Sublime

While others might proclaim the wonders of such a world-shaking experience, the Buddha denies that he obtained or found anything at all.

For Gautama the “Awakened One” or Buddha (died c. 545 B.C.) lived at a time when the major Upanishads were already in existence, and their philosophy must be seen as the point of departure for his own teaching. It would be a serious mistake, however, to look upon the Buddha as the “founder” or “reformer” of a religion which came into being as some

are. In fact, the word “Buddha” simply means one who has awakened to his or her own true nature.

REALIZING YOU ARE BUDDHA is a very sobering experience. This wasn’t exactly the Buddha you had in mind when you came to practice.

Most people look for enlightenment in the future. Buddhas find it in the past. In this sutra, the Buddha says, “No beginning, this is the highest truth.” To believe such truth, you must be fearless.

the Buddha was not a Buddhist. On the contrary, according to the Pali Canon, he requested that his image not be depicted, he worried that he might be worshiped as a god, he allowed people to continue to practice their existing religious rites, and he remained agnostic on such fundamental questions about the creation of the world and what happens af

Yet how many people continue to practice with the implicit goal of someday meeting Buddha? We may imagine we will meet him in the guise of an enlightened master—a qualitatively different order of being than ourselves—or that we will one day, after years and years of hard practice, finally become whatever it is we imagine we want to turn into.

Buddha means “the awakened one.”