"Do Buddhas and Bodhisattvas have eternal life?" This is a headline Q&A that I saw today. I roughly glanced through the answer area and wasn't too happy with their answers. Because they did not answer it from the perspective of science and actual history, but answered it with a whimsical mindset. In fact, to answer this question, not only scientific knowledge is needed, but also humanistic knowledge such as history, religion, and philosophy. However, in fact, it is not too difficult, only a very general humanistic common sense is needed, but unfortunately the vast majority of people do not have it. Below, I'll give you a few answers.
The real-life Buddha shaved his hair, not this style
First of all, some people mythologize Buddhas and bodhisattvas, believing that they have supernatural supernatural powers and can have unlimited lifespans like gods, which is actually a misunderstanding of the original meaning of Buddhism. Remember, the reason why people think of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas this way is that they don't understand Buddhism and see them as gods and immortals in Taoism. Only Taoism says that there will be immortal gods and immortals, and in Buddhism this thing is not mentioned. Not only does the Buddhist teachings not speak of immortality, but it also does not acknowledge the existence of such a being.
In fact, during the Eastern Han Dynasty, Chinese people misunderstood Buddhism from the beginning. According to Tang Yongtong's "History of Buddhism in the Southern and Northern Dynasties of the Han and Wei Dynasties", Buddhism in India was introduced to China in the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty. From the very beginning, our people misunderstood Buddhism and saw it only as something similar to the Huang-Lao doctrine. Xiang Kai, a chancellor during the Reign of emperor Huan of Han, believed that Futu (Buddhism) was actually the same "way of clearing nothingness" as Huang Lao. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, MuZi wrote the "Theory of Reason and Confusion", imagining Shakyamuni as a "god-man" who "flew into the void and had daylight". This is actually a category of Buddha and Taoist gods and immortals. The Huainan Zi also says that the Buddha can achieve the ascension of the flesh through the refining of the gods, which is actually based on the theory of the Han Dynasty's Immortal Fangshi Daoshu, while Buddhism actually does not have such a statement.
Still
How do the true Buddhist teachings view issues such as divine power and eternal life? The Buddha is the Buddhist honorific Shakyamuni, and if we take Shakyamuni's words as the truth of Buddhism, we should listen to what he really said. Shakyamuni was actually given the honorific title given to him by his later disciples, which he did not say when he himself was alive. Originally a Nepalese, he came from a small kingdom and was one of the heirs of the family. If measured by the standards of our present people, it is a village of several thousand people. His real name was Siddhartha and his family name was Gautama. Siddhartha left his village as a young man and wandered around the Ganges Valley in northern India and central India, gradually establishing an intellectual and scholarly community. He is a leader in this academic community. This academic community was a sect of ancient Indian Shamen. According to the clear records of the Buddhist scriptures, Siddhartha died around the age of 70 and nearly 80. Buddhism has a famous precept called the "Zenmi Bipharsha", Siddhartha died on July 15, and The Buddhists in India took out this "Zenmi Bibha Salad" on July 15 every year, prayed a good prayer, and then drew a dot on the back of the book. By the 7th year of Qi Yongming, 975 dots had been drawn on this book. That is to say, Siddhartha by this time had died 975 years ago. Thus, if we extrapolate 975 years before, we can conclude that he died in 485 BC.
There is evidence that Siddhartha experienced many kinds of illness before his death. It can be seen that he does not have any "magical powers", but is just a mortal. Ashoka of India was a figure of great significance to the history of Buddhism, and it was he who used the administrative power of the state to promote the spread of Buddhist ideas throughout Asia. In 393 AD, the Roman Emperor Theodosius I proclaimed Christianity the state religion. Ashoka's status was comparable to that of Theodosius I. Ashoka once asked Buddhist monks about the Buddha's life, and he was told that the Buddha suffered from a variety of diseases during his lifetime, including arthritis, abdominal colic, and so on.
Since we believe that Siddhartha's own statement represents the supreme authority of Buddhism, we should listen to Siddhartha's view of the nature of the world. During his lifetime, Siddhartha was a leader in the academic community and often gave lectures to his disciples in the place of Luyeyuan. In his first formal lecture, Siddhartha spoke of the impermanence of the nature of the world, arguing that both the material and spiritual worlds were illusory and unreal. This is because the nature of the world is fluid. There is nothing that exists forever. At that time, Siddhartha proposed that "divine consciousness" did not exist. This "divine consciousness" refers to the "soul" mentioned in other religions. In other words, Siddhartha believed that the soul did not exist. In this lecture, Siddhartha put forward the doctrine of the Four Noble Truths and the Twelve Dependent Beings, and exhorted his disciples not to cling to desires, because there is no constant thing in the world, and everything is impermanent and fluid. The Buddha's disciple Upas, asked the Master, "Will you still exist in the future?" Siddhartha said, "Go in and die." The purpose of what he calls to enter and die is to get rid of the entanglement of karma, and to never enter into the suffering of samsara. So, what is the state of extinction? It is through practice that the spirit reaches the highest level of extinction, that is, a person who dies so much that he can no longer die, which is one level higher than the death that we understand through the sense. Death at this level is a state of absolute nothingness. In the Forty-two Chapters Sutra, there are such records and descriptions. Therefore, the Buddha himself did not admit at all that there is any "immortality", what eternal life? Since even Buddhas are mortal, there is no eternal life, and of course there can be no bodhisattvas with lower fruit than Buddhas. In the minds of some people, the existence of boundless mana and vast divine powers is nothing more than the transformation and borrowing of Taoist immortals. Later generations mythologized him for the needs of faith.
The Buddha in Journey to the West
By the way, there is no "blessing" in the Buddha's mind. What burns incense and prays to get the blessing belongs to Chinese his own thoughts. Ancient Chinese superstitious thought believes that people should sacrifice all kinds of ghosts and gods (in the traditional belief of Chinese, ancestors are also a kind of gods, that is, ancestral gods), sacrifice must have the protection of gods and ghosts, and if they do not sacrifice, there will be disasters, which is a distortion of the Buddhist idea of "karma". Chinese of the Han Dynasty thought that Buddhism was also such a theory, but in fact Buddhism was against ghosts and gods. The Buddhist doctrine of cause and effect holds that karma can only cause results, and karma is human behavior. What kind of behavior causes what kind of fruit, this is not at all the ghost god can dominate. Moreover, according to the Buddha's theory of impermanence, the existence of ghosts and gods is not recognized.
Author: Skeptical Explorer