What are the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path?
What is Buddha's distinction in this chapter between seeking salvation and seeking knowledge? Does Buddha reject knowledge as a way to ultimate truth? Is intuition necessarily irrational? In the Noble Eightfold Path, Buddha states under the topic of "Unprofitable Questions":
Should anyone say that he does not wish to lead the holy life under the Blessed One, unless the Blessed One first tells him, whether the world is eternal or temporal, finite or infinite; whether the life principle is identical with the body, or something different; whether the Perfect One continues after death, and so on such a man would die, ere the Perfect One could tell him all this.
It is as if a man were pierced by a poisoned arrow, and his friends, companions, or near relations, should send for a surgeon; but that man should say: "I will not have this arrow pulled out, until I know who the man is that has wounded me: whether he is a noble, a priest, a citizen, or a servant"; or: "what his name is, and to what family he belongs"; or: "whether he is tall, or short, or of medium height." Verily, such a man would die, ere he could adequately learn all this.[1]
What does Siddhartha mean when he states that the Buddha gave him "Siddhartha, himself"?
Is Siddhartha's injunction that he will never lower his glance before another man justified from this one experience? If so, then is the finding of "inner-self" consequently seen to be a wholly personal undertaking?
| [1] | Paul Carus. Buddha, The Word. 1915. |