Me And the Monks — The Various Buddhas

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(The school of thought known as Buddhism is, by official classification, not a religion, but a philosophy.

Even if you still serve a jealous God, you may access its wisdoms without risk of misdeed.

Other episodes in the in-process autobiographical series “Me and the Monks” may be discovered via search bar on this site)

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It was 2,500 years ago now that Gautama Buddha — as was entirely acceptable and in fact somewhat frequently practiced in his time and place — simply stepped out of his gorgeous robes, honors and responsibilities (these being fluidly and ably filled in his absence by subordinates, according to long established social practice) to sit in meditation under the Bodhi tree, resulting in the particular limb on the infinite mighty upward blossoming vine of human spiritual reaching known to us today as Buddhism.

Of course, in the centuries since — just as have the Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Wiccan and nearly every other limb upon this upwardly spiraling vine (the notable exception being Taoism, the watchwords and bases of which are simplicity and peace, and which has indeed hewn admirably to this Way), the Buddhist limb has put forth many branches of its own, so that the, let’s say, zen branch bears only the most rudimentary similarities to, again, let’s say, the Tibetan.

And there are traditions, or branches on our Buddhist limb, which actually within their own cosmologies conceive of the existence of many different Buddhas.

The original meditating Gautama Buddha himself would have been very comfortable with this reality of the various Buddhas. He himself became such a transparent (impurity free) lens for his listeners that it is understood among scholars of his sayings that one must check the social context into which each statement was spoken for them not to appear at times actuality self-contradictory.

In fact, at many Buddhist academies — some of them involving committed participation over twenty five years at a seven-day, fifteen hour schedule before graduation — it is incumbent upon every student to question strenuously every wisdom put before them, all in the hope of adding to this vast and multifaceted body of spiritual and practical learning from every perspective available.

It is also vastly interesting to this poet that there are Buddhist cosmologies tallying step for step, point for point, directive for directive, with our most advanced cutting edge quantum sciences.

So we’ve seen that the original Gautama’s meditations — like those, proven in scientific experimentation, of more modern meditating monks in these same disciplines — did bring some accurate visions bearing information which wouldn’t become available to the rest of us for quite some time.

Now, knowing that — here’s the thing:

2500 years ago, Gautama Buddha predicted that there would come a complete cessation of the need for his teachings among us — in, oh, about (count ‘em) 2500 years.

We have already seen in other pages on this website that ancient predictions of these “end times” of upheaval through which we are all presently living (equally understood by the Hindu tradition, in which they are referred to as the “Kali
Yuga”) overwhelmingly refer not to the “end” of the world but indeed that of time as we know it.

If this coincides with a cessation of the requirement for outer spiritual supervision — loss of the playground monitor for this child-race, which is at last reaching the age of adult awareness and may be trusted to monitor its own behaviors, and to work for the good of the whole as well as that of self — what do we have?

Human consciousness ascension.

As natural as learning to walk — even though, just before, we crawled.

Come on — good job! Come to mama!…

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