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By Root 2312 0

and teaches not only the path leading to the supreme state of ultimate liberation, the perfect bliss of Nibbāna, but also the paths leading to the various types of wholesome mundane happiness to which human beings aspire. A Buddha proclaims both a path of mundane enhancement that enables sentient beings to plant wholesome roots productive of happiness, peace, and security in the worldly dimensions of their lives, and a path of world-transcendence to guide sentient beings to Nibbāna. His role is thus much wider than an exclusive focus on the transcendent aspects of his teaching might suggest. He is not merely a mentor of ascetics and contemplatives, not merely a teacher of meditation techniques and philosophical insights, but a guide to the Dhamma in its full range and depth: one who reveals, proclaims, and establishes all the principles integral to correct understanding and wholesome conduct, whether mundane or transcendental. Text II,1 highlights this wide-ranging altruistic dimension of a Buddha’s career when it praises the Buddha as the one person who arises in the world “for the welfare of the multitude, for the happiness of the multitude, out of compassion for the world, for the good, welfare, and happiness of devas and humans.”

The Nikāyas offer two perspectives on the Buddha as a person, and to do justice to the texts it is important to hold these two perspectives in balance, without letting one cancel out the other. A correct view of the Buddha can only arise from the merging of these two perspectives, just as the correct view of an object can arise only when the perspectives presented by our two eyes are merged in the brain into a single image. One perspective, the one highlighted most often in modernist presentations of Buddhism, shows the Buddha as a human being who, like other human beings, had to struggle with the common frailties of human nature to arrive at the state of an Enlightened One. After his enlightenment at the age of thirty-five, he walked among us for forty-five years as a wise and compassionate human teacher, sharing his realization with others and ensuring that his teachings would remain in the world long after his death. This is the side of the Buddha’s nature that figures most prominently in the Nikāyas. Since it corresponds closely with contemporary agnostic attitudes toward the ideals of religious faith, it has an immediate appeal to those nurtured by modern modes of thought.

The other aspect of the Buddha’s person is likely to seem strange to us, but it looms large in Buddhist tradition and serves as the bedrock for popular Buddhist devotion. Though secondary in the Nikāyas, it occasionally surfaces so conspicuously that it cannot be ignored, despite the efforts of Buddhist modernists to downplay its significance or rationalize its intrusions. From this perspective, the Buddha is seen as one who had already made preparations for his supreme attainment over countless past lives and was destined from birth to fulfill the mission of a world teacher. Text II,2 is an example of how the Buddha is viewed from this perspective. Here, it is said, the future Buddha descends fully conscious from the Tusita heaven into his mother’s womb; his conception and birth are accompanied by wonders; deities worship the newborn infant; and as soon as he is born he walks seven steps and announces his future destiny. Obviously, for the compilers of such a sutta as this, the Buddha was already destined to attain Buddhahood even prior to his conception and thus his struggle for enlightenment was a battle whose outcome was already predetermined. The final paragraph of the sutta, however, ironically hearkens back to the realistic picture of the Buddha. What the Buddha himself considers to be truly wondrous are not the miracles accompanying his conception and birth, but his mindfulness and clear comprehension in the midst of feelings, thoughts, and perceptions.

The three texts in section 3 are biographical accounts consistent with this naturalistic point of view. They offer us a portrait of the Buddha stark in