The (Magnificent) Seven Ancient Buddhas

Buddhism began in India about 2,500 years ago. It was started by a person who Buddhists call “Gautama Buddha” or “Sakyamuni Buddha”. It's said that Gautama Buddha was enlightened when he was doing meditation early one morning while sitting under a tree. He then began to teach other people about what he understood to be the truth about the world, and his teachings gradually spread to other regions.

One interesting thing about Buddhism is that Gautama Buddha is regarded as a human being, and not as a form of God. Buddhists regard Gautama Buddha as a wonderful human being, and revere him for realizing the truth about the world and teaching people about what he realized. Another interesting thing is that Buddhism believes that the truth that Gautama Buddha realized 2,500 years ago has existed since the very beginning of time. In other words, the truth about the world which Gautama Buddha realized has always been here. To acknowledge this, Buddhism includes an idea about "Seven Ancient Buddhas" or "Seven Past Buddhas".

The idea about the seven ancient Buddhas is that, prior to Gautama Buddha, there were six mythical Buddhas who also realized the truth hundreds of thousands of years before Gautama Buddha did. In Zen Buddhism at least, it's not generally believed that those six mythical Buddhas actually existed, but it's Buddhism's way of saying that the truth that Gautama Buddha realized has been here since the beginning of time, and so it's possible that other people also realized the truth long before Gautama Buddha did. The phrase “Seven Ancient Buddhas” refers to those six mythical Buddhas and Gautama Buddha. In chapter 15, Busso  (The Buddhist Patriarchs) of Dogen's book Shobogenzo, the names of the seven ancient Buddhas are given as Vipasyin Buddha, Sikhin Buddha, Visvabhu Buddha, Krakucchanda Buddha, Kanakamuni Buddha, Kasyapa Buddha, and Gautama Buddha (the historical Buddha).

The Youtube clip below is a short audio recording (3 mins) of a talk by Gudo Nishijima in which he discusses this idea about the Seven Ancient Buddhas. I recorded this on a cassette recorder in 1999, so apologies if the sound quality isn't too good. 

I Can't Go On

    Every once in a while I get asked whether I think Buddhism is a religion or a philosophy. It’s a question a lot of people interested in Zen Buddhism seem to have at some point or other. I don't know if it matters too much whether you consider Buddhism is a religion or a philosophy, if you feel that it helps you in your life in some way. I studied Buddhism with a teacher named Gudo Nishijima, and he often used to describe Buddhism as a practical philosophy. One thing that distinguishes Buddhism from most philosophies or religions is that doing some kind of meditation is an important part of daily life for a lot of Buddhists. 

    In Zen Buddhism, the meditation practice is called zazen. The general idea is that doing zazen regularly helps us experience life in a way that's a bit different from what we're used to, and helps us to live a bit more in harmony with the world around us. It can create a bit of space where we can take a step back from our busy lives and reflect on or notice what’s going on in our life at that particular time. Gudo Nishijima used to encourage his students to do zazen every day, even for 5 or 10 minutes, and ideally to do zazen once in the morning and once in the evening if we can.

    I first met Gudo Nishijima about 30 years ago. I used to go along to his Buddhist classes and retreats, and I also tried to follow his advice about doing some zazen at home. If you start to do zazen regularly, you probably will notice that it makes a difference in your day-to-day life in some way or other. But it also requires a bit of time and effort to keep up the habit of doing it every day. In my own case, once in a while I’d go through a stage where I’d lose my motivation or interest in doing zazen. After I’d been doing zazen like that for a few years, I had a chat with Gudo Nishijima and told him I was finding it a bit hard to keep doing zazen regularly and that I was thinking of giving it up. He said it was no problem and it was up to myself to decide what to do and to stop altogether if I wanted to. But he also said jokingly that if I stopped doing zazen for a while and then decided to start doing it again, then I’d know that I’m a Buddhist.

    So I took a break from zazen for a couple of weeks. My life went on more or less as before. But after I had stopped doing zazen for about two weeks, I felt something was missing in some way even though I couldn't exactly say what it was. Life just seemed a bit more interesting when I'd been doing zazen regularly. So I started to do zazen again, and continued doing it since then. Later on it occurred to me that when I had been doing zazen on a daily basis I didn’t really notice what effect it had, and it was only when I stopped that I could notice that whatever effect there was from doing zazen wasn’t there anymore. That’s the way it seemed to me anyway, but it may be that it was just something I was going through at the time.

Remembering Gudo Nishijima Roshi today

 

My Buddhist teacher, Gudo Nishijima Roshi, passed away on this day (January 28) in 2014. 

He dedicated most of his life to learning about Buddhism and teaching other people.

Here's a video of Master Nishijima explaining how to do Zazen.

And this is a video of Master Nishijima doing Zazen on a very hot summer's day in Tokyo when he was 89.

I feel very fortunate to have met him and that he was kind enough to teach me about Buddhism. I'll be keeping him in my thoughts today.