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Buddhist Teachings

Buddhist Teachings

"Come to me as Buddha ("Plot-Poem")"

Lord Buddha, like a vein of shining ore in rocks of a gloomy gorge, thy message of mercy illumines a cruel world. O Heart of Pity, one day, to save a lamb from sacrifice, thou didst offer thine own body. [1]
Loftiest Soarer in Renunciation's Skies! beneath thy God-lifted eyes the inner kingdom of ego faded away into invisibility. Thou didst forever forsake meadows of sense comforts, rivers of greed, prickly cacti of selfish worries, tall trees of temporal ambition, and gaunt deserts of desires.
Thine entire being was irrevocably set on attaining Transcendence-Nirvana. Under a banyan treet thou didst make an unbreakable tryst with Spirit:

Beneath the banyan [2] bough
On sacred seat I take this vow:
"Until life's mystery I solve Until I gain the Priceless Lore,
Though bones and fleeting flesh dissolve, I'll leave this posture nevermore." [3]

Thy solemn thoughts still roam in the ether, searching for ecstasy-tuned minds.
Thou Symbol of Sympathy, Incarnation of Compassion! give us thy determination, that with urgency we, too, pursue Truth. Teach us to seek the Sovereign Remedy, as Thou didst, for the ills of mankind.
May thy blessings, O Buddha, help all mortals to attain the Great Awakening! [4]

Paramahansa Yogananda, [Wf 176]

Comments and Notes

[1] You don't become a Lord here on earth by sacrificing your body. And insincere Yogananda praise, what about it? Yogananda's guru Yukteswar teaches that self-sacrifice is worse than foolish, as humans have greater value than sheep. Yogananda writes about that in his Autobiography.

""Guruji, should one offer himself a sacrifice rather than kill a wild beast?"
"No; man's body is precious. It has the highest evolutionary value because of unique brain and spinal centres . . . the Vedas teach that wanton loss of a human body is a serious transgression".
I sighed in relief." [LINK]

To praise what you go against, is that swell? Yogananda does. Compare also, "How much more valuable is a man than a sheep!" [Matthew 12:12]". So Yogananda should definitely have found other things to praise than rude self-sacrifice. Here are some basic ideas of Buddhism instead: [LINK]

[2] The pipal or bo tree, a variety of banyan, in Buddh Gaya, Bihar, India. Buddha attained the Great Illumination under it.

[3] Gautama Buddha established a Middle Path that talks against going to extremes. So we should not praise rash resolves of the kind above. After all, couldn't he have had some food and resumed his meditation and been balanced? Tibets great saint and patron Milarepa has the answer, after long years of severe, extreme ascetism: "That was not necessary, after all!" [Tm 204-09, paraphrase]
Good gurus praise what helps and helps the best. Good measure is the gate to better conditions.

[4] The whole idea of "come to me, O thou Great One" is to be abandoned for fit meditation. The "come-bellowing" is duality-soaked - fervent devotional You-directed meditation is of devotionalism, which breeds cults too. Hinduism shows it does. Hinduism is a composite of diverse doctrines, cults, and ways of life. The cult of bhakti (love, devotion) gave rise to Vishnuvism and other major sides to Hinduism. The cult of Shiva developed alongside the cult of Vishnu. The tendency for the laity to form themselves into religious societies, promoted the growth of devotional Vaishnavism and Shaivism. The large-scale development of devotion to the Mother Goddess, the favourite of Yogananda, did not take place until medieval times. Vast parts of present-day Hinduism are of cults, as Christianity started out as in Judaism too. [Ebu, sv. "Hinduism"]
Opposed to Yogananda's outpourings and supplications there is the final teachings of Buddha in the Mahanibbana Sutta. Just before his passing Buddha praised a monk who did not come to see him and pay his respect to him as others expected he would do. Buddha summoned him, and the monk said: "I thought the best way to honour you was by becoming an Arhant [in deep meditation] before you departed."
Buddha said, "Excellent! He honours me best who practises my teaching best." [Bht 287]

Genuine Buddhism

The Wheel of Dharma is to be set in motion.

Sensuous experience is had through some unconditioned Maya dream thought.

The Clear Light may be recognized, and vouchsafed by "gift-waves," that is, "transmitted influences. [Tibetan teaching]

The Sage should through the village go,
Unshook by praise and blame. [Tibetan]

Wise men become serene.

As in a boat, a wise man reaches the Other Shore (Nirvana-land). [Buddhism in essence]

Enlightenment glows in the heart. [Buddhist teaching]

Buddhism and Hinduism teach alike: Good ones should try to live out what is handy or neatly unnatural in certain basic, regulated ways without doing themselves harm, for some such measures may help inner development. In Buddhism it is likened to turning the wheel of dharma. The clue is: Even if it is not totally in accord with natural living in everything, it allows for sound pleasures, having houses and homes, utensils and other goods, and fine food too - Even cattle may be had.

Buddha teaches to go gently with yourself and give yourself love and affection, because you deserve it as much as anybody else in your universe. "You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person will not be found: You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection. [Buddha]" Do not let gurus tip your balance, then. He also teaches "Avoid killing". Absolutisic ideals of killing and not killing and medleys and confusion in such as Yogananda's teachings are avoided due to a noble, basic understanding.

Buddha lays out a careful, graded path, with some rules for lay followers and stricter rules for monks and nuns. Be as lax as you can; but you can draw benefit from rules for monks even as a layman. That is possible. What to do? Incorporate the suitable regulations in your life. Benefits stem from living in fit ways more than from ceremonial formalism with robes and decorum, Buddha and Tibet's patron saint Milarepa shows. Milarepa says,

Give not way to misleading teachings that tempt you.
May pleasures of the world illusory not tempt me . . . may the Blossom of Superconsciousness bloom forth in me [Tm 193].
Give not way to desires for distractions and vain frivolities — Talks of worldly things disturb my meditation [Tm 195, 224].
I have never valued word-knowledge set down in books in conventionalized form — They who, knowing not, pose as guides for others, do injury both to themselves and others. [Tm 245, 253].
True guidance and misleading temptations appear alike, but do not mistake the one for the other [Pray to know the difference] [cf Tm 299, 300].
Carry the teachings into practice in your everyday life — Weed out all hypocrisies. [cf TM 270, 189]
What gain is it to celebrate religious rites without attuning body, speech, and mind to the Doctrine? [cf 263]

From that you see that if you think you should live more like a monk, you do not have to don any robes and get overly concerned with ceremonial rigmarole. You can just try to live up to Milarepa's "The worthiest one is engaged in turning a blessed human life to the best account [cf Tm 225]."

Recognize who are your friends in time. Buddha offers helping guidance here. [LINK]

Remove that arrow

First get out of trouble, if you have identified it, and then seek to remedy it, perhaps by taking expert councel. An allegory by Buddha.
A man approached Buddha and wanted to have all his philosophical questions answered before he would practice. In response, Buddha said, "It is as if a man had been wounded by a poisoned arrow and when attended to by a physician were to say, 'I will not allow you to remove this arrow until I have learned the caste, the age, the occupation, the birthplace, and the motivation of the person who wounded me.' That man would die before having learned all this.'" (Abbreviated)
It is fine to profit from trouble too, but not everybody can tackle that. Such an idea is related to "some problems are challenges", and "some challenges may be solved, even with some profit". Sound stress management gives a much similar scope too.
Some find that troubles at times help moral growth - but I would not count on it.

Take heed of your company. Buddha warns against being with fools, not unlike the proverb "Stay away from fools that you may not be among their number". Refrain from using the criteria to harm people.
Are cult people well? If you take to the holistic health concept and its parameters, it is fair to doubt that. Holistic medicine looks at the whole person - his body, mind, emotions, and environment. It stresses traditional commonsense essentials of exercise, adequate sleep, good air, moderation in personal habits, and so forth. A cult and sectarians have certain hallmarks, and great freedom of spirit and mind is hardly one of them. There may be a play on emotions too, and the environment may get limited, even cramped in the sad cases. In the case of Yogananda's "groupies", he probably impressed them by great-looking words like Infinity, Supreme, and so on - and did much of devotion. He let monks and nuns run his society, allegedy to keep the teachings pure - which teachings? It shows up that the devoted forgers have no particular clean fare in such matters. [LINK]
Now, the idea is that emotionalism and devotionalism may limit one's fare, and a limited fare may give cramped living, even nervousness, and less liberal outlooks, and subservience to top-dogs. Such a drift down into silliness may come soon, or in time.
You may also have noticed that unlike the big boss Yogananda I do not try to convince you of things to fit you into allegedly Great God-schemes. I try to present the case, furnish some evidence, and let that suffice for most part. Compare Buddha's Kalama Sutta: [LINK] This said, there are many people who have benefitted from SRF too: It matters how base you are when you enter - but the main trends of sectarian devotionalism may be spoken of anyhow.

Buddha teaches you not to give to undeserving ones. Who are they? Hearts know, or should know. However, for the sake of the few he also says that healing matters may be dispensed to all. That is why I teach core kriya freely, at least for the time being. [LINK]

"Alive!" is a terse and good biography for someone who makes efforts to enter the Way or walk It. Much in this life too depends on how well he lives.
Then what about Yogananda who "with one hand" affirmed in 1945, "I was never born, I never died" and "with the other hand" finished the first edition of his Autobiography of a Yogi in 1946 and died in 1952? Has Great Inconsistency got into it somehow?
It is also easy to get confused by a guru who first taught ahimsa, non-violence, and later sent disciples to fight in World War II. The do's and don'ts of the guru are not always fit, and not always bad either. See that you don't make the worst of it.

Literature
Bht: Narada. The Buddha and His Teachings. 4th ed. Kuala Lumpur: Buddhist Missionary Society, 1988.
Ebu: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2008 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2008.
Tm: Evans-Wentz, Walter Yeeling, ed. Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa. 2nd ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Wf : Yogananda, Paramahansa. Whispers from Eternity. 8th ed. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1959.
Wfe: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Whispers from Eternity. Ed. Kriyananda. 1st ed. Paperback. Nevada City: Crystal Clarity, 2008. Online. www.ananda.org/inspiration/books/whispers/

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