23. How to be a Buddha: Timing of Virtues Cultivation (Parami)
How to be a
Buddha: Timing of Virtues Cultivation
By Pittaya
Wong
10 Feb 2018
[1] As mentioned in the earlier chapter that
every Buddha-to-be has to go through an incredibly long period of virtues
cultivation until the required transcendental virtues energy are fulfilled and
enable such Buddha-to-be to attain enlightenment and become a Silent Buddha or
Lord Buddha, some may doubt why the requirement for Buddhahood is accounted as
the period of cultivation, 20.1 eons, 40.12 eons, and 80.1 eons, instead of the
volume of transcendental merit energy earned from doing good deeds and
accumulated in oneself.
[2] To
clarify this, we can compare the cultivation of virtues for Buddhahood to ‘bread
baking’ where the mass of bigger or smaller chunks of raw bread are baked in an
oven over a period of time until it becomes fully and completely baked. In contrast, the Wisdom-Oriented Buddha-to-be
person is like a smaller chunk of raw bread which requires less time, 20.1
eons, to be completely baked whereas the Faith-Oriented and Perseverance-Oriented
Buddha-to-be persons need more time for cultivation, 40.1 eons and 80.1 eons
respectively, to attain enlightenment, similar to bigger chunks of raw bread in
an oven that take more time to be completely and fully baked.
[3] Timing
in virtues cultivation plays an important role in pursuit of perfection as
different types of Buddha-to-be namely the Wisdom-Oriented, Faith-Oriented, and
the Perseverance-Oriented have more or less timing requirements for
Buddhahood. The Wisdom-Oriented
Buddha-to-be can attain enlightenment similar to the Faith-Oriented and Perseverance-Oriented
Buddha-to-be with less accumulated merit energy and shorter period of
cultivation. This is because when ‘wisdom’
is the leading quality in virtues cultivation of a Buddha-to-be, it allows the
Buddha-to-be to be wiser in developing other virtues more quickly whereas the
Faith-Oriented Buddha-to-be relies on wisdom moderately, and the
Perseverance-Oriented Buddha-to-be relies on wisdom the least among all types
of Buddha-to-be.
[4] Thus, this eventually differentiates the
performance among Lord Buddhas as the Lord Buddhas with longer period of
virtues cultivation normally have more accumulated transcendental merit energy
that enables them to perform their duties at a greater extent while
comparatively have similar scope of insight and knowledge of the Dhamma.
