(switching to my words to make the story short)Bhikkus before my enlightenment, while i was still a bodhisatta, not yet fully enlightened it occured to me
Way before awakening Buddha had noted,"this world is in quite a jam, it is born, ages and dies, it is reborn...yet it does not understand the escape from suffering?"
- there was no person here,
- it is born, ages and dies
Perhaps this was the stream entry, or higher?
- Before final awakening, Buddha had worked out the entire sequence of DO without a glitch.
Mara in his case being the remnants of unskillfulness or unwholesomeness. Buddha was not fighting his asavas for Annihilation nor women (Mara's daughters) that night, he was battling the last traces of delight that lingered in him. Was it a stubborn memory of the olden days, of a son, or a wife? None can say, all i can speculate is it had to be something worthwhile, not a hangover of an annihilation, like a hangover from a night of drunkenness, and revelry.
Only a stupid wannabe philosopher out of touch with BuddhaDhamma will say Buddha was fighting a view of annihilation the night before awakening,[/b] or weeks, or months before.
He was not an idiot by this time. Annihilation is a mark of an idiotic mind. Idiots cannot recognize the genius. Idiots are limited by their idiocy.He had already come up with a design for DO, way before the grand day.
- How do you measure the immeasurable mind with a teaspoon of a puny brain?
MN 4, and MN 36, MN 85 MN 100, describes 4th jhana as the vehicle.On the night of awakening he ripped asunder, the karmic consciousness, hard to dislodge. Power of that explosion was such that It never reformed again.
Now if someone on this thread claims
it sounds ludicrous.."In other words, Goatama stopped being one (meaning annihilationist) when he awakened, suspecting part of his awakening was seeing how his annihilationist views still tethered him to existence"
Canon admits he had already known DO for quite sometime, before awakening. Who would think that mara battle on the night of Full Awakening was based on a stupid Annihilationistic View? Even commonly ignorant people like us know better. Bodhisattaa full of wisdom! Why would he entertain a silly idea, on an auspicious night? To do so he had to be more stupid than us. I won't go there.
Canon never tells us exactly when he met these two Indian sages. One scholar Andre Bureau goes as far as to say Buddha never met them. Our inhouse wannabe Buddhologist writes Buddha was obsessed with their teachings. I tend to lean towards A. Bareau. Bareau has proven himself, by writing a text on "The Buddhist schools of the Small vehicle"
Reading the canon however, one comes across two suttas where Buddha mentions these two teachers in a most unkind light, perhaps he met them briefly, (few days, two weeks the most) and dismissed their methods as of no use in the cessation of suffering.
The canon never gives us a time frame of events. What likely happened was:
Siddhartha leaves his family. He had already been exposed to the accumulated vedic knowledge before his renunciation. Upon leaving the palace he went in search of the best teachers. Why waste time? Alara kalama & Uddaka Ramaputta had a reputation. He met them spent some time (most would be two weeks) with each one of them, did not take him too long to figure out
He resorted to other yogic practices prevalent in Magadha, 3-4 years? ... almost died, devas injected nourishment via skin pours."This is baloney, i will never find the end of suffering through a scheme of warped meditation"
Gotama regains his strength, gains his wisdom, had some decent food instead of starving, remembers the jhana episode as a child, pursued that line of thought, figures out DO, weeks, months before awakening?
- Managed to get rid of the traces of craving, and reversed DO, on the night of awakening
Good luck with your future speculations as a Buddhologist. Tell us a story or two worth listening to, instead of Nibbana that exists, or the challenge of figuring out the truth regarding the Five Precepts.
With love on a fine Monday morning