That Brāhman, the Buddha

An essay written by Phiroz Mehta in 1954 for The Middle Way, extracted from Buddhahood

Continued from part 1 and part 2

Now let us turn to Canto 26 of the Dhāmmapada…

(1) O brāhman, struggle hard; dam the torrent of craving and drive away sensual pleasures. When thou hast understood how to root out the elements of being, then, O brāhman, wilt thou realize the Uncreated.

(3) He for whom exist neither the six internal nor the six external states of consciousness, nor both; he who is free and fearless, him I call a brāhman.

‘Free and fearless’ — free to attain Superconsciousness by entering the deeper states of consciousness one by one, and finally stopping the flow of discursive thought; and fearless, because it requires unusual courage to take the plunge into the Void, for there is no knowing what may happen.

(29) Him I call a brāhman in whom there exists no craving; who has reached correct understanding; who is free from doubt and who has plumbed the depths of the Immortal.

‘Free from doubt’ — doubt that the silence is the fullness, is the Superconsciousness; the fearful mind of him who is confined within the sphere of mortality is inclined to believe that the stopping of the flow of discursive thought merely means emptiness, vacuity.

In Canto 10 we have this verse:

(6) If, like a shattered gong, thou hast learnt Silence, thou hast already reached Nirvana—there is no anger within thee.

Look through the pages of the Buddha’s discourses, and you will find again and again the Buddha’s statements concerning the entering into profounder states of consciousness, culminating in what he calls the stopping of feeling, knowing and perception, which I describe as the stopping at will of the flow of discursive thought. The Buddha himself achieved this Superconsciousness and could enter it as and when he pleased and remain in it as long as he pleased. This attainment, which is the same as the Upaniṣadic ‘knowing Brāhman’ or ‘realizing the Ātman’ or ‘ascending aloft and becoming immortal’, is precisely the very heart of the enlightenment of the Buddha. So on the way to Gayā, the Buddha says to Upaka:

The Arahant am I, teacher supreme, Utter Enlightenment is mine alone; Unfever’d calm is mine, Nirvana’s peace.

I seek the Kāśis’s city, there to start my Doctrine’s wheel, a purblind world to save, sounding the tocsin’s call to Deathlessness.

When he first addresses, in the deer park of Isipatana, the five who were to be his first disciples, he categorically assures them:

The Immortal is found. I instruct, I teach the Doctrine. Going along in accordance with what is enjoined, having soon realized here and now by your own superknowledge that supreme goal of the Brahmā-faring … you will abide in it.

Siddhatttha Gotama, in becoming the all-enlightened Buddha, had also become the true brāhman: one who had become Brāhman. The venerable bhikkhu, Kaccāna the Great, declared (M. I. 111.):

The Lord has become vision, become knowledge, become Dhamma, become Brahmā; he is the propounder, the expounder, the bringer to the goal, the giver of the Deathless, Dhamma-lord, Tathāgata.

In the Agganna Sutta, the Buddha himself declares (D. 3. 84):

Vāseṭṭha, these are names tantamount to Tathāgata; belonging to the Dhamma, and again belonging to Brahmā; and again, Dhamma-become, and again Brahma-become.

And it is significant that the Buddha declares this immediately after saying:

He, Vāseṭṭha, whose faith in the Tathāgata is settled, rooted, established and firm, not to be dragged down by anyone, well may he say, ‘I am a veritable son of the Exalted One.’

I leave it to you to think of the use of the word ‘son’ in this statement by the Buddha in relation to the use of the word ‘son’ in the genealogy in St Luke’s Gospel from Jesus to God.

That brāhman, the Buddha, was one of the supreme heirs and noblest representatives of the profoundest religious development the world has ever seen. As the young seeker of truth, he saw suffering around him, suffering as we ordinarily understand it. As the all-enlightened Brahmā-become Buddha of his maturity, he saw suffering, dukkha, everywhere and in everything, including what we commonly regard as good and worthwhile. But this dukkha, this ill-state, meant something infinitely profounder than sickness, old age, infirmity, heartbreak and all the ephemeral ills of this world. This dukkha meant absence of permanent Nirvana; absence of that upekkhā which is the dynamic poise that knows no shaking; absence of that absolute freedom of mind which is won through the perfecting of character and of clear-visioned insight; absence of the power to stop at will the flow of discursive thought and enter Superconsciousness. It was this dukkha from which the Buddha found and taught the way of deliverance. This suffering as taught by the Buddha is identical with the Upaniṣadic anguish of separation from the Tad-va-nam, the goal of love-longing, which is Brahman the Immortal Beloved. And in both cases, the transcending of this anguish, which is the realization of Brahman by a muni, or Nirvana by a Buddha, is the realization of Superconsciousness.

The master who experiences the immortal in Superconsciousness naturally and inevitably teaches his disciples that that is the true goal of the spiritual life. Equally naturally and inevitably, those who seek the immortal ask questions and await answers regarding the nature of this goal. But questions and answers, framed in words which express thoughts, all arise and are confined to the sense-mind sphere, which is the sphere of uprising-proceeding-dying, the sphere of mortality. The terms and criteria of the sphere of mortality and of separate entity or diversity do not properly apply to the sphere of immortality and eternal existence, which is that of unity. So, the inadequacy of the mortal inevitably distorts the as-it-really-is-ness of the immortal. Human beings, with minds confined to the sphere of mortality, easily conceive of a god in their own image, exalted to a superlative degree. But this god, as an entity, and with man-bestowed qualities, is a strange idol, a grey image of the unimaginable reality… unimaginable, that is, but fully realizable in Superconsciousness. When mortals say that their teacher is the Son of God, one with God, etc., they are talking devoutly; but there is a considerable measure of misconception in what they say. Again, those who spin out theologies which purport, sincerely enough, to make plain the eternal light, do in fact cast fantastic shadows whilst trying to utilize that light. You cannot use the light of truth for your own purposes. You can only become the light: be enlightened. And only he with a pure heart can clearly see that light. If and when he who has attained uses terms like Brahman, God, Eternity, Nirvana, etc., he knows what he is talking about, for the meaning of those terms is an actual blissful inward realization; whereas for him who has not realized the silence, the meaning of those terms is an externalized product of his imagination.

Fully understanding the difficulty, almost the impossibility, of containing the unconditioned Immortal within the strangely fashioned cup of restrictive speech-thought, the great munis and teachers, arahants and buddhas refused to be professional theologians. Instead, they demonstrated in their own everyday lives the consequence of their Brāhman-becoming. They taught the way of life which leads to the realization here-now of eternal life: the way which transforms a man into a true brāhman.

It is particularly significant that the last canto of the Dhammapada is called the ‘Canto of the Brāhman’, and the refrain, ‘Him I call a brāhman’ is used in no less than thirty-two verses to describe the person who has trod the steps of the Noble Eightfold Path and attained supreme Nirvana.

Some 5,000 years and more have passed since the days when Enoch walked with God, days which may perhaps coincide with the days when Yama chose death and abandoned his body, entered the inner world and was granted lordship over the highest of the three heavens. With the passing of the centuries, the great ṛṣis and munis of ancient India handed down their treasured wisdom of the way of deliverance and of the holy experience of immortality in Superconsciousness to their disciples, their ‘sons of proven worth’. That holy experience they termed Brāhman-knowing: crossing over sorrow, crossing over sin, liberation from the knots of the heart. In the course of a millennium or so, theologies and strange theories began to appear. Theologies and theories are the sport of the not fully enlightened servants of the intellect, the unenlightened monarchs of mere verbiage. And when the truth of the way of deliverance was in danger of submergence, Gotama the Buddha came to wrest immortality from the very jaws of Māra the death-dealer. The Buddha gave a fresh emphasis to the practical aspects of treading the perfect way; and he and his aryan bhikkhus did not cloister themselves in one place for their lifetime, but moved from town to town and village to village.

More than 2,400 years have gone by since the Buddha uttered his last words: ‘Strive on with diligence.’ The face of the world has undergone remarkable change. Great deeds and terrible deeds have been done. Knowledge has piled up mountainously. But the fevered heart of man is still restless, questing for the end of his anguish, questing for the goal of his love-longing.

Man professes disillusionment today, puts on the mask of obstinate incredulity and plays at being objective and scientific, matter-of-fact and rational. But life will sweep away all his professions and pretensions in her irresistible tide, for ultimately man must come to the light, even if the only path left to him is through the portals of death.

Buddhahood was published by Element Books in 1988 with an introduction and edited by the late John Snelling. It is out of print, but is available to download free in PDF format on our website.

The book consists of seventeen essays and interviews that Phiroz Mehta contributed to The Middle Way, many of them being originally lectures delivered at the Buddhist Society Summer School. The following is an extract from the introduction:

In this book, then, lies spiritual vision of the first order; inspired writing and impeccable scholarship too. Here also the reader will find sound advice from one who has actually striven to lead the holy life as a householder amidst the hurly-burly of modern urban life. For all of us struggling on the Path in the unpropitious circumstances of the contemporary world, falling by the wayside from time to time, exhausted, dispirited, it is inspiring to know, despite our blackest periodic fears to the contrary, that ‘It can still be done’!

Continued in part 4

Comments

The last two paragraphs speak volumes of wisdom. It is in our interest to read, listen, reflect and require… “Attitude” as we walk on.

‘Kingfisher’, 13^th March 2018