Queequeg wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 1:50 pm
clyde wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 5:32 am
The Zen task is to open the gates of the world beyond our prejudices. Like the Buddha, we can step away from everything we are certain about. I think that this possibility is the best contribution we can make to healing the flaws in consciousness and helping the world. Unkindness comes out of certainty; when we throw out certainty, we have the bare reality of consciousness, and another name for that is love.
Sudden Awakening by John Tarrant in Lion’s Roar
https://www.lionsroar.com/sudden-awakening/
Certainly written for the supermarket checkout line.
Not amenable to his approach that defines Buddhadharma as love. Too much baggage in that word, too much leeway to get lost in all the baggage that comes with that word, even its highest meanings like agape (which, notwithstanding, falls far short of bodhi, imho), which he squarely related to.
Too much emphasis on peak experiences and whimsy for my taste. Maybe that works for some people.
Meanwhile, limits the Buddha to the five foot tall man born at Lumbini
I have read that Buddha was longer than that. There is a sutta/sutra in which a tall bhikshu is approaching in the distance, and the bhikkhus get up out of reverence, thinking that it must be Tathagata himself. Then it turns out that he is (only) Mahakasyapa and they sit down again. Mahakashyapa was "great" (maha) in the meaning that he was tall, as tall as Buddha himself.
In another sutta/sutra Yasodhara says to Rahula that he can know his father among the bhikshus from the fact that he is the tall one.
"Buddha is perhaps one of the few sages for whom we have mention of his rather impressive physical characteristics. He was at least six feet tall and had a strong enough body to be noticed by one of the kings and was asked to join his army as a general."
https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispe ... Buddha.htm
"On one occasion, a certain brahmin citizen of Rājagaha heard that it was impossible to measure the height of Buddha Gotama. So when the Buddha went into Rājagaha City and made His rounds for alms, he took a sixty-cubit long bamboo pole and stood outside the city-gate. When the Buddha drew near the city-gate, he went up to Him with the pole. The pole reached just the Buddha’s knee.
"The next day, the brahmin joined two sixty-cubit long poles and came again near the Buddha. The joined poles did not stand higher than the waist of the Buddha who asked him what he was doing. The brahmin replied that he was measuring His height.
"Then the Buddha said:
“Brahmin, even though you may join all the bamboos in the universe, you will not be able to measure My height. Certainly, I have not developed the perfections for four asaṅkhyeyyas and a hundred thousand aeons to enable somebody to measure My height. (I have developed them to the extent that nobody can measure My height.) Brahmin, the Buddha is a personage who is peerless and immeasurable.”
from
Great Chronicle of Buddhas (maha-buddha-vamsa) Part 1 - Introduction (the Buddha’s height Measured by a Brahmin)