Immortals vs. Bodhisattvas (or arahats)?

[goldisheavy]

Yet isn't there a depth to the understanding of emptiness? And doesn't the insight lead naturally to manifestations of unentanglement in experience and form. That it is not just a conceptual understanding, but that perception of reality for the enlightened alters. That Thusness does infact experiences reality differently, that he is wired differently?

 

Suppose I have a deluded belief that the world ends where my room ends. As a result of this belief, I refuse to leave my room. Then you come along and help clear up my delusion. So now I know I can leave my room and explore a wider world. Does this mean that in all cases I will do so? No. There is a case where even though I now no longer suffer from delusion, I know about the wider world, I am still happy and content to remain in my room.

 

So I would say that wisdom enables siddhis but doesn't guarantee them, because siddhis reflect intent and not just absence of delusions. If you don't want ice cream, you can't get it despite yourself, even if there is no delusion that would block your way to the ice cream store.

 

If dependent origination frees psychological grasping of the "I" because of its truth regarding the empty nature of self and after awhile one no longer is illusioned with an "I," in that it disappears like the child of a barren women, shouldn't it also display its truth by displaying the empty and ungraspability of phenomena as well? That one can readily be free from material functions?

 

I don't know, I'm really just asking questions here. To me it seems like the enlightened being should have the ability of all siddhis.

 

Even without grasping, some things are less pleasant and some are more pleasant. Ending grasping doesn't completely flatten out the experience and make everything completely identical. This means that while preferences can soften up, they don't necessarily disappear altogether.

 

I think all enlightened people have the ability to display siddhis, but there are a few limitations:

 

1. Ultimately your own beliefs and your own intent is as powerful as any other being's. So if an enlightened being intends to show you a miracle, but you completely and thoroughly intend to not see it, you will win out. Or in other words, to have a shared experience of a siddhi, your intent must be aligned with the person who is trying to show something to you. This is true with anything. All the mundane happenings are kind of siddhis too, and we can all see computers for example because our intent to see them is aligned, or overlapping. So to the extent our intents overlap, we witness something akin to objective reality, something common to us, and to the extent our intents do not overlap we witness subjective realities that are not common to us all.

 

2. The person must want to show you something before they can show you something. So even a simple thing like lifting a plate off the table with your hands is not going to get accomplished if you don't want to do it. This is exactly the same for siddhis.

 

3. The person should be accustomed to whatever display they want to perform if they want to do so reliably. So, for example, I know I can ride a bicycle, and there is no delusion blocking this. Nonetheless, if I am not accustomed to riding a bicycle, I cannot just hop on it at a moment's notice. So not having delusions is not enough, because we still experience some preferences, some habituation, some general flow. So if a thing is too far out of your flow, you'd have to train for it to be able to do it. Having no delusion means you're able to succeed in training. It doesn't necessarily mean training is completely unnecessary. If you read about Buddha's disciples, you'll read how they all had different paranormal talents, and even though they were all Arhats, they didn't all have the same exact abilities. Some were better in some things than others and some Arhats could do things other Arhats couldn't immediately and comfortably do. And some had no apparent paranormal powers at all. I believe Sariputta was one such. Sariputta was enlightened, but he seemed happy with his appearances so he didn't develop any powers. On the other hand, Mahamoggallana vowed to develop paranormal powers even in his previous life, before the life in which he met Gotama Buddha. So of course according to his resolute intent, Moggallana was foremost in psychic power.