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From: cyee@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au (Chut Ngeow YEE)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern
Subject: RE: Some Questions
Message-ID: <1991May30.155627.8760@nas.nasa.gov>
Date: 30 May 91 15:56:27 GMT
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Organization: NAS Program, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
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Roger Adams writes:

>moorthy@hctdemo.leis.bellcore.com (moorthy) writes:
>
>>	What do different Buddhistic schools say about the next Avatar?
>>	(Is there a concept of Avatar in Buddhism?)
>>	
>>	Is there an authentic account of "Kalki" Avatar ( the next Avatar) in 
>>	Hindu scriptures?
>>	/moorthy
>
>What is an avatar? A divine incarnation.  In a sense, we are all avatars

This is what Da Avabhasa (Da Free John) has to say about the parodox of
an Avatar:

"But people want the Guru to be the Avatar. They want that exclusive
God image, whereas God doesn't exist in the exclusive sense.  God is
absolute. And the Guru lives as the Present Divine, not because he
has attained anything, but because he has been undone. So he doesn't
represent himself as the Divine in the exclusive sense. In his ecstatic
speech he claims identity with the Divine, but he is not making a
statement about himself, about his ego or his personal qualities in
some exclusive sense. He is making a statement about all beings and
worlds, about the Nature of Reality, the Condition that is God. Of
course until there are others who realize that same happiness, that
same enjoyment, he seems unique, and he functins for them as the Source
of the operation of the Divine Sidhhi[spiritual power] in order to
generate the life of Understanding in them. But in fact he doesn't
exist as God in any exclusive sense whatoever. so there is no Avatar
except the whole [of mankind and all beings], if it makes any sense to
use such words at all."
                                                               DA AVABHASA
                                                   Grabage and the Goddess


>since the divine is incarnated in all beings - sentient and insentient.
>An avatar, as it is described in the AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI by Paramahansa
>Yogananda, is a fully liberated soul, who became liberated in a previous
>incarnation, and who returns to this physical dimension to help yet unliberated
>souls to also be free.

Saying that the divine is incarnated in all beings implies that the ego is
divine, to be glorified after fulfilling some grand path to enlightenment.
I agree more to the view that the ego and the phenomena world is a temporary
and spontaneous activity rising and falling in God or Buddha Nature or
Transcendental Consciousness or Reality or One-Mind or whatever you want to
call it.  So the destiny of the ego (the re-incarnating entity), the imaginary
disease of separation and unelightenment, is ultimately to be undone. And all
realizers serve that purpose in one way or another. Here is another quote
from Da Avabhasa:

"The Disposition of the Enlightened one is paradoxical. It is a bodily
Disposition, because he is, in a conventional sense, enbodied, and he
therefore represents the past and its movement toward the future. And,
paradoxically, his obligation is to somehow serve the Enlightenment of
other beings. But from the point of view of Enlightenment itself there 
are no other beings, and those conventions of experience that we call
other beings are not in fact failing to be Enlightened. They are
                                                             ---
Enlightenment. They are themselves only the Radiant Transcendental
Consciousness. Therefore, all that we are confronting is a conventional
concept of bondage and the need to survive. It is a superficial concept,
and yet all beings are profoundly organized around these notions of
bondage and survival.  They create their daily lives around motives based
in these notions. Thus, all beings appear to be tormented, and yet their
torment is totally superficial and insignificant. The affair of life is
unnecessary, but it is inevitable. The best description of it is that it
is absurd. The entire universe and all experience exist only to be
transcended.

The Spiritual Master is absurd, like everything else. He is a Function
that serves to Enlighten or Awaken beings from this condition that is
absurd and unneccessary to begin with. The occupation of the Spirutial
Master is as absurd as anything anyone else does, you see. Therefore,
it requires a Sense of Humour, or the Enlightened point of view...."

                                                               DA AVABHASA
                                       The Enlightenment of the Whole Body