UnbornMind Zen

Archive for December, 2016

All born things are subject to entropy. Nothing created can ever escape the critical point of its own decay and final dissolution.  This axiom is not only valid for all things around you and within your body,but also your ideas, your memories, your pain and your joys, and all your desires. All this, you perceive through your filtered present consciousness,  are but positions of the Mind, your true Mind. This verse, within and outside what you presently deem as self,  is possible at any given Read more [...]

As described at Shambhala Press: Take a trip through the realms of hell with a man whose temporary visitor’s pass gave him a horrifying—and enlightening—preview of its torments. This true account of Sam Bercholz’s near-death experience has more in common with Dante’s Inferno than it does with any of the popular feel-good stories of what happens when we die. In the aftermath of heart surgery, Sam, a longtime Buddhist practitioner and teacher, is surprised to find himself in the lowest Read more [...]

It is said that Buddhas never actually enter into parinirvāṇa, because they are completely identical to and interfused with the dharmadhātu (of all dharmas; 如來皆入一切法界)(Radich, Immortal Buddha’s and their indestruction). Once interfused with the Dharmadhātu—the Realm of Suchness Itself, what need to enter into something further after death? “Even the apparent parinirvāṇa of Buddhas like Dīpaṃkara was merely a docetistic show, an expedient means manifested by Śākyamuni Read more [...]

These next two blogs will focus on the realization that the Buddha’s true embodiment is the Dharmakaya; and this Dharmakaya is an “adamant body” (vajrakaya) and absolutely incorruptible. The Buddha is completely immortal, and that his immortality is reflected in his embodiment in an utterly indestructible substance (Skt. vajra, Ch. jin’gang 金剛, “adamant”). (Radich, Immortal Buddhas and their indestructible embodiments) When the original disciples of Gautama Buddha were languishing Read more [...]

Radich writes that there is a problem of maternity concerning the Buddha’s apparent corporeal birth. The MPNMS (Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra) says: At times, I show myself entering into my mother’s womb in Jambudvīpa, and let my father and mother think of me as their child; and yet, ultimately, this body of mine is not engendered by lascivious copulation. For countless kalpas, I have already long been far removed from all lascivious desire…I [only] show myself entering into the womb, Read more [...]

Within Michael Radich’s, The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra and the Emergence of Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine, he makes the case that the Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine can be considered under the lens of a Docetic Buddhology in that the apparent physical appearances of a Tathāgata are inherently deceptive. A Buddha has no ordinary human embodiment, but rather a most salient transcendent-emBODHIment, or the awakening of an Enlightened-Spirit within the Tathātic-Womb: Buddhas are not conceived Read more [...]

Firstly, it needs to be stated that what we have is a true scholarly mansion in the contemporary efforts of the Hamburg Buddhist Studies in once again bringing to the fore the vast significance of the tathāgatagarbha doctrine. Our last series highlighted one such scholar, Jonathan A. Silk, and his analysis of the Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśaparivarta. In this series we will be engaged with Michael Radich and his examination of the docetic factor in light of the Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra. Read more [...]