Can the Buddha read your mind?
No. The Buddha is emphatically dead.
But what if he were alive now? Or if you were alive during his time? Would he be able to read your mind, see the future, and fully understand what's plaguing you? This was a question posed to Reverend Kusula Tuesday night. You might think the answer is simply no, that really these are just myths or legends. But i have a hypothesis that says such a thing is possible.
It relies on a few assumptions, which may be wildly incorrect; the world is ultimately deterministic and once one has achieved Nirvana, that person can see everything, including all relations between all forms of existence. The second assumption is something suggested to be one interpretation of Nirvana as experienced while during one's lifetime. That once one understands the universe, one would be able to see the world from all perspectives and see all relations the world poses to all forms of being.
The first assumption is something a bit bigger, but still fits into the framework of Buddhism, at least as posed by Reverend Kusula. This follows the idea that there is no secret essence to a human, a ghost in the machine, in the way that christainity has a focus on the Spirit or the Soul. There is no fundamental idea of dualism, where some aspect of understanding is hidden from reality. Instead, with the assumption that everything exists as it is paired with the fact that the universe is tremendously complicated, one can easily say that the universe itself, with all it's relations between entities and all it's myriad of entities, is simply impossible to fully comprehend as a human. So really, the world seems non-deterministic, driven by a magic hand, or even randomness, simply because it is too complicated to fully understand. Our approximation is driven by randomness and fate.
But what if a human could, hypothetically, see all these entities, and see all the relations between these entities? And what if a human could compute all these relations? Then, due to the assumption that the universe is ultimately deterministic, they would be able to see where things would be in the future. They would be able to see how everything is affecting another person, animal, or object. So yes, the Buddha would be able to read your mind and see the future.
But what if he were alive now? Or if you were alive during his time? Would he be able to read your mind, see the future, and fully understand what's plaguing you? This was a question posed to Reverend Kusula Tuesday night. You might think the answer is simply no, that really these are just myths or legends. But i have a hypothesis that says such a thing is possible.
It relies on a few assumptions, which may be wildly incorrect; the world is ultimately deterministic and once one has achieved Nirvana, that person can see everything, including all relations between all forms of existence. The second assumption is something suggested to be one interpretation of Nirvana as experienced while during one's lifetime. That once one understands the universe, one would be able to see the world from all perspectives and see all relations the world poses to all forms of being.
The first assumption is something a bit bigger, but still fits into the framework of Buddhism, at least as posed by Reverend Kusula. This follows the idea that there is no secret essence to a human, a ghost in the machine, in the way that christainity has a focus on the Spirit or the Soul. There is no fundamental idea of dualism, where some aspect of understanding is hidden from reality. Instead, with the assumption that everything exists as it is paired with the fact that the universe is tremendously complicated, one can easily say that the universe itself, with all it's relations between entities and all it's myriad of entities, is simply impossible to fully comprehend as a human. So really, the world seems non-deterministic, driven by a magic hand, or even randomness, simply because it is too complicated to fully understand. Our approximation is driven by randomness and fate.
But what if a human could, hypothetically, see all these entities, and see all the relations between these entities? And what if a human could compute all these relations? Then, due to the assumption that the universe is ultimately deterministic, they would be able to see where things would be in the future. They would be able to see how everything is affecting another person, animal, or object. So yes, the Buddha would be able to read your mind and see the future.