I was actually referring to the woman referred to in chapter 23
Constellation King Flower, if there is a person who hears this chapter on the Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King, he too will gain immeasurable and boundless benefits. If there is a woman who hears this chapter on the Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King and is able to accept and uphold it, that will be her last appearance in a woman’s body and she will never be born in that form again. If in the last five-hundred-year period after the thus come one has entered extinction there is a woman who hears this sutra and carries out its practices as the sutra directs, when her life here on earth comes to an end she will immediately go to the world of Peace and Delight where the buddha Amitayus dwells surrounded by the assembly of great bodhisattvas, and there will be born seated on a jeweled seat in the center of a lotus blossom.
He [remember the heavenly gender-change the Buddha’s mother is also subject to in commentarial literature!? Clearly heavens in Buddhism oft have a “no ladies” policy, it seems!] will no longer know the torments of greed, desire, anger, rage, foolishness, or ignorance, or the torments brought about by arrogance, envy, or other defilements. He will gain the bodhisattva’s transcendental powers and the truth of the birthlessness of all phenomena. Having gained this truth, his faculty of sight will be clear and pure, and with this clear pure faculty of sight he will see the buddhas, the thus come ones, equal in number to the sands of seven hundred twelve thousand million nayutas of Ganges Rivers.
As a Mahayana Buddhist, I don’t differentiate between the attainment of Mahayana and Theravada Buddhist masters.
While the goal of attainment in Theravada Buddhism is widely considered a lesser goal than in Mahayana Buddhism, this is not fundamentally the case:
Samma Sambuddha is a self-enlightened Buddha. That is, a Buddha who realises the Truth (Nibbana) by himself, without the assistance of a teacher…
The last Buddha was of this catergory.
Pacceka Buddha also attains Nibbana without the assistance of a teacher, but unlike theSamma Sambuddha he cannot teach the Dhamma.
Savaka Buddha or Arahat attains Nibbana by following the teachings given by a Samma Sambuddha.
In terms of their Enlightenment, all three Buddhas are identical, but they reach this state by different means (with or without a teacher), and may or may not be able to teach. http://www.londonbuddhistvihara.org/fund_topics/buddha.htm
If a living person in the Theravada tradition is widely believed to have attained Nirvana, I take that seriously.
If the Buddha taught 84,000 paths to enlightenment, as is widely taught in Mahayana Buddhism, then Theravada Buddhism is included among those paths:
The Basic Points Unifying the Theravāda and the Mahāyāna is an important Buddhist ecumenical statement created in 1967 during the First Congress of the World Buddhist Sangha Council (WBSC), where its founder Secretary-General, the late Venerable Pandita Pimbure Sorata Thera, requested the Ven. Walpola Rahula to present a concise formula for the unification of all the different Buddhist traditions. This text was then unanimously approved by the Council… Basic points unifying Theravāda and Mahāyāna - Wikipedia
Above being Mahayana or Theravada, the idea of 84,000 paths is more likely to be about how a mix of Chinese whispers and eastern idiomatic uses of numbers caused (and still causes) misunderstandings in established traditions of Buddhism.
The figure was probably originally used to refer to the massive number of discourses the Buddha gave across the 45 years of his spiritual career, and which Venerable Ananda was able to recollect or confirm in the first times the early Sangha met to compile the Dhamma-vinaya left by the Blessed One.
We have already addressed this in previous threads:
I agree with Ajahn Brahm on this point. A genuine Arhat won’t be selfish. Even stream-winners are endowed with generosity, according to the EBTs.
However, I also like Analayo’s exploration of this topic in regards to the Bakula Sutta, a late Sutta which promotes the ideal of a hyper-OCD Arhat, who is obsessed with following the letter of the law of ascetic practice, but refuses to teach others. It would seem like, at some point in early Buddhist history, the Arhat ideal deteriorated, perhaps giving rise to the proto-mahayana idea that Arhats are “Selfish.”
I really don’t understand what the purpose of this thread is. If you want to point out the equality of Theravada and Mahayana to people who are sympathetic to this idea, it is very much preaching to the choir. If you are talking to people who tend to disagree with it, simply stating these things once again won’t help you change their mind.
If the Theravada enlightenment and Mahayana enlightenment are equal and basically the same, then there is no point in trying to convince the Theravadins that those two branches of Buddhism are equal. The Theravadins can be sure that they are not and still reach the arahantship, can’t they? At this stage, they will see the equality of Mahayana and Theravada for themselves.
The same thinking could be applied to many perennialists’ works. If all religions are equal and lead to the same truth, why should I do yoga and not stick to my Latin pre-Vatican II Catholic mass? Why did I convert to Buddhism and not stick to following the teachings of the Russian Orthodox church? I mean, if you consider those two enlightenments are equal, then the Theravadins have all the right to ignore Mahayana altogether, why not?
Ajahn Brahm is cool because in his own way, he allows for a sense of ecumenicism that creates goodwill and harmony.
Still, I just feel a bit bad for Buddhists that haven’t found the EBTs and/or Sutta Central. I do spend time with some Zen communities (yeah, I try to connect in my city, dominated by Zen, Shambhala et al…) , and there is always a Buddha in the corner on a shrine, but I do feel that there’s no appreciation of what the man taught and stood for, and how important his presence is in the world. The Early Texts? No idea. It’s a bit like being a modern physicist and having no idea of who Einstein or Max Planck were.
I’m sorry, that’s not even a fair comparison. Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism are different expressions of fundamentally the same religion. Pointing this out is not the same as saying “all paths lead to God” or whatever the perennialists might say.
I don’t know how it originated, but here is an oft-repeated and beautiful saying, “Just as there are 84,000 worldly passions, the Buddha taught 84,000 paths to enlightenment.”
Even in the Pali scriptures, the Buddha taught different things in different ways to different people in different situations and from different sets of circumstances.
Okay, let’s leave it out. Let us consider Theravada and Mahayana only. Most Theravadins believe Mahayana to be incorrect and irrelevant at best. If we accept that the Theravadin enlightenment is identical to the Mahayana enlightenment, then why not let the Theravadins mind their own business? I mean, why should we talk about the equality of Mahayana and Theravada if the end result is the same, whether we believe in this equality or not?
Kensho, I have also appreciated many talks from Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh where he clearly integrates the EBTs with his own very positive approach to Dharma. I’d welcome seeing more of this approach with other modern Zen teachers, but sadly, this seems lacking. My sense is that Ven. Thay is a scholar of the early texts (Vietnamese Zen being closer to Asian Theravada than, I think, most other forms of Zen), and many current teachers in western Mahayana have little, in any, direct familiarity.
There was a thread about the Rousing of the Arhantaḥ, that narrative of shady-repute, a while ago, and on it I recall making essentially the same point in defence of the narrative, however problematic it may seem from a non-bodhisattvayāna POV.
If the best of Y is “somehow inexplicably” X despite all seeming surface Y-ness, then Y should be put in the position to be as best as it can be at being Y.
問曰：阿羅漢先世因緣所受身必應當滅，住在何處而具足佛道？
Inquiry: in the Arhat’s past lives the causes and conditions for being subject to embodiment necessarily ought to have been eradicated, [in light of this] they dwell where to perfect buddhahood?
答曰： 得阿羅漢時，三界諸漏因緣盡，更不復生三界。有淨佛土，
Response: when attaining Arhatship, the three realms’ myriad outflows’ causes and conditions are exhausted, there is no more birth again in the three realms. There is a pure buddha land,
出於三界，乃至無煩惱之名，於 是國土佛所，聞法華經，具足佛道。
beyond the three realms, where not even the word affliction has a name, in this kingdom of the Buddha, they hear the Dharma Flower Sūtra [i.e. the Lotus Sūtra], with this they perfect Buddhahood.
如法華經說：「有羅漢，若不聞法華經，
As in the Dharma Flower Sūtra’s words: "There are Arhantaḥ[,] for example[, who’ve] not heard the Dharma Flower Sūtra,
自謂得滅度；我於餘國為說是事，汝皆當作佛。」
themselves they call [‘]ones who have attained cessation[’]; I in another realm for them speak this matter, you all shall become Buddhas."
The Pure Land being referred to is akaniṣṭagandavyūha, the highest and most refined saṃbhogakāya buddhakṣetra (Pure Land), even greater and more refined than Sukhāvatī.
It is presided over by Śivamaheśvara, called “Sustainer” here rather than “Destroyer”, who hosts Samantabhadrabuddha, who directly instructs the arhantaḥ in subtle dharma (saddharma).
Theravāda & EBT studies should reinvent itself as a New Kamakura School of Late Mahāyāna Buddhism based on the Mahāyāna scripture above, saying
“in this degenerate age, the dharma of the master yogis is no longer effective, only the pure practice set forth in the EBTs can lead to rebirth in the highest Pure Land and instruction from the Buddha himself!”
Interesting reading.