A Few Wise Men

By Carlos F. Echeverría

The Buddha. ~ Lao Tse. ~ Jesus of Nazareth.

 

The originators of the three wisdom traditions discussed in this book did not set out to create religions. They meant to share what they had discovered about the workings of the world. They wanted to help their contemporaries open their eyes to alternative ways of living.

 

But then, institutions formed around their words and concepts, which were soon overtaken by the goals and needs their followers. What we are most familiar with is this edited and redacted version of their original messages. However, we can see glimmers of their fundamental ideas in the original, primitive texts that remain. With some effort, we can unearth, know and savor the essence of their teachings.

 

The three essays that make up this book are explorations of these original ideas. We will examine the work of the many scholars and academics who have peeled back these distortions. This will allow us to see the original texts with fresh eyes, and to discover what they have found: the unadulterated core teachings of three great, wise men.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Phoenix Centre Press
• Release date: Apr 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781988710037

Carlos F. Echeverría

Throughout his career in politics, communication and business, Carlos F. Echeverria (San Jose de Costa Rica, 1952) has maintained a constant interest in the history of art, philosophy and religions. He currently resides in Valencia, Spain.

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Oh, what a restful life

Of him who flees the noisy world

And follows the hidden path

That has been trodden

By the few wise men that ever lived!

- Fray Luis de León

Preface

THERE HAVE BEEN HUNDREDS, perhaps thousands of religions throughout History. However, only a few of them have had worldwide influence, either by attracting large numbers or followers or through the impact of their ideas in the general culture. They are Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity and Islam.

Every one of them originated in the teachings of a sage or prophet. Muhammad, the founder of Islam, wrote an extensive book explaining his doctrine. While it is the subject of numerous interpretations, there is no doubt about the words that the prophet used to present it.  This is not the case with the other three pillars of the great religions.  As far as we know, Jesus of Nazareth did not write anything; his deeds and sayings were registered several decades after his death, by followers who probably never met him.  Something similar happened with the Buddha: his teachings were orally transmitted for centuries before they were put into writing.  According to the legend, Lao Tse wrote the 81 poems of the Tao Te King by his own hand.  However, modern research suggests that the great classic could have been written by two or more authors at different times.

Enormous doctrinal constructions, with their corresponding hierarchies, festivities and rituals have been built upon the uncertain base of the teachings of those three men (Muhammad’s was not uncertain). Something very powerful must exist in those teachings for their influence to prevail in such an extensive way throughout the centuries.

It is difficult, however, to find those ideas in a pure state. The wisdom of men who reflected on life and the universe in primordial, more diaphanous times, comes to us mixed with all sorts of ideas and beliefs that have been added to them by generations of priests, commentators and scribes. But the fundamental ideas are still there, hidden in ancient texts that we can now interpret through archaeology and linguistics. If we remove those distortions, additions and superstitions, we will find the roots of the wisdom of the great sages.

Many distinguished scholars have devoted their keen and cultured minds to that task. The three essays included in this book rest upon their findings. The author aims no more than to show what others have discovered: the naked wisdom of three great sages whose teachings, though refracted by countless crystals, have had an impact on the lives of billions of people.

Foreword

I MET CARLOS ECHEVERRÍA back in the ‘oughts. It was initially an online meeting; I had a blog about personal development that often delved into Buddhism and he dropped me a line from time to time.

We met in person in Costa Rica and struck up a friendship. Over lunch one day, Carlos offhandedly mentioned that he was close to finishing writing a book about the founders of three religions... and would I be interested in having a look?

I was delighted to do so.

What you have in your hands evolved out of the Spanish version of his book. Just last year, Carlos dropped me a line and said that he’d decided to release the English version as an e-book, and would I be interested in editing and releasing it through my publishing arm.

Again... delighted.

I have a background in Religious Studies; I completed a Master of Divinity in Canada. My path has taken me through Christianity to Buddhism, with a side trip through the Tao. The latter two informed my counselling style and my writing. So, this book was of great interest to me.

I’ve enjoyed digging into Carlos’ writing. He is a thorough and erudite scholar, and a relatable writer. This book explores concepts and the times of three of the most important theological / philosophical thinkers of all time, and as you’ll see, what can seem at times complex is rendered clear by Carlos’ steady hand.

I’m writing this in April of 2020, right in the middle of the Covid-19 epidemic. It’s still early; we don’t know what normal will look like. Clearly, things are going to be different. And it is at times like this that we need to have another look at our moorings.

In fact, I’d suggest you start reading at the end; turn to the Epilogue and have a look. Carlos proposes three things he’s taken from his studies of the philosophies presented. They likely will be a good focal point for you, too.

Going forward, we will need to find a calm and compassionate centre. Fortunately, we don’t have to figure out how. The Buddha, Lao Tse and Jesus have already done the hard slogging for us. In their work and in their lives are the lights for our own paths.

The question has been the same for millennia: will we listen, understand, and follow?

The book in your hands and the words of Carlos F. Echeverría provide a focus for this exploration.

Wayne C. Allen

Canada, 2020

The Awakened

WE ARE IMPELLED OUTWARD by diversity and our curious intellect, and yet there’s always that thread back to the unified state of things, the intelligence of the heart. What is it in us that will not let us rest, that keeps us moving out? And what brings us back to what T.S. Eliot called the still point within?

Joseph Chilton Pearce. Parabola, Vol. 17, N° 2.

As a rule, religions thrive and expand in association with political and cultural systems.

Christianity, for example, was born in the Eastern Mediterranean but its territorial expansion and theological development were linked to the Roman Empire and the power structures that succeeded it, first in Europe and then in the Americas. There are certainly Christians on all continents, but their faith and religious practice arose from the military, political and cultural penetration of the West.

Islam, which has been political since its inception, has shown impressive strength in trespassing borders and impregnating entire nations with its faith, whether through territorial conquest or the conversion of the sovereigns and elites of those nations. Even today the inclusion of many of its new followers is strongly associated with political motives.

Other religions such as Hinduism and Judaism have remained relatively confined to the geographic or ethnic realm where they were born.

Buddhism is a strange exception. It is presently practiced by very few in India, where it originated. Even though its first wave of expansion was toward the South of the subcontinent, down to present day Sri Lanka, soon the young religion lost strength in India while it spread toward North and East Asia.

Having little affinity with political power by virtue of its essential doctrine, Buddhism has seldom been supported by military or civilian rulers, with the remarkable exception of emperor Ashoka in India (c. 269 – c. 232 A.D.). Rather, despite its pacifist calling, it has been the victim of persecution and repression. Moreover, Buddhism has lacked a centralized institutional system or a large, organized missionary activity. Despite all that, it has not stopped growing throughout the centuries. It is estimated that some 500 million people in Asia are Buddhist.

Buddhism has also attracted many people in the West, perhaps not in terms of downright conversions but, at the very least, in the form of respect and admiration toward its leaders – especially the Dalai Lama, the highest authority of Tibetan Buddhism – and in the practice of its basic discipline: meditation.

Mainstream culture has incorporated some concepts of clearly Buddhist origin, such as the idea of the ego as a deceiving psychological prison filled with passions and fears, the wariness of attachments, the concept of karma and the yearning for nirvana.

In every religion, a large variety of doctrinal and ritual aggregates have been added to the original teachings of its founder. This is particularly true in the case of Buddhism, which has evolved for 2500 years in very diverse cultures and distant places on the Asian continent.

It is common to talk about two great traditions: Theravada and Mahayana. Those two names, however, conceal a large diversity of practices and beliefs. One can reasonably assume that there is, in their common essence, a nucleus or seed that has radiated its persuasive power over the millions of human beings who have found a guide to their lives in Buddhism. It is our aim to approach that essence.

The Historical Buddha

THERE IS LITTLE STRICTLY historical research on the life of Siddhartha Gautama because it is almost impossible to do it. His teachings and biography were orally transmitted for several centuries before they were put down in writing. The recitative style in which his sermons have been preserved is a testimony to this. The tales about his life are full of fantastic legend; they provide relatively little information on the real acts and words of the person we remember as the Buddha.

It is known that he lived for about eighty years, but doubts have always existed as to the dates of his birth and death. However, there is some consensus that he was born around 485 B.C. in the village of Lumbini at the foot of the Himalayas, in present-day Nepal. If so, Gautama would have been a contemporary of Socrates. Both would have ended their long and fruitful lives around the year 400 B.C.

Gautama, Socrates, Confucius and perhaps Lao Tse lived about the same time. While separated by immense geographical distances, they established the groundwork for philosophical systems that have influenced most of humankind for several millennia. They are the great thinkers of the Axial Era, the beacons of the historical phenomenon that Karen Armstrong has called the Great Transformation: the shedding of old archetypal, sacrificial and authoritarian religions in favor of new doctrines based on personal responsibility, morality and the search for inner peace.[1]

The Upanishads

This process started in Northern India in the 7th century B.C. with the first Upanishads, which are also called Vedanta: the "end of the Vedas." Around 1500 B.C. the Arian invaders from Central Asia had brought the Vedic or Brahminic religion with them. Their new, vigorous culture replaced the ancient Indus Valley civilization.

Like any other religion associated with territorial conquest, Brahmanism was strictly hierarchical. Its hymns, songs and rituals had the double function of projecting the invaders’ superiority and the sacred nature of their mission, while securing the discipline and respect of the colonized peoples.

In these proto-historical religions, magic and ritual play important roles in establishing the transcendental role of priests. Animal and even human sacrifices work as magical instruments to contain the gods’ wrath. They also acted as subtle warnings to the simple folk: priests have power over life and death. Magic is also present in Brahmanism in the repetition of verses or words called mantras, which are supposed to invoke primordial energies. Mantra repetition is still practiced today as a sort of self-hypnosis that leads to deep states of serenity.

The origin of India’s caste system is found in the Vedas, with Brahmins at the top of the pyramid. This religion, the forebear of present-day Hinduism, understands Brahma as an impersonal cosmic principle of which 33 specialized gods emerge, such as Mitra, Varuna, Indra, Vishnu and Krishna, the latter incarnated as a human hero.

Some Vedic sages and philosophers conceived the revolutionary idea that human beings participate in Brahma’s nature; that there is a spark or a fragment of the cosmic, universal and sacred principle in each one of us. This idea of human beings and the creator of the Universe sharing identity or essence is bold and radical even in our own times; even more so in a society that was structured around the mediating authority of the priesthood.

The belief that every individual shared in divine nature weakened the role of the priests and was consequently considered subversive. Therefore, those who believed in the new doctrine chose to transmit it secretly, from master to disciple. Such is the origin of the Upanishads. The word Upanishad means "sitting next to," or "sitting at the feet of."

The two most important rishis or masters of the first Upanishads were Yajnavalkya, from Videha, and Uddalaka Aruni, from the region of Kuru-Panchakala. Both were active by the middle of the 7th Century B.C.  Kosala, the land where the Buddha would live some two hundred years later, was located between those two kingdoms.

The idea that every human being carries the divine essence within presents a tremendous challenge: How does one maintain conscious contact with that essence? Yajnavalkya points to that difficulty when he states that it is impossible to perceive the atman. (It is impossible to perceive the perceiver.)

This is because the atman, the portion of the All that is inside me, is not me. It is not this sentient being formed by body and consciousness, but rather something transcendental, indestructible and immaterial, as becomes cosmic or divine nature.

Yajnavalkya thought that we become one with our atman only in deep sleep and in orgasm, "where there is not a second reality that we can see as distinct and separate." In those situations, we experience ananda, the ecstasy of Brahman.

But this is clearly insufficient. Human beings want their entire life to be filled with meaning—to make sense—and only a conscious, intimate and constant connection to ultimate reality, to atman, can provide that.

In order to achieve that connection, Yajnavalkya, Uddalaka and other sages of the Upanishads proposed ridding the mind of all obstacles preventing the contemplation of the ultimate reality; dismantling thought habits and approaching deeper states of consciousness. This is the origin of the different forms of meditation, one of India’s greatest legacies to humankind.

However, obstacles that prevent a close contact with our own atman are not only in the mind but also in everyday activity. This leads to another great contribution of ancient India to spiritual thought: the idea of karma, literally meaning action, which is related to the cycles of death and rebirth (samsara).

If atman is inextinguishable but human beings are not, we must assume that when a person dies his atman reappears in someone else. The degree of self-realization of the new person will be partially determined by whatever he achieved in his previous life or lives, both in terms of liberating his mind and in terms of his deeds. This is the ethical dimension of the Upanishads.

To many followers of this doctrine, the compromises, pleasures and conflicts of everyday household life make it impossible for an individual to attain the purity and concentration required to reach the spiritual goal of integrating with one’s own atman (and therefore with Brahman), thereby achieving the final liberation from the endless cycle of deaths and rebirths. Consequently, they chose an itinerate life of asceticism, beggary and reflection. Yajnavalkya himself left his home and his privileged position as an advisor to king Janaka of Videha to follow this path.

Four essential components of the future teachings of the Buddha can be found in the Upanishads: meditation, the ethical idea of karma, the longing for absolute spiritual freedom (nirvana) and the begging itinerancy of the monks. The idea of life as dukkha, suffering, pain, dissatisfaction, which the Buddha would proclaim as the first of his Four Noble Truths, is to be found in another school known as Samkhya[2], which flourished in the 6th century B.C.

Shakya

The land where the Buddha was born experienced remarkable developments in the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. The introduction of the iron plow expanded agriculture, increasing food surplus, commercial exchange and population. Based on a monetary economy, trade flourished along the so-called North Route, which connected the large and fertile Ganges basin with the lower Himalayas and, to the West, with the farthest reaches of the Persian Empire, the economic and political powerhouse of the era. The eastern end of the North Route was the Indian city of Rajagraha, in the kingdom of Magadha; the western end was Taxila, the capital of Gandhara, the easternmost satrapy or province of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

The two powerful and often rival kingdoms of Magadha and Kosala coexisted in the Ganges basin with a group of small, aristocratic "republics," such as Malla, Vrijji, Kashi and the Buddha’s native land: Shakya. That is why texts often refer to him as "Shakyamuni," the sage from Shakya. The village of Lumbini, where the Buddha was born, was close to Kapilavastu, the city that marked the northern tip of the region.

As was customary, near the end of her pregnancy Mahamaya, Gautama’s mother, returned to her family home in Lumbini to give birth to her son. She died soon after. The child was raised by one of her sisters, who would then become the second wife of Gautama’s father, Suddhodana.

Biographies of the Buddha present him as a prince surrounded by luxury and servants, thus idealizing the fact that his father was a member of the ruling council in Shakya. Although not exactly a prince, Gautama was part of a privileged group in his society.

It was customary in the Ganges basin republics to send at least one young man from each distinguished family to the university of Taxila. Several friends of Siddhartha attended that university, including Pasenadi, future king of Kosala; Bandhula, son of the governor of Malla; Angulimala, son of a Savatthi brahmin; Mahali, a nobleman from Vesali, and Jivaka, a courtesan from Magadha.

As a member of one of the ruling families Siddhartha was entitled to receive a formal education. Even though his name does not appear in any register of students in Taxila, Siddhartha could have been the chosen one from Shakya. The fact that he kept contact with all those men throughout his life suggests that they may have studied together.

But there is also the possibility that very early in his life, Gautama chose a different kind of apprenticeship.

Known documents reveal almost nothing about Siddhartha’s childhood and youth, except for mythical and clearly allegorical legends. We do know, however, that at sixteen he married a young girl called Yasodhara. It is interesting to note that his only son, Rahula, was born when Siddhartha was already twenty-eight, shortly before he left home to lead an itinerant life.

Did Gautama and Yasodhara live together during those twelve years? We will probably never know. However, it is reasonable to suppose that such an extremely intelligent young man, living in an atmosphere of intense philosophical and religious speculation, may have temporarily separated from his family either to pursue formal studies or to learn from the many informal schools of wandering philosophers.

The formative years

Gautama’s spiritual education is inextricably mixed with legend, but we know that at separate times he studied with at least two different masters: Alara Kalama and Uddalaka Ramaputta, both followers of the Samkhya school.

This school followed a strict, disciplined asceticism. Besides observing rigorous hygiene, courtesy and obedience norms, it was meticulously respectful of all forms of life, to the point of asking its followers to walk with extreme care not to hurt any living creature. They also practiced concentration and breath control techniques which are the basis of present-day yoga.

Through these practices, followers of Samkhya sought to free their purusha from the bindings of nature and achieve an