In DN 13, Tevijjasutta, the Buddha couldn’t have been anymore clear in his disapproval of the Vedas and the idea that the numerous Brahmin teachers truly knew brahma. The Buddha says that none of these teachers actually saw or knew brahma, and neither claimed to do so. It seems clear that the brahmins of the time were only blindly reciting and learning flawed practices in their own ancient texts. My question is, if none of the Brahmins and ancient seers saw or knew Brahma, how did they know he exists? We see the partial eternalists in DN 1, gods who passed away from Brahma’s host, reborn as humans, and developed recollection of past lives to the extent of only one past life and thus believed Brahma to be Creator God. The same thing seems to have happened to these ancient Brahmin teachers, yet in DN 13, the Buddha says none of them saw or knew Brahma. Why is that? Does he simply just mean they don’t really know the path that leads to rebirth there even if they recollect their past life or is there a nuance I’m not understanding?
Perhaps the brahmins going back to the seventh generation and all those named ancient brahmin seers didn’t directly see Brahma, but (brahmin?) seers even more ancient than that did.
I believe that no one can answer your question without running into irreconcilable contradictions. Therefore, you might consider asking a different question: in the pre-Buddhist texts, does a deity named Brahmā actually exist?
That was true specifically for the brahmins who were present there with the Buddha. In ancient times, when the brahmins were truly devoted to the practice, some of them were able to know the Brahmās. But these things had happened at least seven generations before the Buddha’s time. The brahmins of the Buddha’s time were just a shadow of those ancient brahmins.
Recollecting past lives is not the only way of knowing the Brahmā realms. Practising the divine meditations, the divine abodes, or the brahmavihāras may also lead to such knowledge. On several occasions the Buddha spoke of the good practices of the true brahmins of the past. One example appears in AN 5.192:
Not by farming, trade, raising cattle, archery, government service, or one of the professions, but solely by living on alms, not scorning the alms bowl.
Having offered the fee to his tutor, he shaves off his hair and beard, dresses in ocher robes, and goes forth from the lay life to homelessness.
Then they meditate spreading a heart full of love to one direction, and to the second, and to the third, and to the fourth. In the same way above, below, across, everywhere, all around, they spread a heart full of love to the whole world—abundant, expansive, limitless, free of enmity and ill will.
[The same for compassion, rejoicing and equanimity].
Having developed these four divine meditations, when the body breaks up, after death, they’re reborn in a good place, a realm of divinity.
The Buddha himself, in a past life as Mahāgovinda (the Great Steward, DN 19), practised such disciplines and was able to see and converse with a Brahmā.
“I have heard that brahmins of the past said that whoever goes on retreat for the four months of the rainy season and practices the absorption on compassion sees the Divinity [Brāhma] and discusses with him. But I neither see the Divinity nor discuss with him."
And then the divinity Sanaṅkumāra, knowing the Great Steward’s train of thought, as easily as a strong person would extend or contract their arm, vanished from the realm of divinity and reappeared in the Great Steward’s presence.
(…)
So he addressed the divinity Sanaṅkumāra in verse:
“I’m in doubt, so I ask the Divinity—
who is free of doubt—
about things one may learn from another.
Standing on what, training in what
may a mortal reach the deathless realm of divinity?”
Questioned by Mahāgovinda, the Brahmā Sanaṅkumāra delivered detailed teachings on the path to rebirth in the company of a Brahmā, based on asceticism and on absorption grounded in the four brahmavihāras. Mahāgovinda practised these teachings and taught others as well. Those who succeeded in the practice gained good rebirths—though none of them were freed from the cycle of rebirth.
Just curious, doesn’t the historical religion of the Brahmins(Brahmanism) only affirm a single entity/deity called Brahma ? Who was supposedly the creator of the universe much like Allah/Yahweh ? But the Buddhist doctrine upholds that Brahma is either a realm or a race of divine beings. I wonder if this another Buddhist redefinition of Brahmanical terms, such as Brahmin, which the Buddha stated was not determined by lineage but by practice and virtue.
Redefining the term Brāhma was a tactic of the Buddha to refer to phenomena with which his audiences were already familiar, but with an understanding that was in disagreement with the Buddha’s knowledge.
According to the Buddha, there are 16 levels of existence in the Realm of Form and four levels in the Formless Realm. Rebirth in these realms is conditioned by jhāna. When a new world-system begins its formation, many beings are reborn in the Abode of Brahmā , which is associated with the first jhāna . The beings who arise there mistakenly assume that the first of them is the Supreme God. This misconception spreads among these beings, including this first being (for the brahmins, Mahābrāhma), which is why the idea of a Supreme Creator is so common and intuitive in Saṃsāra.
Yes and no. In fact the pre-Buddhist cosmology is all over place, and frequently merges or divides the same deities, or multiplies their numbers. So yes, in terms of formal cosmology there was a single Brahma who was the creator, but Brahman is also a divine reality inherent in all creation.
