In this essay, I aim to outline my understanding of and appreciation for the historical Buddha Gotama in light of the paradigm of cosmotheandric Christ as articulated in the Order of Awarezen Mitras (OAM). I begin with a juicy and meaningful quotation from the Buddha as he explained to brahmin-turned-monk Vasettha the nature of the Enlightened One and how all who have entered the Buddha’s dispensation as monastics (by extension all committed practitioners) could justifiably see themselves:
Vasettha, all of you, though of different birth, name, clan and family, who have gone forth from the household life into homelessness, if you are asked who you are, should reply: "We are ascetics, followers of the Sakyan.'' He whose faith in the Tathagata is settled, rooted, established, solid, unshakeable by any ascetic or Brahmin, any deva or mare or Brahma or anyone in the world, can truly say: "I am a true son of Blessed Lord, born of his mouth, born of Dhamma, created by Dhamma, an heir of Dhamma." Why is that? Because, Vasettha, this designates the Tathagata: "The Body of Dhamma", that is, "The Body of Brahma", or "Become Dhamma", that is, "Become Brahma." — DN iii 84: Aggañña Sutta
Not a God
There are two common misconceptions about the nature of the Buddha as a person. The first common misconception is that the Buddha is a Deity or God or Messenger of God. This misconception usually comes from those who are conditioned by theistic religious beliefs, who by force of habit ascribe divine status to the Buddha based on the observation that Buddhists seem to “worship” or “venerate” the Buddha as the “highest entity” in the universe. This is wrong. Buddhists do not “worship” the Buddha in the same way that theists might worship their Deity conceived as a supreme Creator standing outside the created universe with all its living creatures. Buddhists do not seek favors from or make prayers to the Buddha as a theist might do to their God. Rather Buddhists honour and revere the Buddha for his excellent enlightened qualities and sterling example in ethics and spirituality. Buddhists may arouse great confidence and inspiration in the Buddha as their teacher par excellence, especially in the arenas of higher morality, meditation, and wisdom that can support them on their own journeys towards enlightenment itself. Hence, while the Buddha is seen as a superlative being, he is definitely not a creator God of any kind. As such, the Buddha is not omnipotent though he has great skill and power in guiding and enlightening sentient beings. He is nonetheless unconfined in his scope of knowing and loving, though omniscience of the divine sort — full knowledge of every single event of the past, present, and future pertaining to every single entity in all realms of existence simultaneously — is not what the Buddha evinces. Rather, the Buddha has the capacity to know anything he focuses his attention on. And he radiates his love and compassion equally, universally, and unconditionally to all beyond all social and existential divisions ever constructed by the deluded mind. In such ways are the Buddha pre-eminent yet not suitable to be labelled a creator God who controls the destinies of all living creatures. From a Buddhist perspective, an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving creator God is not justified by the many existential, moral, and logical problems of such an idea and thus cannot and does not exist.
Not a Man
The second common misconception about the Buddha is that he is a mere human being, perhaps more ethical and intelligent than most but nevertheless an ordinary human being like the rest of humanity. This is again wrong. For Buddhists, the Buddha is not a mere human being replete with all the same mental defilements and afflictive tendencies that plague an ordinary human mind. On the contrary, the Buddha’s mind is completely purified of mental defilements and their seeds, even their imprints, such that no trace of such defilements and afflictive tendencies can be found in him. These defilement and afflictive tendencies are attachment or greed, hostility of hatred, and delusion or self-grasping ignorance with all their variations of degree, intensity, permutations, and combinations. Jealousy, envy, ego-conceit, pride, aggression, skeptical doubt, restlessness and distractibility, sloth and torpor are other examples of defilements of the mind. The Buddha is someone whose mind has been fully cleansed of these defilements resulting in an inner state of perfect peace and wellbeing, bliss and freedom. On top of that, the Buddha has fully developed and perfected all wholesome qualities of the mind to their zenith. Hence, the Buddha possesses and experiences the fullness of universal loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. Specifically, the Buddha has fully accomplished to perfection the heart of enlightenment (Sanskrit: bodhicitta) both relative and ultimate. Relative bodhicitta is the altruistic aspiration and intention to be fully enlightened in order to liberate all sentient beings from their suffering and lead them to full enlightenment themselves. Ultimate bodhicitta is the consummate wisdom that realizes the final nature of reality, which is emptiness. Hence, a fully enlightened being such as the Buddha who is free of all defilements and perfected in all virtues is not a mere ordinary human being still trapped in their delusions and suffering. The Buddha is one who is truly and permanently free in every way. He has transcended the dimension and status of being a mere human.
The Buddha’s paradoxical humanness and pre-eminent trans-humanness make him a difficult person to grasp conceptually due to out limited binary categories conditioned by monotheistic religion. But a willingness to step out of our conditioned binaries can help us come closer towards seeing the Buddha as he really is. But what is most important is that these claims about the Buddha are not meant to be dogmas to be believed in without question. Rather, they express a certain understanding of the nature of a Buddha that can be personally and directly ascertained by means of our own training in and development of the Noble Eightfold Path taught by the Buddha for our enlightenment. These factors of the Path can be directly and immediately realized for oneself and are thus open to empirical scrutiny, unlike grandiose claims of God’s triple-omni characteristics (these being omnipotence, omniscience, and omni-benevolence) and his sovereign control over all things and persons.
Cosmotheandric Paradigm
As such, this picture of the Buddha dovetails well with an open, relational, amipotent, and cosmotheandric paradigm of Christ or God that is radically different from the concept of God in classical monotheism. In the cosmotheandric paradigm, Christ or God is not an external and separate entity standing ontologically apart from the cosmos and controlling it and all entities within it like a puppet-master. Rather, the ”body” of Christ or God is none other than the cosmos itself in all its dimensions and multiple parallel universes. At the same time, Christ or God transcends the cosmos in scope and magnitude in ways that cannot be measured or spoken. Thus, all living and non-living entities in the multidimensional and multiverse cosmos as well as the cosmos itself are but a fraction of the total reality of Christ. The same goes for all the laws of physics and all other sciences that govern the operation of this cosmos. The essential nature of Christ in this cosmotheandric paradigm is pure and primordial consciousness with infinite degrees of freedom, is atemporal and non-local, and pervades all dimensions and entities without impediment. This primordial consciousness that is Christ is indivisible from primordial creative energy and the two are nondually and spontaneously present as a singular reality. This is possible because both consciousness and energy do not inherently exist but share in the one taste of emptiness as nominally designations existing conventionally. Even so, because emptiness itself is empty of inherent existence, saying that consciousness and energy are nominal designations is already to say too much. Such nameless primordial consciousness is a mode of consciousness operating entirely outside the sixfold sensory consciousnesses of eye consciousness, ear consciousness, smell consciousness, taste, consciousness, tactile consciousness, and mind consciousness, and yet is the fundamental basis of the activity of these modes of consciousness. It is the pure witnessing and knowing nature of all modes of consciousness but not as an inherent separate entity, abiding naturally as itself without any sign and limit, without landing place or surface. Ajahn Thanissaro, a prominent Thai Forest meditation master, calls this “consciousness without a surface.” It is a nebulous concept pointing nevertheless to a direct immediate realization open to all who make the necessary effort towards it.
Continuing with this cosmotheandric discourse, one can say that the entire cosmos and all that is within it are but a fragmentary modulation of Christ as primordial consciousness, an effulgent display of blissful luminosity that is part of the creative activity of Christ. Everything and everyone that has emanated and manifested out of the ocean of consciousness does so as spontaneous modulation of consciousness itself. There is no willful design and construction with sovereign control exerted by a separate absolute Divinity over this creative process. Instead, the creative process occurs timelessly and spontaneously as the blissful dance of consciousness itself. It is simply the energy of consciousness playing with itself and transmuting, relatively speaking, into myriad forms, sounds, shapes, colours, smells, tastes, sensations, ideas, feelings, perceptions, and intentions of infinite beings. At some early point along the way of manifestation, confusion and obscuration arise and cause both unknowing (ignorance; Pali: avijja) and misknowing (delusion; Pali: moha) to occur. This in turn gives rise to reactivity and afflictive emotions leading to afflictive actions, dissatisfaction, and suffering. This is the universal condition of all sentient beings, beings who are entrapped within the twin fangs of ignorance and delusion and engaged in a plethora of unwholesome actions, unable to experience genuine happiness and freedom even for a second.
Cosmotheandric Emanation of Enlightenment
Into this gloomy scenario comes the enlightened being we call the Buddha, a spiritual pioneer who opens for the first time in a long time the doors to the Deathless. By his own self-evolved wisdom, he pierced the veils of delusion and ignorance to see and reveal the naked reality of the way things are, not how they appear to be. He realizes the everpresent buddha-nature, which is non-abiding nibbanic awareness within, thus actualizing the full freedom of primordial consciousness and the full capacity of primordial energy in compassionate responsiveness to sentient suffering. The Buddha became the first in a line of enlightened beings to teach and guide sentient beings out of their self-created suffering into the blissful freedom of nibbāna. He is thus known as the Original Teacher in the lineage and dispensation of the Buddha Dhamma. Now, a question might arise: how is it that Gotama got to become the Buddha and is this occurrence a purely random event or is there some kind of cosmic design behind it? This takes us back to the earlier quotation which I repeat here in part:
Why is that? Because, Vasettha, this designates the Tathagata: "The Body of Dhamma", that is, "The Body of Brahma", or "Become Dhamma", that is, "Become Brahma." — DN iii 84: Aggañña Sutta
This quotation can be read to suggest that the Buddha is the very embodiment of truth (Dhamma) and highest divinity (Brahma), and not just a human being who has merely attained by his own efforts the permanent state of enlightenment. It also suggests that the Buddha has become the totality of truth and the highest divinity in his very being. Furthermore, the epithet “Tathagata” which the Buddha gives himself suggests that he is One who has come from tatha (suchness or reality as it is) and has gone to tatha, as if signaling that the Buddha did not just appear out of nowhere. Rather, the Buddha is an extraordinary emergence that has come out of and goes back to the essential nature of reality, that is suchness.
From this, we can further surmise that the Buddha is none other than a special modulation of primordial consciousness which is ultimate reality — a unique emergence and emanation of consciousness designated to fulfil a specific and unique mission in historical time and space. We can call this the supreme emanation body (parama-nirmanakaya) of the total field of reality or truth that is Christ. On the one hand, Gotama is a historical and sociocultural figure who became disillusioned with the world of sensuality and power-mongering, renounced that world to become a wandering ascetic, became enlightened at the age of 35 after several experiments in meditative and ascetic practices, and walked the length and breadth of Middle India (majjhima-desa for the next 45 years teaching what he discovered with all who would listen, while establishing the world’s first missionary monastic institution, the Buddhist Sangha. On the other hand, we can see Gotama Buddha as a trans-historical, trans-temporal, trans-spatial, and transpersonal being who embodies the totality of truth and freedom that is the primordial consciousness-energy of Christ itself. The Buddha was not a random blip in the cosmos but a purposeful yet spontaneous manifestation of reality with a cosmic aim of revitalizing the Dhamma, opening up the Path to liberation, and teaching suffering beings to liberate themselves from cyclical suffering by walking that Path to its very end.
Grace: Knowing Buddha, Loving Christ
Seen in this light, the Buddha is thus a flesh-and-blood embodiment and a continuum of enlightened awareness that has his origin, ground, and destination in the ineffable and infinite expanse of primordial consciousness united with emptiness as its true nature, the final reality of the way things are. Put simply, the Buddha is a living expression of the cosmotheandric Christ. One who sees the Buddha sees Christ, and one who sees Christ sees the Buddha. Are they One? No. Are they two? No. The living Buddha and living Christ are not two, not one, and not capable of being confined to binaries and reified notions of the unenlightened mind. In seeing and knowing the Buddha, one can also see and know Christ and come to relish in the effulgent dance of Christ in creative spontaneity and expression.
The human embodiment and personification of Christ can be seen in the persons of Gotama Buddha, Adiyogi Shiva, and Yeshua of Nazareth. In so perceiving, one naturally arouses an inner devotion and intimacy of love with respect to these unexcelled human emanations. In the wisdom of nondual seeing and knowing, there is immaculate and fathomless peace. In the love of nondual devotion and intimacy, obtained not between two separate entities but as a fluid melody and dance flow without fixations, there is great bliss and ecstasy free from all reference points. Hence, we can encapsulate this process as this: knowing the Buddha and loving Christ. Alternatively, we can say it is knowing Christ and loving the Buddha. It works both ways. This is a process open to all who are receptive and sensitive, with clear intelligence and piercing insight. Receiving this process inwardly, one is indeed consecrated. One is irrevocably blessed. We can call this “grace.”
All sentient beings are invited into this oceanic flow of grace that surges from the deepest dimension of our being and percolates throughout every cell of this body and every moment of this mind. Both body and mind are limited modulations of what is essentially infinite and indescribable. Beyond that, this grace permeates the entire cosmos with all its multiverses, parallel timelines, and dimensions of existence. For this grace stems not from a standalone isolated entity outside the cosmos but is the very fabric of the cosmos itself while extending beyond it. This is cosmotheandric grace of the cosmotheandric Christ in whom and which all life and non-life have their being and becoming. It is the grace that makes every existent thing possible and the grace that attracts all entities towards their ultimate home — which is who they really are in their buddha-nature, as Christ.
