This post is going to be a bit contentious, but I believe it to be worth it.

I’m going to suggest that an updated version of Buddhism — and other spiritual paths — is urgently needed if they are to be accessible to 21st-century people. As a start, I suggest that “bodhisattvas” are renamed “Nirvaneans”, and “Living Buddhas”, “Posthumans”.

“Nirvanic experience” should also be regarded as accessible to the many and as a normal part of “growing up”, not some fabled Pure Land only visible to the ancients. Until we change our terminology and show that Nirvana is as true for us today as it was for Gautama Siddhartha 2500 years ago, living spirituality will remain the preserve of fossilized religions and charlatans.

With this in mind let’s take a look at one of the great Buddhist scriptures :

The Flower Garland (Avatamsaka) Sutra of Hua Yen Buddhism has had a great influence on the development of Zen. It brims with stunning insights into the nature of reality and is known for its magical, cascading descriptions which numb the senses and tumble us into Enlightenment by the sheer exuberance of it all. Buddha Lands without end, reflecting in jewels without end, come flashing out from the pages of these exotic volumes. No scriptural work comes closer to the wild dance of life itself than the immense, final volume of the Avatamsaka Sutra.

“Avatamsaka” refers to the garland of flowers around the neck of the Universal Buddha, whose concentration is said to summon up the spectre of the world.

The sutra presents the flowing patterns of life as the immoveable concentration of the Buddha, or Awakened Mind. There is thus a completely unhindered interpenetration between the Absolute principle, call it what you will, and the normal life that we lead from day to day.

These nirvanically-realized principles are not readily accessible to materialistic moderns who rely heavily on intellectual solutions to daily problems and challenges. Hua Yen Buddhism can be difficult at times but, like all of Buddhism, the doctrine dissolves into “seeing”, a concentrated, continuous awareness of the ocean of being, or Buddha-nature. In the final book of the Flower Garland Sutra, the monk Sagaramegha explains his doctrine of the universal eye by which he maintains his awareness at all times of the unborn Buddha-mind, represented by consciousness within and space without, here depicted as the ocean:

“Son, I have been living here in Sagaramukha (Ocean-
Door) for twelve years, having focused my mind on the
ocean and kept it present in my awareness, reflecting
on the measureless vastness of the great ocean, its
pure clarity, its unfathomable depth, its gradual
deepening, its variety of deposits of precious
substances, the measurelessness of its body of water,
its infinity, its being the dwelling place of various
immense creatures … and how it neither increases nor
decreases. I think: is there anything else in the
world as vast as the great ocean, as broad, as
measureless, as deep, as various?”

The book expounds the Hua Yen vision of the world as the vast state of concentration of the Buddha. All objects and happenings in the world are his teachings for sentient beings, and their lives are their means of practice. The Buddha is raised to the status of an all-embracing cosmic principle, the one consciousness behind all things. Gautama, the historical Buddha, participates as Vairocana Buddha, reality itself.

Despite his constant presence before all beings, however, he is only recognized by Posthumans. Ordinary mortals fail to identify his “body” which is the functioning of the world, their everday reality realm. As it’s put in the “Great Treatise” of the Taoist I Ching, “The kind man discovers it and calls it kind. The wise man discovers it and calls it wise. The people use it day by day and are not aware of it, for the way of the superior man is rare.” Again, “It possesses everything in complete abundance : this is its great field of action. It renews everything daily : this is its glorious power.”

The Flower Garland sutra is concerned with “clarifying the eye of unobstructed knowledge” in ordinary people. The means for this are twofold : the great guiding principle of the Buddha himself, fully revealed in his world — this is the path of the quick-witted, and the way of “enlightening beings”, the bodhisattvas (Nirvaneans), who return to the world of birth and death to bring all creatures to enlightened Posthumanity. The imperative for human beings is to develop the “ocean reflection” through nirvanic experiences, whereby reality can be seen directly at all times.

“The universally good always fills the universe
With various bodies flowing everywhere,
With concentration, psychic powers, skill and strength,
In a universal voice teaching extensively without hindrance.”

All our ancient religions have been distorted out of all recognition with time. Until we reassess them with an authentic “nirvanic eye”, they will become increasingly inaccessible to the majority, and the playground of fanatics.