January 20, 2025
The Life of Sakyamuni Buddha (7)
By Rev. Shinkai Oikawa
9. Sakyamuni’s Manhood (3) Meditation under the Bodhi tree (3) —Thinking from the body
I think Sakyamuni had time to recover from exhaustion after bathing in the River Nairanjana. He went into the woods of a nearby town called Gaya, now Buddhagaya, and sat in meditation.
There stands a large tree called the “Bodhi tree,” under which He sat and meditated about two thousand and five hundred years ago. I have been translating books written in the Indian language about one thousand and five hundred years ago into Japanese and found the books had some significant features. The Indian people know surprisingly well about the human body.
They knew not only the eyes, nose and mouth but also all the internal organs: the liver, kidney, heart, stomach, bowels, which were all written in the ancient Pali language.
They knew precisely about many parts as if they had already dissected a body. They explained each part by drawing its picture and comparing it to the shape of something similar. They say for example a part is similar to a coconut or a papaya, or about half the size of a mango.
There are fairly difficult explanations about the bile, which are of two types: the one which does not move and the other which circulates in the body. The Indians have known well about a human body for a very long time. So Sakyamuni thought about His own body at first.
He understood in the long run that “our body never ceased to change.” No one can escape from such a process as birth, aging, illness and death. This is the strict reality that no one can deny and escape.
The next problem is feeling. This is not only a bodily faculty but the ability to catch what is spoken. In Buddhism this ability is called “to receive.” We all have the ability to receive.
You know the sixth sense or the fifth sense, don’t you? The six senses are the “eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind.” Human beings have very excellent abilities with which they can receive everything from the outside. We receive both things joyful, pleasant and delicious as well as things painful, bitter, uninteresting and unpleasant. We cannot avoid receiving both good things and bad things.
So Sakyamuni began to think that human beings are animals in their bodies, but at the same time they are affected by their feelings. He thought it very hard in order to have peace of mind.
Sakyamuni first had a bitter experience of having practiced asceticism in vain. What is the thing He could not make clear even after long meditation and asceticism?
He survived a long period of asceticism. Why did He survive? I suppose the Buddha then seriously wondered whether or not human beings might naturally have the desire to survive.
Generally speaking, healthy people do not think of their own bodies. However, once they get ill, they seriously think of them because they want to become healthy.
They go to the doctor. First the doctor has to make a correct diagnosis of the patient with just a cold, or a specific virus influenza, or possibly pneumonia. If he makes a wrong diagnosis, he cannot cure the illness and causes great trouble. Therefore, he must determine “the cause of the illness.”
Patients go to the doctor to have the illness cured. If the doctor only determined the cause of the illness and did nothing about it, the patients would not know what to do.
The doctor must give them appropriate treatment, remove the causes of the illness and cure them completely. But if he gives them excessive treatment, the illness might worsen. He always has to understand what the best normal physical condition of human beings is and how much medicine he should give to the patients.
(4) The Attainment of Buddhahood (3) —to get rid of mental illnesses
Sakyamuni deeply contemplated both bodily and mental illness at the same time. Actually, mental illness is quite the same as physical illness. Sakyamuni thought he had to understand exactly what was mental affliction and what caused it.
Through various endeavors He gradually came to find ways to get rid of mental affliction. Sakyamuni, I suppose, thought the place where we have completely gotten rid of the affliction was called the “Pure Land.”
Sakyamuni earnestly contemplated the structure in which human beings live, that is to say, “what human beings are,” “why we live,” “what for we live,” “how we should complete life and die.”
He thought why and how He lived and then must clearly have seen what He was. One of my professors, the late Dr. Hajime Nakamura, writes in one of his books that “Sakyamuni did not understand very well at the moment He became enlightened, though He must have grasped at least the fundamental problem.”
What is the fundamental problem? It is the structure of which human beings consist. We also call it “engi” (coming into existence by depending on other things).
Human beings exist physically and mentally in the structure that results from causation. If we understand this rule, we can see what we are at present and find it easy to make our future plans. All we have to do is to earnestly think what we should do to be happy on this foundation. Of course since every one is quite different and has his own way of thinking, each individual problem seems to be difficult to solve.
Dr. Nakamura thinks that maybe Sakyamuni did not understand the problem after all because there are no clearly definitive words of Sakyamuni in various sutras.
Certainly Sakyamuni said nothing to anyone after enlightenment, sitting silently and staying still gladly. He kept silent like this for seven weeks. He did not say, “I became spiritually awakened in this way.” or “I will teach on behalf of human beings.”
He seemed to think He was heartily satisfied with his enlightenment and wished no more. He seemed to only wish to die. However, a god did not leave Him alone.
(Trans. by Rev. Kanshu Naito)
(to be continued)