The Great Discourse on Lineage

Digha Nikaya 14 (Sujato translation). I'm reading the Maurice Walshe translation hard copy I have.

So everyone is sitting around and they get to talking about past lives, as you do. 

I don't have any memories of past lives. When I look at someone I can imagine their life, and I could imagine that if I had their body and their circumstances, I would probably make similar choices. The more I think about a human life, the more I understand the vector they took.

Why have we (in present time America) lost our knowledge of past lives? Maybe because it was a supposition of a culture I'm not ensconced in right now, and you know when other cultures don't pick up on things, maybe it's part of that culture's mythology.

I have met people who talked about past lives, but to my shame I've been dismissive in my past. I'm a fairly skeptical person, I killed my grandparents dreams of me believing in Santa Clause early. I can remember the disappointment on my grandmother's face when I guessed Grandpa put the presents under the tree, not Santa Clause. I honestly was guessing, so it was also a surprise to me that I was right. 

I'm agnostic about past lives. I don't have any information. Because it's part of the culture of the Buddha, I work hard to be open to it. It's a delicate balancing act to both honor your current skepticism and be open to new information and stories. 

The Buddha gives a sermon on past lives. He talks about past Buddhas in distant eons. There were 3 previous Buddhas in this eon, and the present one talking. The Buddha is an honorific title, the name he was given at birth was Siddhartha Gautama. Most Buddhas were born in Brahmin families in the Indian caste system, but Gautama was born in the Khattiya cast, the warrior cast. 

Caste is a big thing, and I have sad sinking feeling when I think about caste, like if you're born in the a caste, you might out of confusion confine your life to that caste's possibilities. I have read a book by a woman who was born untouchable, who converted to Buddhism in Ambedkar's conversion to Buddhism. This great man had to sit outside the classroom and look through the window into the class. He went to the USA and got a PhD in law, and then went to England and got a PhD in law. Then he came back to India and helped write the first constitution and served as the first minster of justice. He looked around and saw that there were other world religions to convert to, where he wouldn't be considered untouchable. He studied Christianity. He studied Islam. I don't know how far he went, did he study other religions? I'd love a good biography of him. 

Ambedkar decided to convert to Buddhism. The unfortunate thing is that when he converted to Buddhism, and there was a mass conversion of untouchables, he died 6 weeks later. His followers needed a leader, and he was gone. 

The Dalit Buddhist movement has suffered under the lack of leadership ever since then. Gandhi called the untouchables Dalits, and it's a slightly condescending term, "god's children", but it stuck as a nicer term for the untouchables caste. Lokamitra, a disciple of Sangharakshita, went to India and there are many in the Triratna order. 

They do lots of amazing work amongst the Dalit community. Lokamitra is married to a Dalit, and Triratna is considered a lay movement by the outside Buddhist world, even though Sangharakshita considered it neither monastic nor lay, because they have no lineage. Sangharakshita looked back through time and realized that not all 5 people at an ordination would all be keeping the Vinaya, so lineage would ever be literal, you couldn't know all the monks were actually keeping the discipline as stated in the rules. Maybe someone had some food after solar noon, the ways you would break the vinaya are endless, it's hard to imagine every single ordination going back had perfect compliance. He also admired some monks who had secret wives on the side, they were deep and vigorous, where as there were monks who kept the vinaya and he wasn't impressed by them. It wasn't really the mark of spiritual depth to him. That is how the story came down to me. 

Whenever I meet people of Indian heritage in America, I ask if they know Ambedkar. Most of the people in my neighborhood are from Gujarati, and no, they haven't. Ambedkar converted in Nagpur, Maharashtra. Everyone in America says they are Brahmin because we don't know, in Indian they would know by their name. 

Many of the women from Gujarati don't speak English or don't want to talk to an American, but one did, and we talked while our children played. She talked about how she would eat mulberries in a tree while her father would farm. I would climb mulberry trees in Wisconsin, and I felt like she was a kindred spirit when I heard that story. She has a delightful son, who plays with my daughter. 

Back to the Sutta. The other Buddhas of this eon lived thousands of years. This Buddha was short lived in comparison. He lived to 80, becoming enlightened at 35, after a 6 year quest and he spread the message for 45 years. 

He names the kinds of trees past Buddhas were enlightened under. The tree our Buddha was enlightened under was named after him, Ficus religiosa, a kind of mulberry tree! You can visit the grandchild of the original tree in India today. That there is a connection to the Buddha via a tree is amazing to me. 

The way the Buddha has Sariputta and Moggallana, the past Buddhas had two chief disciples. There are pages of names. His attendant is Ananda, they list past attendants. If you're ever looking for a baby name, you could pick among these.

There is another talk by the Buddha, following on in this topic.  When a woman gets pregnant with a Buddha all kinds of amazing things happen to her. That would be a good passage to read to your wife if she's pregnant. Just don't read the part about dying 7 days after childbirth. One amazing thing about modern childbirth is that women don't have to die as frequently. This is a great thing. 

The Buddha baby comes forth and walks 7 steps. We know human babies can't do that, so that part has to be mythical. Indeed we've been in mythical stories for quite a while now.

I could take a moment to tell you how I look at mythology. I used to be fairly skeptical, and see mythology as a nice story. Then I read more about cults, and of course they scared me, but there is also a sense where cultic is deep devotion, and deep devotion isn't bad if it's targeted and not manipulated. You can use devotion to support your individual practice. So if I take it literally true, then it puts a little zip into my practice. I love the mythology. 

There's a danger if you don't realize when taking the mythology literally isn't the right thing to carry out into public life, and I'm very invested in respect for other religions and people. The rise of Christian nationalism in America is quite frightening. The speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson hopes to inject Christianity into the secular public spaces. I believe public life should be secular in that we live in a multicultural world, country, state, city, and you can't assume everyone is of the same sect of evangelical Christianity you are. 

The Buddha had the 32 marks of a great man. My mind immediately goes to the idea that this is about the iconography of the Buddha. I try to be credulous:

“(1) He has feet with level tread. (2) On the soles of his feet are wheels with a thousand spokes. (3) He has projecting heels. (4) He has long fingers and toes. (5) He has soft and tender hands and feet. (6) His hands and feet are net-like. (7) He has high-raised ankles. (8) His legs are like an antelope's. (9) Standing and without bending, he can touch and rub his knees with either hand. (10) His male organs are enclosed in a sheath. (11) His complexion is bright, the color of gold. (12) his skin is delicate and so smooth that no [18) dust adheres to it. (13) His body-hairs are separate, one to each pore. (14) They grow upwards, bluish-black like collyrium, growing in rings to the right. (15) His body is divinely straight. (16) He has the seven. convex surfaces. (17) The front part of his body is like a lion's. (18) There is no hollow between his shoulders. (19) He is proportioned like a banyan-tree: his height is as the span of his arms. (20) His bust is evenly rounded. (21) He has a perfect sense of taste. (22) He has jaws like a lion's. (23) He has forty teeth. (24) His teeth are even. (25) There are no spaces between his teeth. (26) His canine teeth are very bright. (27) His tongue is very long. (28) He has a Brahma-like voice, like that of the karavika-bird. (29) His eyes are deep blue. (30) He has eyelashes like a cow's. (31) The hair between his eyebrows is white, and soft like cotton-down. (32) His head is like a royal turban."

Collyrium is eyeshadow. 

Banyan-tree has roots that spread out and prop up the tree, not sure what they're getting at there.

Humans have 32 teeth, so 40 teeth, that's special. 

Kalavi-bird is a mythical bird (see below). Seems like a human torso with wings below. Wikipedia says it sounds like a cuckoo. The word is "karavikabhāṇī". Anyway, a new lovely mythical creature

When you read the wikipedia page on Turbin, it didn't catch on in Buddhism. A head like a turbin could just be a big head.

I you google pictures of cow eyebrows, it's pretty interesting, not sure I really had an image of them before I googled images. I imagine they're prominent. 

So it's an interesting list, and I suppose it's before the big ears and top knot iconography. 

Then the sutta goes on about Vipassi from Bandhumati, a mythical ancient town, he is one of the previous Buddhas a long time ago, there are parallels with the Buddha's narrative. Prince Vipassi goes through the 4 sights over hundreds of thousands of years. But this prince likes being pampered, and does not go forth right away, but after seeing a mendicant, he decides to go forth with 84K people. They all shave off their hair and don the robes. He realized having 84K people around him wasn't the way to quest for enlightenment and went off on his own. He goes through some teachings and the 12 nidanas and the 5 aggregates. 

Just like the Buddha, Brahma asks him to teach and share the teachings. Vipassi teleports himself around to teach the people he thinks he can teach, then they come to him. Kandha and Tissa come to him and he builds up to the 4 noble truths, and they gain enlightenment. They eventually leave and the 84K who went forth hear about this and they want in on the action. So Vipassi teaches them and they all become enlightened, "freed from the corruptions without remainder". Soon enough there were 6 million monks on top of the 84K. He told them to spread out and wander, spread the teachings. Just come back in 6 years and recite the monk's code. 

It was a while (91 eons) since the Buddha Vipassi, so the gods decided Siddhartha Gautama must be born, even though people tend not to live as long. The end.

I wish I had greater comprehension but I'm reading this for the first time, so I'll be content with summarizing it. Quite a rollicking adventure. 

To it implies the cosmic journey of the Buddha discovers the path, doesn't create it, it sort of magnifies.

Why don't Buddhists worship Vipassi over Shakyamuni? I think at a certain point you're worshiping the essence of all the Buddhas and Buddha-nature inside everyone in the Dharmakaya.