Was Gautama Buddha Enlightened?

Basically, he proclaimed four truths: life is suffering (symptoms), there is a cause of the suffering (metaphysical truth about causality), there is a way to stop suffering (cure), and there is a path that ends all suffering (treatment plan). The path is known as “the Noble Eightfold Path”, and most of Buddhism is an explanation of the path.

The 8-fold path is a recipe. All the ingredients are interconnected. They fall into three main groupings: wisdom, ethics, and concentration. For instance, wisdom teaches us how to have the right view and right intention, but without the necessary concentration to back it up, learning wisdom is useless. The Buddha spent 35 years teaching this path.

Is it necessary that he followed this path to the end? Certainly, a Bodhisattva understands and can teach this plan of salvation without being a Buddha. This is because it is very logical. It’s a straightforward map that could have been drawn by someone with insight. You don’t have to be a abacus to solve problems using an abacus, however. It just takes more time.

Buddhists think suffering is bad.
As far as i know.
That is what the whole thing hinges on.

Does it work? Can a person meditate (or whatever) and remove suffering? Or was Gautama a poser?

This is exactly what I am saying. The people at Genius Forums are wise enough to want to make a movie called the “Wisest Movie Ever”, but until they actually make in theatres it they are still women, cheerleaders on the sideline not getting things done, no different than me and my DNA machine I have no idea to build.

OP is dealing with different issues than the title of the thread. Let me answer only the title.

As i see it, we, as common persons, cannot know whether Buddha was enlightened or not. And, the very simple reason is that only any other enlightened person can check the credentials of Buddha. An examiner/checker has to be more learned and knowledgeable than the examinee. It cannot be other way around, though we intellectuals have the tendency to that quite often.

Yes, that question would have been asked to Jesus or Moses, Guru Nanaka or Saint Kabir. Perhaps, they may have better idea of that.

We can only know for sure that he was more knowledgeable than us. That is all. Nothing more than that.

with love,
sanjay

The West is so steeped in systemic, neurological medical issues that meditation is largely ineffective. The rationale in Buddhism is sound enough toward producing not only peace of mind but also higher awareness and intelligence (thus adversary to Middle Eastern and Western authorities).

As to whether he was “enlightened”, it all depends on what you are calling enlightened.

I’ve thought about what this means, Buddha means “awakened one”.

Now take my perspective…

I was shocked, absolutely floored, that nobody mentioned sexual stratification as an issue, the primary issue of conflict here in any religious or philosophical text, even though everyone knows it’s there!

You also have issues of approach escalation as well.

What was such a shock to the system is that I realized nobody before me actually deserved sex or resources without saying this outright, and that once you actually deserve it as a male, it’s impossible to get.

This shocked me beyond belief.

There have been maybe trillions of human sexual encounters that all have zero deserve factor, which means none of us have actually earned the right to be here!

Make homicidal tension very high (more difficult to commit homicide) and suicidal tension very low and you have a world where you can justify bringing people here even as parents.

I’ve said before that the entire world is run by the female blackmail system, it’s so shocking when you discover it, that it makes one wonder what the point is of heightened states of being are without even acknowledging this basic fact.

There are no kings or queens to speak of however, no lords or lady’s ; just good practitioners of moral laws that don’t contradict themselves.

The illuminati is bullshit. The religions are bullshit.

The suicide distribution proves it.

The question in such a world for the individual who understands all of this comes down to “to be or not to be.”.

To say some stupid zen thing like “being, no being” is just to get sex, or fit in socially with the female blackmail system, without being it ego, you can’t even know you’re being addressed or spoken to.

I could go on, but this is a decent point to stop.

1. we just have traces of the guy, through other traces left by other people. Even if we are englightened (more on that) we are sifting through trampled on footprints in mud under the snow after a snowstorm.
2. enlightened, the term, is used to imply a final state of perfection. What is considered perfect depends on the values of those using the term. IOW perhaps he achieved some final state, which he could maintain, which fit the values of some people, including himself. But this may not be a state that fits the values of other people. Of course a Buddhist might say that those other people do not simply have other values but rather are attached or deluded. Thus objectivifying and also universalizing their values. For me the issue is moot since a) the guy is long dead and b) his goals are not mine, not in total.

I thought dudes were the ones who blackmail. Females are just overly judgmental and cliquey. So it’s say it is the “easily triggered random landmine labyrinth” system rather than the “blackmail” system they use.

I’m aware of this. Partly, my post is written with this in mind. I’m essentially asking if anyone is able and willing to claim their own Enlightenment. No unenlightened person can measure Buddhahood.

However, Enlightenment may be a fictitious state. I don’t know how someone could prove that, but it is the more important part of my post.

I suppose if Enlightenment is a fictitious state … the path(s) to Enlightenment is fictitious as well?

Are all humans on a path(s) to Enlightenment? From spirit to matter … back to spirit?

How can we know? … If we assume we are … what metrics can effectively measure progress?

Someone posted on another OP … something to the effect … a million people following a million different paths … each individual discovering something new along each step of the way. For me, the scenario the ILP member described feels like paths to Enlightenment … rather than following someone’s arbitrary road map … Gautama Buddha … Christianity … Hinduism and so on. Although these various road maps could act as “cheerleaders” along the barren and difficult journey.

Is Josh Groban on a path to Enlightenment?

metrolyrics.com/you-raise-me … roban.html

More emerging thoughts …

Here’s an anecdote from the life of St Augustine … from his book “Confessions”.

At the time of his experience was he on a path to Enlightenment?

“How unhappy I was and how conscious you made me of my misery, on that day when I was preparing to deliver a panegyric on the emperor. In the course of it I would tell numerous lies and for my mendacity would win the good opinion of people who knew it to be untrue.
The anxiety of the occasion was making my heart palpitate and perspire with the destructive fever of the worry, when I passed through a Milan street and noticed a destitute beggar.
Already drunk, I think, he was joking and laughing. I groaned and spoke with the friends accompanying me about the many sufferings that result from our follies.
In all our strivings such as those efforts that were than worrying me, the goads of ambition impelled me to drag the burden of my unhappiness with me, and in dragging it to make it even worse; yet we had no goal other than to reach a carefree cheerfulness.
That beggar was already there before us, and perhaps we would never achieve it. For what he had gained with a few coins, obtained by begging, that is the cheerfulness of temporal felicity, I was going about to reach by painfully twisted and roundabout ways.
True joy he had not. But my quest to fulfill my ambitions was much falser. There was no question that he was happy and I racked with anxiety. He had no worries; I was frenetic, and if anyone had asked me if I would prefer to be merry or to be racked with fear, I would have answered ‘to be merry’.
Yet if he asked whether I would prefer to be a beggar like that man or the kind of person I then was, I would have chosen to be myself, a bundle of anxieties and fears.
What an absurd choice! Surely it could not be the right one. For I ought not to have put myself above him on the ground of being better educated, a matter from which I was deriving no pleasure. My education enabled me to seek to please men, not to impart to them any instructions, but merely to purvey pleasure. For that reason you ‘broke my bones’ (Ps. 41: 11;50: 10) with the rod of your discipline(Ps. 22: 4).”

Right.

Notice that the discussion is going on without a clear definition of ‘enlightened’ - as thought everyone knows and agrees on what it is.

Both of them were morons. The beggar was a stupid hedonist with no goals, and the scribe worked for a corrupt and dishonest government and promoted their evil propoganda.

I dont think its so much as removing suffering as it is either “This too shall pass” or being so schizophrenic that you distance the conscious nueral pathways from the pain pathways.

as for him being a poser, he claimed that he could end his consciousness rebirthing into earth. Whether or not he did your guess is as good as mine.

You don’t need a clear definition of cat (“small four legged mammal”) to debate the existence of cats.

Is that literal, or is there an esoteric meaning to rebirth?

You see how eastern monks in movies are casted by characters capable of being silly and humorous. This is not for nothing. It represents the frivolous and playful side of eastern wisdom. The Buddha’s attitude is a mix of cynicism and fortitude toward the same world the existentialists call absurd. The difference in ethos is apparent. The easterns were stronger internally than the western, atheist equivalents of the nihilist. Buddhism as clean nihilism. The easterns have a joviality and cheerfulness before what the west recognizes as tragic.

Actually, you kind of do.

I am meaning quite litterally, i don’t mean rebirth as in a metaphor for abandoning old personalities, i mean literally rebirthing into earth when you body dies (which is presumably, what noone wants, not in this state of affairs.) But how did Buddha know he didn’t rebirth into Earth, after all his piousness?

Let me try to answer that.

Rebirth is code for the extra-terrestrials harvesting your DNA so that they can clone you and use your clones for their hunger games. Ultimate goal is nirvana, whereby the ETs reject your DNA, and your clones do not spend eternity providing amusement for sadistic aliens.

So yeah, Buddha was enlightened, either from his own insight, or possibly good aliens -if they exist.