1. To cultivate Vipassanā (‘insight meditation’), one must first comprehend those ‘insights.’ That means understanding the ‘true nature of the world.’
- Our sensory experiences do not reveal the ‘true nature of the world.’
- As I have discussed in many recent posts, our sensory experiences do not reveal the ‘true nature of the world.’ They are masked by ‘kāma saññā‘ for us living in the ‘kāma loka.’
- For example, we think strawberries are red and tasty. But the ‘red color’ or the ‘taste’ is not in strawberries.
2. Generating yathābhuta ñāna (‘comprehension of the true nature of the world’) is the key to attaining a magga phala, let alone Buddhahood.
- Average humans like us attain that yathābhuta ñāna by learning from a Buddha or a true disciple of the Buddha.
- But a Bodhisatta (especially after receiving niyata vivaraṇa from a Buddha) cannot learn from another, even from a Buddha.
- The reason is the following. A Bodhisatta’s task is to discover and teach the ‘true nature of the world’ in a time when Buddhist teachings are not available in the world. If a Bodhisatta learns and comprehends yathābhuta ñāna from another Buddha, there will be no one to discover those teachings in a maha kappa where no other Buddha is born. As we know, once one attains a magga phala, one will attain Arahanthood within ‘seven bhava‘ (which means during the same Buddha Sāsana) and thus will not be reborn in this world again; i.e., the Bodhisatta will not be reborn in a time where the teachings of a Buddha are not present. That defeats the purpose of becoming a Bodhisatta!
- That is why, especially after receiving niyata vivaraṇa from a Buddha, a Bodhisatta is destined to discover the ‘true nature of the world’ only when there is no other Buddha present. Only one Buddha can appear in a given time. Even though there have been five Buddhās in the current maha kappa, and Buddha Gotama was the fourth one, their times did not overlap. The fifth Buddha (Buddha Maithreya) will be born only after the teachings of Buddha Gotama disappear from the world.
