PRESENTED AT THE BUDDHA CENTER ON JUNE 22 AND 25, 2013 AND AGAIN TO THE NEW BUDDHA CENTRE ON SATURDAY, JULY 20, 2024 (REVISED). 

Impermanence and suffering suggest the possibility of permanence and happiness. Non-enlightenment raises the question of enlightenment. If the world of rebirth is conditioned, impermanent, and ultimately unsatisfactory, is there something beyond it? A coin cannot have only one side. The Buddhist answer is that there is an escape from suffering, the unborn, unbecome, unmade, and unconditioned. The appearance of bondage points toward the possibility of liberation.

An antecedent of the Mahayana doctrine of Buddha-potential appears in the Pali Canon in the description of the luminous mind, which is defiled by adventitious impurities. The philosophical connection is significant. Since the world is unsatisfactory, the possibility arises that one will recognize its essential inadequacy. It is only a small step from realizing the unsatisfactoriness of existence to formulating the intention to escape from it, since all beings desire happiness. Thus, the world itself provides the occasion for the aspiration to enlightenment and, through the cultivation of wisdom, its eventual realization.

The Lineage of Bodhisattvas

That human beings can attain extraordinary states of spiritual realization is a recurring theme in the religious traditions of humanity. In Buddhism, this possibility finds its supreme expression in the lineage of the buddhas. Theravada tradition recognizes twenty-eight buddhas, including the historical Buddha, Gotama. The traditional enumeration begins with a Buddha called Tanhankara. The fourth, Dipankara, predicted the future enlightenment of Sumedha, a wealthy Brahman who had renounced worldly life to become a hermit. According to the tradition, Sumedha subsequently underwent innumerable rebirths, perfecting the qualities necessary for Buddhahood, until he was finally born as Gotama.

Our present fortunate aeon is said to contain five buddhas: Kakusandha, Konagamana, Kassapa, Gotama, and Metteyya. Metteyya, the future Buddha, will appear long after Gotama and his teaching have been forgotten. The tradition associates his appearance with a future age of extraordinary prosperity and human longevity. These are not the only buddhas who have existed. Buddhist cosmology envisages innumerable past cosmic cycles, extending across immense and sometimes incalculable periods of time. The appearance of a fully awakened Buddha is exceptionally rare, but Buddhahood itself is not unique to Gotama. Whether one accepts these traditions as literally historical is beside the point for our present purpose. Their underlying significance is philosophical. Historical, metaphorical, mythological, and symbolic narratives can express truths that do not depend entirely upon their literal factuality. One may extract meaning from such accounts without confusing the planes of myth and history.

The word bodhisattva, or bodhisatta in Pali, combines bodhi, awakening, with sattva or satta, a being. A bodhisattva is therefore a being oriented toward awakening. In early Buddhist literature, the term refers especially to Gotama before he attained Buddhahood. In Mahayana Buddhism, it develops into the ideal of one who aspires to complete enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings.

The bodhisattva is not necessarily already enlightened. Indeed, the path presupposes that there are degrees of realization. An aspiring bodhisattva may possess considerable spiritual understanding while still being subject to ignorance, craving, and delusion. Advanced bodhisattvas, on the other hand, are described as having achieved direct insight into reality while continuing their work toward complete Buddhahood.

The formulation of the bodhisattva aspiration may be understood in relation to the first two factors of the Noble Eightfold Path: Right View and Right Intention. Having understood something of the nature of suffering and its cessation, one forms the intention to realize that cessation completely. In the Mahayana interpretation, this aspiration expands to embrace the liberation of all sentient beings.

The aspiration of an arhant and that of a bodhisattva are not wholly unrelated. Both originate in the recognition of suffering and the possibility of emancipation. Their traditional formulations differ, particularly concerning the scope and culmination of their respective paths. Nevertheless, their common foundation lies in the liberating wisdom discovered by the Buddha.

In this sense, Mahayana is not simply other than what it calls Hinayana, nor is the earlier teaching unrelated to Mahayana. They belong to a continuous historical and philosophical development. The recognition of their underlying unity finds expression in the Mahayana doctrine of the single or universal vehicle.

Buddhist cosmology describes thirty-one planes of existence, ranging from the hell realms to the highest formless attainments. Among these is Tusita, the heaven of contentment, where the Bodhisattva Gotama is traditionally said to have dwelt before his final human birth. The future Buddha Metteyya is likewise associated with Tusita. The significance of these cosmological traditions is not simply that some beings occupy more pleasant states of existence than others. It is that different conditions of existence offer different opportunities for spiritual development.

Human beings occupy a special position. Those in the lower realms experience suffering so intense that systematic spiritual cultivation is extremely difficult. Those in the higher realms may enjoy such extraordinary happiness that they have little incentive to seek liberation. Human existence combines suffering with the intellectual, emotional, and practical capacities necessary to investigate its causes. Thus, the human state is particularly favourable for realizing Buddha-potential.

In the vastness of Buddhist cosmology, human birth is rare. It presents an opportunity that should not be squandered. The first practical task is to cultivate the ethical qualities that conduce to favourable rebirth and spiritual development. The Buddhist code of ethics is not wholly unique. Many of its fundamental principles are shared with other religious and philosophical traditions. Nevertheless, the Buddha regarded ethical conduct as indispensable to the path. Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood are integral components of the Noble Eightfold Path. At the same time, ethics is not identical with enlightenment. The observance of rules, however scrupulous, does not by itself produce liberating wisdom. In the Brahmajala Sutta, the first discourse of the Sutta Pitaka, the Buddha distinguishes ordinary moral accomplishments from the more profound qualities associated with his awakening. The distinction is important. One can observe innumerable rules without understanding the nature of reality. Conversely, genuine understanding transforms conduct from within.

The Buddha did not establish a system in which formal credentials, established curricula, or institutional recognition constitute proof of spiritual realization. These may serve useful purposes, but they cannot substitute for direct knowledge. One cannot put the teaching in a box.

The historical Buddha was born as a bodhisattva. According to the tradition, this was his final birth before attaining complete realization. According to the Mahavastu, the Bodhisattva had already attained the tenth stage of bodhisattvahood before descending from Tusita heaven for his final human birth. The Theravada tradition likewise regards Gotama as a bodhisattva whose eventual enlightenment had been assured since the prediction of Dipankara Buddha. Thus, the Bodhisattva’s departure from household life was not the beginning of his spiritual career, but the culmination of an aspiration cultivated through innumerable previous lives. In the Pali Canon, this aspiration finds expression in his realization that conditioned existence is unsatisfactory and his determination to seek the unborn, unageing, and deathless security of nirvana.

The traditional biography of the Buddha raises an important question concerning the relationship between sexual renunciation and spiritual attainment. Gotama was married and fathered a son before abandoning household life, yet Buddhist tradition regards him as an extraordinarily advanced bodhisattva whose eventual Buddhahood was assured. Moreover, this portrayal of his sensual life is not confined to later biographies. In the Sukhumala Sutta (AN 3.39), the Buddha himself recalls spending the four months of the rainy season in a residence where he was entertained exclusively by female musicians. In the Magandiya Sutta (MN 75), he explicitly describes his former enjoyment of sensual pleasures, including pleasurable bodily contact.

Although these passages do not establish the precise nature of his relationships with the women, they leave little doubt that his pre-renunciation life was not one of systematic withdrawal from sensual enjoyment. Some later traditions portray him as already sexually abstinent, but others explicitly describe his sexual relationship with Yasodhara. Taken together, these accounts challenge the assumption that sexual abstinence is a necessary prerequisite for attaining an advanced degree of bodhisattvahood. This does not establish that complete Buddhahood can be attained without celibacy, but it demonstrates that spiritual development and sexual renunciation are not necessarily inseparable.

Later Buddhist biographies describe Gotama as a young man surrounded by extraordinary luxury. His father sought to protect him from the unpleasant realities of life, and he enjoyed the privileges associated with his social position. He married, and his wife bore a son named Rahula, a name traditionally associated with a fetter or, in another interpretation, an eclipse. The familiar account of Gotama’s youthful pleasures, athletic accomplishments, and sheltered upbringing belongs principally to the developed Buddhist biographical tradition. The early discourses provide fewer details, but they make something equally important clear: Gotama was human. He experienced uncertainty, dissatisfaction, physical suffering, and the need to discover a way beyond them.

According to the traditional chronology, at approximately twenty-nine years of age, Gotama abandoned household life. The aspiration cultivated through innumerable previous lives had reached its decisive moment. He then undertook the six-year spiritual adventure that would culminate in complete emancipation and Buddhahood.

The Tathagata

Tathagata is the designation the Buddha frequently uses for himself throughout the Pali Canon. Its derivation is uncertain. Traditional commentators offer several interpretations, including the “Thus Gone One” and the “Thus Come One.” Both interpretations emphasize tatha, meaning “thus” or “in this way.” The second element may be understood in relation to going or coming, giving rise to different but complementary readings. The ambiguity is itself suggestive.

The Tathagata is one who has gone beyond the ordinary condition of beings, but also one who has come into the world to reveal the teaching. He has realized reality as it is and is no longer bound by the conditions that govern involuntary rebirth. The word possesses a numinous quality. It points toward a realization that ordinary language cannot adequately encompass. In this respect, one might compare its religious significance with that of the divine name in Hebrew tradition, although the theological meanings are quite different.

The Buddha does not identify himself as a creator God. Nor does he claim that liberation consists in becoming a permanent individual self. Rather, the designation Tathagata suggests a mode of realization that transcends conventional descriptions of personal existence. The ambiguity may be intentional, suggesting one who has both gone beyond conditioned existence and come into the world to reveal the truth.

The bodhisattva occupies a similarly ambiguous position. He belongs to the conditioned world, yet aspires to transcend it. He possesses Buddha-potential, but has not necessarily realized it completely. He is both what he is and what he may become. This is particularly evident in the advanced bodhisattva of Mahayana Buddhism, who may possess extraordinary insight and spiritual capacities while continuing to cultivate the perfections necessary for complete Buddhahood.

The Buddhist tradition also describes relations between bodhisattvas, buddhas, and beings inhabiting the higher planes of existence. Divine beings, commonly translated as gods or deities, inhabit realms characterized by extraordinary longevity, beauty, happiness, and power. Their modes of existence differ from those of human beings, and some are described as possessing refined or nonmaterial bodies. Nevertheless, they remain conditioned beings. They are subject to impermanence and, except where they have attained liberation, to ignorance and rebirth. These divine beings resemble, in certain respects, the gods, angels, and spiritual intelligences described in other religious traditions. The similarities invite comparative investigation.

The Pali Canon repeatedly describes encounters between the Buddha and divine beings. Sometimes these beings request instruction. Sometimes they offer praise or information. At other times, the Buddha corrects their misunderstandings. The relationship is significant because even the highest divine beings are not necessarily enlightened. Spiritual power and liberation are distinct attainments.

The Buddha’s extraordinary knowledge is another important aspect of this tradition. The discourses attribute to him the recollection of previous lives, knowledge of the rebirth of beings according to their actions, and the realization of liberation through the destruction of the mental intoxicants. Later Buddhist traditions develop more extensive doctrines of Buddhahood and omniscience. The question of what these extraordinary forms of knowledge imply about consciousness remains open to philosophical investigation. Comparative studies of mystical experience, meditation, and psychedelics have documented experiences in which individuals report encounters with apparently autonomous intelligences or realities extending beyond ordinary perception. Such reports raise questions about the nature and capacities of consciousness that deserve serious investigation.

The contemporary scholar of religion Jeffrey J. Kripal has explored these questions extensively in his studies of mystical, paranormal, and other extraordinary experiences. In works such as Authors of the Impossible, The Superhumanities, and How to Think Impossibly, Kripal investigates reported phenomena that have striking parallels in the Pali Canon, including telepathy, clairvoyance, extraordinary perception, and the recollection of past lives. The Buddha describes such capacities among the higher knowledges (abhinna), along with extraordinary physical powers, knowledge of the rebirth of other beings, and the liberating knowledge that destroys the mental intoxicants. Kripal also examines precognition, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, and encounters with apparently autonomous intelligences. He challenges the conventional division between subjective experience and objective reality, suggesting that certain extraordinary experiences may require a conceptual framework that transcends the usual distinction between mind and matter. The parallels with Buddhist accounts of extraordinary knowledge and spiritual beings suggest a potentially fruitful field of comparative inquiry into the nature and capacities of consciousness.

The bodhisattva is therefore “in between.” He is in the world, but no longer entirely of it. He aspires to a Buddhahood that exists as a possibility but has not yet been completely realized. One may have intimations of Buddha-nature and still remain subject to delusion. Even advanced realizers may retain limitations that have not been fully overcome.

The complete realization of Buddha-potential culminates in nirvana, the extinction of craving, hatred, and delusion. The word “extinction” sounds negative from the standpoint of the conditioned world. Yet the Buddha characterizes emancipation positively as the supreme security from bondage: the unageing, unailing, deathless, sorrowless, and undefiled.

The extinction of ignorance is not the destruction of reality. It is liberation from delusion.  The early account of Gotama’s renunciation is particularly illuminating. In the Ariyapariyesana Sutta, Gotama describes leaving home while still young, despite the opposition of his parents, who wept as he departed. This differs from the later story in which the Bodhisattva secretly leaves the palace at night while his wife and infant son are sleeping. The contrast is revealing. The earlier account presents renunciation as a difficult human decision, undertaken despite emotional opposition. The later narrative gives it the character of a dramatic and almost mythological departure.

Gotama first sought instruction from Alara Kalama, an accomplished contemplative teacher who taught the attainment called the sphere of nothingness. Gotama mastered this attainment but remained dissatisfied. It did not bring the complete liberation he sought. He then approached Uddaka Ramaputta, associated with the still more refined attainment of neither-perception-nor-non-perception. This too he mastered, but once again he recognized its limitations.

The two attainments belong to the four formless spheres recognized in Buddhist cosmology and contemplative psychology. They are extraordinarily refined states of consciousness, but they are still conditioned and therefore impermanent. This illustrates an important Buddhist distinction: even the highest meditative absorption is not necessarily enlightenment.

The thirty-one planes of existence are traditionally understood as realms of rebirth, but they also bear significant relationships to states of consciousness. Certain heavenly and formless realms correspond to meditative attainments, suggesting a close connection between Buddhist cosmology and contemplative psychology. The precise ontological interpretation of these realms differs among Buddhist traditions. Nevertheless, the relationship between mental experience and cosmological existence is too important to dismiss. After studying with his two teachers, Gotama undertook a period of severe asceticism.

According to later Buddhist biographies, he was accompanied by five ascetics: Kondanna, Bhaddiya, Vappa, Mahanama, and Assaji. Kondanna was traditionally identified as the Brahman who, at Gotama’s naming ceremony, predicted that the child would become a fully awakened Buddha. The chronology of the five ascetics’ association with Gotama is not entirely clear in the earliest sources. What is clear is that they regarded his severe austerities as evidence of spiritual seriousness.

The wider religious environment of ancient India contained numerous ascetic movements, including traditions associated with Brahmanism, Jainism, and the developing worship of Shiva. Buddhism and Shaivism share certain historical and cultural features, including renunciation, yogic discipline, meditation, and the use of ascetic symbolism. Later developments in both traditions also display striking parallels in tantric practice and cemetery imagery. These correspondences arise from a complex and overlapping religious environment.

Gotama experimented with increasingly severe practices. He attempted to overcome the body through force of will, suppressed his breathing, endured intense pain, and reduced his intake of food to almost nothing. The Mahasaccaka Sutta describes his extraordinary determination and the physical consequences of his austerities. His body became emaciated, and he approached the limits of human endurance. Yet the promised liberation did not appear. Eventually, Gotama realized that the path of extreme self-mortification was mistaken.

He recalled an experience from childhood, when he had been sitting in the shade of a rose-apple tree while his father was occupied with agricultural work. Without forcing his mind or tormenting his body, he had entered the first meditative absorption, a state characterized by seclusion, happiness, and concentration. He asked himself whether this could be the way to enlightenment. The question marked a decisive turning point.

The happiness associated with meditative absorption was not the same as sensual indulgence. It arose from detachment rather than attachment. Therefore, it need not be rejected merely because it was pleasurable. But his weakened body could no longer sustain the necessary concentration. He resumed eating.

Later Buddhist tradition identifies a village woman named Sujata as the person who offered him milk-rice. Some accounts describe her as believing that she was making an offering to a tree spirit. The five ascetics, seeing Gotama abandon his severe austerities, concluded that he had returned to a life of indulgence. They left him. Alone, Gotama continued his investigation.

He entered progressively refined states of meditation, characterized by concentration, equanimity, clarity, and freedom from sensual attachment. According to the traditional account, during the three watches of the night he acquired three extraordinary forms of knowledge. During the first watch, he recollected his previous lives. During the second, he perceived the passing away and rebirth of beings according to their actions. During the third, he realized the Four Noble Truths and the destruction of the mental intoxicants. With the cessation of ignorance and craving, he attained complete emancipation.

This account does not present enlightenment as the discovery of a permanent personal identity underlying all existence. Rather, it describes the direct realization of conditioned existence, moral causality, suffering, and its cessation. From a broader philosophical perspective, one may interpret this realization as transcending the apparent separation of self and world. Gotama had become the Buddha.

The Chain of Cause and Effect

One of the Buddha’s most profound discoveries was the principle of dependent origination, or paticcasamuppada. The Pali-English Dictionary describes the term in relation to arising on the basis of preceding conditions. The underlying principle is that phenomena arise dependent upon causes and conditions and cease when those conditions cease. The idea of causality was already familiar in ancient Indian thought. The Buddha’s originality lay not simply in recognizing that causes produce effects, but in applying conditionality systematically to the arising and cessation of suffering.

The doctrine also suggests a wider philosophical vision of interconnectedness. Things do not exist in complete isolation. They arise through relationships, conditions, and processes that extend beyond the boundaries by which ordinary perception divides reality into separate entities. Nevertheless, dependent origination should not simply be equated with the proposition that everything causes everything else. Its central function in the early discourses is more precise: it explains how suffering arises and how it can cease.

Ananda once remarked to the Buddha that dependent origination seemed quite clear and straightforward. The Buddha corrected him. He declared the doctrine profound and difficult to understand, and explained that failure to penetrate it leaves beings entangled in the cycle of rebirth. The difficulty is not merely intellectual. It concerns the structure of experience itself.

In the Nagara Sutta, the Discourse on the Ancient City, the Buddha describes investigating dependent origination while he was still a bodhisattva, before his complete enlightenment. He began with the immediate human predicament: ageing, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair. What is their cause? The answer was birth. But what conditions birth? Becoming. What conditions becoming? Clinging. What conditions clinging? Craving. What conditions craving? Feeling.

And so the investigation continued, moving progressively toward more fundamental conditions. The fully developed twelvefold sequence of dependent origination is conventionally presented as follows:

1. Ignorance;
2. Volitional formations;
3. Consciousness;
4. Name-and-form;
5. The six sense bases;
6. Contact;
7. Feeling;
8. Craving;
9. Clinging;
10. Becoming;
11. Birth; and
12. Ageing and death.

These twelve links describe the conditioned arising of the whole mass of suffering. The sequence is not merely a theory of individual psychology, although it has profound psychological implications. It also concerns the continuity of conditioned existence and rebirth. The precise relationship between these dimensions has been interpreted differently by Buddhist schools. Ignorance, avijja, is not simply the absence of information. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of reality, particularly the Four Noble Truths and the conditioned nature of experience.

Ignorance conditions volitional formations, sankhara, the activities and dispositions through which intention and karma operate. These condition consciousness, vinnana, which in turn conditions name-and-form, namarupa. Name refers to the mental aspects of experience, including feeling, perception, intention, contact, and attention. Form refers to the material aspect of the living organism. Together, name-and-form express the psycho-physical structure of individual existence.

Here the doctrine becomes especially interesting. In the Nagara Sutta, the Buddha describes consciousness and name-and-form as mutually conditioning each other. Consciousness conditions name-and-form, and name-and-form conditions consciousness. The relationship is reciprocal. Bhikkhu Bodhi has described this relationship in terms suggesting a mutually sustaining process. The image of a vortex is appropriate: rather than a simple linear succession, one encounters an interdependent system in which the elements continuously sustain one another.

One may compare this with certain descriptions of cyclic processes in later Buddhist philosophy, including Vajrayana. Padmasambhava, the great eighth-century tantric master associated with the transmission of Buddhism to Tibet, belongs to a tradition that explores such interdependent processes through the language of consciousness, energy, and transformation. The comparison is suggestive, although the historical and doctrinal contexts differ.

From name-and-form arise the six sense bases: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and thinking. These condition contact, the conjunction of sense faculty, object, and corresponding consciousness. Contact conditions feeling, particularly pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feeling. Feeling conditions craving. Craving conditions clinging. Clinging conditions becoming, bhava, the process of karmically conditioned existence leading toward renewed birth. Becoming conditions birth, and birth conditions ageing, death, and the entire mass of suffering. The doctrine thus describes a system of conditional relations extending from fundamental ignorance to the existential predicament with which the Buddha began.

Several aspects of this analysis deserve particular attention. First, the Buddha’s investigation did not begin with an ontological absolute. He began with direct experience. He observed that beings are born, age, suffer, and die. He then investigated the conditions responsible for these experiences. This method resembles, in certain respects, later philosophical approaches associated with phenomenology, process philosophy, and existentialism. The suggests that the direct investigation of experience can generate philosophical insights across very different historical and cultural contexts.

Second, the doctrine reveals the inadequacy of treating things as self-sufficient entities. The individual is not an isolated substance existing independently of conditions. Consciousness, embodiment, perception, feeling, desire, and volition arise through interdependent processes. This is a profound challenge to the ordinary conception of the self.

Third, dependent origination has both psychological and cosmological implications. At the psychological level, it explains how sensory experience gives rise to feeling, craving, attachment, and suffering. At the cosmological level, it explains the continuity of conditioned existence through rebirth. These dimensions are interconnected, although they should not simply be treated as identical.

Fourth, the doctrine establishes a relationship between ignorance and the entire conditioned structure of suffering. This raises a difficult philosophical question. If ignorance is the fundamental condition of samsaric existence, what is the relationship between ignorance and ultimate reality? The early discourses do not answer this question by declaring that the absolute itself is ignorant. Indeed, such an assertion would create serious problems for the Buddhist understanding of the unconditioned. Nevertheless, later Buddhist traditions explored the relationship between primordial awareness, ignorance, and the appearance of differentiated experience.

One finds particularly interesting discussions in the Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions, including texts such as the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment. These developments invite comparison with the psychology of C. G. Jung. Jung understood the unconscious not simply as a storehouse of repressed psychological material but as a vast field of psychic possibilities, some of which may become conscious through the process of individuation.

From a comparative philosophical standpoint, one might ask whether the differentiation of consciousness is involved in the emergence of the world as experienced. Such a comparison must remain speculative. The Buddhist doctrine of ignorance is not equivalent to Jung’s unconscious, nor does dependent origination establish that the universe is an unconscious absolute awakening to itself. Nevertheless, the analogy raises important questions concerning consciousness, differentiation, and the relationship between the individual and the whole. It also helps explain why I prefer the expression “Buddha-potential” to the more familiar “Buddha-nature” as a translation or interpretation of tathagatagarbha.

The latter expression can suggest that every being already possesses a fully realized Buddha hidden within themselves. This conception invites comparison with the Hindu doctrine of atman, the permanent Self, which certain Upanishadic traditions identify with ultimate reality, or Brahman. Indeed, some Mahayana texts, notably the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, explicitly identify Buddha-nature with a true Self, although they distinguish this from the ordinary conception of an individual, permanent self. The relationship between this teaching and the fundamental Buddhist doctrine of non-self remains a matter of considerable interpretation and debate. Other Buddhist traditions explain the continuity of individual existence through the concept of a mindstream, a succession of conditioned mental events that does not require a permanent self.

But if that Buddha were already perfectly enlightened, how could ignorance and delusion persist? The concept of potential avoids this apparent contradiction. One may possess the potential for enlightenment without having realized enlightenment. The potential is real, but its complete manifestation requires the removal of ignorance.This is not the only possible interpretation of Buddha-nature. Some Mahayana traditions understand original purity and adventitious defilement in ways that do not require a temporal process of producing enlightenment. Nevertheless, the distinction between potential and realization remains philosophically useful.

Fifth, dependent origination identifies the practical points at which liberation becomes possible. One cannot simply decide not to have been born. Nor can one abolish the six senses by an act of will. But craving can be understood and abandoned. Ignorance can be overcome through wisdom. Thus, the chain of dependent origination contains within itself the possibility of its own cessation.

The Buddha describes not only the arising of suffering but also the cessation of the conditions that sustain it. With the cessation of ignorance, volitional formations cease. With the cessation of formations, the conditioned sequence leading to suffering is ended. This is the significance of reversal. The doctrine that explains bondage also reveals liberation.

The Four Noble Truths identify craving as the origin of suffering. Dependent origination places craving within a more extensive system of conditions, ultimately rooted in ignorance. Consequently, wisdom occupies a fundamental position in the Buddhist path. The early path of renunciation emphasizes the cessation of craving. Mahayana develops the cultivation of wisdom into a comprehensive ideal, particularly through the Prajnaparamita literature. These are not mutually exclusive approaches. The cessation of craving and the destruction of ignorance are complementary dimensions of liberation. The perfection of wisdom is therefore not an alien addition to Buddhism. It develops an insight already central to the Buddha’s discovery: the decisive importance of understanding reality as it is.

In the Prajnaparamita literature, wisdom becomes the means by which the bodhisattva transforms limited meritorious actions into an aspiration directed toward the welfare and enlightenment of all beings. The underlying principle is that wisdom gives spiritual practice its proper direction and ultimate significance.

Perfect Wisdom

Perfect Wisdom, prajnaparamita, is the perfection of wisdom emphasized in Mahayana Buddhism. Its relationship to Right View is especially important. Right View is the first factor of the Noble Eightfold Path. It establishes the understanding that guides the remaining factors: intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration. The perfection of wisdom is not simply another name for Right View. It represents a developed Mahayana understanding of liberating insight, particularly insight into emptiness and the absence of independent self-existence. Nevertheless, the two are philosophically continuous. Both recognize that liberation depends upon understanding the nature of reality.

Peter Masefield, in his important study Divine Revelation in the Pali Canon, drew attention to the significance of hearing and understanding the Dharma in the process of spiritual realization. The early discourses repeatedly refer to the breakthrough by wisdom. This is especially important in the transmission of Buddhism to the West. Many Westerners misunderstand wisdom. Some treat it as a remote goal that can only be attained after years of formal meditation. Others dismiss philosophical understanding as mere intellectualism. Both misunderstandings obscure its actual role. Wisdom is not merely the accumulation of concepts. Nor is it necessarily opposed to meditative development. It is the direct understanding of things as they are.

The Buddha is clear that mere reasoning is insufficient for enlightenment. Yet the Pali Canon also describes disciples who achieve profound realization upon hearing the Dharma, sometimes with little evidence of prolonged formal meditative training. The discourse itself becomes the occasion for insight. This is not a rejection of meditation. It demonstrates that meditative realization and wisdom cannot always be separated into rigidly successive stages. One may hear a teaching, recognize its truth, and undergo a decisive transformation of understanding.

The Eightfold Path is conventionally presented as a sequence, but its factors are also mutually supporting. Right View informs Right Intention. Right Intention informs conduct. Ethical discipline supports concentration, and concentration supports the further cultivation of wisdom. The relationship is dynamic rather than mechanical. This brings us back to dependent origination. Just as ignorance conditions the arising of suffering, wisdom makes possible its cessation. Nirvana is unconditioned, but the path leading to its realization involves conditions: hearing the Dharma, wise attention, ethical cultivation, meditation, and insight.

We must distinguish the unconditioned character of liberation from the conditioned practices through which it is realized. The Buddha did not invent this path. He rediscovered it. In the Nagara Sutta, he compares himself to a man wandering through a forest who discovers an ancient road leading to a forgotten city. The traveller follows the road, finds the city, and makes its existence known. Similarly, the Buddha discovered the ancient path followed by the fully awakened Buddhas of previous ages. That path is the Noble Eightfold Path. The image is profoundly suggestive. The teaching is not a system created arbitrarily by an individual. It is the disclosure of a truth inherent in the structure of reality. The Buddha’s achievement was to rediscover that truth, realize it completely, and make the path accessible to others.

The Mission of the Buddha

After attaining enlightenment, the Buddha initially hesitated to teach. He reflected that the Dharma he had discovered was profound, difficult to perceive, peaceful, subtle, and accessible to the wise. Human beings, however, were attached to sensual pleasure and deeply immersed in ignorance.  Would anyone understand?

According to the traditional account, Brahma Sahampati appeared before the Buddha and urged him to teach, declaring that there were beings with little dust in their eyes who would understand the Dharma if they heard it. The Buddha surveyed the world with the eye of a Buddha and recognized that beings differed in their capacities. Some were deeply immersed in delusion. Others were prepared to understand. He resolved to teach.

His first thought was to seek out his former teachers, Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta. Both had been capable contemplatives, and he believed they might understand his discovery. But he learned that both had died. He therefore decided to seek the five ascetics who had formerly accompanied him.

On the road, he encountered the ascetic Upaka. The Buddha declared that he had attained complete awakening and was going to proclaim the Deathless. Upaka was skeptical. The Buddha had no living teacher whose authority could be invoked to establish the authenticity of his attainment. Upaka apparently found this extraordinary claim unconvincing. He shook his head and took another road.

The episode is revealing. The Buddha’s realization could not be authenticated through an established religious lineage or institutional credential. Its authority would have to be demonstrated through the teaching itself and the realization of those capable of understanding it.

The Buddha proceeded to the Deer Park at Isipatana, near Benares, the modern Varanasi. There he encountered his former companions. At first, they resolved not to honour him. They remembered that he had abandoned extreme asceticism and believed that he had returned to luxury.

Nevertheless, when he approached, their resolve weakened. They received him and eventually agreed to hear his teaching. The Buddha began with the Middle Way. He identified two extremes to be avoided: devotion to sensual pleasure and devotion to self-mortification.

The first was ignoble and unprofitable. The second was painful and equally unprofitable. The Middle Way avoided both. The Buddha identified it with the Noble Eightfold Path, which leads to knowledge, peace, direct understanding, enlightenment, and nirvana.

He then expounded the Four Noble Truths. According to the traditional account, Kondanna was the first of the five to understand the teaching. The Dharma eye arose in him, and he attained stream-entry. Through subsequent instruction, the five ascetics eventually attained full liberation. The group became the nucleus of the Buddhist community.

The Buddha was no longer simply an awakened individual. He had become a teacher, and the Dharma had begun to circulate among human beings. According to later Buddhist tradition, Kondañña spent his final twelve years beside the legendary Mandakini Lake in the Chaddanta Forest, traditionally located in the Himalayan region. Accounts of his final visit to the Buddha emphasize his extraordinary devotion and gratitude. These traditions preserve the memory of Kondanna’s special position as the first disciple to penetrate the Dharma.

The Middle Way deserves further consideration. At its most immediate level, it rejects the extremes of sensual indulgence and self-torture. But its implications extend beyond those practices. Ethically, it suggests conduct guided by wisdom rather than either self-indulgence or rigid moralism. Psychologically, it suggests the cultivation of equilibrium, detachment, and awareness. Philosophically, it invites reflection on the transcendence of conceptual extremes. Later Buddhist traditions, particularly Madhyamaka, developed this last implication into a profound critique of fixed metaphysical positions.

The Middle Way came to signify not simply a compromise between opposing views but insight into the conditioned and empty nature of the categories through which reality is ordinarily understood. One may therefore interpret the Middle Way within yogic, ethical, and epistemological frameworks.

The Tibetan doctrine of the bardo, or intermediate state, also explores transitional conditions of consciousness and existence. The possibility of an intermediate existence between death and rebirth is suggested in the Pali Canon itself, notably in the Kutuhalasala Sutta (SN 44.9), as reflected in Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation. Although the existence of such a state was disputed among some early Buddhist schools and rejected by later Theravada orthodoxy, the canonical evidence suggests that the concept was not foreign to early Buddhism. Nevertheless, both the intermediate state and the Middle Way both invite reflection on the limits of rigid conceptual divisions.

The Buddha identified the Middle Way with the Eightfold Path. It is important to remember that a wheel turns. The coming forth of the teaching is dynamic. Dharma is not merely a collection of statements preserved from the past. It is a living process of understanding and realization, transmitted from one individual to another. Each genuine realization renews the teaching. In this sense, the Buddha set the Wheel of Dharma in motion at Sarnath. It continues to turn.

A later discourse provides a particularly revealing insight into the nature of the Buddha’s achievement. Ananda describes the marvellous qualities associated with the Tathagata, including the extraordinary circumstances surrounding his birth. The Buddha then adds another wonderful quality. Feelings, perceptions, and thoughts are known as they arise, as they remain present, and as they disappear. This is a remarkable statement.

Among the many wonders attributed to the Buddha, he identifies the direct awareness of mental phenomena as itself worthy of admiration. One may reasonably conclude that the disciplined observation of experience is more fundamental to enlightenment than the display of miracles.

The Buddha’s achievement was not merely the acquisition of extraordinary powers. It was the realization of the nature of experience and the cessation of the ignorance that perpetuates suffering. This also explains his rejection of extreme asceticism. The body need not be tortured in order for wisdom to arise. Indeed, self-mortification may become another form of attachment to physicality.

What matters is the transformation of consciousness through detachment, concentration, and understanding. The Buddha illustrates this principle through three similes of fire-making. In the first, a person attempts to produce fire by rubbing a wet, sappy piece of wood lying in water. The attempt is futile. In the second, the wood lies on dry land but remains wet and sappy. The attempt is still futile. In the third, the wood is dry, without sap, and lies on dry land. Now fire can be produced.

The Buddha explains that the decisive factor is not simply whether a practitioner engages in painful austerities. It is whether sensual attachment has been relinquished inwardly. A person who remains attached to sensual pleasure cannot attain liberation merely by tormenting the body. A person who has relinquished that attachment possesses the necessary conditions for awakening, whether or not he practises painful austerities.

The symbolism of fire is especially interesting. Throughout Indian religious history, fire represents transformation, purification, spiritual power, and illumination. Later yogic and tantric traditions develop this symbolism through concepts such as kundalini and the Tibetan practice of tummo, or inner heat. The comparison reveals a recurring association between spiritual transformation and the imagery of ignition. The dry wood is capable of producing fire because the conditions are right. Similarly, enlightenment becomes possible when the conditions obstructing realization have been removed.

The symbolism also recalls the Buddha’s traditional association with the solar lineage of the Sakyas. He is sometimes called the kinsman of the Sun. The Sun, as a symbol of illumination and the overcoming of darkness, provides an appropriate image for the emergence of wisdom from ignorance. From a comparative perspective, one might call the path of transcendence a solar path, not because Buddhist liberation literally requires the worship of the Sun, but because illumination expresses the essential character of awakening.

The Buddha’s decisive discovery was that neither indulgence nor self-torture constitutes the way. Both remain entangled in the conditioned world when pursued through craving and attachment. The true path begins with the recognition of suffering and the intention to understand its causes. Through ethical cultivation, concentrated awareness, and liberating wisdom, the practitioner gradually abandons the conditions that sustain bondage.

The Buddha himself followed this path. He investigated suffering, rejected inadequate methods, recognized the significance of meditative happiness, penetrated dependent origination, and attained complete liberation. His realization was not a repudiation of the world through despair, nor an attempt to perpetuate its pleasures indefinitely. It was the discovery of a freedom beyond craving, ignorance, and involuntary rebirth. This is why the Buddha is called the Tathagata, the Thus Gone One. He has gone beyond the conditions that bind ordinary beings, yet his teaching remains within the world as the means by which others may follow.

The path is ancient, but its realization is always immediate. It is the path of wisdom. And its destination is the Deathless.

Revised October 30, 2026

Notes

[1] The fourth Buddha, Dipankara, is said to have predicted the future enlightenment of Sumedha, a rich Brahman turned hermit, who numerous kappas later was born as Gotama. Our age is blessed that it will have known five Buddhas: Kakusandha, Konagamana, Kassapa, Gotama, and Metteyya. Metteyya will appear in the distant future.

[2] There is some evidence in the Pali Canon for a Northern Buddhist tradition Gotama renounced the world at the age of 19, and attained enlightenment at 30, but the mainstream tradition says 29 and 35. In fact, he was probably 28 and 34 respectively in Western reckoning, since Asian chronology considers an infant to be one year old at birth.

[3] In the Anguttara Nikaya, the Buddha compares the practices of self-mortification with the physical, verbal, and mental impurities of the Brahmans, and declares neither will attain enlightenment because of their exclusive emphasis on the physical.

[4] Pali-English Dictionary (see bibliography).

[5] Thus, Vinnyana is similar to the Cabalistic concept of the nephesch.

[6] Uppaka was an Ajiwaka, one of the five major samana philosophies. The Ajiwakas believed in cosmic determinism. The other schools were the hedonistic Lokayata (or Charwaka), the ascetic Jain (or Nirgrantha), the agnostic Ajnana, and Buddhism itself.

[7] The Gnostic Society Library, The Gospel of Thomas Collection,  Logion 13, http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl_thomas.htm.