Ok, this is the best example I can give - you clearly are along the path and have fallen well into the rabbit hole so I'm going to skip a lot of stuff. That story is the entire reality of our lives post enlightenment, it is very significant to understand this - enlightenment is a realization, not a state of being - there is a state we can attain of true clarity and supreme perception that is often referred to as nirvana but it's just a state of supreme focus, it also passes. It's like this.
If this reality was World of Warcraft and you born a dwarf running around whatever that world is called - that would be your life, everything aside the game would matter most, etc. That is your reality. Now along comes another player, they inform you that WoW is just a game and your not really a dwarf, your a person sitting at a computer (or VR or however you need to get it) the Player explains the true nature of your reality and it explains lots of things that you've noticed and feels right.
Then he leaves. Then you are still in WoW, still a Dwarf, still just playing the game. But you know the true nature of things, so you see everything different now, far more correct than you did - you still have no idea of what a person is, so you can't possibly know the actual true nature of things but you know the truth of your reality.
This is why is in the Gospel of Thomas Jesus says, "Those who learn the truth will be troubled" Enlightenment doesn't necessarily even make things easier if you don't truly embrace reality for what it is.
I've got a lot of things that I would like to say in reply to you but I can only share some of them.
> enlightenment is a realization, not a state of being
If you say something is "not" a state, that is a state. ... no?
If you say it's beyond words, then it's not.
If you don't know how one might state it, then it's better to be able to know and say so.
> there is a state we can attain of true clarity and supreme perception that is often referred to as nirvana but it's just a state of supreme focus, it also passes
This is not totally true. It is true that karma can be reborn. But who says the "state" has gone anywhere?
What you're referring to seems to be the temporary nirvana - the magical city, for example - made up by the Buddha as he is recorded has having admitted in the White Lotus Sutra of the True Law.
If it were actual rest then you would also be at ease as to the question of how to not let that state pass. And the answer is: omniscience.
But he knew while pacing around his tree that beings wouldn't be ready to accept this, would doubt it, become afraid at it, or exhausted about it, or think themselves not the inheritors of it. So he made up the temporary nirvana as one of the benefits you get from one or more of the "vehicles" he also made up at his tree as a device to lead beings to the time they'd be ready to hear his disclosure that there are no three vehicles, no multiple nirvanas, but the singular Buddha-yana and the one actual nirvana.
> Then you are still in WoW, still a Dwarf, still just playing the game. But you know the true nature of things,
Contradiction. Check out the Diamond Sutra. There are no living beings. What we call living beings, aren't. Actual living beings aren't like that. Quite a good one of his. The Diamond Which Cuts Through Illusion.
> This is why is in the Gospel of Thomas Jesus says, "Those who learn the truth will be troubled" Enlightenment doesn't necessarily even make things easier if you don't truly embrace reality for what it is.
Yessss high five
"If you know the truth, you will be lonely; If you tell the truth, you will be under a curse"
and ... those who know of the true way... do not speak of it as if it is such a great thing.
Things like that.
After enlightenment, someone's life becomes harder. You will be obliged to do things bound by duty being the only one who can see, like a parent, in whose hands the future resides to some degree.
How much more so when you face the ridicule of those of small virtue.
Everything was essentially made up by the Buddha - he expanded upon the teachings of the Brahmins before him but much of what we think of as Buddhism was made up by people other than him.
Truth is revealed as can be understood. He was limited by the capabilities of those to whom he was speaking, that is evident everywhere in his sayings.
The teachings he left were sufficient for the people of the time but today I think them more a trap than a gateway to truth. There are many aspects of the commonly accepted beliefs that I flat out fundamentally disagree with - the cessation of karma for example. I also believe that Buddha was primarily talking about a singular life when he was speaking about things like reincarnation - we live many lives within our one life, we are constantly changing and being reborn - it is controlling this cycle of rebirth in which we attain our best iteration of ourself.
I'm not sure that I can explain things from a purely Buddhist perspective as I have have lifted from everything the truth I found within and now I have view entirely my own.
The Buddhist teachings will only take you take to you point.
I'm glad you can identify the state of mind I spoke of as whatever he made up - notice I didn't place great significance on it. That goes by many names and were I trying to convince that could not possibly understand but I needed to give them something they could do that could validate, that would have been what I would have given them also, as anyone can attain it with limited effort.
You place too much faith in what you know you know
> Everything was essentially made up by the Buddha
obvious self contradiction, fwiw
Besides, do you really think he made up his loneliness, having to travel to find anyone who really wanted to learn, and then die as an old man on the side of the road? I doubt he would have chosen that, after all, why come to contribute to this world if everything were already hunky-dory,.. and frankly, it seems abusive behavior towards him to pretend he chose to suffer our stubbornness, ignorance, and pride. Again, girardian scapegoat mechanics.
> he expanded upon the teachings of the Brahmins before him
He referred to himself clearly as self-born and someone who saw the world on his own. One can't expand on something that doesn't contain a teaching.... sort of like your own descriptions, actually, if you don't mind my directness.
> but much of what we think of as Buddhism was made up by people other than him.
> The teachings he left were sufficient for the people of the time but today I think them more a trap than a gateway to truth.
You need to know the fact that when people tried to transmit his teaching, they couldn't help but damage or change it. This is an unavoidable consequence of the fact that they had a lower level of consciousness than his or didn't have the ability to verify singular points of knowledge and control their karma. Maybe 1-2 people could transmit it without damaging it terribly.
You and others today also can't always tell the difference between his words and what his words were changed into by many people - because you aren't yet sufficiently familiar with the law of existence and disillusioned with lies.
An apple, no matter how nourishing when fresh, becomes poisonous when rotten (degenerated). Instead of poisoning your body, the deteriorated truth poisons your apparatus of awareness - your consciousness. So you're right that you can't study his teaching and probably can't recover the real teaching or a sufficient teaching for saving your life if you're in danger, as far as I know - unless you have the help of another Tathagata. Chances are if you contact Buddhism without a truthful guide, you will lose yourself. That's why I wanted to tell you what the Lotus Sutra says and I wanted to tell you that it is clear that an actual Buddha has to appear in the world in order to reveal the dharma. Until then, people forget what the teaching is, far from being able to even enunciate it without damaging it. So please do not cheat yourself by believing your thoughts.
I'm not sure that you will see this reply but you've given me a few things to think about.
I already fell into it all without a teacher and lost myself along the way but I found myself again and I have no issues with identifying truth, none. My thoughts are not my own, to blindly follow them would be quite foolish. I think we believe similar things when all is said and done but I find your faith in external Tathagata to determine truth concerning - there is no need for anything outside oneself, if there were there would be no prophets. You are plenty capable of discerning truth for oneself. This is bc although there is only one truth it is itself is only a limited truth - we can know the true nature of reality from within reality but we cannot know what reality is wholly until we are outside of it, this is an obvious truth - as it works everywhere that it can be applied without exceptions.
To know something one must be able to see all of it, fairly basic but impossible for us to achieve - hence some of my favorite teachings like the analogy of the sweeping of the floor or language like, "Have you found the beginning bc the end is the beginning" so it very important to realize that this is why there multiple religions able offer their own way out.
We need only a working model of reality as we cannot have a functional correct model of reality, simply an understanding that encapsulates certain truths and presents them in a way that allows for individuals and a society to arrive shared understandings and behaviors that incorporate those truths.
True followers of Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha or others are very similar people in the way they act and their core beliefs are the same - that this is a created thing, that we were before and will be after, that death is not the end and that there is an assessment of how we lived that transpires at some point.
Today I can essentially create a working model of reality that utilizes science and things like the Internet and games - this working model incorporates all the core and necessary truths needed to provide a way/path out but is in a language I can naturally understand - this is what I meant by the Buddha made everything up. I have, in a sense just made up my "religion" but it's built on all that which have come before it to be a functional working model of reality, which is all I believe it needs to be. That's all the prophets have ever done - say the truth, as can be heard, in their time and place. I've just done that for me.
The Buddha didn't imagine his loneliness - nor do we need to as we are privy to the human condition and of course we now live in a time and place where all I need to say is "human condition" for us to get what he was going on about. People are smarter over time. You are inherently more capable of understanding these things than anyone in the Buddhas time bc you literally know more than any one and all of them.
I'm not attempting to mislead you or steer you astray, I understand your warnings. I've merely noticed throughout our conversation your deflection/utilization of external things that I don't believe you need, you are plenty capable of discerning truth for oneself and knowing right from wrong and what to do or not to do - this is all internal stuff. You may make misjudgements at times, you will learn from those and with time you will have faith in oneself, not a Tathagata, not a sutra, You.
I'm a bit of an eccentric tho, so I suggest taking all this with a grain of salt - run it by the ole feelings first and foremost. I rarely speak of such things, even rarer in such settings.
> To know something one must be able to see all of it, fairly basic but impossible for us to achieve
self contradiction
> We need only a working model of reality as we cannot have a functional correct model of reality
self contradiction
> I have, in a sense just made up my "religion" but it's built on all that which have come before it to be a functional working model of reality, which is all I believe it needs to be. That's all the prophets have ever done - say the truth, as can be heard, in their time and place.
Please do not cheat yourself and others, or slander the saints, by saying (a) they made up or wanted to start religions or (b) that you can speak of a truth approaching theirs yet while saying you can't. Buddha didn't say "I'm enlightened but not really". He claimed he actually reached the real thing and there was proof if not for the destruction perpetrated upon him by those who couldn't admit their own issues even to themselves.
If this reality was World of Warcraft and you born a dwarf running around whatever that world is called - that would be your life, everything aside the game would matter most, etc. That is your reality. Now along comes another player, they inform you that WoW is just a game and your not really a dwarf, your a person sitting at a computer (or VR or however you need to get it) the Player explains the true nature of your reality and it explains lots of things that you've noticed and feels right.
Then he leaves. Then you are still in WoW, still a Dwarf, still just playing the game. But you know the true nature of things, so you see everything different now, far more correct than you did - you still have no idea of what a person is, so you can't possibly know the actual true nature of things but you know the truth of your reality.
This is why is in the Gospel of Thomas Jesus says, "Those who learn the truth will be troubled" Enlightenment doesn't necessarily even make things easier if you don't truly embrace reality for what it is.