Shakyamuni As A Seeker – Summary of Topic #1 in the Treasured Teachings monthly series

Here are some of the main points of the presentation. Please note my presentation is based on the lineage of Higashi Honganji teachers (Japan and U.S.) and that other Buddhist groups will have different presentations because of their particular viewpoints.

1. The historical Buddha Shakyamuni was a human being

He was no different from any of us and his path of seeking is the same one we are on.

2. The importance of the teacher

The “four gates” story is just a legend – any 29 year old would already know about old age, sickness and death. Shakyamuni could no longer be happy with his pampered life knowing that it would inevitably end in death from old age, sickness and possibly the violence of war. But in the four gates legend, he encounters the man in rags begging for food and sees the man’s face is shining with joy and serenity, what the Buddha would describe in the Larger Sutra as ko-gen-gi-gi “light face majestic.” That man is the teacher for Shakyamuni – the evidence that there was something worth seeking for to transcend his concerns about the sufferings of life.

3. The provisional stages

The time (age 29 to age 35) that Shakyamuni spent studying under various spiritual teachers and doing harsh ascetic practice represented the provisional stages of self-centered ethical and religious practices. Coming from a privileged background, he probably needed the discipline of being denied instant gratification, and later he recommended the ascetic lifestyle to the monks and nuns who followed him because most of them came from well-off families.

4. The awakening of true liberation means breaking out of the ego-shell and identifying with all beings.

When Shakyamuni tumbled down the mountain of elitism and landed in the valley of ordinary life, he experienced the true awakening of breaking out of his self-concerns and finding interconnection with all beings - humans, animals, plants, minerals. In the Lotus Sutra he tells the monks and nuns that all they were doing was preparation for the real enlightenment that is available to all beings, not just to those who did special practices. The Buddha found that laypeople – those who worked and cared for family members – didn’t need the monastic life because the harshness of their own life struggles brought them to hear the teachings of freedom and equality. Western Buddhists for too long heard the narrative that the monastic life was the superior path and the traditions like Pure Land were for those who were too stupid and morally lax to do the hard practice required for attaining enlightenment. But teachers from Nagarjuna through to Shinran realized the Buddha taught that the real experience of awakening is evidenced by identifying with all beings and losing all justification to look down on any of them. [See reading material “The Third Birthday” by Rev. Gyoko Saito]