..續本文上一頁ghtened. He had no one whom He could regard as His teacher. Through His own efforts, He practised to perfection the ten supreme qualities of generosity, discipline, renunciation, wisdom, energy, endurance, truthfulness, determination, goodwill and equanimity. Through His mental purification, He opened the doors to all knowledge. He knew all things to be known, cultivated all things to be cultivated, and destroyed all things to be destroyed. Indeed, no other religious teacher was comparable to Him in terms of cultivation and attainment.

　　So special was He and so electrifying His message, that many people asked Him ”What(not so much as Who) He was”. Questions on ”Who He was” would be with respect to His name, origin, ancestry, etc., while ”What He was” referred to the order of beings to which He belonged. So ”godly and inspiring was He that even during His time, there were numerous attempts of others to turn Him into a god or a reincarnation of god. Never did He agree to be regarded as such. In the Anguttara Nikaya, He said: ”I am not indeed a deva, nor a gandharva, nor a yaksa, nor a manusya. Know ye that I am the Buddha.” After Enlightenment, the Buddha could no longer be classified even as a ”manusya” or an ordinary human being. He belonged to the Buddha Wangsa, special race or species of enlightened beings, all of whom are Buddhas.

　　佛陀是一個普通人，他透過自己的覺悟而證得正自覺大智慧，沒有人可以宣稱他是佛陀的導師。經過他自己不懈的努力，和獲得十種殊勝的德行──布施、持戒、出離、智慧、精進、忍辱、堅定、真實、慈悲和平等。透過自身的淨化，他敞開了知識的大門，他擁有通曉世間一切的智慧，他教化一切可以被教化的，銷毀一切應該被銷毀的。這一點，其他的宗教導師是無法和他相比擬的。佛陀的教義像閃電一樣 的驚醒了大家，開始有人不屑的問道：「他是什麼東西？」尊重他的教義的人，也開始在尋思道：「他是誰？」。佛陀是多麼的神聖和超脫，佛陀從來未曾宣稱過他是神或是神的使者，他不須要代表神。佛陀說過：「我不是天人、不是甘塔拔、不是亞卡(yakkha)，也不是人類(manusya)，我是佛陀。」 《增支部》

　　覺悟後的佛陀，確實不能將他歸類于普通的人，他是佛陀，一位擁有正自覺大智慧的殊勝生類──佛陀。

　　Buddhas appear in this world from time to time. But some people have the mistaken idea that it is the same Buddha who is reincarnated or appears in the world over and over again. Actually, they are not the same person, otherwise there is no scope for others to attain Buddhahood. Buddhists believe that anyone can become a Buddha if he develops his qualities to perfection and is able to remove his ignorance completely through his own efforts. After Enlightenment, all Buddhas are similar in their attainment and experience of Nibbana.

　　佛陀在這世間一次又一次的出現，很多人誤解以爲是同一位佛陀。其實，他們並不相同，要不然就沒有必要修學佛道了。佛教認爲任何人都可以親證涅槃，只要開發自己的智慧，斷除邪見，精進努力，當證悟正自覺後，所有的佛陀都一樣能到達清淨的涅槃。

　　In India, the followers of many orthodox religious groups tried to condemn the Buddha because of His liberal teaching which revolutionized the Indian society. Many regarded Him as an enemy when increasing numbers of intellectuals as well as people from all ranks of society took up the religion. When they failed in their attempt to destroy Him, they adopted the reverse strategy of introducing Him as a reincarnation of one of their gods. This way they could absorb Buddhism into their religion. To a certain extent, this strategy worked in India since it had, through the centuries, contributed to the decay and the subsequent uprooting of Buddhism from the land of its origin.

　　在印度，有些外道責難佛陀，因爲他那自由的教導改革了整個印度社會。很多人針對他，視他爲敵，企圖摧毀他。可是當越來越多人皈依佛教後，他們失敗了。在他們失敗後，開始接收了佛教的思想，並認爲佛陀是他們所崇敬的神的化身。

　　Even today there are certain religionists who try to absorb the Buddha into their beliefs as a way of gaining converts among Buddhists. Their basis for doing so is by claiming that the Buddha Himself had predicted that another Buddha would appear in this world, and that the latest Buddha will become even more popular. One group named a religious teacher who lived 600 years after Gautama the Buddha as the latest Buddha. Another group said that the next Buddha had already arrived in Japan in the 13th century. Yet another group believed that their founder came from the lineage of great teachers (like Gautama and Jesus) and that founder was the latest Buddha. These groups advised Buddhists to give up their old Buddha and follow the so-called new Buddha. While it is good to see them giving the Buddha the same status as their own religious teachers, we feel that these attempts to absorb Buddhists into another faith by misrepresenting the truth are in extreme bad taste.

　　Those who claim that the new Buddha had already arrived are obviously misrepresenting what the Buddha had said. Although the Buddha predicted the coming of the next Buddha, He mentioned some conditions which had to be met before this can be possible. It is the nature of Buddhahood that the next Buddha will not appear as the dispensation of the current Buddha still exits. He will appear only when the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path have been completely forgotten. The people living then must be properly guided in order to understand the same Truth taught by the previous Buddhas. We are still living within the dispensation of Gautama the Buddha. Although the moral conduct of the people has, with very few exceptions, deteriorated, the future Buddha would only appear at some incalculable period when the Path to Nibbana is completely lost to mankind and when people are ready to receive Him. 佛陀是不是神的化身

　　即使在今天，某些宗教爲了擴展勢力，也將佛教歸納在他們宗教的範圍內。他們甚至鼓吹佛陀曾經預言，另一位佛陀即將出世，他將比佛陀更偉大。有一個外道教派聲稱他們的導師活了六百歲，是佛陀以後的真佛。日本一個教派說，佛陀于十叁世紀已經在日本降世了。某一教派認爲他們的創始人與佛陀、基督是同一時代的人，是現任的佛陀，要佛教徒放棄原有的信仰追隨他們。感謝他們將佛陀的身份給了他們的教主，汲取佛教教義爲他們的信仰，可是這一切的背後都有不良的企圖。

　　那些聲稱佛陀即將降世的人，是完全不尊重佛陀的言教，雖然佛陀曾經預言在將來的世界有佛陀降世，可是他也敘述了未來佛陀降世的種種條件，那是無數大劫以後的事了。

《佛陀是世界之光 Nature of the Buddha Light of the World》全文閱讀結束。