A Buddha is a special kind of enlightened being — one who attains awakening entirely through his own effort, without a teacher. From this it follows that there are different kinds of enlightened beings. Buddhas are rare, but they are not unique. That is to say, Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, was not the only Buddha. Therefore, his teaching is not the only Buddha-Dharma.
This is an important distinction that sets Buddhism apart from Christianity. For the Christian, the birth of Jesus was a singular event — a unique historical moment that permanently and irrevocably transformed reality. In light of what we know about the nature of time and causality, this raises problems analogous to those posed by theism itself.
The Buddha, however, described himself as the latest in a lineage of self-awakened beings appearing cyclically across vast epochs. These cycles of self-discovery are without beginning and stretch across immeasurable aeons — hundreds of thousands, millions, even billions of years — not unlike the geological and astronomical cycles identified by science. The teachings of the Buddha, the Dharma, are not new inventions but rediscoveries of a primordial truth coterminous with reality itself and with the most ancient strata of Indian civilization. The Vedic tradition, ritualized in the Brahmanic culture of the fifth century BCE, represents one such early expression, against which the Buddha reacted. Yet Vedic civilization is not the only possible expression of Dharma. One would expect Dharma to manifest spontaneously throughout the multiverse, just as life itself does, for it is the Dharma to which the Buddhas awaken and which they, in turn, reveal to others. Thus, the Buddha cautioned his followers against attachment to rites, rules, and dogmatic beliefs.
The appearance of a Buddha necessarily transforms his world — altering the moral and even the physical conditions of the age in which he appears. The Buddha is not only a man of wisdom but also of power: his renunciation and enlightenment constitute an act of power. For this reason we speak of a Buddhist era, or epoch, beginning with the parinibbāna of the Buddha, traditionally dated between 405 and 383 BCE, though other reckonings place it earlier. One may also speak of epochs originating in his enlightenment or birth.
According to the Pali Canon, Siddhartha Gautama was the twenty-eighth Buddha in the lineage of this eon (kalpa). His immediate predecessor was Kassapa, the third of the five Buddhas of the present age. The first Buddha of this world cycle is usually named Tanhankara, though some sources name Dipankara. The Nidānakathā records that once Gautama formulated the resolve to attain perfect awakening, it required innumerable rebirths — billions of lifetimes — before he achieved Buddhahood.
In that primordial time, human beings were said to be long-lived and radiant, existing at a subtler level of vibration. Over time, their vitality diminished, and they became material and mortal. The Aggañña Sutta describes this devolution vividly: luminous beings, feeding on joy, gradually became coarse, developing gender, greed, and violence, and eventually organizing themselves under the first elected ruler, Mahāsammata — “the Great Appointed One.” This myth can be interpreted as a poetic allegory for humanity’s descent from a paradisal, pre-agricultural consciousness into the Neolithic and beyond.
Thus, higher beings degenerate into lower beings until the nadir of the cycle is reached. The Buddha predicted that the next Buddha, Metteyya (Skt. Maitreya), will not appear until the Dharma is forgotten — five thousand years after his own parinibbāna. There can only be one Buddha per world at a time. This suggests a future advent around 4600 CE, after a period of great decline. The Cakkavatti-Sīhanāda Sutta foretells that this dark era will culminate in anarchy, followed by a new golden age of Dharma. Although popular tradition depicts Maitreya as arising at the nadir, the Pali Canon places his birth at the height of the renewed civilization, when human life and understanding reach their maximum. At some immeasurable time thereafter, the kalpa itself will end.
The term kalpa defies exact definition; it signifies an aeon of immense duration — millions or even billions of years — subdivided into smaller cycles, some as short as a decade, further complicating any attempt at precise chronology. Thus, the enumeration of twenty-eight Buddhas should not be taken literally as a measure of time but as a symbolic expression of cosmic entropy.
The Pali Canon encodes fragments of immemorial cosmology, including a description of the earth as composed of four great continents and eight subcontinents — a pattern whose mythic topology may preserve memories of remote prehistory. Between kalpas, worlds perish in fire, famine, and pestilence, but the present cycle cannot end until Maitreya appears, and Maitreya’s advent lies far ahead. We are not living at the end of the age. Rather, we stand midway through the 5,000-year Dharma cycle — the beginning of its second half — which preserves the teaching of Gautama Buddha.
True Dharma is universal and absolute, identical with reality itself. Yet the succession of Buddhas reveals a gradual decline — not of awakening itself, but of the human and cosmic conditions under which awakening arises. Over time, comprehension and lifespan decrease, and with them the capacity to grasp the original Dharma. Hence, the Dharma transmitted through the Vinaya, Sutta, and Abhidhamma — whether Hinayana, Mahayana, or Vajrayana — cannot be identical to that of the first Buddha, Tanhankara. Nevertheless, vital elements of the primordial Dharma persist, embedded within the cultural and historical matrix of subsequent ages, as gold is found within ore. Through the application of energy — disciplined inquiry, meditation, and realization — this gold can be refined to its original essence. This was precisely the method by which Gautama Buddha recovered the lost spirit of Brahmanism, and it remains the means by which we may recover the philosophia perennis, the prisca theologia — the universal primordial Dharma.
The revelation of Dharma always opens a rare opportunity: even now, one may realize the true teaching hidden within its historical forms, with or without a teacher. At this midpoint of the current 5,000-year cycle, the gold of Buddhism survives in its innermost and most secret traditions — accessible through direct mindfulness and the method of skeptical inquiry.
Note:
- Thus given the current chronology the 2500-year cycle will change between 2016 and 2118 CE.
- During the current historical epoch the Buddha himself was preceded by two “proclamations,” one hundred and one thousand years before his advent, perhaps Laozi (6th century BCE) and the Rigveda (15th century BCE).
Dharmata 