The Buddha's Awakening: What Happens After Death According to Buddhism | Buddha's Secret

The two crucial aspects of the Buddha's awakening are the what and the how, what he awakened to and how he did it. His awakening is special in that the two aspects come together. Chapter 1. The What and How of Buddha's Awakening He awakened to the realization that there is an undying happiness and that it can be attained through human effort. The human effort involved in this process ultimately focuses on understanding the nature of human effort itself, in terms of skillful kama and dependent co-arising, what its powers and limitations are, and what kind of right effort, the noble path, can take one beyond its limitations and bring one to the threshold of the deathless. As the Buddha described the awakening experience in one of his discourses, first there is the knowledge of the regularity of the Dhamma, which in this context means In other passages he describes the three stages that led to insight into dependent co-arising, knowledge of his own previous lifetimes, knowledge of the passing away and rebirth of all living beings, and finally insight into the four noble truths. The first two forms of knowledge were not new with the Buddha, they have been reported by other seers throughout history, although the Buddha's insight into the second knowledge had a special twist. He saw that beings are reborn according to the ethical quality of their thoughts, words and deeds, and that this quality is essentially a factor of the mind. The quality of one's views and intentions determines the experienced result of one's actions. This insight had a profound impact on his mind. On the one hand, it made him realize the futility of the round of rebirth, that even the best efforts aimed at winning pleasure and fulfillment within the round could have only temporary effects. On the other hand, his realization of the importance of the mind in determining the round is what led him to focus directly on his own mind in the present to see how the processes in the mind that kept the round going could be disbanded. This was how he gained insight into the four noble truths and dependent co-arising. Seeing how the aggregates that made up his person were also the impelling factors in the round of experience and the world at large, and how the whole show could be brought to cessation. With its cessation, there remained the experience of the unconditioned, which he also termed nibbana, unbinding, consciousness without surface or feature, the deathless. Without the first, which includes not only an understanding of kama, but also of how kama leads to the understanding itself, any realization, no matter how calm or boundless, that does not result from these sorts of understanding cannot count as an awakening in the Buddhist sense. True awakening necessarily involves both ethics and insight into causality. Chapter 2 The Meaning of the Buddha's Awakening As for what the Buddha's awakening means for us now, four points stand out. One, the role that It means that what each of us does, says, and thinks does matter. This in opposition to the sense of futility that can come from reading, say, world history, geology, or astronomy, and realizing the fleeting nature of the entire human enterprise. The awakening lets us see that the choices we make in each moment of our lives have consequences. We are not strangers in a strange land. We have formed and are continuing to form the world we experience. The fact that we are empowered also means that we are responsible for our experiences. This helps us to face the events we encounter in life with greater equanimity, for we know that we had a hand in creating them, and yet at the same time we can avoid any debilitating sense of guilt because with each new choice we can always make a fresh start. Two, the awakening also tells us that good and bad are not mere social conventions, but are built into the mechanics of how the world is constructed. We may be free to design our lives, but we are not free to change the underlying rules that determine what good and bad actions are and how the process of kama works itself out. Thus, cultural relativism, even though it may have paved the way for many of us to leave our earlier religious orientations and enter the Buddhist fold, has no place once we are within that fold. There are certain ways of acting that are inherently unskillful, and we are fools if we As the Buddha says at one point in describing his awakening, ignorance was destroyed, knowledge arose, darkness was destroyed, light arose, as happens in one who is heedful, ardent, and resolute. In other words, he gained liberating knowledge through qualities that we can all develop, heedfulness, ardency, resolution. If we are willing to face the implications of this fact, we realize that the Buddha's awakening is a challenge to our entire set of values. The fact that the unconditioned can be attained forces us to re-evaluate any other goals we may set for ourselves, whatever worlds we want to create in our lives. On an obvious level, it points out the spiritual poverty of a life devoted to wealth, status, or sensual pursuits, but it also forces us to take a hard look at other more worthwhile goals that our culture and its sub-cultures tend to exalt, such as social acceptance, meaningful relationships, stewardship of the planet, and so on. These, too, will inevitably lead to suffering. The interdependence of all things cannot be, for any truly sensitive mind, a source of security or comfort. If the unconditioned is available, and it is the only trustworthy happiness around, it only makes sense that we invest our efforts, and whatever mental and spiritual resources we have in its direction. Even for those who are not ready to make that kind of investment, the awakening assures us that happiness comes from developing qualities within ourselves that we can be proud of, such as kindness, sensitivity, equanimity, mindfulness, conviction, determination, and discernment. Again, this is a very different message from the one we pick up from the world telling us that in order to gain happiness we have to develop qualities we can't take any genuine pride in—aggressiveness, self-aggrandizement, dishonesty, and so forth. Just this much can give an entirely new orientation to our lives and our ideas of what is a worthwhile investment of our time and efforts. CULTURAL CHALLENGES AND THE DEATHLESS The news of the Buddha's awakening sets the standards for judging the culture we were brought up in, and not the other way around. The Buddha's awakening challenged many of the presuppositions of Indian culture in his day, and even in so-called Buddhist countries, the true practice of the Buddha's teachings is always countercultural. It's a question of evaluating our normal concerns, conditioned by time, space, and the limitations of aging, illness, and death, against the possibility of a timeless, spaceless, limitless happiness. All cultures are tied up in the limited, conditioned side of things, while the Buddha's awakening points beyond all cultures. It offers the challenge of the deathless that his contemporaries found liberating, and that we, if we are willing to accept the challenge, may find liberating ourselves. AFTERLIFE AND NO AFTERLIFE Many people studying Buddhism have a one-sided understanding, believing that the Buddha only taught about the existence of an afterlife and the cycle of birth and death. They think that anyone who doesn't believe in an afterlife holds wrong views, or mikadithi. Those with wrong views, not believing in an afterlife, would only care for the present life, seeking to satisfy their current desires, leading them to commit any evil deed. Conversely, those who believe in an afterlife fear the negative consequences in the next life, and thus strive to do good and avoid evil in this life to reap the benefits in the next. If the Buddha's teachings were merely about affirming the existence of an afterlife to encourage disciples to do good, avoid evil, and create merit for a better future life, then his teachings would be on par with all other religions, including folk beliefs. Religions and beliefs all affirm that beings have an afterlife because they possess an immortal soul. Therefore there cannot be an end to the existence of the soul or the cessation of an afterlife. The extraordinary aspect of the Buddha's teachings is his assertion that some beings have an afterlife, while others do not. Specifically, beings with ignorance or avijja, and craving for existence or bhavatana, continue into another life after this one. In contrast, beings without ignorance and craving for existence do not have an afterlife. Those without an afterlife are the arahants, who have eradicated ignorance and craving. When they pass away, it's like a deep dreamless sleep, permanently ending existence in any form or place, ending the afterlife. The Buddha did not advocate for a life with an afterlife or praise the path leading to another life. He knew it was a path of suffering, leading to birth, aging, illness, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair. He taught, elucidated, analyzed, and clearly directed the way to a life without an afterlife, praising the path that ends the afterlife because it is the path that ends suffering. The Four Noble Truths and the Afterlife The Four Noble Truths he realized and proclaimed can be expressed in other terms. These are four truths. 1. The truth about the afterlife which is the truth of suffering, eightfold wrong path. 2. The truth about the cause of the afterlife which is the cause of suffering, ignorance and craving for existence. 3. The truth about the end of the afterlife which is the cessation of suffering, nirvana without remainder. And 4. The truth about the path to end the afterlife which is the path to the cessation of suffering, the noble eightfold path. Realizing the Dhamma monks or lay people who consider themselves disciples of the Blessed One but still think they will have to continue the cycle of rebirth, aiming for a better rebirth in the next life, practicing to achieve a beautiful form, superior sensual pleasures of heavenly realms and so on, in the next life, are those who have not realized the Dhamma, have not seen the Dhamma. Those who have seen the Dhamma, realized the Dhamma, with their hair standing on end, knowing the truth of suffering and the cause of suffering in the cycle of birth and death, will affirm, this is the last life. After this life, there will be no more life. Those who have not seen the Dhamma, realized the Dhamma, but are wise, must seek and learn the way to end the cycle of birth and death in this very life, especially in the dying process. The Satipatthana Sutta. The Buddha affirmed this truth in the Satipatthana Sutta. Anyone who practices this Dhamma for a minimum of seven days up to a maximum of seven years, the expected result is right knowledge or arahantship in the present. If any residue remains the result is non-returner or anagami. This statement of his is still preserved in the Nikayas and cannot be false, not found in the commentaries, not in the sub-commentaries, not from later people, because those who have not realized cannot know such deep things to say so.