Will I gain supernatural powers just by being enlightened?
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Whenever someone do it, it will be felt by those that have similar abilities and thus exposing the person's locationOriginally posted by An Eternal Now:In fact, it is against Buddha's monastic rules to do public miracle display.
That is why you dont see it in public. The disciples will know, though.
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My master always say "there are some people who always claim to have this kind of supernatural power, that kind of experience. This is a very pitiful thing."
And anyway powers do not necessarily come in sequence, prajna wisdom is most essential. -
The Buddhist attitude to psychic powers is a practical one. There is no use hankering after them when one is unenlightened, for they can become an ego-boosting trap - a wrong priority that increases greed and pride, hampering down-to-earth practice for liberation. And since these powers will be naturally attained when enlightened, why bother specifically going after them? This is famously reflected in the incident of the Buddha telling an ascetic, who could walk on water after 25 years of practice, that his achievement was insignificant, as anyone could simply ferry across waters! The only truly worthy miracle, according to the Buddha, is the miracle of instruction and realisation of the Dharma, which helps oneself and others rid suffering, to attain compassion and wisdom. This culminates in enlightenment - itself the greatest miracle possible!
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I think the ultimate aim to gain enlightenment should not be for the sake of having supernatural powers, though this normally comes with it as a package.
Anyway, once you were enlightened, you woudn't even be bothered with these powers because all these to you are just a part of your Buddha nature, which you have uncovered. -
Well said all of you.
Supernatural power is not something that we as a buddhist should go after.
Even if one acquires some supernatural power, if his mind is not pure, his power will eventually lost.
A lot of people has some special power when they are young kid, for example, can hear the words written on paper, or mind reading and so on, but as they growing up and start to have worldly attachment, their power also automatically disappear.
This happened to the buddha's cousin devadatta, who had learnt supernatural power from ananda. But due to his greed and hatred over buddha, he lost his powers and eventually his evil deed and misuse of supernatural power cause him to suffer in the lowest level of hell for an aeon. Does the power help him? No. the power make him suffer instead.
In meditation, there are many levels of samadhi, a buddhist practitioner are told to practise up to level 4 only, that is because if one reach level 5, the realization will be too stunning, if he doesn't have enough wisdom to look beyond it, then he will think that he has attain nirvana and start to talk nonsense. A meditation learner must have a teacher to guide, if not when things go wrong, it will slow downs your progress, or affect health or worse, commited the 5 greatest sin and become another devadatta.
While knowing all these, I think we shouldn't rule out the usefulness of supernatural power, this is my personal opinion, otherwise why mugalana is given the title "first in supernatural power" among the buddha's 10 greatest disciple. mugalana and sariputra are so called the buddha's 2 chief disciple.
True, supernatural power has no match against karma. But when we see someone suffer, should we help or should we not help, how to know whether helping your friend to overcome a problem is going against his own karma? Anyone kindly enlighten pls. -
Hello justdoit77,Originally posted by justdoit77:Well said all of you.
Supernatural power is not something that we as a buddhist should go after.
Even if one acquires some supernatural power, if his mind is not pure, his power will eventually lost.
A lot of people has some special power when they are young kid, for example, can hear the words written on paper, or mind reading and so on, but as they growing up and start to have worldly attachment, their power also automatically disappear.
This happened to the buddha's cousin devadatta, who had learnt supernatural power from ananda. But due to his greed and hatred over buddha, he lost his powers and eventually his evil deed and misuse of supernatural power cause him to suffer in the lowest level of hell for an aeon. Does the power help him? No. the power make him suffer instead.
In meditation, there are many levels of samadhi, a buddhist practitioner are told to practise up to level 4 only, that is because if one reach level 5, the realization will be too stunning, if he doesn't have enough wisdom to look beyond it, then he will think that he has attain nirvana and start to talk nonsense. A meditation learner must have a teacher to guide, if not when things go wrong, it will slow downs your progress, or affect health or worse, commited the 5 greatest sin and become another devadatta.
While knowing all these, I think we shouldn't rule out the usefulness of supernatural power, this is my personal opinion, otherwise why mugalana is given the title "first in supernatural power" among the buddha's 10 greatest disciple. mugalana and sariputra are so called the buddha's 2 chief disciple.
True, supernatural power has no match against karma. But when we see someone suffer, should we help or should we not help, how to know whether helping your friend to overcome a problem is going against his own karma? Anyone kindly enlighten pls.
Can you kindly quote from where did you learn about that buddhist practitioner only told to practice up to level 4 and not beyond?
To my understanding such level of samadhi was defined by Buddha. It sounds to me quite ridiculous to stop any practicing buddhists to go forward. Wisdom and samadhi goes hand-in-hand. Without a certain level of wisdom, I doubt one can advance in higher samadhi as well.
No offence, but I believe you have misunderstood what kamma is. If helping a friend to overcome a problem is considered as going against his own kamma, then Lord Buddha had made the greatest mistake by spreading the Dhamma.
Our compassionate Lord wanted us to get out of suffering, and that was the reason why He'd preached the Dhamma. By understanding and application of the Dhamma, one is changing our kamma.
As buddhist, seeing Buddha as the ideal example of Wisdom and Compassion, we should, to the best of our abilities, helping our friends out of their plight. Rather than leaving them alone and says," This is their kamma, their just deserts, we shall leave them alone."
If any buddhist has such mindset, then it shows how wrongly they've understood kamma and Dhamma in the first place. Of course our Wisdom and Compassion ain't as complete as Lord Buddha, but like I'd mentioned, to the best of our abilities. We're buddhists, not Buddhas, we will bound to make mistakes, there will bound to me limits to what we can do, but the important thing is that we are willing to try; willing to learn; willing to grow.
May all grow in the spiritual path =) -
As in the Buddha's advice in the Kevaddha Sutta
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/canon/sutta/digha/dn-11-tb0.html, "The only miracles that should be performed are these: when you see a man full of passion, craving and greed, and you teach him to free himself from passion, craving and greed; when you see that a man is a slave to hatred and anger and you use your powers to help him control his hatred and anger; when you come across a man who is ignorant and who cannot see the true nature of the world (everything in this world is impermanent, sorrowful and egoless) and you use your powers to help him overcome his ignorance. These are worthy 'miracles' you can perform." If so, let us start "performing" the truly supreme miracles today - by realising the Fantastic Four Noble Truths! -
Claim?Originally posted by An Eternal Now:My master always say "there are some people who always claim to have this kind of supernatural power, that kind of experience. This is a very pitiful thing."
And anyway powers do not necessarily come in sequence, prajna wisdom is most essential.
for $? 
Whack people with it
Practice makes perfect -
Hi, regarding this point, it is true that in the Theravada circle, many practitioners are asked to develope the 4 Jhanas, and from there, switch into Vipassana meditation. One may alternatively reach higher jhanas, up till 8 jhanas, but jhanas is not a means to an end itself, even reaching 8 jhanas you will not be liberated but can attain many supernatural powers. Jhanas is used especially in the Theravada school so that the mind can be focused and Vipassana willbe more effectively practised. Vipassana (more towards mindfulness and awareness) is the more essential practise, it is only through Vipassana that leads to liberation, however many believes that a strong foundation of samatha is needed.Originally posted by yamizi:Hello justdoit77,
Can you kindly quote from where did you learn about that buddhist practitioner only told to practice up to level 4 and not beyond?
Personally my path does not consists of Jhanas, it is in a way quite different from many schools of Theravada, but so far this is my understanding (as above). -
Excellent!Originally posted by path_seeker:I think the ultimate aim to gain enlightenment should not be for the sake of having supernatural powers, though this normally comes with it as a package.
Anyway, once you were enlightened, you woudn't even be bothered with these powers because all these to you are just a part of your Buddha nature, which you have uncovered. -
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mahayana also practise that, samatha (zhi3) and Vipassana (guan1). The most common practise is you go into samadhi (ding4) and then come out to stay in samatha, so that your mind is calm enough to practise vipassana.Originally posted by An Eternal Now:Hi, regarding this point, it is true that in the Theravada circle, many practitioners are asked to develope the 4 Jhanas, and from there, switch into Vipassana meditation. One may alternatively reach higher jhanas, up till 8 jhanas, but jhanas is not a means to an end itself, even reaching 8 jhanas you will not be liberated but can attain many supernatural powers. Jhanas is used especially in the Theravada school so that the mind can be focused and Vipassana willbe more effectively practised. Vipassana (more towards mindfulness and awareness) is the more essential practise, it is only through Vipassana that leads to liberation, however many believes that a strong foundation of samatha is needed.
Personally my path does not consists of Jhanas, it is in a way quite different from many schools of Theravada, but so far this is my understanding (as above).
AEN, what is your way of practising this?
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Jhana Not by the Numbers
by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
When I first went to study with my teacher, Ajaan Fuang, he handed me a small booklet of meditation instructions and sent me up the hill behind the monastery to meditate. The booklet — written by his teacher, Ajaan Lee — began with a breath meditation technique and concluded with a section showing how the technique was used to induce the first four levels of jhana.
In the following years, I saw Ajaan Fuang hand the same booklet to each of his new students, lay and ordained. Yet despite the booklet's detailed descriptions of jhana, he himself rarely mentioned the word jhana in his conversations, and never indicated to any of his students that they had reached a particular level of jhana in their practice. When a student told him of a recurring meditative experience, he liked to discuss not what it was, but what to do with it: what to focus on, what to drop, what to change, what to maintain the same. Then he'd teach the student how to experiment with it — to make it even more stable and restful — and how to judge the results of the experiments. If his students wanted to measure their progress against the descriptions of jhana in the booklet, that was their business and none of his. He never said this in so many words, but given the way he taught, the implicit message was clear.
As were the implicit reasons for his attitude. He had told me once about his own experiences as a young meditator: "Back in those days you didn't have books explaining everything the way we do now. When I first studied with Ajaan Lee, he told me to bring my mind down. So I focused on getting it down, down, down, but the more I brought it down, the heavily and duller it got. I thought, 'This can't be right.' So I turned around and focused on bringing it up, up, up, until I found a balance and could figure out what he was talking about." This incident was one of many that taught him some important lessons: that you have to test things for yourself, to see where the instructions had to be taken literally and where they had to be taken figuratively; that you had to judge for yourself how well you were doing; and that you had to be ingenious, experimenting and taking risks to find to ways to deal with problems as they arose.
So as a teacher, he tried to instill in his students these qualities of self-reliance, ingenuity, and a willingness to take risks and test things for themselves. He did that not only by talking about these qualities, but also by forcing you into situations where you'd have to develop them. Had he always been there to confirm for you that, "Yes, you've reached the third jhana," or, "No, that's only the second jhana," he would have short-circuited the qualities he was trying to instill. He, rather than your own powers of observation, would have been the authority on what was going on in your mind; and you would have been absolved of any responsibility for correctly evaluating what you had experienced. At the same time, he would have been feeding your childish desire to please or impress him, and undermining your ability to deal with the task at hand, which was how to develop your own powers of sensitivity to put an end to suffering and stress. As he once told me, "If I have to explain everything, you'll get used to having things handed to you on a platter. And then what will you do when problems come up in your meditation and you don't have any experience in figuring things out on your own?" (to be continued) -
(continued fr previous)
So, studying with him, I had to learn to take risks in the midst of uncertainties. If something interesting came up in the practice, I'd have to stick with it, observing it over time, before reaching any conclusions about it. Even then, I learned, the labels I applied to my experiences couldn't be chiseled in rock. They had to be more like post-it notes: convenient markers for my own reference that I might have to peel off and stick elsewhere as I became more familiar with the territory of my mind. This proved to be a valuable lesson that applied to all areas of my practice.
Still, Ajaan Fuang didn't leave me to reinvent the dharma wheel totally on my own. Experience had shown him that some approaches to concentration worked better than others for putting the mind in a position where it could exercise its ingenuity and accurately judge the results of its experiments, and he was very explicit in recommending those approaches. Among the points he emphasized were these:
Strong concentration is absolutely necessary for liberating insight. "Without a firm basis in concentration," he often said, "insight is just concepts." To see clearly the connections between stress and its causes, the mind has to be very steady and still. And to stay still, it requires the strong sense of well being that only strong concentration can provide.
To gain insight into a state of concentration, you have to stick with it for a long time. If you push impatiently from one level of concentration to the next, or if you try to analyze a new state of concentration too quickly after you've attained it, you never give it the chance to show its full potential and you don't give yourself the chance to familiarize yourself with it. So you have to keep working at it as a skill, something you can tap into in all situations. This enables you to see it from a variety of perspectives and to test it over time, to see if it really is as totally blissful, empty, and effortless as it may have seemed on first sight.
The best state of concentration for the sake of developing all-around insight is one that encompasses a whole-body awareness. There were two exceptions to Ajaan Fuang's usual practice of not identifying the state you had attained in your practice, and both involved states of wrong concentration. The first was the state that comes when the breath gets so comfortable that your focus drifts from the breath to the sense of comfort itself, your mindfulness begins to blur, and your sense of the body and your surroundings gets lost in a pleasant haze. When you emerge, you find it hard to identify where exactly you were focused. Ajaan Fuang called this moha-samadhi, or delusion-concentration.
The second state was one I happened to hit one night when my concentration was extremely one-pointed, and so refined that it refused settle on or label even the most fleeting mental objects. I dropped into a state in which I lost all sense of the body, of any internal/external sounds, or of any thoughts or perceptions at all — although there was just enough tiny awareness to let me know, when I emerged, that I hadn't been asleep. I found that I could stay there for many hours, and yet time would pass very quickly. Two hours would seem like two minutes. I could also "program" myself to come out at a particular time.
After hitting this state several nights in a row, I told Ajaan Fuang about it, and his first question was, "Do you like it?" My answer was "No," because I felt a little groggy the first time I came out. "Good," he said. "As long as you don't like it, you're safe. Some people really like it and think it's nibbana or cessation. Actually, it's the state of non-perception (asaññi-bhava). It's not even right concentration, because there's no way you can investigate anything in there to gain any sort of discernment. But it does have other uses." He then told me of the time he had undergone kidney surgery and, not trusting the anesthesiologist, had put himself in that state for the duration of the operation.
In both these states of wrong concentration, the limited range of awareness was what made them wrong. If whole areas of your awareness are blocked off, how can you gain all-around insight? And as I've noticed in years since, people adept at blotting out large areas of awareness through powerful one-pointedness also tend to be psychologically adept at dissociation and denial. This is why Ajaan Fuang, following Ajaan Lee, taught a form of breath meditation that aimed at an all-around awareness of the breath energy throughout the body, playing with it to gain a sense of ease, and then calming it so that it wouldn't interfere with a clear vision of the subtle movements of the mind. This all-around awareness helped to eliminate the blind spots where ignorance likes to lurk.
An ideal state of concentration for giving rise to insight is one that you can analyze in terms of stress and the absence of stress even while you're in it. Once your mind was firmly established in a state of concentration, Ajaan Fuang would recommend "lifting" it from its object, but not so far that the concentration was destroyed. From that perspective, you could evaluate what levels of stress were still present in the concentration and let them go. In the initial stages, this usually involved evaluating how you were relating to the breath, and detecting more subtle levels of breath energy in the body that would provide a basis for deeper levels of stillness. Once the breath was perfectly still, and the sense of the body started dissolving into a formless mist, this process would involve detecting the perceptions of "space," "knowing," "oneness," etc., that would appear in place of the body and could be peeled away like the layers of an onion in the mind. In either case, the basic pattern was the same: detecting the level of perception or mental fabrication that was causing the unnecessary stress, and dropping it for a more subtle level of perception or fabrication until there was nothing left to drop.
This was why, as long as your awareness was still and alert all-around, it didn't matter whether you were in the first or the fourteenth jhana, for the way you treated your state of concentration was always the same. By directing your attention to issues of stress and its absence, he was pointing you to terms by which to evaluate your state of mind for yourself, without having to ask any outside authority. And, as it turns out, the terms you can evaluate for yourself — stress, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation — are the issues that define the four noble truths: the right view that the Buddha says can lead to total liberation. -
Hi, even though Mahayana practise that, but it is particularly the Theravada tradition that focuses on developing jhana. For example, if you look into the Zen school, the Tibetan schools, I do not think they teach their followers to develope jhanas. In Tibetan Buddhism, they may call it 'continuing the flow of rigpa', and I think that is closer to my path. (http://www.thab.us/_glimpse/dharmaglimpse0505.htm) Due to certain meditative experience that I had in the past, I have also called up my dharma teacher and discussed on the topic of Jhana before.Originally posted by justdoit77:mahayana also practise that, samatha (zhi3) and Vipassana (guan1). The most common practise is you go into samadhi (ding4) and then come out to stay in samatha, so that your mind is calm enough to practise vipassana.
AEN, what is your way of practising this?
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My school's definition of 'Chan2 Ding4' is as such:
Furthermore, if you listen to the cds you taken home that day, you would have heard.