"The Buddha: An Alternative Narrative of His Life and Teaching" | MAKING OF A SAINT
In a world marked by violence, terror, war, angst, jealousy, and every other sense of aggressive attachment, the teachings of Buddha become ever more relevant as every individual journey seems to move towards doom. What has essentially been seen as cognitive, emerging from machinations of the mind is looked at in a broader perspective by Mukunda Rao in his writing, The Buddha: An Alternative Narrative of His Life and Teaching. Rao engages in a discourse concerning how the body of a monk evolves to accommodate enlightenment as a pantheon of living- even beyond dying.
It comes across as an evident paradox- how can the body possibly accept a state that is beyond its periphery, beyond its domain of life. Yet, through his narratives of tracing the Buddha’s journey, Rao positively asserts that it is the body, above the mind that experiences enlightenment, which is essentially nestled in a state of non-experience. Paradoxical again, yet this complexity is what makes the pursuit of pure consciousness an uphill task, which is arduous in execution, yet it is still deemed precious.
The Buddha’s journey, unlike other major religions had not been rooted in a search of divinity, which probably would be conceivable only by the mind. The Buddha begins his sacrosanct journey from a disillusionment that he senses towards the cycle of life- old age, disease, and death- all causes of immediate suffering compelled a young prince Siddhartha to sacrifice his royalty and head out in search for a path that would divorce him from these necessary conditions of existence. With practice, failure, further practice, and even more failure, Buddha was ultimately able to find peace within him- peace that is essentially ruptured from any idea of the self.
The notion of oneness has been the central point of spirituality- where nature (prakriti) and person (purusha) are intrinsically understood as emanating from a unified body of consciousness. It is the mind which conjures ideas of ‘I’ that takes away from the individual what it would experience in its primordial senses. Buddha with his philosophies seeks to assert a new path- not one that takes from history- as knowledge is again rooted in a deep sense of the Self which it creates through reflections from the past. He rejects any idea that embellishes the Self- whether knowledge or experience. The only truthfulness essentially lies at a point of non-cognisance where the individual’s role is restricted only to ‘seeing’ not to assign meaning to what it sees. The seer has been a consistent aspect of Upanishadic traditions where the ideal purusha is one who sees- the senses are extended but cognisance is restricted.
Mukunda Rao in his text deliberates over the role of the body, and the evolution of the body as the Buddha or any venerated monk walks down his path of enlightenment. Religions across the world have overlooked the role of the body as agentive in facilitating change- even modern day Buddhism. Yet tracking the trajectory of the Buddha it is evident that the body harnesses change which is experienced more actively than that of the mind. The mind is essentially flawed simple because it has rooted itself in perpetuating its own existence. We live in a constant fear that ‘I’ will cease to be. This ‘I’ is the mind, or the perception of the mind about itself. The body harnesses the primordial sense of oneness that is the reality of nature. The moment you identify yourself as ‘I’, is the moment where you separate yourself from everything else. The role of religion is essentially to take us back to our original state of undivided unitary consciousness, where all lives as one.
The physical imagination of the Buddha with elongated ears, protracted hands, and head full of lumps- are biological changes that Siddhartha underwent when he reached his state of enlightenment. These biological markers were the first amendments made to the body as the sense of individual self was gradually dissolved. It is not just the Buddha but as Rao outlines, using the living examples of famous sages- Pandit Gopi Krishna, The Mother, UG Krishnamurti, and Ramana Mahrshi, biological experiences of enlightenment arise first as the role of the mind is essentially diminished. Therefore, as the text constantly emphasizes- the understanding of enlightenment which has so forth been seeped in the discourse of the mind has to shift gears, to realize that is essentially the body that is agentive in the process- the mind is really diminished to nothing as only in shunyata-a concept elaborately discussed- can the body experience unadulterated enlightenment- which is pure consciousness.
The goal is ultimately to experience pure consciousness where one is governed by compassion and vision- qualities that are divorced from judgment. The impetus is to realize that the mind takes us away from blissfulness by rooting our belief system in a necessary composition of ‘I’ the self that deceives the pure individual to experience the oneness that it shares with the natural and human world alike. Despite this robust philosophy the path of Nirvana is never described- as each individual must discover this for herself. “Ultimately, nirvana is not something that can be known but something to be lived through. It is not an experience that can be transmitted or shared either. One has to discover it for oneself. So we have to stop here.”
By bringing in perspective from the Western philosophy of Nietzsche, and engaging intensively with the experiences of 19th century sages, Mukunda Rao has produced a text that re-establishes the significance of detachment- an aspect which is of crucial importance in today’s world that is marked by a selfish strife for self glorification.
As we delve into a bottomless pit of greed this old Pali aphorism gains rapid precedence- “Form is not yours, give it up. Sensation, perception, the formation and consciousness are not yours. Give them up…..”
