The Buddha’s Path To Enlightenment | 17 May 2024

Before and during the Buddha's time,

There were those who trained in a mind of samadhi,

A concentrated mind,

Being still and solid,

But to only find bliss in samadhi.

They may absorb into jhana,

Or stare at a kasina object,

For the mind to have peace and stillness.

We call this entering the jhanas,

States of mental absorptions.

The first jhana,

Second,

Third and fourth jhana.

And focusing on this object,

The thoughts reduce.

Like we can see when we practice samadhi and the thoughts reduce,

Rapture and fullness of heart arises.

Happiness has arisen from the mind being still and peaceful,

And not being moved.

There is a lot of bliss,

And then abiding in equanimity.

Bliss is in the first jhana.

And training higher,

Training till one gets more experience,

Skilled and proficient,

Till one can get to the fourth jhana.

But some Dhamma practitioners may train just till the first jhana,

And then experience sights,

Sounds,

Tastes,

Odours,

Touch,

Mind objects,

Which one gets pleased in,

And the jhana can decline.

They aren't skilled enough.

With insufficient skill,

They look just for the bliss of jhana.

They get a taste of it,

And it takes time to enter samadhi.

They take samadhi as the fundamental of the practice,

Because they see the mind as being uncontrollable.

It goes with all the outer sense objects,

So they train like this.

And there were many big teachers at the time who taught to do this type of samadhi,

Who also had a lot of disciples,

Were respected and had the faith of the wider public.

And there were some big teachers and ascetics who trained with more skill than that.

They see that this mind,

Upon receiving an aramana,

A sense object entering,

Then there is vinyana,

Sense consciousness arising.

Here it is disturbed.

There is a feeling of being impinged,

Having vedana,

Feelings,

Having sannya,

Memories and perceptions,

Having sankhara,

Thoughts.

Here it's really disturbed.

If they didn't have all these mental processes,

Then there would be more happiness.

So they train the mind to not let the mind be associated with feelings,

Memories,

Thoughts,

Sense consciousness.

This is very refined.

They said it is very refined and close to nibbana.

And they understand that they have reached nibbana already,

That this is the highest point.

They only can reach this level.

And they go teach this to future generations,

To develop the rupa and arupa,

Form and formless jhanas.

This is training samadhi that is firmly established and solid.

But at that time they don't know the kilesas,

The mental defilements are still there.

They think the defilements aren't there anymore,

Because mentally they are at ease.

The sammasambuddha,

The perfectly self-awakened buddha,

Was born,

Together with his merit and bharami,

Spiritual perfections,

That was complete.

He proclaimed in his first utterance that he was the most excellent,

Supreme and the most spiritually developed in this world.

He walked seven steps forward.

If we talk of the meaning of this,

It would be that the Buddha would spread the buddhasasana,

The Buddha's dispensation,

All over the Indian subcontinent,

Or the land of the rose apple.

He had contemplated into the whole of the world,

The human,

Deva and brahma god worlds,

And saw that there was no living being as excellent,

Supreme and developed as him.

That is,

The bodhisattva was born along with his full bharami,

Which he had built for a long time.

Built for an uncountable period of lifetimes and existences.

Through this he had met so many buddhas.

And for a buddha to attain enlightenment,

They have to build a great bharami.

And our buddha had met so many past buddhas.

So think about how long he had to build his bharami for.

And the bodhisattva had the supportive causes and traits within his mind.

When he was just seven years old,

He sat meditation underneath a rose apple tree.

He said that the shadow of the rose apple tree stood still.

Even past noon,

There was still the shade on him.

It was a miracle.

And the bodhisattva learnt various knowledges easily,

Because he had done it a lot before.

He mastered them all.

All the subjects and disciplines of that time,

He learnt them quickly.

His wisdom was quick.

And the bodhisattva had his bharami.

It was his last life and he would gain enlightenment.

So the satca,

The truth,

The truth of dhamma was present already.

Before we had been born,

There already existed birth,

Aging,

Sickness and death.

But we see it as something normal,

That we have to be born and die like this.

We don't know how to find the way out of this,

And think there isn't a path out of it.

Having been born,

We get old.

Being old,

We get sick.

Being sick,

Then we die.

Dying,

Then being cremated.

It's finished.

We die,

And where we go,

We don't know as well.

So the great bodhisattva,

The Buddha-to-be,

Thought that,

Though having happiness of all kinds,

Why did he have to separate from all of this?

It was great suffering.

This sankhara,

Bodily heap,

We see that it ages,

Sickens and dies.

But we really don't see it.

We don't see it at all.

We see it only as being me and mine.

But the bodhisattva,

The Buddha-to-be,

Saw it as something that was a lot of suffering and torture.

Why do we also have to age?

Being born,

Why do we need to experience pain like this?

Suffering and being tortured like this?

The body decaying and breaking apart like this is not good at all.

Is there that which does not age,

Does not sicken and does not die?

There is hot,

As there is cold.

There is darkness,

As there is light.

There is birth and death as a pair.

Then there should be that which does not get born,

Does not die.

How did he even think of this?

If one's bhārami isn't full,

There would be no way to think like this.

The big teachers of the time that had the higher jhānas couldn't think like this.

They couldn't find the way.

They taught others following them to absorb deeper into jhāna.

Then they can be born as a brahma god,

Which is still a brahma of the mundane world.

Once the power of a brahma is lost,

Then they have to come back to be born as a deva,

Then born as a human again.

Being a human and lapsing in goodness,

Then going down to be born in the lower realms again.

It revolves around like this.

Avicchā,

Ignorance,

Makes one to be born and die,

Going around like this.

We have been cycling through birth and death a lot.

They say that our pile of bones from our past lives is a lot higher than a mountain.

The drops of tears from having suffered amounts to more than the great ocean.

Think about how much suffering we have experienced then.

Being born in each life,

We must have suffered like this.

So the Buddha searched for the path.

He learned first from the ascetics,

Alara and Uddhaka,

Who had the seventh and eighth jhānas.

And he had great happiness.

But with the wisdom of the bodhisattva,

He saw that this was still just samādhi.

It was suppressing the mental defilements.

It hadn't cut them off.

His heart still had concern for his princess Ishodara and son Rahula,

Even just a tiny bit.

And he knew it.

So it showed that he hadn't got to his goal.

And at that time,

The preferred way to practice was self-torturing the body.

Could this be the way?

The bodhisattva tried to train,

Practice and do this way of self-torture.

He didn't eat.

He stopped the breath.

He clenched his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

And he ended up fainting three times.

If it was someone else,

They would have died already.

There was no other ascetic who could take it that far.

He had the higher jhānas,

And the jhānas of a bodhisattva as well.

So it was greater than others.

Until he had the wisdom that this was not the way.

In the text of the Buddha's life,

It says,

There was a deva that played a harp with three strings.

One string was tight,

One was loose,

And one was just right and had a beautiful sound.

The strings that were too tight and too loose were not beautiful sounding.

It was a sign.

But the Buddha knew it already,

Because he had tried it out for himself and knew that it wasn't the path.

So he came back to eat food to regain his strength.

And on the fifteenth full moon day of the sixth lunar month,

Called Visakha,

It says in the Theravada suttas that the bodhisattva walked across the Naranjara River and meditated.

He faced the east,

As the other directions were not appropriate.

Facing east,

He sat meditation on the diamond throne,

Which was the throne of one whose mind was a diamond.

He made the mental vow to sit and either attain enlightenment or die.

There was no other way.

Before this,

He had made a mental determination to float the golden plate that Lady Sujata had placed her offering of forty-nine mouthfuls of milk rice porridge on.

If it went against the current,

Then the bodhisattva would succeed.

And so it did,

And he had gained more certainty.

And he sat meditation under the mahabodhi tree,

The banyan tree.

He determined his mind firmly,

Entering the first jhāna.

On the first watch of the night,

Between six p.

M.

And ten p.

M.

,

He gained pupe niwas anusati jhāna,

Where he could remember his past lives,

What he was born as before,

How he had built barami in that life.

The Buddha could remember many lifetimes,

And he saw that there was no end to it.

Remembering one hundred lives,

One million lives,

And there were still more lifetimes without end.

This is the cycle of saṃsāra,

Of renewed birth and death,

Being so long,

So very long.

It is enough to be weary and tired of it.

Whatever it is,

We have been it before already.

It's enough to be weary of it.

Then the Buddha contemplated further.

He entered samādhi and into jhāna.

He had cittupapattayāna,

The insight that he recollected the arising of living beings,

Coming from what karma had been made.

A being with no sīla becomes an animal,

A lower being,

Reappearing in the hell,

Ghost,

Asura,

Or animal realms.

Being a deva,

From sīla and dhamma,

From goodness.

Being a brahma,

From having developed samādhi to the level of jhāna.

Being a human,

From having the five precepts.

And receiving various types of happiness and suffering from specific karma.

It was very refined,

And the bodhisattva knew all of it.

It was just this karma that followed one.

It was karma that decides one's birth in different realms.

Karma is what gives good or bad results.

Karma is one's inheritance that follows one.

And it is our refuge and support.

Whoever does karma,

Whether good or bad,

Must receive the result of it.

So we must hold on to the principle that we will just do good karma.

Do just merit and goodness.

It gets to our birthday,

Or to an important day,

And our mind goes to make merit and goodness.

In our house,

When we can't come to the monastery,

We remember the merit and dhāna,

Giving,

We have done.

We chant and meditate so our minds are still and peaceful.

We recollect the virtues of the Buddha,

Dhamma,

Sangha,

And we gain merit from this too.

The Buddha has great barami,

It is limitless,

It is appamano bhutto.

The limitless Dhamma,

Which makes our mind free from suffering,

Appamano dhammo.

And appamano sangho,

The limitless noble Sangha.

We train ourselves to develop goodness.

We recollect like this a lot.

We do it a lot,

Develop it a lot.

And then,

On the third watch of the night,

2am till 6am,

The Buddha contemplated the Dhamma of paticca-samuppada,

The Dhamma of dependent co-arising,

Of dukkha,

Samudaya,

Nirodha,

Magga.

He knew suffering,

The cause leading to suffering,

The cessation of suffering,

Through sila,

Samadhi,

And bhajna,

Morality,

Concentration,

And wisdom.

He contemplated this Dhamma back and forth,

And at dawn,

The Bodhisattva was enlightened and became the samma-sambuddha.

So the Buddha was born first as the great Bodhisattva Prince Siddhartha,

And was born again as the samma-sambuddha in the heart,

Under the Mahabodhi tree.

And then the Buddha spread the Buddha-sassana for 45 years,

Then laying down his bodily and mental formations,

Attaining parinibbana in the town of Kushinara.

And the Buddha taught all Buddhists to be established in heedfulness,

Make heedfulness complete.

It was the pacchima-avada,

The last teaching.

So we are born under the shade of the Buddha-sassana,

Showing we have merit and goodness.

May you put in the effort and diligence to practice a lot,

To do a lot of goodness.

Grow your mind to be higher,

From a human to a deva,

Or those who are a deva to be a brahma.

Then contemplate the four noble truths and you will be a venerable one,

Which arises in the heart.

May you grow in blessings.