Buddha We Like Nirvana

A week after the Buddha died and had been cremated at Kusinara there was a monk in the retinue of Maha Kassapa, by the name of Subhadda, who said the following:

“Enough, Sirs! Weep not, neither lament! We are well rid of the great Samana. We used to be annoyed by being told: 'This beseems you, this beseems you not.' But now we shall be able to do whatever we like; and what we do not like, that we shall not do!” (T.W. Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, 75).

This shows that not all were grieving over the Buddha’s death. In the case of Subhadda he seemed relieved that he and perhaps others would no longer be admonished by the Buddha which meant they could do as they pleased.

Subhadda’s brazen contempt for the Buddha finds, I think, more sympathy with modern Buddhists who now have their own brand of Buddhism. Nothing restrains them from creating their own teachings and paths—after all, the Buddha has been dead for a long time! Who, therefore, can tell them they can’t do it?

This also applies to modern Zen Buddhism which has gone its own way despite the fact that much of its traditional literature has a fairly consistent underlying theme, always pointing to Mind, such mind being the absolute. This is adequately verified in the Sixth Patriarch’s Platform Sutra:

“’Who would have thought,’ I said to the Patriarch, ‘that the Essence of Mind is intrinsically pure! Who would have thought that the Essence of Mind is intrinsically free from becoming or annihilation! Who would have thought that the Essence of Mind is intrinsically self-sufficient! Who would have thought that the Essence of Mind is intrinsically free from change! Who would have thought that all things are the manifestation of the Essence of Mind!’ Knowing that I had realized the Essence of Mind, the Patriarch said, ‘For him who does not know his own mind there is no use learning Buddhism.’”

Yet, despite all the proof in the favor of the claim that Zen is really the school that realizes the Buddha’s Mind, in modern hands, you might as well take the whole mass of Zen literature and burn it. Much of modern Zen has no need for it and could not care less about realizing Buddha’s Mind—not when awareness of peeling onions and being in the now, and doing lots of sitting, is more important. It is as if modern teachers of Zen are also saying, “The people who come to our Zen centers don’t want to hear all this esoteric bunk—they are in psychological pain and learning to be in the now is what it takes to help them.”

Changing gears, I am not the only one who has noticed that modern Buddhism is moving away from Buddhism in the same way modern Zen is moving away from Zen. The reasons for this departure, I assume, harbor the same contempt as Subhadda’s contempt for the Buddha.

This leads me to say that while the Buddha succeeded in making not a few Arhats and other grades of holy persons (aryasravaka) who shared his sacred vision, he also faced a huge lay and monastic community of prithagjana (i.e., worldlings). What is of especial interest, they lacked the essential spiritual realization of stream-entry and because of this, saw a different goal for Buddhism. In light of this, I would argue that after the Buddha’s death they were instrumental in revising the Buddha’s original teaching into something counterfeit (pratirupakadharma) in which spirit was driven out.

In my estimation, this is what is happening today throughout many Dharma centers around the world. The Buddha’s real message of spirit, that we are primarily spirit and not corporeal bodies, is being cutout of the teachings so that what is presented to the public is often a dumbed-down, psychologized version of Buddhism that with half a brain anyone can master in five minutes.

I hope relevant, this brings to mind something a few years ago I read about the game of Myst. It seems some elderly ladies who had been playing the game for a long time had been unable to access any of the hidden Myst worlds which are the essential part of the game. Convinced there were no hidden worlds as they had not been able to find them, they wrote to the creators telling them the game had no such worlds! In frank truth, these elderly ladies were Myst prithagjana—not Myst aryasravaka. They lacked the mental ability to play the game unlike the the vast majority of other people who could play Myst. And so it is with Buddhism. Much of Buddhism reflects a huge misunderstanding of Buddhism. It teaches no entry into the transcendent which is the purport of the Buddha’s teaching.