What is the Relationship Between Heaven and Gods or Buddhas?

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Without straining oneself to believe in gods or Buddhas, it is the natural state of a person raised with love to spontaneously do good and avoid bad.

That is a heavenly way of living, but as one ages and encounters unreasonable or unfair treatment, one repeatedly comes across hellish things, evil.

Even so, there is a fundamental conviction somewhere that human nature is good, and people are inherently made to seek heavenly, blissful things such as pleasantness, comfort, enjoyment, and deep emotion.

Here, I will point out that such a heaven-oriented aspiration does not directly lead to gods or Buddhas.

Right now, you may be struggling with a difficult life, troubled by problems with your lover or spouse, feeling that life is hard, or overwhelmed by various emotions, but the very resolution of such suffering is heaven.

However, I would like to mention a few points to show that not all problems are resolved simply by being in heaven.

In the first place, what is the relationship between heaven and gods or Buddhas?

Looking at Shakyamuni's path to Nirvana, joy and pleasure are in the lower levels of the nine stages – the first, second, and third dhyanas – and while one might call that heavenly, it is still a lower stage.

Shakyamuni - 6 - An Experience That Cannot Be Called an Experience

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◎The One Who Possesses the Last Body

The Dhammapada contains an experience of Shakyamuni that cannot be called an experience.

Dhammapada 351

"The one who has reached the ultimate, is fearless, freed from craving, stainless,

he has cut off the arrow of existence; this is the last body."

(The Dhammapada / Translated by Ichiro Katayama / Daizo Shuppan pp. 424-425)

Dhammapada 352

"The one who is freed from craving, without attachment, skilled in words and expressions, and who knows well the collection of letters and what comes before and after,

he is the one who possesses the last body, the great wise one, called a great person."

(The Dhammapada / Translated by Ichiro Katayama / Daizo Shuppan pp. 424-425)

First, he declares that he has reached the ultimate. Fearless and freed from craving, with diminishing human traits, he realized that after several reincarnations, this is his last one. However, the expression referring to himself as "he" suggests a narrative style that has undergone a reversal of God and man.

Then, there is a mention of the power of words (Kotodama). One who is well aware of the wondrous function of words precisely understands their action and reaction. Therefore, they naturally grasp the past from which words arise and the future to which they lead, as if seeing them in the palm of their hand. It is because they have come to know the secrets of the world. Thus, Shakyamuni is called the one who possesses the last body, the great wise one, a great person.

Shakyamuni attained an "experience that cannot be called an experience."

Furthermore,

On his way to Varanasi, Shakyamuni was asked by Upaka, a Jain ascetic, "Under whom have you gone forth, friend? Who is your teacher, or whose doctrine do you profess?"

Shakyamuni replied:

"I am the all-conqueror, the all-knower, undefiled by any dhamma, all-renouncing, liberated from craving; having realized by myself, whom should I call my teacher?"

(The Dhammapada / Translated by Ichiro Katayama / Daizo Shuppan p. 426)

The all-conqueror, the all-knower is the one who has reached the ultimate, knows all the secrets of the world, has conquered everything, has achieved oneness with God, and has become the final form of a human being.

Having experienced all the realities arising from craving, he is the one who is liberated from them and has completely abandoned them.

Therefore, without having any teacher, Shakyamuni is a hero living in the ultimate.

This is a declaration of "I am God." It is only after undergoing an "experience that cannot be called an experience," which is a great reversal of God and man, that such an expression arises.

Shakyamuni - 5 - The Difference Between the First Nirvana and the One at the Time of Death - 2

 

 - The One Who Teaches the Final Death

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◎Limitless Silence, Eternal Silence

"Going from the sixth to the seventh is the ultimate death. You will be surprised to know that in the old days, acharya meant the one who teaches the final death. There is a saying, ‘The teacher (acharya) is death.’ So when Nachiketa reached the god of death, he reached an acharya. The god of death cannot teach anything other than death. Acharya is the name for one who can only talk about death, disintegration, disappearance…. But before this death, you have to be born. Right now you are not. Whatsoever you think you are is borrowed. It is not your real existence. Even if you lose it, you can never be the owner of it. It is just as if I steal something and donate it for charity. How can it be my donation if it is not my thing? That which is not yours cannot be given. So the so-called sannyasin is not renouncing anything at all, because he is renouncing that which is not his. How can you be a man who renounces that which is not his? It is madness to claim that you have renounced that which is not yours.

Renunciation happens when you move from the sixth to the seventh. There you throw away that which you are…because you have nothing else. You literally throw away your own being.

The only meaningful renunciation is to enter the seventh dimension. Before that, whatsoever you talk about renunciation is all childish. The man who says, ‘This is mine,’ is foolish. The man who says, ‘I have renounced all my things,’ is also foolish, because he is still claiming to be the owner. Only oneself is one’s own…. But people don’t understand this.

So you come to know who you are from the fifth to the sixth, and from the sixth to the seventh you become capable of renouncing that which you are. The moment you renounce that which you are, nothing is left to be achieved, nothing is left to be renounced. And no question remains. There is limitless silence, eternal silence. Afterwards, one cannot even say that there is bliss or peace. One cannot even say that there is truth or untruth, light or darkness. Nothing can be said. That is the world of the seventh dimension."

(The Quest for the Miraculous, Vol. 2 / Osho pp. 367-368)

According to Osho Bhagwan's explanation, Shakyamuni was essentially "one who saw God" from his initial enlightenment until just before his death, but at the time of his death, he became "one who became one with God and entered Nirvana."

However, if that were the case, it seems that Shakyamuni cannot be said to have mastered both the vertical and horizontal paths.

This is because, if so, in addition to the Mahaparinirvana, which is an experience of "becoming one with God and entering Nirvana" on the well-known horizontal path, there must be another secret experience of "becoming one with God and entering Nirvana" on the vertical path.

In other words, Shakyamuni must have already achieved union with God and entered Nirvana on the vertical path, likely through Kundalini Yoga, before his death, and even returned to life, but the details of this process are hidden behind a veil of secrecy.

Shakyamuni - 5 - The Difference Between the First Nirvana and the One at the Time of Death - 1

 - Seeing and Diving

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◎Mahaparinirvana

Shakyamuni accessed Nirvana twice in his lifetime. Osho Bhagwan explains this.

First, he states that one cannot reach the seventh body, Nirvana, while remaining in the sixth body.

The sixth body is a state where the entire universe is oneself, where past, present, and future are one and the same as oneself, where birth and death are oneself, without beginning or end, vast and limitless. By abandoning this, one reaches Nirvana.

"The seventh body cannot be reached while in this body. At the most, in this body, you can stand on the boundary line of this sixth body and look at the seventh body. That jump, that void, that abyss, that eternity can be seen from that point, and there we can stand. That’s why in Buddha’s life two nirvanas are recorded. One nirvana was achieved under the Bodhi tree, on the bank of the river Niranjana. That was forty years before he died. That is called nirvana. That day he stood on the verge of the sixth body…. And he remained there for forty long years. The day he died is called mahaparinirvana. That day he entered the seventh dimension. So when people asked, ‘What happens to the tathagata after death?’ he said, ‘The tathagata will not be.’

But this did not satisfy the mind. Again and again people asked, ‘What happens to the awakened one in mahaparinirvana?’ To this Buddha replied, ‘Where all activity ceases, where all events cease, that is called mahaparinirvana.’

As long as something continues to happen in the sixth body, it is existence. That which is beyond it is non-existence. So when Buddha disappears, nothing is left. In a sense, it can also be said that he never was. He disappears like a dream, like a line drawn on sand, like a line drawn on water which is drawn and disappears. He disappears and nothing is left. But this does not satisfy our minds. We say that on some level, in some corner, however far away, he must be. But in the seventh dimension he simply becomes the void, the formless.

Beyond the seventh body there is no way to bring a new form. There are people who stand on the boundary and see the abyss that the seventh body is. So whatsoever is known about the seventh dimension has been reported by those who stood on the boundary, not by those who went there, because there is no means to communicate any explanation. It is just as if a person stands on the border of Pakistan and looks and reports that there are houses and shops and roads and people and trees and the sun rising. But this man is standing on the Indian border."

(The Quest for the Miraculous, Vol. 2 / Osho pp. 366-367)

Shakyamuni experienced Nirvana upon seeing the morning star and, at the time of his death, plunged into Mahaparinirvana.

Shakyamuni - Trajectory to Nirvana - 5 - Nirvana

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◎Nirvana

This is a continuation of the scene of Shakyamuni's Parinirvana from the Pāli Canon's Mahāparinibbāna Sutta (遊行経).

"Then Ānanda (the Buddha's disciple), (who had only heard many sermons of the Blessed One and was particularly outstanding in remembering them, but was completely at a loss having encountered such a scene that was not mentioned in those sermons) asked Anuruddha (Anuruddha = the Buddha's disciple, who had clairvoyance and suddenly appeared upon seeing this situation):

'Has the Blessed One already attained complete Nirvana?'

Anuruddha replied:

'Not yet, Ānanda. The Blessed One is now in the cessation of perception and feeling (滅想定), having transcended all of the Form Realm, the Formless Realm, that is, all three realms. I once heard directly from the Buddha, "One attains complete Nirvana only after emerging from the fourth jhāna."'

At that moment, the Blessed One (just as Anuruddha had replied),

emerging from the cessation of perception and feeling (and returning to the Formless Realm), entered the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception;

emerging from the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception, entered the sphere of no-thingness;

emerging from the sphere of no-thingness, entered the sphere of infinite consciousness;

emerging from the sphere of infinite consciousness, entered the sphere of infinite space (here concluding the four formless absorptions);

emerging from the sphere of infinite space (and returning to the Form Realm), entered the fourth jhāna;

emerging from the fourth jhāna, entered the third jhāna;

emerging from the third jhāna, entered the second jhāna;

emerging from the second jhāna, entered the first jhāna (this was repeated three times);

emerging from the first jhāna, entered the second jhāna;

emerging from the second jhāna, entered the third jhāna;

emerging from the third jhāna, entered the fourth jhāna;

emerging from the fourth jhāna, the Buddha here attained complete Nirvana."

(Quoted from 阿含経を読む / 青土社 pp. 952-953)

The crucial point here is that Anuruddha states that Shakyamuni himself denied that the cessation of perception and feeling (滅想定) is Nirvana, even though it transcends all three realms (the Realm of Desire, the Realm of Form, and the Formless Realm), meaning it is no longer within the realm of human experience but in the Buddha's domain.

The cessation of perception and feeling (滅想定 - Nirodha-samāpatti) transcends the three realms, so it is not a "concentration" (定 - samādhi) but corresponds to "absorption" (三昧 - samāpatti) in the Yoga Sūtras. However, since the cessation of perception and feeling is not Nirvana, it is thought to correspond to Absorption with Form (有想三昧 - ūpa-saññā-samāpatti) in Yoga.

Therefore, Nirvana corresponds to Absorption without Form (無想三昧 - asaṃprajñāta-samādhi) in the Yoga Sūtras.

Based on this, it can be considered that the levels of meditation (dhyāna) seen in Buddhism are not nine but actually ten stages, and each of these corresponds to the classifications in the Yoga Sūtras.