Why is America really called "America"?

Seth Auberon, Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; "The Naming of America: Fragments We've Shored Against Ourselves" by Johnathan Cohen (uhmc.sunysb.edu)

USA is #1 at ideals but not soccer, human rights, peacemaking... (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Where are all the fireworks and star-spangled spectacles? (losangeles.cbslocal.com)

Local MTV feeder, KROQ FM (CBS, Inc.) reveals best places in LA/OC to watch fireworks

 

Navajo flag representing Native Americans

USA - It's [Declaration of] Independence Day, the 4th of July, so it's time to decry war and conquest and to celebrate rebellion.

England sent out invaders with lots of technology, took over most of the known world, including this ancient naga territory of America -- which is NOT named after Amerigo Vespucci or any old European map. Then we rebelled, absorbed people from all over the world, mostly from Africa, where are forebears stole them from, and mixed with the indigenous people we did not kill off.

 

This country belongs to the 99% (occupy.com)

It's odd that place names are kept the same when invaders can easily change them on a whim, as they do in many places to remind them of home. Whatever the reason, whatever its name, the English, Spanish, French, Vikings -- and earlier the Afghans/Chinese (judging from the body of written records and anthropological evidence), Egyptians (judging from the pyramids and the trace amounts of "New World" cocaine in ancient Egyptian mummies), the Khmer (judging from the megalithic architecture and strange demise of various pre-Mexican Mesoamerican empires mimicking the history of the Southeast Asian Empire of Angkor in present-day Cambodia), and Africans or Australian aborigines (judging from the fossil record). But the story is even stranger, and it is certainly connected one way or another to the very ancient earthling nagas.

• USA (NSA) declares war on all electronic privacy
  

How it's done in formerly Buddhist Kyrgyzstan, Independence Day, Bishkek (Cyrille Gibot)

The name America (applied to present-day Brazil) appeared for what is believed the first time on Martin Waldseemüller's 1507 world map, known as the Baptismal Certificate of the New World and also America's Birth Certificate. More

América, no invoco tu nombre en vano

["America, I don't invoke your name in vain"]

-Pablo Neruda, Canto General

The Naming of America

Johnathan Cohen (edited by Wisdom Quarterly)

"America" (gabelli-us.com)

AMERICA, we [incorrectly] learn as schoolchildren, was named in honor of Amerigo Vespucci, for his discovery of the mainland of the New World. We tend not to question this [deceptive] lesson about the naming of America.
 

By the time we are adults it lingers vaguely in most of us, along with images of wave-tossed caravels and forests peopled with naked cannibals. Not surprisingly, the notion that America was named for Vespucci has long been universally accepted, so much so that a lineal descendant, America Vespucci, came to New Orleans in 1839 and asked for a land grant "in recognition of her name and parentage."
 

Since the late 19th century, however, conflicting ideas about the truth of the derivation have been set forth with profound cultural and political implications. To question the origin of America's name is to question the nature of not only our history lessons but our very identity as Americans.
 

Traditional history lessons about the discovery of America also raise questions about the meaning of discovery itself. It is now universally recognized that neither Vespucci nor Columbus "discovered" America. They were of course preceded by the pre-historic Asian forebears of Native Americans, who migrated across some ice-bridge in the Bering Straits or over the stepping stones of the Aleutian Islands.

 

A black African discovery of America, it has been argued, took place around 3,000 years ago and influenced the development of Mayan, Aztec, and Inca civilizations [judging from facial features of the large stone monuments and other records].
 

The records of Scandinavian expeditions to America are found in sagas -- their historic cores encrusted with additions made by every storyteller who had ever repeated them. The Icelandic Saga of Eric the Red, the settler of Greenland, which tells how Eric's son Leif came to Vinland, was first written down in the second half of the 13th century, 250 years after Leif found a western land full of "wheatfields and vines"; from this history emerged a fanciful theory in 1930 that the origin of "America" is Scandinavian: Amt meaning "district" plus Eric, to form Amteric, or the Land of (Leif) Eric.
 

Other Norsemen went out to the land Leif had discovered; in fact, contemporary advocates of the Norse connection claim that from around the beginning of the 11th century, North Atlantic sailors called this place Ommerike (oh-MEH-ric-eh), an Old Norse word meaning "farthest outland."
 

(This theory is currently being promoted by white supremacists of the so-called Christian Party, who are intent on preserving the nation's Nordic character, and who argue that the Norse Ommerike derives from the Gothic Amalric which, according to them, means "Kingdom of Heaven.")
 

But most non-Scandinavians were ignorant of these sailors' bold exploits until the 17th century, and what they actually found was not seriously discussed by European geographers until the 18th century.

 

Further, other discoveries of America have been credited to the Irish, who had sailed to a land they called Iargalon, the land beyond the sunset, and to the Phoenicians, who purportedly came here before the Norse.
 

The 1497 voyage by John Cabot to the Labrador coast of Newfoundland constitutes yet another discovery of the American mainland, which led to an early 20th-century account of the naming of America, recently revived, that claims the New World was named after an Englishman (Welshman, actually) called Richard Amerike.
 

 
Yet, despite the issue of who discovered America, we are still confronted with the awesome fact that it was the voyages of Columbus, and not earlier ones, that changed the course of world history.

Indeed, as Tzvetan Todorov, author of The Conquest of America (1984; tr. Richard Howard), has argued,
 

"The conquest of America...heralds and establishes our present identity; even if every date that permits us to separate any two periods is arbitrary, none is more suitable, in order to mark the beginning of the modern era, than the year 1492, the year Columbus crosses the Atlantic Ocean."
 
Columbus clearly made a monumental discovery in showing Europe how to sail across the Atlantic; Vespucci's great contribution was to tell Europe that the land Columbus had found was not Asia but a New World (and that a western route to Asia involved yet another ocean beyond it). 
 
[What about the name?]

The naming of America, then, becomes essential to a full understanding of our history and cultural values -- ourselves -- especially when considered in terms of the range of theories about the origin of the name. 

The Maya Connection

The most explosive, haunting, almost credible etymology -- the so-called Amerrique theory, which was first advanced in 1875 -- reappeared in the late 1970s in an essay by Guyanan novelist Jan Carew, titled "The Caribbean Writer and Exile."

Here Carew focuses on the identity struggle of Caribbeans who are "subject to successive waves of cultural alienation from birth -- a process that has its origins embedded in a mosaic of cultural fragments -- Amerindian, African, European, Asian."

He adds that "the European fragment is brought into sharper focus than the others, but it remains a fragment." It is in his discussion of this European fragment that he turns to the early historical accounts written by "European colonizers, about their apocalyptic intrusion into the Amerindian domains" -- histories which, he argues, are largely fictions "characterized, with few exceptions, by romantic evasions of truth and voluminous omissions."

Carew moves from the "fictions" of Columbus to those of Vespucci with these striking words: "Alberigo Vespucci, and I deliberately use his authentic Christian name, a Florentine dilettante and rascal, corrected Columbus's error [thinking he had found the Orient]...Vespucci, having sailed to the American mainland... More

DNA: Are Native Americans, Mexicans Asian?

Xochitl, Ashley Wells, Dhr.Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Scott Neuman (All Things Considered, NPR.org, 5-16-14), "Ancient skeleton in Mexico sheds light on Americas settlement"

In this June 2013 photo provided by National Geographic, diver Susan Bird, working at the bottom of Hoyo Negro, a large dome-shaped underwater cave in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, brushes Naia's skull found at the site (Paul Nicklen/AP).

 

A nearly complete skeleton of a teenage girl (called "Naia") has yielded DNA clues linking her to Native Americans living today. She died 12,000-13,000 years ago in a cave in the Yucatan Peninsula (modern Mexico). 

 

The connection bolsters the prevailing theory that the sole route of human migration into North America took place over a Siberia-Alaska land bridge known as Beringia, starting 15,000-20,000 years ago.

 

NPR Science Correspondent Joe Palca says the skeleton of the girl, who died at age 15 to 16, was discovered in 2007 amid a complex of flooded caverns in Mexico known as Hoyo Negro, or "Black Hole."

 

Meditating Mayan figurine (MT)

Scientific American says, "She lies in a collapsed chamber together with the remains of 26 other large mammals, including a saber-toothed tiger, 600 meters from the nearest sinkhole. Most of the mammals became extinct around 13,000 years ago."

 

"It was impossible to safely recover the body from the cave location, so the research team dove to the cave and made bone measurements [on site]. They placed Naia's skull on a rotating tripod and set a camera on a second tripod next to it. Turning the skull slowly, they snapped pictures every 20 degrees. Later the team used the photographs to reconstruct a three-dimensional image."

 

Aztec Kwan Yin, Queen of Devas (LTG)

James Chatters of Applied Paleoscience in Bothell, Washington, led the study and published the results in the journal Science.

 

Chatters says the skeleton, known as Naia after the water nymphs (naiads) of Greek mythology, doesn't look much like modern Native Americans, who have narrower faces, different teeth, and a different palate.

 

"I could tell from the shape of the palette and some other aspects of the skull that she was similar to some of the other earliest Americans I'd seen," Chatters says. "So many differences that it seemed they must come from somewhere else." But the DNA told a different story. 

Taos Pueblo like Tibet, Southwest USA (NM)

The University of Texas at Austin's Deborah Bolnick, an expert in extracting ancient DNA from fossilized teeth and bones, got a sample of Naia's mitochondrial DNA [slower changing genetic information], which is inherited exclusively from the mother.

 

Bolnick found a lineage known as D-1 that's found in Northeast Asia (including Siberia, which is North Aisa) and also very common in Native Americans.

What that suggests, Bolnick says, is that the girl is indeed descended from the first humans to cross the land bridge and not some later migration from somewhere else.

 

That means the physical differences between the first "Paleoamericans" and Native Americans of today are the result of evolution since the great migration out of Asia.

 

LISTEN (2:41), DOWNLOAD, TRANSCRIPT (All Things Considered/NPR)

• Buddhism exists in Mexico today [Not so] surprisingly, one of six Tibet Houses in the world -- Casa Tibet México -- is located in Mexico City. It is used by the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Vajrayana leaders of Tibetan Buddhism to preserve and share Tibetan culture and spirituality [with Native Americans and modern European-invaded Mexicans]. There is a Thai Theravada Buddhist temple in Tamaulipas, in the Gulf of Mexico, where there are three monks from Thailand who teach the Dharma, as well as one monk from Cambodia (the former Khmer Empire most famous for building Angkor Wat).
• Buddhism in Mongolia (Vajrayana, shamanism)
• VIDEO: "Mysteries of Lost Temples, the City of Angkor and its Temple or Wat (National Geographic) A former naga-worshipping empire, once the greatest in Southeast Asia with a million urban and suburban inhabitants living in and around stone monuments in the jungle united by a sophisticated water distribution system.
• It existed in Mexico long ago: How the Swan Came to the Lake (Rick Fields)
• Ancient Mysteries (Nat Geo): "Lost City of Angkor Wat" - In 1860 Christian missionaries came across Buddhist ruins in the Cambodian jungle -- splendor right out of fairy tales, discovering a lost city twice as large as Manhattan. More

Commentary

Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

From Asia (China and Afghanistan) to California and Mexico (Int'l History Channel)

.

World's most famous Pueblo, Potala, Tibet

As we have noted repeatedly, the Buddhism practiced in Siberia, Russia (as well as Kalmykia, Europe) is Mongolian and Tibetan, with strong native animist and shamanistic influences, deriving from the Buddha's shramana movement in and around India.

 

It traveled up from Central Asia, modern day Afghanistan (part of ancient Gandhara, see the pioneering work of Dr. Ranajit Pal), into ancient Greece and Northern Asia. It is startlingly similar to Native American beliefs and practices, enhanced by visits from Afghan and Chinese Buddhist missionaries to Mexico and California long before the arrival of Columbus, as documented by Edward P. Vining, Hendon M. Harris, and our research on Puebloan Peoples in America. 

 

China's Fusang, our CA, Mexico

The Bering Strait land bridge is not the only route of spiritual ideas, DNA, and Asiatic culture. A great deal of it came directly and intact. 

 

One amazing "coincidence" is the similarity between the megalithic jungle cultures of Buddhist Angkor and other ancient city-states, part of the enormously successful Khmer Empire in modern Cambodia and Thailand, and the megalithic jungle empires of the Maya, Aztecs, Toltecs (see also Toltec Mounds State Archaeological Park), Olmecs, and Incas in Mexico (Mesoamerica) and South America.

Traces of it also existed in the modern "mound building" cultures in the United States, whose enormous size and sophistication (as well as being gigantic as individuals) make them part of "forbidden archaeology" as exposed by Dr. Michael Cremo.

Ancient Mesoamerica (pre-Spanish invasion) included parts of California, the USA, Mexico, Belize, the Mayan Empire, Guatemala (named after Gautama Buddha, according Rick Fields' accounts, Swans)... See detail

Buddhism in America before Columbus (video)

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; All History Buff (History Channel)

Polish Jew Christopher Columbus came to infect, rape, and enslave for Europe (AMN)

   

Long before Christians and Conquistadors

The Chinese made a map of the world

It's 455 and the Aztecs live in America as the Chinese begin to make their way to the "New World."

This was long before Chris(to) Columbus' merchant mission. In fact, no less than a dozen cultures have tales of these adventures woven into their histories, but they are noticeably absent in American history books. This documentary explores the possibility that Chinese Buddhists, Japanese, Polynesians, Norse, Welsh, Irish, Ancient Hebrews, and Solutreans [DNA evidence of Africans arriving 50,000 years ago not included] all made it to the Americas much earlier than the mass murderer Columbus. 

Afghan Buddhist monks discovered America shows American historian in 1885 (archive.org)

 

Tibetans (China) brought pueblos to Natives

In 455 AD Buddhist missionaries -- Chinese Hwui Shen and Afghan Buddhist monks -- brought the world-religion of Buddhism to the Native Americans 1,037 years before Columbus, the Conquistadors and Cortes, and European Christian-Catholic missionaries in general.
 
Buddhist missionaries made it to Mexico via California (when California was part of Mexico) according to surviving records (see Minute 8:20). The Chumash (Native Americans from Los Angeles, the Channel islands, and Santa Barbara along the coast of Southern California) were even visited by the Polynesians (Min. 34:20). What hard evidence, apart from written histories, is there for all this?

 

Avoiding European invasion and genocid

Some maritime archaeological artifacts were found in our very own Los Angeles (Min. 11:20). By the time the Welsh set off for the New World, the magnificent Buddhist Khmer Empire of Cambodia was completing Angkor Wat (Min. 20:00), the greatest urban city of the time with a million suburban inhabitants made of stone in the jungle just like those in Mexico and Mesoamerica/Central America built by the Maya, Olmec, Toltec, Inca, and Aztec empires. 

 

But let's rebuild the ships, trace the routes, test the artifacts, and analyze blood evidence to finally learn the answer to one of the greatest mysteries of all time -- Who really discovered America?

• VIDEO: Proof Chinese brought Buddhism to America
• Why would the Smithsonian and others hide history? (Forbidden Archeology with Michael Cremo) 
• Christoph Columbus was JEWISH, historians argue

Convert them like this, Columbus (Daily Mail)

Scholars now believe that Italian mass murderer Columbus was actually a Marrano, a "secret Jew," who feigned conversion to Catholicism. Historians say five clues to the explorer's faith can be found in his will. His famous voyage was funded not by the Queen of Spain, but by three prominent Jews -- and he first updated them on the progress of his quest. One new theory even suggests he may have been looking for a safe haven for Jews persecuted and driven out of Spain...

No, comments Lorenzo Damas: Search "Christopher Columbus History Turned Upside-Down by New Polish Biography." Historian Manuel Rosa has these links in his book “Kolumb: Historia Nieznana” (published May 8, 2012 in Poland), translated from the Spanish book “Colon: La Historia Nunca Contada. Jews weren't persecuted in Spain until later, and that will is a forgery.

I'm a Mexican Buddhist (video)

Crystal I. Quintero, Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly (PART 1)

Mexican-American in L.A. Sit and sit, wait and wait, grow and grow (Yoga9v/facebook)

Nathalie Cardone sings "Hasta Siempre" (Forever, lit. Until Always) subtitled lyrics

Devotion (Guido Dingemans/flickr.com)

Can one be Latin American and Buddhist? It seems like such an American, particularly a Californian, thing to do. Then I think, California was Latin America, a part of Mexico, until it was invaded and annexed by the USA. This was during the American-Spanish War, post British colonial invasion, after Columbus and the Conquistadores buttered up the people with European diseases and sadistic Old World ways.

The amazing thing is that Mexico and Mesoamerica (the stretch of land between North America and South America), El Norte being the US, Canada, and Greenland, was Buddhist long before it was Catholic, Christian, or agnostic.

Ernesto Che Guevara Lynch, Latin-Irish revolutionary hero

(Society for Irish Latin American Studies)

Afghan Buds in America

For long ago Asian Buddhist monks from China visited and shared a wealth of advanced technological knowledge about spirituality, religion, pottery, art, food, and everything (and everyone) under the Sun.

It's how the Native Americans -- the American "Indians," the First Nations of Canada, the Indigenous Mexicans, the Inuit of Alaska and Greenland -- got such advanced spiritual knowledge while presumably living like cave dwellers in a "savage" pre-colonial environment.

Hope Sandoval, once lead singer of Mazzy Star, performing their greatest hit, "Fade Into You"

Which world-religion was first?

Wisdom Quarterly has covered much of this shocking new historical territory (with Rick Fields, Edward P. Vining, the History Channel, National Geographic, Hendon Harris, and others), so the real question is, Why would any modern person prefer to find guidance in the Enlightened One?

If the first Noble Truth is "All conditioned existence is disappointing or unsatisfactory," my own suffering, particularly in the Love Department, resonates with that. I weep, I hurt, I'm happy to roll in disappointing-sensuality, and I'm yet to be fulfilled. 

When I date, I fade into you. When I yearn for social justice, I want to be Che and always and forever fight for freedom and justice, not in name like imperial US wars but in truth. Like, maybe, the real struggle for liberation I need to wage is for personal liberation. It would help everyone around me, it would free me, and it would lead to world peace or peace in the world anyway. I am you, you are me, we're different, we're the same, we're all one, we've yet to meet... So you see, the Buddha is the best guide to find the freedom and light he found. Buena suerte (Good luck).

Buddhist cave temples found in Grand Canyon

Dhr. Seven and Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly, Jack Andrews, "Was the carved 'installation' in the Grand Canyon an ancient Buddhist temple?" (Lost Civilizations / in Spanish)

The Gazette headlines of April 5, 1909 document the reality of these unbelievably astounding finds, some of the greatest US archeological discoveries ever. Why were they covered up?

 

Better than feathers (Jamyang190/blog)

In the vast Grand Canyon of Arizona, USA, there is an Egyptian-style tomb full of Buddhist art showing that Asians migrated to America and brought the Dharma and advanced technology to Native Americans in the distant past. It is similar to the Valley of Kings in Luxor, Egypt. While this will be too fantastic for most readers to believe, the trail of evidence begins with an article published on the front page of the Arizona Gazette on April 5, 1909. It claims that just such a rock-cut cavern temple full of Buddhist, Vedic, and Egyptian art and architecture, hieroglyphs, and mummies -- an almost incomprehensible wealth of archaeological treasures -- was discovered.

Marble Canyon, Grand Canyon Nat'l Park

"According to the story related to the Gazette by Mr. Kinkaid, the archaeologists of the Smithsonian Institute, which is financing the expeditions, have made discoveries which almost conclusively prove that the race which inhabited this mysterious cavern, hewn in solid rock by human hands, was of oriental origin..." - Arizona Gazette, April 5, 1909

"First, I would impress that the cavern is nearly inaccessible. The entrance is 1,486 feet down the sheer canyon wall" -  G.E. Kincaid, 1909 

Was the carved "installation" in the Grand Canyon an ancient Buddhist temple?

 

Mt. Hengshan, China, near Datong, Shanxi Province

Photos show how ancient Chinese Buddhist monks went out of there way to carve their temples in cliff faces in remote and inaccessible cliff-lined river canyons.

Other clues to the speculation that the installation may have been used for such a purpose are broken swords and cups and other items, often used ceremonially in ancient Chinese Buddhist temples, were found in the cave in 1909. The cave lies in Marble Canyon (above photo), which is a steep limestone wall-lined canyon. It it is similar to the Hanging or Mid-Air temples on Mount Hengshan, China, southeast of Datong, Shanxi Province.

They cling precariously to the cliff face and illustrate determined isolation of the early Buddhist communities in China. 

Founded in pre-Tang Northern Wei Dynasty, the temples continued to function during the Tang period and were subsequently restored in the Ming and Qing dynasties (Tang China: Vision and Splendour of a Golden Age by Edmund Capon with photography by Werner Forman, Macdonald Orbis, 1989). 

 

Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves (left) high on the cliffs of the west Mutou Valley under the Flaming Mountains, 27 miles (45 km) east of Turpan near Shanshan in Western China's Uygur Autonomous Region, northeast of Taklamakan Desert, Xinjiang. The caves feature  ancient Buddhist monasteries carved into cliffs dating from ~400 AD to 1,300  AD. More

  

"Approximately 70 km. (45 miles) east of Turfan lie the Buddhist cave-cliff temples of Bezeklik, most of which were originally built in the open and joined by wooden porches.

 

Grand Canyon Egyptian finds (lightworkers.org)

"Others were carved into the living rock in the manner of cave temples. The height of activity at Bezeklik, on the evidence of surviving wall paintings, was the Tang Dynasty, when Silk Road trade brought travelers, merchants, and missionaries to the temples in search of sanctuary and spiritual comfort.

Today they are still difficult to reach, for the monks endeavored, even here in the desert wastelands of Chinese Central Asia, to build their temples as far away as possible from the real and profane world" (Ibid.)

 

Mai-Chi caves, Chinling range, China (Magnificant China, Hong Kong, Hua Hsia Publ., 1972)

 
Indian Legend

Burmese cave temple (Nadia Isakova/flickr)

It is notable that among the Hopis, the tradition is told that their ancestors once lived in an underworld in the Grand Canyon. This went on until dissension arose between the good and the bad, the people of one heart, the people of two hearts.
 
(Manchoto), who was their chief, counseled them to leave the underworld, but there was no way out. The chief then caused a tree to grow up and pierce the roof of the underworld, and then the people of one heart climbed out.

They tarried by Palsiaval (Red River), which is the Colorado river, and grew grain and corn. They sent out a message to the Temple of the Sun, asking for blessings of peace, goodwill, and rain for the people of one heart.

That messenger never returned, but today at the Hopi village at sundown can be seen the old men of the tribe out on the housetops gazing towards the Sun, looking for the messenger. When he returns, their land and ancient dwelling place will be restored to them. That is the tradition. More

• Arizona Gazette, Monday Evening, April 5, 1909
• Is There a Vast Cavern System of Tunnels and Chambers at the Grand Canyon?
• Lost City of the Dead in the Grand Canyon
• The Grand Discovery (story quoted in full)
• The Importance of the Find in 1909
• The Search for Kinnaman's Entrance
• The [astonishing] Arizona Gazette story of 1909

• Lost Cities and Ancient Mysteries of the Southwest
• Lost Cities of China, Central Asia, and India

The Kogi, Sierra Nevada (RinzaisMarket.com, Sedona, AZ, world-healing.com)

Mahayana: "The Sutra in Forty-Two Sections"

Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Amber Larson, (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Ling-Yen Mountain Temple, Canada, "The Sutra in Forty-Two Sections"; Master Miao Lien (PURE LAND BUDDHISM)

Kwan Yin Bodhisattva, Goddess of Mercy, at the seaside of Sanya (HawkDisplays/flickr)

 

OPENING VERSE

The unsurpassed, profound, and wonderful Dharma

Is difficult to encounter in hundreds of millions of aeons.

I now see and hear it, receive and uphold it,

And I vow to fathom the Tathagata's true meaning.

 

PREFACE

When the World Honored One had attained the Way, he [is said in Mahayana Buddhism to have] thought, "To leave desire behind and to gain calmness and tranquility is supreme." 

He abided in deep meditative concentration and subdued every demon and externalist.

• [Externalist: six non-Buddhist wandering-ascetic (shramana) traditions led by: Pūraṇa Kassapa, Makkhali Gosāla, Ajita Kesakambalī, Pakudha Kaccāyana, Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta (Jainism's Mahavira), and Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta].

In the Deer Park he turned the Dharma-wheel of the Four Noble Truths and took across Ajnata-kaundinya [led Añña Kondañña to enlightenment] and the other four [first] disciples, who all realized the fruition of the Way.

Then the bhikshus expressed their doubts and asked the Buddha how to resolve them. The World Honored One taught and exhorted them, until one by one they awakened and gained enlightenment. After that, they each put their palms together, respectfully gave their assent, and followed the Buddha's instructions.

SECTION 1

Leaving Home and Becoming an Arhat

Shakyamuni Buddha walking (sdhammika)

The Buddha said, "People who take leave of their families and go forth from the householder's life, who know their mind and penetrate to its origin, and who understand the unconditioned Dharma [i.e., asankhata, nirvana, what is not conditional, not dependently originated] are called shramanas [wandering ascetics as distinguished from Brahminical temple priests]. 

"They constantly observe the 250 [monastic] precepts, and they value purity in all that they do. By practicing the four true paths [likely a reference to the four analytical knowledges], they can become arhats."

"Arhats [equipped with abhinnas or siddhis] can fly and transform themselves. They have a life span of vast aeons, and wherever they dwell they can move heaven and earth."

 

"Prior to the arhat is the anagamin [non returner]. At the end of his life, an anagamin's vital spirit will rise above the nineteenth heaven, and one will become an arhat."

"Prior to the anagamin is the sakridagamin [once returner], who ascends once, returns once more, and thereafter becomes an arhat. 

"Prior to the sakridagamin is the srotapanna [stream enterer], who has [at most] seven [more] deaths and seven births remaining, and then becomes an arhat. Severing [attachment] and desire is like severing the four limbs; one never uses them again."

SECTION 2

Eliminating Desire and Ending Seeking

The Buddha [allegedly] said, "Those who have left the home-life and become [wandering ascetics] cut off desire, renounce [attachment], and recognize the source of their minds. They penetrate the Buddha's profound principles and awaken to the unconditioned Dharma. 

"Internally they have nothing to attain, and externally they seek nothing. They are not mentally bound to the Way, nor are they tied to karma. They are free of thought and action [are not storing up karma]; they neither cultivate nor attain certification; they do not pass through the various stages, and yet they are highly revered [reverence-able, worthy of reverence]. This is the meaning of the Way." 

SECTION 3

Severing [Attachment] and Renouncing Greed

The Buddha said, "Shaving their hair and beards, they become shramanas who accept the Dharmas of the Way. They renounce worldly wealth and riches. In receiving alms, they accept only what's enough. They take only one meal a day at noon, pass the night beneath trees, and are careful not to seek more than that. Craving and desire are what cause people to be stupid and dull."

The Buddha's life in panels, Jing'an Temple wall, Shanghai, China (Wisdom Quarterly)

 

SECTION 4

Clarifying Good and Evil

The Buddha said, "Living beings may perform Ten Good Deeds or Ten Evil Deeds. What are the ten? Three are done with the body; four are done with the mouth; and three are done with the mind.

"The three done with the body are killing, stealing, and lust [sexual misconduct]. The four done with the mouth are duplicity [slander], harsh speech, lies [perjury], and frivolous speech. The three done with the mind are jealousy [craving], hatred [aversion], and stupidity [tenaciously holding wrong views].

"Thus, these ten are not in accord with the Way of sages and are called the Ten Evil Deeds. To put a stop to these evils is to perform the Ten Good Deeds."

SECTION 5

Reducing the Severity of Offenses

The Buddha said, "If a person has many offenses and does not repent of [turn away from] them, but cuts off all thought [intention, aspiration] of repentance [of changing one's way], the offenses will engulf [one], just as water returning to the sea will gradually become deeper and wider. If a person has offense and, realizing they are wrong, reforms and does good, the offense will dissolve by themselves, just as a sick person who begins to perspire will gradually be cured."

SECTION 6

Tolerating Evil-doers and Avoiding Hatred

The Buddha said, "When an evil person hears about your goodness and intentionally comes to cause trouble, you should restrain yourself and not become angry or blame [that person]. Then the one who has come to do evil will do evil to him/herself."

SECTION 7

Evil Returns to the Doer

The Buddha said, "There was a person who, upon hearing that I observe the Way and practice great humane kindness, intentionally came to berate me. I was silent and did not reply. When [that person] finished abusing me, I asked: 'If you are courteous to people and they do not accept your courtesy, the courtesy returns to you, does it not?' 'It does," [that person] replied. I said, 'Now you are scolding me, but I do not receive it, so the misfortune returns to you and must remain with you. It is as inevitable as an echo that follows a sound, or as a shadow that follows a form. In the end you cannot avoid it. Therefore, be careful not to do evil.'"