Bodhisattva Ideal

I had reason recently to check on the history of Atisha who was one of the teachers responsible for the introduction of the bodhisattva ideal into Tibetan Buddhism. This idea is not pushed in other sectors of Buddhism, and certainly not in what became known as Theravada.

I checked on this history because of speaking recently to a person who is a member of the Kadamba sect of Tibetan Buddhists. To assist someone, I usually need to have some idea of the person’s cultural and religious background and orientation. This makes it necessary for me to study up in some cases. The current situation of a person is skin deep for the most part but since most people anchor themselves only in the present life and consider everything within that analysis, one has to know their current conditioning if one is to assist them. At least in the calculation of if one can assist them at all, one has to take into account their current cultural mock-up.

As I studied the details of the bodhisattva ideal, I saw that it was flawed. There was something missing which is the description of the spiritual families. Of course Buddhism at large has no admittance of spiritual families and it suggests here and there that there is no person to consider anyway (anatta). One cannot assist a person from another spiritual family unless one is commissioned to do so by the spiritual source-person of the subject. It is not haphazard.

We find that many groups both from the Eastern and Western systems of religion, send out members to proselyte others to increase the following. This is doing haphazardly. Most of the religious teacher have no idea about spiritual families. They feel it is a free for all, like for instance if we hear about gold ore being abundant in some part of the world, and each of us set out to make a claim on a part of the land where we can prospect for the mineral.

A person may be born in a Christian family and not be aligned spiritually to Jesus Christ. Or a person might be born in a Hindu family and be aligned spiritually to Jesus Christ. If I run out on the street and convert someone at random to my sect how do I know that this person belongs to the religious head of my sect?

Each entity is connected to a specific source-person and no matter what, that cannot happen whereby by converting the person one can change that person’s spiritual source. It cannot happen. There is no harm in helping someone from another family line but that assistance cannot remove that person from the person’s source.

Here source means another person from whom that subject emerged in the beginning of time.

The bodhisattva ideal of saving every unliberated person before one becomes liberated himself, is totally nonsensical. First of all one cannot save every person unless one is the Supreme Person himself or herself. One would have to be the fountain head source of all persons to save all such persons. A limited being just cannot do that. But even so if we agree to the proposal because it appears to be a harmless and magnanimous ideal, then still because there are spiritual families, it is not possible for one person to randomly save other persons without the permission and approval of those persons’ sources.

However as I read of the ideal and as I saw the flaw in it, suddenly I became aware of Gautam Buddha. He inspired this information into my head:

As the rays emanate from me, they pass through various persons one by one. In that order those persons can be rescued by the specific person through whom the ray passed before it reached the subject person. Without me as the fountainhead, it cannot happen. The problem with this vow is that people are trying to use it without considering my inclusion as the source of it. A limited person cannot independently rescue another person. An infant cannot lift a donkey.

Just after that information was inspired, I began to feel rays of light emanating from him in a higher dimension. I perceived many persons through whom those rays penetrated and then reached other subjects.

From that it appears that the bodhisattva vow is only valid if Buddha is the fountain head person in an orderly distribution of persons who have direct relationship with him and whose energies pass through others directly in succession.