Why not Charles Or Edward ?

Last Tuesday in the Advanced Electronics lecture the discussion was more on Buddhism rather than display technologies. His purpose by doing this is not clear to me. He said he wants to discuss about industrial ethics as we're at the edge of our academic life. It’s always great to have a discussion on Buddhist concepts but I wonder whether it’s the proper time for that as we have 20% non-Buddhists in the class as well. He left us with a question to find answers for. And here goes my answer and I hope this would be helpful for the few non-Buddhist ENTC friends who read my blog.

The question he raised was why Siddharth (Bodhisatta) was not named as Charles or Edward in his previous lives? I’ve read and listened to a number of Buddhist sermons and I’ll answer this question with the knowledge I’ve gathered from them.

Reincarnation is accepted and vividly described in Buddhism and one could even argue that it’s the basis of Buddhism. To a certain extent it’s true but Buddhism approaches are more towards explaining path to Nibbana which literally means the only way to end reincarnation. I’m not going to talk much deeper on this as some readers would be only interested in the answer.

I believe that the question itself is wrong. I will discuss on the question in point form which would be much easier for me.

Point 1

Buddhism never speaks of a beginning or a creator. Buddha explains that the beginning is just a concept invented. The universe and the Earth we are in had been destroyed and reformed infinite number of times. The energy existing can never be created or destroyed and it just transforms in a cyclic manner. Buddha explained that this process happens automatically and each living organism have born and died infinite times.


Time to time this truth vanishes and a Buddha is born to reveal the truth to the living beings. And there have been infinite number of Buddha as well. At this point people may come up with questions like..

IFthere has been uncountable number of Buddha’s and each Buddha reduces some finite amount of විඤ්ඤාන (I don’t know the English word for that) how come we still have this much living beings left?


If the number of the විඤ්ඤාන is finite and if they can’t be created how does the population increase?


Do aliens exist and how other galaxies are interfered by the birth of Buddha?

 

T  There are answers for these questions but I’m not going to discuss them here as it takes much time.When Buddha wanted to explain something to people he used only the required and the most applying examples. In most cases he took examples from his previous similar regional births and that’s the reason why all the Jathaka Stories are comprised with pali bodhisatta names such as Mahaushadha, Makhadeva,Brahmadatta etc.

The book “පන්සිය පනස් ජාතක පොත” was written to enhance the “Shraddha” of the Buddhists and all these “Jathaka katha” (Jathaka Stories) analyze the characters of a society deeply and explains the characteristics needed for a better society. Not all the stories were peached by Lord Buddha and some were woven around prevailed folktales.I'm providing the link below if you wanted to read some of those  stories. Trust me they are really interesting and applicable to the current society as well

Link :- පන්සිය පනස් ජාතක පොත

Point 2

It’s said that Every Buddha was born, attained Enlightenment, held the first sermon and passed away on the same places as previous budhdhas. This has been a tradition and maybe that’s one of the reasons why the professor may have raised that question.

When a person dies the state of his mind we call as “චුති සිත”. This state decides the next stage of reincarnation which is “ප්‍රතිසන්දි සිත” . These states of mind are comprised of several factors. If you are a Buddhist and believes in your religion there’s higher probability of being reborn as a Buddhist. And that’s the same theory for Catholics and Muslims as well. The birth location is also decided upon this “චුති සිත”. But what happens in between is explained in such a way that the next birth can happen anywhere. But I don’t want to continue on that as I know half of my blog readers are non-Buddhists and this discussion won’t be at any interest to them.

Fortunately I got a chance to further clarify this matter. This Thursday I was on my way to home and was seating next to a monk. Bit eager but with a half hesitative mind I decided to talk to him about these questions I had. This monk’s reply was not different to mine but his explanation added something extra important which I might write on some other day.

And I’m extremely sorry if this post is hurting anyone’s faiths .But my only intention was to share my knowledge on this question and professor is surely gonna ask for the answers next day. So my conclusion is Bodhisatta might had been born not just only as Charles or Edward but may be as Jacob too . :P :P :P.Hope this was helpful and correct me if I’ve said anything wrong. But please make sure you accept whatever he says is right and keep quit. Don’t go for arguments unless you want to sit for a repeat test next year.