Hello, Bhante.
Buddhism is a religion that is made to make one individual the path to enlightenment.
How can it be that you don't hear about Buddhists that become enlightened, arahants, or a Buddha?
Thanks.
Well, you're not talking to the right people, I guess.
There's a lot of people out there who do talk about people becoming enlightened, arahants, or Buddha.
but I imagine in Israel you wouldn't hear so much.
But the other thing, I mean the obvious answer here is that people don't talk about it.
An enlightened being is incredibly disinclined to talk about their own enlightenment.
Even a sotapanna is someone who has
just begun on the path to enlightenment, has given up that idea and is incredibly disinclined towards bragging or announcing their enlightenment.
So even Buddhists don't hear about it and we generally speculate about our teachers and so on and often that speculation goes overboard and suddenly everybody's an Arahant, everybody's enlightened.
The reason you don't hear about people becoming Buddhas is because it's apparently not possible at this point.
I think it would be impossible for two reasons.
One is that the Buddha Sāsana is still here, and two, so the world is not currently capable of supporting a private Buddha, a Pacheco Buddha.
And two, a perfectly enlightened Buddha could not arise in this age.
This is theory.
I mean, it may all be wrong.
I think it's just what the commentaries say.
But the theory is that there's too many defilements and people, their lifespan is too short at this point for a Buddha to arise.
A Buddha would not arise at this time.
The other thing is, first of all, we have a prophecy of when the next Buddha is coming, and we have an understanding that it's a very rare thing for a Buddha to arise.
So the chances, even without that prophecy, of a Buddha arising in this day and age, or anytime soon, is very, very rare because we just had one.
And there's some kind of gravity involved, I would say.
I would speculate that anybody who was even close to becoming a Buddha had to have been drawn towards this Buddha.
Like Maha Kachayana, I think.
Maha Kachayana, I think, if I remember, or it was Kasupa, one or the other, was destined to become a Buddha, had made a determination to become a Buddha, and gave it up.
I can't remember which one it was.
See?
Bad teacher.
Don't know my stuff.
But one of them.
And...
They gave it up when they met the Buddha because they realized that it was much better for them to become enlightened here and now and pass on the teachings, help spread the teachings here and now.