Why can't a Buddha's power just save us already? Like Jesus

Question

I am a faithful believer in the Buddha's teachings and I even believe in the iddhi powers they all had and that show up in our day as well. I also believe in the various Bodhisattvas and Buddha's even within Taoism and contemplate and marvel at them every day, their mysteriousness, hard work and wisdom. Some of the scriptures have some astounding excerpts though of millions of bodhisattvas and deities...

Which is why I wonder why, if we are:

1. a bundle of skandhas with no central core;
2. quite subject to cause and effect;
3. crying for saving;
4. individuals the omnisicient, omnipresent, omnipotent (iddhis) buddhas and bodhisattvas have vowed to save from actual suffering and also awaken;

Then why don't the billions of bodhisattvas and buddhas just make manifestation bodies and march across the universe and pacify and awaken everything as the first Buddha vow states?

What is your opinion on this matter?

Answer 1

If you are "a faithful believer in Buddha's teachings" you have missed his point entirely.

You should not believe a single thing. Instead, your own experience should lead you to your own conclusions.

This is what Buddha left behind. Techniques for waking up, so that you may dissolve into pure experience, as did he and countless others.

Only you can save yourself.

Answer 2

In response to your question, may I ask what are we saving ourselves from?

Samsara is an endless (and beginningless) grinding cycle where all beings are being agonized by myriad forms of suffering (Dukkha). However, Samsara, and even higher realms of existence are illusionary, how can one be saved from an illusion?

Here is an excellent analogy I read from the esoteric master Huang Nian-Zu: what is the best way to save a man being hunted by a vicious tiger in a nightmare?

The answer isn't trying to run away or defending yourself. The best solution is to simply wake up and end the dream. Our true self has always been safe asleep, and the tiger can not harm us.

In theory, the above sounds like a really simple solution. In reality, though, the difficulty to achieve this is parallel to the depth of one's delusion and attachment.

Every being is one with Buddha. We are all capable and deserve the perfect wisdom, fortuity and abilities that Buddha possess. To seek help from Buddha and Bodhisattvas we need to awaken the Buddha within ourselves.

Hope this helps. If there is anything I could improve on with my reply please kindly share your views :)

Answer 3

Main cause of your problems are when you come in contact a sensation arise and you react due to our delusional perceptions which proliferates other sedation to which we react. You liberation is being non reactive to the sensation and reducing pre conditioned reaction.

The Buddha cannot subdue perception of another being or indefinitely influence the sensations experienced by another being or influence indefinitely the reaction to sensation of another being. Hence we have to work on our own liberation.

Answer 4

Now why can't a Buddha just intercede? From what the Enlightened Zen Master Huai-Chin Nan said... even the Buddha's cannot penetrate our ignorance and so that is why they provided all these mantras as a means of accessing their consciousness so that they can help us and help us out. It's like a "password" to enter into their system.

In my own words, they can only help us as much as our sincerity, purity and jhana allows them! From another perspective, isn't it true that we each of us contain the power of gods, the power to become a Buddha? So how can this god nature this buddha nature be brought out by anyone but itself? If it was able to be brought out by an "other", this buddha nature that you have within you would not be buddha nature! It would be "slave nature."

Similarly, you yourself cannot egoistically bring about this buddha nature. Because you (skandhas) are just ego. Everything you are, feel, think... is "false thought". Just like a Buddha cannot save you, you can't effort yourself into enlightenment. All you as the egoic container can do... is prepare and wait... and even that is not enough. As the diamond sutra states, it comes without coming... only then is it true coming.

Thus, use that understanding in your own cultivation of effortlessness, because the closer you are to effortlessness, the closer you are to It. This Buddhism is becoming very Taoist, no?

Another speculations for why the Buddha's might just be "passive" in their universe-saving policies... how is this whole saving business even necessary. Karma is karma. Everyone deserves what they got. What do you learn more from, hard experiences or easy experiences? What are you more thankful for, difficulties and failures or easy-gimmes?

Karma is a wonderful educational system that the Buddha's have no need to intercede with. (I really learned this concept through the Buddhist cosmological analyses given in Mind Experiment by Professor Bavo Lievens.)

They gave their education, it's time for you to play the game and cultivate your own Tao. Look at some pictures of the Angry Hell Buddha (I forget what it's called).

Anyway, their help is always at your beck and all when you ask with focus, clarity and faith.

Answer 5

If the Buddha came to you today and offered the blue pill and the red pill like in the movie The Matrix, and by swallowing this blue pill, you will get instant Nirvana, would you accept it?

The answer is that 99.999% of serious Buddhists will not accept it, because they are not ready to let go of their attachments right now. Even if they accept the Buddha's teachings, they are not mentally prepared to leave everything that forms their reality. They don't want to be "saved" right now. They might ponder about their loved ones, material possessions, career etc. They won't be ready to let go of their personhood. But they may want to get there progressively.