“Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

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Zhen Li
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by Zhen Li »

As much as it would be nice if Jahova were Indra, unfortunately, he's terribly jealous and wrathful, even hundreds of years after the Buddha. It's doubtful the two guys ever met. If anything, he's a jealous asura.

But I'm all for converting these heathen gods. If TNH is taking the first steps in winning over Gaia to the Buddha Dharma, good for him.

Maybe Gaia, Pṛthivī, Dṛdhā, Vasudhārā, and Cool and Pure Land Bodhisattva should have an earth goddess conference together with a powerful bodhisattva. Maybe they'll develop a solution for climate change while they're at it. :popcorn:
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by Malcolm »

Heimdall wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 3:09 pm
they'll kill you to prove their point about their loving god
I'm glad there's no Buddhists in history who did the same thing.
Well, they didn’t kill heathens for not believing in their god, in the case of Shri Lanka for example, they just killed them for lebensraum——millions, according to the Dipavamsa.
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by Heimdall »

Zhen Li wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 3:16 pm As much as it would be nice if Jahova were Indra, unfortunately, he's terribly jealous and wrathful, even hundreds of years after the Buddha. It's doubtful the two guys ever met. If anything, he's a jealous asura.
I can understand that perspective. If it's worth anything, I think the traditional Gnostics (who identify the Old Testament God as a Mara like figure; the ruler of the world who wants to keep souls trapped here [some interpreted as reincarnation], with the only way to escape achieving a spiritual experience of "Gnosis" ["Knowledge" or "Enlightenment"]) were much closer to Buddhism than Nicene Christianity (not including the Gnostic larp organizations like Crowleyism or Hermeticism).

With that being said, the Old Testament Yahweh [especially divorced from Christ] is a flawed figure who commanded a great amount of war and death, even with his sacrifice of animals. But it's not like there's nothing positive about Yahweh's Levitical teachings. There are many great things. He detested human sacrifice and promiscuity [compared to the Ishtarites and the Moloch worshippers, for example]. He encouraged people to be merciful, and for people to help the poor. He encouraged people to not be superficial and judge a book by its cover by always using weak and minor figures to accomplish great things. He encouraged fasting and asceticism [e.g., the Nazarites and the Prophets].

And lastly, despite how allegedly sexually puritanical he was (The "Song of Solomon" and crass sexual imagery in the Old Testament I think nullifies that argument) and how he didn't offer a good place for the feminine, I find a good portion of his morality to be correct (but still incorrect totally).

Remember as well that Indra is in incessant warfare against the Asuras and is a warrior god, and the Brahmins offered tons of animal sacrifice to him. Kings invoked him for warfare just like the Israelites did with Yahweh.

While Indra is a noble, respectable figure worthy of honor and praise, he isn't free from flaws and we should look to the Buddha who is above him.


Last comment than I'll stop responding because it's going off topic from OP - as Queequeg hinted at, I tend to view the 33 devas as more directly connected to the natural world (for example, Sakhra being a lightning god). The natural world has great things, but it's flawed, and we should be looking to higher things than the natural world, even if it's within us.
Last edited by Heimdall on Tue Oct 19, 2021 4:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by Malcolm »

Heimdall wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 4:12 pm
Remember as well that Indra is in incessant warfare against the Asuras...
It is worth noting that Buddhists are Team Indra with respect to the destruction of Tripura, the Three Cities of the Asuras.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripura_(mythology).

We just substituted Mahākāla and Śrīdevī, Shiva and Parvati's children, for Shiva.
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by Queequeg »

Heimdall wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 3:09 pm
they'll kill you to prove their point about their loving god
I'm glad there's no Buddhists in history who did the same thing.
Who made that claim that Buddhists haven't killed people over dogma? Shameful history. You've been around here a few months, and its becoming clear that you like to slip these strawmen into your rants. As a favor, can you please stop that? Its annoying.
but god is pretty much dead
In the contemporary West, yes.
replaced by the Scientific method
Hah, I wish.
In popular secular discourse? Sure they have. They understand it about as well as many of our ancestors understood the divine judging by their stories. Of course most people are not actual practicing scientists, but they're as fanatic about the idea of science as any other religionist.

One thing you have to understand is that people today don't value knowledge and wisdom. They only value the social appearance of knowledge and wisdom.
Is that so? Do you include yourself in that "people today"?
Thing is, if I share these ideas to others even in academia, nobody cares.
Are you actually a member of the academy? Are you a practicing scholar? In a graduate program or teaching? I can tell you, with personal knowledge, that if you can document connections along the lines you propose, using the analytical tools of one or another specialized social science field, beyond pointing out rhymes in mythology, and actually drawing these things out of artifacts or texts... people are interested. Its true, textual analysis is not particularly interesting, but that's because its kind of prone to wandering off into someone's idiosyncratic obsessions... nobody wants to hear about someone's dreams.
It's much easier to just write an article in 10 minutes saying "The Old Testament is a patriarchal invention meant to oppress women" and give off the impression you are a sophisticated Liberal elite drinking champagne in New York.
Yes. That's exactly what scholars actually do. Conservative pundits have totally nailed it.
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by Ayu »

How about going :focus: ? Just my humble idea.
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by bodhiye »

Malcolm wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 1:06 pm Vasudhara is Laxmi, not Mother Earth.
Could you tell about the exact connection between Vasudhara and Laxmi? I assumed Vasudhara might be the counterpart of Laxmi but is Vasudhara Laxmi herself or is Laxmi a manifestation of Vasudhara?(asking about this because Laxmi's consort is Vishnu but Vasudhara's consort is different)
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by tingdzin »

bodhiye wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 11:42 am Could you tell about the exact connection between Vasudhara and Laxmi? I assumed Vasudhara might be the counterpart of Laxmi but is Vasudhara Laxmi herself or is Laxmi a manifestation of Vasudhara?(asking about this because Laxmi's consort is Vishnu but Vasudhara's consort is different)
Such correspondences and equivalents between deities are not set in stone, although various orthodoxies like to try to do so. Buddhists need not concern ourselves too much with them.

P.S.

Indra was only a "good guy" from the standpoint of Indic mythology. To the Iranians, he was the arch cattle-thieving bloodthirsty warrior deva that Zarathustra condemned. It all depends on whose ox is being gored, I guess.
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by Malcolm »

tingdzin wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 6:29 am
Indra was only a "good guy" from the standpoint of Indic mythology. To the Iranians, he was the arch cattle-thieving bloodthirsty warrior deva that Zarathustra condemned. It all depends on whose ox is being gored, I guess.
As I said elsewhere, Buddhists are Team Indra.

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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by tingdzin »

Favoring Indian (Hindu) mythology over Iranian is not particularly Buddhist, strictly speaking.
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by Zhen Li »

bodhiye wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 11:42 am
Malcolm wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 1:06 pm Vasudhara is Laxmi, not Mother Earth.
Could you tell about the exact connection between Vasudhara and Laxmi? I assumed Vasudhara might be the counterpart of Laxmi but is Vasudhara Laxmi herself or is Laxmi a manifestation of Vasudhara?(asking about this because Laxmi's consort is Vishnu but Vasudhara's consort is different)
The connection is largely iconographic. It is helpful to keep in mind that while the deities exist across religious traditions, they are not consistent. There is not a grand unified Buddhist-Hindu concordance.

For instance, the "Record of Buddhist Teachings Compiled During the Kaiyuan Era 開元釋教錄" explains that Lakṣmī is identical with Mahāśrī, and is the wife of Vaiśravaṇa; elsewhere she has the consort Mahākāla. Mahāśrī is found in the Golden Light Sūtra.

But if you ask Buddhists in Nepal today, I think you shouldn't be surprised if people say Vasudhārā is the same as Lakṣmī, or that Lakṣmī is an emanation of her, but you may also get pushback from people who don't like Hinduism encroaching. Also, there's the constant conflation of Vasundhārā and Vasudhārā—not everything needs textual support to be considered traditionally correct. It all depends on who you ask.

As for Viṣṇu, some identify him with Nārāyaṇa, the personification of those with a solid body, but in either case he usually appears just as an emanation of Avalokiteśvara. His consort is given as Lakṣmī in the Śūraṅgama dhāraṇī. Identification and dealing with Viṣṇu in some way is always a matter of politics, since he usually tends to be the legitimating force behind Hindu monarchs.

As a general rule, I've found it to be the case that Buddhists texts do not rule out trans-religion concordance between deities. This is consistent with Mahāyāna doctrine about the manifestation of buddhas and bodhisattvas in accord with the needs of beings—they can appear as anything that suits beings needs, thus Lakṣmī can be an emanation of Vasudhārā, but also Avalokiteśvara is perfectly capable of such emanations. In Hinduism it is a bit more direct, at least in the purāṇas. In tantric literature, you get Buddhist deities both being equivalent to Hindu deities, and also trampling on them, and vice versa. It all depends on the circumstances and what purposes need to be fulfilled.
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by bodhiye »

Zhen Li wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 7:34 am The connection is largely iconographic. It is helpful to keep in mind that while the deities exist across religious traditions, they are not consistent. There is not a grand unified Buddhist-Hindu concordance.

For instance, the "Record of Buddhist Teachings Compiled During the Kaiyuan Era 開元釋教錄" explains that Lakṣmī is identical with Mahāśrī, and is the wife of Vaiśravaṇa; elsewhere she has the consort Mahākāla. Mahāśrī is found in the Golden Light Sūtra.

But if you ask Buddhists in Nepal today, I think you shouldn't be surprised if people say Vasudhārā is the same as Lakṣmī, or that Lakṣmī is an emanation of her, but you may also get pushback from people who don't like Hinduism encroaching. Also, there's the constant conflation of Vasundhārā and Vasudhārā—not everything needs textual support to be considered traditionally correct. It all depends on who you ask.

As for Viṣṇu, some identify him with Nārāyaṇa, the personification of those with a solid body, but in either case he usually appears just as an emanation of Avalokiteśvara. His consort is given as Lakṣmī in the Śūraṅgama dhāraṇī. Identification and dealing with Viṣṇu in some way is always a matter of politics, since he usually tends to be the legitimating force behind Hindu monarchs.

As a general rule, I've found it to be the case that Buddhists texts do not rule out trans-religion concordance between deities. This is consistent with Mahāyāna doctrine about the manifestation of buddhas and bodhisattvas in accord with the needs of beings—they can appear as anything that suits beings needs, thus Lakṣmī can be an emanation of Vasudhārā, but also Avalokiteśvara is perfectly capable of such emanations. In Hinduism it is a bit more direct, at least in the purāṇas. In tantric literature, you get Buddhist deities both being equivalent to Hindu deities, and also trampling on them, and vice versa. It all depends on the circumstances and what purposes need to be fulfilled.
Thank you for the informative reply.
:anjali:
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by Varis »

tingdzin wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 6:25 am Favoring Indian (Hindu) mythology over Iranian is not particularly Buddhist, strictly speaking.
This is only true if you reject all of the developments within Buddhism that happened after the parinirvana of the Buddha.
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by Malcolm »

tingdzin wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 6:25 am Favoring Indian (Hindu) mythology over Iranian is not particularly Buddhist, strictly speaking.
Isn’t amazing though that it is totally the case that Buddhist overwhelmingly derive their mythopeia from common Indian sourrces?
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by tingdzin »

Malcolm wrote: Sun Oct 24, 2021 11:58 pm Isn’t amazing though that it is totally the case that Buddhist overwhelmingly derive their mythopeia from common Indian sourrces?
Read Zhen Li's reply.
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by Malcolm »

tingdzin wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 6:54 am
Malcolm wrote: Sun Oct 24, 2021 11:58 pm Isn’t amazing though that it is totally the case that Buddhist overwhelmingly derive their mythopeia from common Indian sourrces?
Read Zhen Li's reply.
I was kidding, however, when we look at the tropes in Buddhist literature, we frequently see myths that employ the destruction of Tripura, the churning of the milky ocean, the abduction of Sita, and so on. Asuras are always the bad guys, devas always the good guys, etc. Thus, Team Indra.
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by Malcolm »

tingdzin wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 6:54 am
Malcolm wrote: Sun Oct 24, 2021 11:58 pm Isn’t amazing though that it is totally the case that Buddhist overwhelmingly derive their mythopeia from common Indian sourrces?
Read Zhen Li's reply.
Also, Zhen Li's reply does not count for one to one correspondences with Shiva, Umadevi, Sarasvati, Tāra, and so on.
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by Zhen Li »

Malcolm wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 2:48 pm Also, Zhen Li's reply does not count for one to one correspondences with Shiva, Umadevi, Sarasvati, Tāra, and so on.
My reply is just accounting for the messiness that these correspondences are while admitting that that is okay. It's consistent with Buddhist textual explanations of emanation: A buddha or bodhisattva mahāsattva manifests in whatever form suits beings' needs.

The purāṇic forms of Hindu deities tend to take a more prescribed (or we might say "canonical") set of avatāras, though those sets differ from text to text. Viṣṇu for instance has anywhere from ten to forty forms.

The point of manifestation in Buddhism, however, is different than an avatāra in purāṇic texts. A manifestation leads beings to awakening in whatever form suits their inclinations, regardless of whether they realise it or not. Avatāras are more about restoring cosmic order or punishing evil. So, it makes no sense for an avatāra to manifest in infinite forms to suit beings' needs in the way a buddha or bodhisattva does. As for simple claims to correspondence, this is almost always a matter of claims to superiority or subordination.
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by Malcolm »

Zhen Li wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 3:21 pm The point of manifestation in Buddhism, however, is different than an avatāra in purāṇic texts. A manifestation leads beings to awakening in whatever form suits their inclinations, regardless of whether they realise it or not. Avatāras are more about restoring cosmic order or punishing evil. So, it makes no sense for an avatāra to manifest in infinite forms to suit beings' needs in the way a buddha or bodhisattva does.
I wasn't referring to the distinction between an avatāra and a nirmāṇa. Both are docetic in nature. I was referring the obvious adherence by Buddhists to standard forms of Indian mythopeia, the use of common tropes, which indeed can include avatāric themes, such as Rudra Cakravartin's aka Kalki, defeat of the mlecchas in the final battle to restore world peace from mleccha domination, after the latter attack Shambhala; or the taming of Mahādeva by Śrī Heruka in the Cakrasaṃvara literature or the taming of Rudra found in the lower tantras, etc., in which these beings initiated an age of chaos and inequity, requiring Vajradhara to step in and intervene, etc.

So, still Team Indra.

Its true that the Bonpos work in some Iranian themes into their quasi-Buddhist mythopeia, and that the Chinese and Japanese work in native cultural themes into their mythopeia, and there is indeed some reason to think that the Iranian "paradise", that is the walled garden, may have some influence on the conception and depiction of Sukhavati. Nevertheless, Indian mythopeia is so strong a current wherever Buddhism spread from India that it completely dominates the local myths, which only survive through being appropriated, like domestic animals.
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Re: “Bodhisattva Gaia” and “Vairocana Sun”

Post by Soma999 »

There are the world of forms, names... and the world of principles.

Name are different in each culture for a lot of reasons. For exemple also geography change the perception of deities. In a desert, the sun could be very wrathful. In a cold country, sun is life giving. The sun does not care. Names are for us, not for him.

Hinduism and buddhism use sometime names but they are not the same « beings » or principle at all.

If someone want to stick to words, it is impossible to really understand other traditions. There will always be conflict.

If instead of focusing on names you look what is behind the names, then many bridges could be built between tradition, to better understand, appreciate and enrich each others’s with onés perspective.

Some lineage of sadhus translate the name so as to understand what is really behind.

Lakshmi comes from Lakh, the goal. It is the principle that defines our goal, what we gives value to. When you know what you value and focus fully, you attract what you treasure.

Vasudhara means flow of gems or prosperity. It is the principle of fluidity, nourishment... which turn the mind into a wish fulfilling jewel.

Two different names, two different perspective on a principle that connects us to the deep quality of consciousness, an expression of light.

In the end it is not so important what words we use, what matter is that the water of the divinity allow the garden of our boddicitta to grow and bring good fruits. So, whatever the name you use, know what it means and allow it to bring you to what it really points. It is your heart that empower the names to work miracles.
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