Buddhism and Forty Verses on Reality

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But while the Buddhist rejects the idea of a Creator-God, he believes in the

divine principle in man, the inborn spark of light (bodhi-citta) embodied in

his consciousness as a yearning towards perfection, towards completeness,

towards Enlightenment. To put it paradoxically: it is not God who creates

man, but man who creates God in his image, i.e. the idea of the divine aim

within himself, which he realizes in the fires of suffering, from which

compassion, understanding, love and wisdom are born.

 

The unfoldment of individual life in the universe has no other aim

apparently but becoming conscious of its own divine essence, and since this

process goes on continuously, it represents a perpetual birth of God or, to

put it into Buddhist terminology: the continuous arising of enlightened

beings, in each of whom the totality of the universe becomes conscious.

 

These Enlightened Ones are what the Mahayana calls "the infinite number of

Buddhas" or - insofar as they are experienced as actively influencing the

development of humanity - "the infinite number of Bodhisattvas". The latter

represent the active forces emanating from those who have attained the

highest state of consciousness, inspiring and furthering all those who are

striving for liberation. This is represented pictorially by the aura of the

meditating Buddha, which is filled with small replicas of the Buddha,

symbolising the infinite number of Bodhisattvas who in myriad forms appear

for the welfare of all living and suffering beings. Though they manifest

themselves in innumerable individual forms, they are one in spirit.

 

Lama Anagarika Govinda

Acharya, Arya Maitreya Mandala

 

 

Now we continue with Sri Ramana's Forty verses on Reality

 

 

21. What is the Truth of the scriptures which declare that if one sees the

Self one sees God? How can one see one's Self? If, since one is a single

being, one cannot see one's Self, how can one see God? Only by becoming a

prey to Him.

 

22. The Divine gives light to the mind and shines within it. Except by

turning the mind inward and fixing it in the Divine, there is no other way

to know Him through the mind.

 

23. The body does not say 'I'. No one will argue that even in deep sleep the

'I' ceases to exist. Once the 'I' emerges, all else emerges. With a keen

mind enquire whence this 'I' emerges.

 

24. This inert body does not say 'I'. Reality-Consciousness does not emerge.

Between the two, and limited to the measure of the body, something emerges

as 'I'. It is this that is known as Chit-jada-granthi (the knot between the

Conscious and the inert), and also as bondage, soul, subtle-body, ego,

samsara, mind, and so forth.

 

25. It. comes into being equipped with a form, and as long as it retains a

form it endures. Having a form, it feeds and grows big. But if you

investigate it this evil spirit, which has no form of its own, relinquishes

its grip on form and takes to flight.

 

26. If the ego is, everything else also is. If the ego is not, nothing else

is. Indeed, the ego is all. Therefore the enquiry as to what this ego is, is

the only way of giving up everything.