubt that he did what what good and necessary or offered what he could, without taking it personnaly (as in the case of the Quarrel of Kosambi).

Living the Life of a buddha in short :wink:

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Maybe the tradition has interpreted nibbana incorrectly? It might be a state of perfect peace, cessation and liberation that one can enter after passing though the deepest levels of samadhi, but that is lost, at least somewhat, when one emerges back into the world of all-too-human engagements. I know there are texts that explicitly deny this. But I am increasingly inclined to view a lot of those texts as back-projections from a subsequent, overly pious tradition that had elevated the Buddha into a kind of god-man.

We know the Buddha had to enter samadhi to escape the pain of his backaches. The plain reading of that anecdote is that his back pain bothered him. If it did not bother him, he would have no need to take steps to seek relief from it. If back pain bothered him, it is entirely possible that other things sometimes bothered him as well - like being pestered with too many questions or too many noisy monks. :slight_smile:

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I don’t see where you are getting this bleak image of the shanga from. Buddhism took over all of india in just 150 years after Buddha death. It spread like wild fire. It was an example of how to successfully set up a religion.

Setting up a religion is something very difficult to do. And by all measurements he was very successful.

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The fact that a religion has worldly success in taking over a large territory doesn’t seem like an especially spiritual goal to me.

Imagine if you found out how this world works and have the posibility to help a huge number of people. How in the world are you going to PRESERVE and SPREAD that information if not by setting up a religion ? In what other way can you make it have an impact on the world ?

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I don’t know. I don’t have any of those kinds of ambitions.

Why do you call them ambitions ? For example if you help a sick person, do you call it “I had an ambition to help that sick person” ?

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If I were to get enlightened, the next thing I’d do would be to help other people, to spread this information that I’ve found out about the world. And if I were to do it, I would do it efficiently, not stupidly. I’m a smart guy so I would so it efficiently. The only goal I could have after getting enlightened would be to spread and preserve the information that is needed to be spread and preserved in the most efficient way possible, not in an inefficient way

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I’m skeptical that “setting up a religion” ultimately helps people in the end. Before long you have a bunch of rites and rituals, economically entrenched hierarchies, superstitions and even state co-opting and exploitation in the service of power and violence.

It’s good that the liberating message spreads, but I could do without the other stuff.

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So what would you do instead of a religion ? Start a philosophy school or something ? That would be the same as a religion. What exactly would you do to preserve and spread that important information if not start a religion ?

I’m curious, what would you personally do

I have no idea really. Probably just write down what I thought I had learned and teach what I know to a few others.

Anyway, this is unrelated to the question of whether the Buddha is a tragic figure. Even if you think the religion he created is awesome, it’s still possible that he sacrificed a lot of happiness in order to achieve that creative act, and was a bit weary and disappointed at the end.

Things are simple. You got a highly debating athmosphere going on in India at the time, with every village having a debating hall. If you are actually the guy in the right, what you need to do is to defeat all these people in debates, win them over and spread the knwoledge that you have to others. How do you do this ? Through having monks go there and debate so that the truth prevails and you win more people over.

Also, you need to preserve this information somehow. You need to make sure it lasts a long time. And how do you do it ? Through the Hindu memorization techniques, that’s how you do it. And for that you need a whole class of people working full time on that just like the Bhramins do. And you already have them. The monks that are working towards personal development and are sustained by lay people are just the guys to do it. You put that into their schedule.

That’s all you need to do. You need to have people that know your doctrine so that they are capable of debating with others in the debating halls of every village. Remember India at the time had a highly debating athmosphere and the loser of a debate would lose all his followers to the winning school. This is why Buddhism took over all of india in just 150 years. And besides the spreading, you need people to preserve the dhamma in a highly conservatory way, you need a mechanism in place to make sure that’s how things go so that the dhamma doesn’t get corrupted.

This is exactly what I would do if I were to get enlightened. I would do it efficiently, not inefficiently. And I say Buddha did a pretty good job.

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If you were enlightened, what would you actually teach people in setting up your religion?

I would teach them the truth about how the world works. If I am wrong and they could contradict me, then they would abandon me. If I am right, then they would see that I am right and they would follow me.

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Do you think the Buddha knew the whole truth about “how the world works”? Maybe all he knew was some important stuff about the nature of suffering and how to reach the end of suffering .

Yes I think he did. If I would not agree with him, I would not be a buddhist and instead I would be a fan of another person or, if I saw that I am the only one in the right and nobody else is, I would start my own school.

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What exactly do you feel he didn’t know ? He had opinions about everything. If there is a thing that you feel he was not right about, let it be questioned and put under the scrutiny of logic. An elightened person should be right about how the world works. If he is contradicted by scientific findings for example, then the whole enlightenment claim would go at the garbage.

The truth always rises to the surface in a debate. Put the points you feel he did not get right into the debating hall and find out what the truth is. Either he was right or he was wrong.

I think everything important that the Buddha actually knew can probably be written down on about four pages, and that if people just focused on what was on those four pages, and returned to them again and again, they could achieve liberation.

We know a great deal that the Buddha didn’t know, and that he never even pretended to know.

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Not really. The “higher dhamma” part of the Nikaya has 1500 pages. You can’t explain how the world works in 4 pages, same as you can’t explain how an airplane works in 4 pages.

And this is a problem. Some think you can read a couple of “lower dhamma” pages about rebirth, being a good person, suffering, etc. and understand how the world works, or think that is all that Buddha ever had to say. The important part of his dhamma is the “higher dhamma” - chapter 2, 3 and first half of chapter 4 from SN - 1500 pages