by ~ Ric Streatfield
Click here to download as PDF
How can you be lonely, with no gap between you and all there is?
Roshi Susan Murphy
Now that the Covid-19 virus has caused many of us to isolate ourselves from the normally frenetic modern world it may be a good opportunity to take time to explore at least little bits of the infinity of the Buddha’s Universe. No need for trekking boots and backpacks. No need for Four Wheel Drives or speed-of-light spaceships. All that is needed is an inquisitive mind….and, a black pencil and a sheet of white paper.
Background
As the story goes the Buddha was born into a high status family in a small rural, non-Brahman, republic, in contrast to the surrounding Brahman (Hindu) kingdoms. It is now thought that the Buddha was contemporary with the Greek philosopher Socrates (470-399 BCE) with his famous claim that ‘…..an unexamined life is not worth living’. More than a hundred years earlier the original of the Sophoi, or the seven Wise Men of ancient Greece, was Thales of Miletus on the Ionian Coast of Greece. Thales, besides correctly predicting an eclipse of the sun, some credit as being the originator of the profound Delphic Oracle advice of – ‘Know thyself!’.
Well into his young adult life Gotama the Buddha became dissatisfied with his understanding of the causes of suffering in the world around him. The prevailing Brahman view at the time was based on a cosmology of belief, a super-natural world with Brahma as the creator, the all-pervading Universal Consciousness. The life-force or soul (atman) was the individual Brahma spirit in all living things, and the re-incarnation cycle of life was this spirit of Brahma leaving the mortal body at death and then re-entering a newly forming body at conception, to be re-born into the world of suffering unless the ‘good’ kharma accumulated in the previous life or lives far outweighed the ‘bad’.
The Buddha spent six years in searching and practicing the traditional yoga and ascetic practices until, as the story goes, he gave up his searching, relaxed and sat in meditation under the Bodhi tree. It is there the understanding of the origins of suffering came to him. The methodology the Buddha used in gaining his insight or ‘Enlightenment’ is set out in the Buddha’s own words to Ananda, his personal assistant, almost hidden away in the Pali sutras, in the Paticca Samuppada.