Thus cultural relativism - even though it may have paved the way for many of us to leave our earlier religious orientations and enter the Buddhist fold - has no place once we are within that fold. We may be free to design our lives, but we are not free to change the underlying rules that determine what good and bad actions are, and how the process of kamma works itself out. This helps us to face the events we encounter in life with greater equanimity, for we know that we had a hand in creating them, and yet at the same time we can avoid any debilitating sense of guilt because with each new choice we can always make a fresh start.Ģ) The Awakening also tells us that good and bad are not mere social conventions, but are built into the mechanics of how the world is constructed. The fact that we are empowered also means that we are responsible for our experiences. We have formed and are continuing to form the world we experience. The Awakening lets us see that the choices we make in each moment of our lives have consequences. It means that what each of us does, says, and thinks does matter - this, in opposition to the sense of futility that can come from reading, say, world history, geology, or astronomy and realizing the fleeting nature of the entire human enterprise. True Awakening necessarily involves both ethics and insight into causality.Īs for what the Buddha's Awakening means for us now, four points stand out.ġ) The role that kamma plays in the Awakening is empowering. Without the first - which includes not only an understanding of kamma, but also of how kamma leads to the understanding itself - any realization, no matter how calm or boundless, that does not result from these sorts of understanding cannot count as an Awakening in the Buddhist sense. When we address the question of how other "enlightenment" experiences recorded in world history relate to the Buddha's, we have to keep in mind the Buddha's own dictum: First there is the knowledge of dependent co-arising, then there is the knowledge of nibbana. With its cessation, there remained the experience of the unconditioned, which he also termed nibbana (Unbinding), consciousness without surface or feature, the Deathless. This was how he gained insight into the four noble truths and dependent co-arising - seeing how the aggregates that made up his "person" were also the impelling factors in the round of experience and the world at large, and how the whole show could be brought to cessation. On the other hand, his realization of the importance of the mind in determining the round is what led him to focus directly on his own mind in the present to see how the processes in the mind that kept the round going could be disbanded. On the one hand, it made him realize the futility of the round of rebirth - that even the best efforts aimed at winning pleasure and fulfillment within the round could have only temporary effects. This insight had a double impact on his mind. The quality of one's views and intentions determines the experienced result of one's actions. They have been reported by other seers throughout history, although the Buddha's insight into the second knowledge had a special twist: He saw that beings are reborn according to the ethical quality of their thoughts, words, and deeds, and that this quality is essentially a factor of the mind. The first two forms of knowledge were not new with the Buddha. In other passages, he describes the three stages that led to insight into dependent co-arising: knowledge of his own previous lifetimes, knowledge of the passing away and rebirth of all living beings, and finally insight into the four Noble Truths. The human effort involved in this process ultimately focuses on the question of understanding the nature of human effort itself - in terms of skillful kamma and dependent co-arising - what its powers and limitations are, and what kind of right effort (i.e., the Noble Path) can take one beyond its limitations and bring one to the threshold of the Deathless.Īs the Buddha described the Awakening experience in one of his discourses, first there is the knowledge of the regularity of the Dhamma - which in this context means dependent co-arising - then there is the knowledge of nibbana. He awakened to the fact that there is an undying happiness, and that it can be attained through human effort. His awakening is special in that the two aspects come together. The two crucial aspects of the Buddha's Awakening are the what and the how: what he awakened to and how he did it.
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