Did aliens come to meet Lord Buddha?

Question

In lord Buddha's daily routine, divided into five parts as follows.

1. the morning session
2. the afternoon session
3. the first watch
4. the middle watch (10.00 P.M. TO 2.00 A.M.)
5. the last watch

So the 4th part is The Middle Watch, from 10.00 PM to 2.00 AM.

In that time Lord Buddha will answer the questions from "Devas", and these Devas come to see Buddha by flying Machine called "Wimanas" (or Vimana).

So my question is, does "Devas" here means Aliens? Did Aliens came to see Lord Buddha, and learn about Buddhism?

Answer 1

You could say that they are aliens. They are from a different world/plane/dimension. Also the definition of aliens means from another world. So yeah. Check this article;

Answer 2

Devas are buddhist celestial beings. They don't have to mean aliens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deva_(Buddhism)

Answer 3

If you accept the Pali Canon as the basis of Buddhism, then it is clear that "original Buddhism" taught that the Buddha both taught and learned from devas, that they visited him and that he visited deva worlds. Even the historically oldest Buddhist texts refer to devas and other worlds. Moreover, as I have shown in my book, Conversations with the Buddha, many of these descriptions match the phenomenology of the UFO experience as described for example by Jacques Vallee in his book, Passport to Magonia. Whether one accepts these descriptions or how one chooses to explain or interpret them is of course a matter of conjecture, but the references are clearly there and they are archaic. No less an authority than Ajahn Brahm has publicly stated that he has personally seen both nagas and garudas, and appears to be open-minded about UFOs. On the other hand, Richard Gombrich considers these references to be ironic (a view rejected by Rupert Gethin).

Answer 4

Deva is from our universe (sometimes from other universe). Alien is something we cannot identify yet. May be they are living on a surface like human beings or may be they are living in the space like some Devas. The word alien is recently being used (in the science fiction sense, from 1953) and we cannot tell Deva and Alien are same or not by any means. So back to the question, Deva met Buddha so many times from this universe and other universes (precisely Devas from 1,000,000,000,000 universes) but not necessarily Alien. For the flying machine, I didn't read anything like this in Sutra, what I read in Buddhist books is Deva used coach drawn by horses. It may be flying but it is not a machine.

Answer 5

Go to YouTube -- Buddhism and alien abductions by Ajahn Brahm.