The Buddha

Ajanta cave 26, c. sixth century CE (The Art Archive)

The Sanskrit roots to the word “Buddha” means “someone who has woken up.”

www.budsas.org/ebud/ebsut059.htm

Erhard Bernstein has particularly liked this photo

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Dinesh ^club

Consciousness consists of selection: rejection. Discarding . James provides this remarkable conclusion to his chapter on the Stream of thought: macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstream/11375/10578/1/fulltext.pdf

The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block ofstone. In a sense the statue stood there from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest. Just so the world of each of us, howsoever different our several views ofit may be, all lay embedded in the primordial chaos of sensations, which gave the mere matter to the thought of all of us indifferently. We may, if we like, by our reasonings unwind things back to that black and jointless continuity of space and moving clouds of swarming atoms which science calls the only real world. But all the while the world we feel and live in will be that which our ancestors and we, by slowly cumulative strokes of choice, have extricated out ofthis, like sculptors, by simply rejecting certain portions of the given stuff. Other sculptors, other statues from the same stone! Other minds, other worlds from the same monotonous and inexpressive chaos ! My world is but one in a million alike embedded, alike real to those who may abstract them. How different must be the worlds in the consciousness of ant, cuttle-fish, or crab!

2 years ago. Edited 17 months ago.

Dinesh ^club

De Guignes funished much detail about the life of this founder from Arabic and especially chinese sources and thought that a birth of around 1027 BC.E appears more likely than an earlier date that might be due to a confusion of Buddha with Zoroaster. He also included a short version of Buddha’s deathbed confession story but added a particular twist:

“When dying he said to those of his disciples who wee most attached to him that until then he had only made use of parables and that he had hidden the truth under figurative and metaphorical expressions; his true opinion being that there is no other principle than emptiness and nothingness , and that everything came out of nothing and would return to it. So, according to all missionaries, atheism seems to be the favorite principle of this philosopher; but a more attentive examination of the conduct of those who follow his doctrine and of thebook which he has left to us does not allow our wholesale adoption of this opinion. ~ Page 218

17 months ago. Edited 17 months ago.

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