Originally posted by DarfiusThat is the story of the Buddha's physical body. But according to Mahayana Buddhist doctrine, he had three bodies.
Dunno, but according to:
http://www.sivanandadlshq.org/saints/buddha.htm#end
Buddha surely died. And I see no mention of his resurrection. SO luckily, he was just like every other man in the history of the world, in regards to being mortal.
1. The Appearance Body ( Nirmanakaya ). This was his physical body as it manifested in northern India from roughly 560 to 480 BC.
2. The Enjoyment Body ( Samboghakaya ). This is his "light body", the one he uses to travel between all dimensions in the phenomenological universe. It can be understood as the same kind of body that Jesus manifested in after the Resurrection (if one accepts Christian doctrine in that regard).
3. The Dharma Body ( Dharmakaya ). The Dharma Body ("body of ultimate truth"😉 is actually formless, and manifest as the essence of all sentient consciousness everywhere. In Zen this is known as the "Buddha-mind", and is the "reborn nature" of any who correctly tames their ego and awakens beyond the delusions of projected thought and false identification.
So the answer to "where is Buddha's body" is three-fold -- one, it is dissolved back into the universe (Nirmanakaya); two, it is available anywhere in the manifest universe, on whatever dimension, in its light-body form (Sambhogakaya); and three, it is the very essence of all beings everywhere (Dharmakaya).
Originally posted by DarfiusI'm not a Buddhist myself, but as far as I can tell, the original Buddha is supposed to have been a man like any other, until he achieved Enlightenment, which all Buddhists hope to attain eventually (even if it takes many lifetimes). So you don't need to classify him as being fundamentally separate from humanity, because he's not - he's a role model, an example of how to live. In Christian terms, he is seen as a saint rather than a deity in his own right.
Dunno, but according to:
http://www.sivanandadlshq.org/saints/buddha.htm#end
Buddha surely died. And I see no mention of his resurrection. SO luckily, he was just like every other man in the history of the world, in regards to being mortal.
Buddhists don't believe in resurrection and eternal existence as some special power reserved for deities - they believe in reincarnation (same soul but a different body and mind) as a fact of life, which can only be escaped by enlightenment, which comes with the realisation that body and mind are chimeras. However, some Enlightened ones stay on Earth or return to it to help others, and the Buddha was/is one example of this. IIRC the Dalai Lama is also such a figure from his followers' point-of-view.
Very good!
Except for one tweaking here...where you wrote...(same soul but a different body and mind)
Buddhists do not believe in a soul or self. (That would be Hinduism, actually, which calls the soul "Atman" and regards the enlightenment processs of one where Atman=Brahman, where "Brahman" is the Absolute, or God, and the awakening entails the realization that one's soul is one with God). But Buddhism regards the self or soul as non-existent, and sees the essence of consciousness as "shunyata" ("emptiness"😉.
What this means is that all that is really "reincarnating" is the illusory projected world of the ego-self (or false self). So in the ultimate sense, Buddhism both accepts and rejects reincarnation. It accepts it because it acknowledges that in the dream-world of "maya" the separate self does in fact appear to exist, but with the awakening of the mind one sees that the entire process of reincarnation never actually happened, much like dreams at night never truly occurred from the standpoint of the one who just woke up to the sound of the birds and the sunshine. This is because both time and space are purely conceptual constructions, having no existence in ultimate reality, which is always based in the timeless Present Moment.
Originally posted by Metamorphosissort of like a Blaxxun Contact VRML chat world?
Very good!
Except for one tweaking here...where you wrote...[b](same soul but a different body and mind)
Buddhists do not believe in a soul or self. (That would be Hinduism, actually, which calls the soul "Atman" and regards the enlightenment processs of one where Atman=Brahman, where "Brahman" is the Absolute, or God, and the awakening e ...[text shortened]... having no existence in ultimate reality, which is always based in the timeless Present Moment. [/b]
Originally posted by invigorateLOL.
I've got the body of a God
Bhudda!
Well, actually the Buddha, the historical founder of Buddhism, was a slim-jim. That "fat guy" image is deriving from the Chinese Buddhist saint named "Hotei", or the "Laughing Buddha". He came many centuries after the historical founder of Buddhism, Siddartha Gautuam, who was not Chinese but Indian-Nepali.
Buddhist monks in India during the Buddha's time (and still today in the Theravadin tradition) are rarely overweight because most of them only eat one meal a day, at lunch time. Buddha himself, prior to his enlightenment, used to go on long fasts, and once ate only one blade of grass per day.
The might be the origin of the "Jade Buddha" image... 😉