So, I'm a Buddhist now.

[Agent]

[Despanan]

Yeah, but I'm smarter than you agent, so clearly the shit I'm into is not psuedo-profound - just regular profound. ;)

[Despanan]

[Agent]

I think it lost something in the translation.

[dexeron]

I kind of have to agree. It's hard to pick the meat out of that word-salad. I mean, there has got to be a better way to express whatever the fuck a "nayuta asamkhya thousand-million-fold world" is, a "Buddha Burning Torch" is, who the hell the "This Come One" is supposed to be, or what a "kalpa" is. Is it a measure of time? Is he saying he's been a Bhudda for like, billions of years? It sounds like a really self-aggrandizing statement to make.

Either way, all of the proprietary language is really distracting. The dialogue presented within might have some interesting insight to impart, but I'll be damned if I can make sense of it.

[Despanan]

Oh sorry, just realized you guys are lacking context and footnotes. My bad. I'll explain:

They're both numbers: "nayuta" means 100,000 "asamkhya" means "innumerable". Our world, the reality we occupy is called the 'Three Fold World". So basically he's saying if you took not just our world, but every word and dimension that could possibly exist and ground them down into dust, and then dropped them in a line and let one piece of dust represent one "Kalpa" (Kalpa = unspecified very long time/an age) after you'd added all that time up, the time since he has attained buddhahood surpasses that by a ridiculous, incalculable amount of time.

Burning Torch is the name of another Buddha who Shakyamuni studied under in a past life and earlier in the Sutra, Shakyamuni described how he was enlightened (which was super trippy btw).

"The Thus Come One" is a title for the Buddha.

And yes, you can read the "I'm super old" statement as bragging but in context he's answering a question.

Without getting too far into it his followers just saw him do something impossible and are all "wtf???". He's Siddartha Gutama, the prince that we all have heard about who was born, became enlightened under the bodhi tree and went around teaching people. This is at the end of his life, he's like 70 years old, he was enlightened around mid 30's early 40's. The specific impossible thing that he did in the previous chapter is not something you could do in the 30 odd years he's been teaching, and his followers have called him on that.

So he's saying: "Yeeeaaaahhhh...I sorta lied to you when I said I was enlightened under that Bodhi Tree, or well I didn't really lie so much as I told you what you needed to hear at that time, and that story about how Burning Torch was enlightened? That also wasn't entirely true, or well it's true but it didn't happen like that, the story I gave you was an expedient means, so you'd come as close as you could to understanding what I'm talking about."

So then he goes on to say: "So you all think I'm this seventy-year old guy, who got these powers by hanging out under a tree. That's true but it's also not true. The truth is I was first enlightened in the incalculably distant past and I have been trying to guide beings to enlightenment ever since. So what do I do? I look at you, and I see who you are and what you need and how best to communicate with you at this time and I become that thing.

I then give you a teaching that pushes you in the right direction. Sometimes I say I'm the Buddha, sometimes I say I'm someone else. Sometimes to get you to pay attention, I tell you I'm about to die.

Why do I do this? Because unlike you, I can see the whole board: There is no cycle of birth and death. There's no being alive now and entering nirvana later. The world is neither substantial nor empty, consistent nor diverse, and it's not what you think it is: not what you perceive with your five senses.

Because all of you are so different, in nature, desires, actions and thought - and because I want to help you I employ a variety of stories and phrases and doctrines to bring about this end.

I have been doing this over and over and over again since time immemorial and I will continue to do it, as long as it takes.

Why? Because I'm a Buddha, and that's what Buddha's do."

You get why that's groundbreaking from a Buddhist standpoint? Particularly the part about how there isn't actually a cycle of birth and death? Also do you see the implications when you consider the larger world and other religions and non-religions?

[Agent]

If you just wait long enough won't this all work itself out anyway? Like just let the universe die and that will solve all of these problems and take a lot less time than the Buddha was talking about up there. Seems like he's getting himself all worked up for nothing.

[dexeron]

Basically I read it as a couple of things, but what I take from it as important is a sort of "screw dogma and doctrines" lesson. A sort of "stop worrying about specific ritual or correct prayers or terminology. This worked for you. Something else is going to work for that guy. Whatever it takes to get the truth across is whatever's needed, so stop stressing about stuff. Also, yeah, I'm only 70 years old, but did you miss that whole rebirth thing? This isn't my first rodeo, dudes. I'm like a bene-gesserit. I can see what came before, because I've been reborn."

"Also, rebirth isn't a thing. Except it is. But it isn't. Why don't you take that koan and stick it up your Three Fold World."


You can see why my translation of the Lotus Sutra hasn't been the best-seller I'd hoped it would be. ;)

[Samurai]

[Despanan]