The Radical Awakening of Gautama Buddha - Jon Eden Khan

Imagine being in the presence of a being who’s awakening to the infinite empty radiant consciousness of ultimate reality that is the ground of all being is so powerfully transmitting that it is blowing everyone in their field open into pure devotion to the utter sacredness of life.

Imagine being in the presence of a being who’s level of development has them clearly inhabiting multidimensional frequencies of sacred reality simultaneously and sharing teachings that are breaking everyone open to the one reality that is always here behind the appearance of the many.

Imagine being in the presence of a being whose heart and body are so clearly cracked open to the sheer divinity of that reality that they are transmitting it through the power, wisdom, love, and creative force emanating from their very cells.

Enlightenment is real.

Buddhas are real.

Beings who have reached extraordinary levels of awakening, development, and embodiment are real.

We have virtually no reference point for that reality today.

And that doesn’t mean much.

I find it extraordinary that there is evidence that Gautama Buddha’s teaching during his life encapsulated all the three major turnings of the Wheel of Dharma that came in the thousand years after him.

That he genuinely transmitted the core of each turning of the wheel, knowing that there would be initiates who would come later, riding the stream of his transmission, to unpack and update the whole tradition.

From the focus on the inevitable unsatisfactoriness of each of our ego project and the illusory nature of the self that is the focus of the first turning of the wheel and Theravada.

To the focus on the radical realisation of the emptiness of all phenomena - that our whole experience of dualistic reality is built from concepts that have no ultimate reality - in the second turning and Mahayana.

The indications that he even taught tantra, and practices on breath, subtle energy, mantra, visualisation, and the embrace of the essential sacredness of the body, pleasure, and emotions to those who were ready for it to seed what would birth later as the Vajrayana.

To the revelation that the essence of all reality is that his very awareness that is present right now, in its true nature is the infinite awake presence that is the radiant and sacred ground of all reality – buddha nature.

He gave it all.

And we are still unpacking that revelation two and a half thousand years later.