Maitreya – Traou an Dour

The Scripture Preached by the Buddha on the Total Extinction of the Dharma

Thus have I heard:

Once, the Buddha was in the state of Kushinagara ; he was to attain Parinirvana in three months. Together with all the monks and all the bodhisattvas, an innumerable crowd came to visit the place where the Buddha was, and bowed themselves to the earth. The World-Honored One was still, silent and preaching nothing; his radiant brilliance was not manifested.

The wise and wordily Ánanda did obeisance, and said to the Buddha, “World-Honored One, whenever you have preached the Dharma, your majestic brilliance has been uniquely illustrious. But now, a great multitude has come together, and your radiance is not manifested in the slightest. What is the reason for this? A reason there certainly must be, and we wish to be taught its significance.”

The Buddha was silent, and made no response. After Ánanda had repeated the question three times, the Buddha told him, “After my nirvana, the Five Mortal Sins will foul the world, and the Mara-way will flourish exceedingly. The Maras will become monks, to spoil and wreck my Way or they will wear lay dress, rejoicing in multicolored clothing. They will drink wine and eat meat, killing living things in their desire for fine flavors. They will not have compassionate minds, and they will hate and envy each other.

“At times, there will be Bodhisattvas, Pratyekabuddhas, and Arhats, who concentrate single-mindedly on cultivating merit and treat all beings with reverence; being the objects of the people’s devotion, they will impartially preach and convert. They will pity the poor and keep the old in their thoughts, and take care of those in poverty and difficulty. They will constantly induce the people to worship and serve scriptures and images, doing all good acts that bring merit; their wills and natures will be kind and good. They will not harass or injure people, but sacrifice themselves for the deliverance of others. They will not spare themselves, but will put up with insult, being benevolent and harmonious.

“Should there be such a being, the gang of Mara-monks will unite in hating him, slandering him and focusing on his bad points. He will be expelled and banished; they will not suffer him to remain. From then onwards they will all fail to cultivate merit according to the Way. Temples will be empty and desolate, and will no longer be repaired, but will be allowed to fall into ruin. The monks will covet nothing but material goods, accumulating them without distribution, not doing good deeds. They will deal in male and female slaves, plow the fields and plant them, burning off the mountain forests and harming all living things; they will not have compassionate minds. Male slaves will become monks, female slaves will become nuns; they will have none of the merit that comes from practicing the Way, but rather will be filthy and depraved, foul and turbulent; men and women will not be kept separate. The reason the Way will become shallow and weak, is all because of that type of person!

“Some will evade the constables by taking refuge in my Way, seeking to become monks, but not practicing the precepts and ordinances. At the middle and end of the lunar month, although in name they should chant the precepts, they will be tired of it and resentful; lazy and careless, and they will not wish to listen. They will select and abbreviate here and there, unwilling to speak everything. The scriptures will not be recited, and should there be readers, they will not know the characters and phrases; they will force interpretations and allege their accuracy, not bothering to ask people who know. In their haughtiness they will pursue fame, making a vain display of elegant manners with which to glorify themselves, and hope for people’s offerings.

“This gang of Mara-monks will be doomed to fall spirit and soul into Avici Hell after the end of their fated lives. In their punishment for the Five Mortal Sins, there is nothing they will not suffer as hungry ghosts and domestic animals, for as many kalpas as there are grains of sand in the Ganges. Their sin atoned for, only then will they come forth, but they will be born in a frontier state, where there will be no place that has the Three Treasures.

“When the Dharma is on the verge of being destroyed, it is women who will concentrate on advancement, and have the habit of performing good deeds. Men will be lazy and indolent; they will have no use for the words of the Dharma. They will consider monks to be like befouled earth; they will not have believing minds.

“The Dharma is about to be wiped out, and when the time for that comes, all the Devas will weep tears. Rainy and dry seasons will be untimely, the Five Grains will not ripen, pestilential vapors will be prevalent; there will be many dead. The common people will toil in hardship, the public officials will be calculating and harsh; not compliant with the principles of the Way, all will have their hearts set on pleasure or disorder. Wicked men will steadily increase in number, to become like the sands of the sea; the good will be very scarce, no more than one or two.

“Because the kalpa is nearly at its end, the days and months will become shorter and shorter, and men’s lives will pass more and more hastily; their heads will be white at forty. Men will be filthy and depraved; they will exhaust their semen and shorten their lives, living at most to the age of sixty. The lives of men will become shorter, but the lives of women will become longer, to seventy or eighty or ninety; some will reach a hundred years.

“Great floods will suddenly occur; they will strike by surprise, unlooked-for. The people of the world will have no faith, and hence they will take the world to be permanent. Living creatures of every variety, with no distinction between gentry and the base, will be drowned and float away, dashed about, to be eaten by fish or turtles.

“At that time, there will be Bodhisattvas, Pratyekabuddhas, and Arhats; the gang of Maras will drive them away, and they will not participate in the religious community. These three types of disciples will enter into the mountains, to a land of merit. Tranquil and self-controlled, they will rest content in this. Their lives will grow longer, the various Devas will protect and watch over them, and Candraprabha will appear in the world. They will be able to meet him, and together they will make my Way flourish.

“In fifty-two years after that, the Shurangama Scripture and the pratyutpanna-samádhi will prematurely change and vanish, and shortly afterwards the twelve divisions of the Mahayana canon will also be destroyed in their entirety, and will not appear again. The robes of the monks will spontaneously turn white.

“When my Dharma is destroyed, the process will be comparable to an oil lamp, which, drawing close to the time it will go out, will shed an even greater radiance and brilliance, and then be extinguished. When my Dharma is destroyed, it will surely be like a lamp going out.

“What will happen then is not possible to describe in detail. But several thousand myriad years after this happens, Maitreya will descend to be Buddha in the world. All-under-Heaven will enjoy peace, prosperity, and equality; the pestilential vapors will be dispersed and expelled. The rain will be suitable to growth and no more, and the Five Grains will grow and flourish. Trees will grow large, and men will be eighty feet tall. All of them will live eighty-four thousand years. It is impossible to count how many living things will be able to be saved.”

The wise and worthy Ánanda made obeisance and said to the Buddha, “What shall we name this scripture? How is it to be venerated and practiced?”

The Buddha said to Ánanda, “The name of this scripture is “The Total Extinction of the Dharma.” Propagate it to all; you should cause all to have a clear, complete understanding of it. The merits of its accomplishments are limitless, and cannot be counted up.”

The four types of disciple heard the scripture; grief-stricken and rueful, all vowed to attain the Way of the Limitlessly High Sage Truth. All did obeisance to the Buddha, and departed.

ॐ, buddhism, Cause & Effect, Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, New Age, Prophecy, Quotations, Rāja yoga, Synthesis

The Doctrine of the Coming One

Excerpted from:

The Reappearance of the Christ – Chapter I – The Doctrine of Avatars

By Alice Bailey and Djwhal Khul

CHAPTER ONE

The Doctrine of the Coming One (Western Teaching)
The Doctrine of Avatars (Eastern Teaching)

Whenever there is a withering of the law and an uprising of lawlessness on all sides, then I manifest Myself.

For the salvation of the righteous and the destruction of such as do evil, for the firm establishing of the Law, I come to birth age after age.

– Bhagavad Gita, Book IV, Sutra 7, 8.

Right down the ages, in many world cycles and in many countries (and today in all) great points of tension have occurred which have been characterized by a hopeful sense of expectancy. Some one is expected and His coming is anticipated. Always in the past, it has been the religious teachers of the period who have fostered and proclaimed this expectancy and the time has always been one of chaos and difficulty, of a climaxing point at the close of a civilization or culture and when the resources of the old religions have seemed inadequate to meet men’s difficulties or to solve their problems. The coming of the Avatar, the advent of a Coming One and, in terms of today, the reappearance of the Christ are the keynotes of the prevalent expectancy. When the times are ripe, the invocation of the masses is strident enough and the faith of those who know is keen enough, then always He has come and today will be no exception to this ancient rule or to this universal law. For decades, the reappearance of the Christ, the Avatar, has been anticipated by the faithful in both hemispheres – not only by the Christian faithful, but by those who look for Maitreya and for the Bodhisattva as well as those who expect the Imam Mahdi.

When men feel that they have exhausted all their own resources and have come to an end of all their own innate possibilities and that the problems and conditions confronting them are beyond their solving or handling, they are apt to look for a divine Intermediary and for the Mediator Who will plead their cause with God and bring about a rescue. They look for a Savior. This doctrine of Mediators, of Messiahs, of Christs and of Avatars can be found running like a golden thread through all the world faiths and Scriptures and, relating these world Scriptures to some central source of emanation, they are found in rich abundance everywhere. Even the human soul is regarded as an intermediary between man and God; Christ is believed by countless millions to act as the divine mediator between humanity and divinity.

The whole system of spiritual revelation is based (and has always been based) on this doctrine of interdependence, of a planned and arranged conscious linking and of the transmission of energy from one aspect of divine manifestation to another – from God in the “secret Place of the Most High” to the humblest human being, living and struggling and sorrowing on earth. Everywhere this transmission is to be found; “I am come that they may have life” says the Christ, and the Scriptures of the world are full of the intervention of some Being, originating from some source higher than the strictly human. Always the appropriate mechanism is found through which divinity can reach and communicate with humanity, and it is with this communication and these Instruments of divine energy that the doctrine of Avatars or of divine “Coming Ones” has to do.

An Avatar is one Who has a peculiar capacity (besides a self-initiated task and a preordained destiny) to transmit energy or divine power. This is necessarily a deep mystery and was demonstrated in a peculiar manner and in relation to cosmic energy by the Christ Who – for the first time in planetary history, as far as we know – transmitted the divine energy of love directly to our planet and in a most definite sense to humanity. Always too these Avatars or divine Messengers are linked with the concept of some subjective spiritual Order or Hierarchy of spiritual Lives, Who are concerned with the developing welfare of humanity. All we really know is that, down the ages, great and divine Representatives of God embody divine purpose, and affect the entire world in such a manner that Their names and Their influence are known and felt thousands of years after They no longer walk among men. Again and again, They have come and have left a changed world and some new world religion behind Them; we know also that prophecy and faith have ever held out to mankind the promise of Their coming again amongst us in an hour of need. These statements are statements of fact, historically proven. Beyond this we know relatively few details.

The word “Avatar” is a Sanskrit word, meaning literally “coming down from far away.” Ava (as prefix to verbs and verbal nouns) expresses the idea of “off, away, down.” Avataram, (comparative) farther away. The root AV seems at all times to denote the idea of Protection from above, and is used in compounds, in words referring to protections by kings or rulers; in regard to the gods, it means accepted favorably when a sacrifice is offered. With the result that the root word can be said to mean “Coming down with the approval of the higher source from which it came and with benefit to the place at which it arrives.” (From Monier-Williams Sanskrit Dictionary.)

All the world Avatars or Saviors, however, express two basic incentives: the need of God to contact humanity and to have relationship with men and the need of humanity for divine contact, help and understanding. Subject to those incentives, all true Avatars are therefore divine Intermediaries. They can act in this fashion because They have completely divorced Themselves from every limitation, from all sense of selfhood and separativeness and are no longer – by ordinary human standards – the dramatic center of Their lives, as are most of us. When They have reached that stage of spiritual decentralization, They Themselves can then become events in the life of our planet; toward Them every eye can look and all men can be affected. Therefore, an Avatar or a Christ comes forth for two reasons: one, the inscrutable and unknown Cause prompts Him so to do, and the other is the demand or the invocation of humanity itself. An Avatar is consequently a spiritual event, coming to us to bring about great changes or major restorations, to inaugurate a new civilization or to restore the “ancient landmarks” and lead man nearer to the divine. They have been defined as “extraordinary men Who from time to time appear to change the face of the world and inaugurate a new era in the destinies of humanity.” They come in times of crisis; They frequently create crises in order to bring to an end the old and the undesirable and make way for new and more suitable forms for the evolving life of God Immanent in Nature. They come when evil is rampant. For this reason, if for no other, an Avatar may be looked for today. The necessary stage is set for the reappearance of the Christ.

The Avatars most easily known and recognized are the Buddha in the East and the Christ in the West. Their messages are familiar to all, and the fruits of Their lives and words have conditioned the thinking and civilizations of both hemispheres. Because They are human-divine Avatars, They represent what humanity can easily understand; because They are of like nature to us, “flesh of our flesh and spirit of our spirit,” we know and trust Them and They mean more to us than other divine Emergencies. They are known, trusted and loved by countless millions. The nucleus of spiritual energy which each of Them set up is beyond our measuring; the establishing of a nucleus of persistent energy, spiritually positive, is the constant task of an Avatar; He focuses or anchors a dynamic truth, a potent thought-form or a vortex of magnetic energy in the world of human living. This focal point acts increasingly as a transmitter of spiritual energy; it enables humanity to express some divine idea and this in time produces a civilization with its accompanying culture, religions, policies, governments and educational processes. Thus is history made. History is after all only the record of humanity’s cyclic reaction to some inflowing divine energy, to some inspired leader, or to some Avatar.

An Avatar is at present usually a Representative of the second divine aspect, that of Love-Wisdom, the Love of God. He will manifest as the Savior, the Builder, the Preserver; humanity is not yet sufficiently developed or adequately oriented to the life of the Spirit to bear easily the impact of an Avatar Who would express the dynamic will of God. For us as yet (and this is our limitation) an Avatar is one Who preserves, develops, builds, protects, shields and succors the spiritual impulses by which men live; that which brings Him into manifestation is man’s need and man’s demand for preservation and help. Humanity needs love, understanding and right human relations as an expression of attained divinity. It was this need which brought the Christ to us before as the Avatar of Love. The Christ, that great human-divine Messenger, because of His stupendous achievement – along the line of understanding – transmitted to humanity an aspect and a potency of the nature of God Himself, the love Principle of Deity. Light, aspiration, and the recognition of God Transcendent had been the flickering expression of the human attitude to God, prior to the advent of the Buddha, the Avatar of Illumination. Then the Buddha came and demonstrated in His Own life the fact of God Immanent as well as God Transcendent, of God in the universe and of God within humanity. The Selfhood of Deity and the Self in the heart of individual man became a factor in human consciousness. It was a relatively new truth to man.

However, until Christ came and lived a life of love and service and gave men the new command to love one another, there had been very little emphasis upon God as Love in any of the world Scriptures. After He had come as the Avatar of Love, then God became known as love supernal, love as the goal and objective of creation, love as the basic principle of relationship and love as working throughout all manifestation towards a Plan motivated by love. This divine quality, Christ revealed and emphasized and thus altered all human living, goals and values.

The reason He has not come again is that the needed work has not been done by His followers in all countries. His coming is largely dependent, as we shall later see, upon the establishing of right human relations. This the church has hindered down the centuries, and has not helped because of its fanatical zeal to make “Christians” of all peoples and not followers of the Christ. It has emphasized theological doctrine, and not love and loving understanding as Christ exemplified it. The Church has preached the fiery Saul of Tarsus and not the gentle Carpenter of Galilee. And so, He has waited. But His hour has now come, because of the people’s need in every land and because of the invocative cry of the masses everywhere and the advice of His disciples of all faiths and of all world religions.

It is not for us yet to know the date or the hour of the reappearance of the Christ. His coming is dependent upon the appeal (the often voiceless appeal) of all who stand with massed intent; it is dependent also upon the better establishment of right human relations and upon certain work being done at this time by senior Members of the Kingdom of God, the Church Invisible, the spiritual Hierarchy of our planet; it is dependent also upon the steadfastness of the Christ’s disciples in the world at this time and His initiate-workers – all working in the many groups, religious, political and economic. To the above must be added what Christians like to call “the inscrutable Will of God,” that unrecognized purpose of the Lord of the World, the Ancient of Days (as He is called in The Old Testament) Who “knows His own Mind, radiates the highest quality of love and focuses His Will in His Own high Place within the center where the Will of God is known.”

When the Christ, the Avatar of Love, makes His reappearance then will the

“Sons of men who are now the Sons of God withdraw Their faces from the shining light and radiate that light upon the sons of men who know not yet they are the Sons of God. Then shall the Coming One appear, His footsteps hastened through the valley of the shadow by the One of awful power Who stands upon the mountain top, breathing out love eternal, light supernal and peaceful, silent Will.

“Then will the sons of men respond. Then will a newer light shine forth into the dismal, weary vale of earth. Then will new life course through the veins of men, and then will their vision compass all the ways of what may be.

“So peace will come again on earth, but a peace unlike aught known before. Then will the will-to-good flower forth as understanding, and understanding blossom as goodwill in men.”

—–

buddhism, Oracles, Prophecy, Quotations

METTEYYA

THE Blessed One proceeded with a great company of the brethren to the sala grove of the Mallas, the Upavattana of Kusinara on the further side of the river Hirannavati, and when he had arrived he addressed the venerable Ananda, and said: “Make ready for me, I pray you, Ananda, the couch with its head to the north, between the twin sala trees. I am weary, Ananda, and wish to lie down.”

“Be it so, Lord!” said the venerable Ananda, and he spread a couch with its head to the north, between the twin sala trees. And the Blessed One laid himself down, and he was mindful and self-possessed.

Now, at that time the twin sala trees were full of bloom with flowers out of season; and heavenly songs came wafted from the skies, out of reverence for the successor of the Buddhas of old. And Ananda was filled with wonder that the Blessed One was thus honored. But the Blessed One said: “Not by such events, Ananda, is the Tathagata rightly honored, held sacred, or revered. But the devout man, who continually fulfills the greater and lesser duties, walking according to the precepts, it is who rightly honors, holds sacred, and reveres the Tathagata with the worthiest homage. Therefore, O Ananda, be ye constant in the fulfillment of the greater and of the lesser duties, and walk according to the precepts; thus, Ananda, will ye honor the Master.”

Then the venerable Ananda went into the vihara, and stood leaning against the doorpost, weeping at the thought: “Alas! I remain still but a learner, one who has yet to work out his own perfection. And the Master is about to pass away from me-who is so kind!”

Now, the Blessed One called the brethren, and said: “Where, O brethren, is Ananda?” One of the brethren went and called Ananda. And Ananda came and said to the Blessed One: “Deep darkness reigned for want of wisdom; the world of sentient creatures was groping for want of light; then the Tathagata lit up the lamp of wisdom, and now it will be extinguished again, ere he has brought it out.”

The Blessed One said to the venerable Ananda, as he sat there by his side: “Enough, Ananda! Let not thy self be troubled; do not weep! Have I not already, on former occasions, told you that it is in the very nature of all things most near and dear unto us that we must separate from them and leave them? The foolish man conceives the idea of ‘self,’ the wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‘self,’ thus he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain. Why should I preserve this body of flesh, when the body of the excellent law will endure? I am resolved; having accomplished my purpose and attended to the work set me, I look for rest! For a long time, Ananda, thou hast been very near to me by thoughts and acts of such love as is beyond all measure. Thou hast done well, Ananda! Be earnest in effort and thou too shalt soon be free from evils, from sensuality, from selfishness, from delusion, and from ignorance!”

Ananda, suppressing his tears, said to the Blessed One: “Who shall teach us when thou art gone?”

And the Blessed One replied: “I am not the first Buddha who came upon earth, nor shall I be the last. In due time another Buddha will arise in the world, a Holy One, a supremely enlightened One, endowed with wisdom in conduct, auspicious, knowing the universe, an incomparable leader of men, a master of angels and mortals. He will reveal to you the same eternal truths which I have taught you. He will preach his religion, glorious in its origin, glorious at the climax, and glorious at the goal, in the spirit and in the letter. He will proclaim a religious life, wholly perfect and pure; such as I now proclaim.”

Ananda said: “How shall we know him?” The Blessed One said: “He will be known as Metteyya, which means ‘he whose name is kindness.'”

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Excerpted from:

BUDDHA, THE GOSPEL

By Paul Carus

Chicago, The Open Court Publishing Company,

[1894]