Our FBA Dharmabyte today is a preview for Saturdayand#8217;s Podcast. In and#8220;The Buddha As Bodhisattvaand#8221; be prepared for the odd surprise as Dhivan considers the relationship between what we think we may know about the Buddha, and what the historical evidence suggests. In this excerpt he shares the traditional story of the Buddha as Bodhisattva including four biographies of the Buddha and a reading from the Lalitavistara Sutta.
From the talk and#8220;What Do We Really Know About the Buddha?and#8221; given at the Cambridge Buddhist Centre, 2008.
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. But no doubt you've come across from time to time the life story of the Buddha in its traditional kind of form. And you've probably noticed that the way the Buddha is represented there, the Buddha and the Bodhisattva prior to his enlightenment in ways which don't sound all that normal at all. There's only a few traditional biographies of the Buddha, actually. There's four. And they obviously all rely on the same basic pool of stories and information. And all of them are written centuries after the Buddha. In the main Taravada one, which is called the nidana katar, the extended story. It starts with a bhikkhu named Sumeda, vowing to attain Buddhahood under the Buddha di Pankara, who lived four incalculables and a hundred thousand calpers ago. He was twenty-four Buddhas ago. So in that story, our Buddha has got a very long kind of history behind him, of striving through various lives to become gautama in his life. So that is not all very ordinary in a way. And another biography of the Buddha, the Mahavastu, is explicit in its way. It describes the Buddha as lokutara beyond the world. The Buddha just appears as a human being, as in a body. It's just for the sake of teaching. It's quite explicit. And in another biography, the Lalata Vistra, the sports of the Buddha, the figure of the Buddha becomes magnificently exaggerated. And I would like to read you some of this. This bit of the Lalata Vistra concerns the Bodhisattva. Having resolved upon attaining enlightenment, walking towards the Bodhi tree, you might remember the traditional story here gives up all starities and realises that the way to gain enlightenment is by attaining Jhana. And so he takes food and then heads to the Bodhi tree. Thus, O Bikus, the Bodhisattva, having bathed in the river Narangina and having restored his physical strength and vigor by eating, departed towards the spot under the lordly Bodhi tree, in the spot on the earth with sixteen forms, with the victorious walk of a great man, the untroubled walk, the walk which is satisfying to the senses, the well-established walk, the walk of a lord Meru, the walk which is straightforward, not a zigzag walk, an unaffected walk, not a tripping walk, not a limited walk, not a dispirited walk, not a frivolous walk, a playful walk, a pure walk, an auspicious walk, a folkless walk, an under-luded walk, an unattached walk, the walk of a lion, the walk of a swan, the walk of a lordly elephant, the walk of Narayana, a walk that did not touch the earth, a walk as wonderful on earth as a thousand-spoked wheel, the walk with webbed toes, and red nails, a walk to resound on earth, a walk to break open the lord of mountains, a walk that made uneven areas, a walk that emitted array of light, as though in between the webs of fingers, which travelled well and touched the creatures, a walk that created pure notices at every step, a walk that came from previous auspicious deeds, a walk of the previous Buddha lions, a walk tough and unpircible as adamant, a walk that obstructed the path of all evil and ill, and on and on. With such a walk did the Bodhisattva go to the seat of enlightenment. I read that, so you get a feeling for the kind of stories that nourished the early Buddhists in their attempts to represent the Buddha. And with those stories, they made absolutely no distinction between this kind of Buddha and what we regard as a human Buddha, as it were. This was clearly not of importance to the Indian imagination, to distinguish between myth and reality in the way that we might. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donny. And thank you. [music fades out] [music fades out] [music fades out] [BLANK_AUDIO]
