..续本文上一页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.

　　佛陀是一个普通人，他透过自己的觉悟而证得正自觉大智慧，没有人可以宣称他是佛陀的导师。经过他自己不懈的努力，和获得十种殊胜的德行──布施、持戒、出离、智慧、精进、忍辱、坚定、真实、慈悲和平等。透过自身的净化，他敞开了知识的大门，他拥有通晓世间一切的智慧，他教化一切可以被教化的，销毁一切应该被销毁的。这一点，其他的宗教导师是无法和他相比拟的。佛陀的教义像闪电一样 的惊醒了大家，开始有人不屑的问道：「他是什么东西？」尊重他的教义的人，也开始在寻思道：「他是谁？」。佛陀是多么的神圣和超脱，佛陀从来未曾宣称过他是神或是神的使者，他不须要代表神。佛陀说过：「我不是天人、不是甘塔拔、不是亚卡(yakkha)，也不是人类(manusya)，我是佛陀。」 《增支部》

　　觉悟后的佛陀，确实不能将他归类于普通的人，他是佛陀，一位拥有正自觉大智慧的殊胜生类──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.

　　佛陀在这世间一次又一次的出现，很多人误解以为是同一位佛陀。其实，他们并不相同，要不然就没有必要修学佛道了。佛教认为任何人都可以亲证涅槃，只要开发自己的智慧，断除邪见，精进努力，当证悟正自觉后，所有的佛陀都一样能到达清净的涅槃。

　　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，有些外道责难佛陀，因为他那自由的教导改革了整个印度社会。很多人针对他，视他为敌，企图摧毁他。可是当越来越多人皈依佛教后，他们失败了。在他们失败后，开始接收了佛教的思想，并认为佛陀是他们所崇敬的神的化身。

　　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，某些宗教为了扩展势力，也将佛教归纳在他们宗教的范围内。他们甚至鼓吹佛陀曾经预言，另一位佛陀即将出世，他将比佛陀更伟大。有一个外道教派声称他们的导师活了六百岁，是佛陀以后的真佛。日本一个教派说，佛陀于十三世纪已经在日本降世了。某一教派认为他们的创始人与佛陀、基督是同一时代的人，是现任的佛陀，要佛教徒放弃原有的信仰追随他们。感谢他们将佛陀的身份给了他们的教主，汲取佛教教义为他们的信仰，可是这一切的背后都有不良的企图。

　　那些声称佛陀即将降世的人，是完全不尊重佛陀的言教，虽然佛陀曾经预言在将来的世界有佛陀降世，可是他也叙述了未来佛陀降世的种种条件，那是无数大劫以后的事了。

《佛陀是世界之光 Nature of the Buddha Light of the World》全文阅读结束。