How comes that praising oneself and blame others is unskillful but the teacher of it does?
Upvote:0
The "I" the Buddha is attributing all these virtues to is not the ego/illusion of self (atman) but the non-self (anatman), the no-soul or no-self doctrine. American-born Zen masters sometimes call this "Big Mind".
It is this non-self that speaks to the atman (in the form of Mara) in the Buddha enlightenment story:
Mara appeared in front of Buddha and said ” you, who go where no one else will dare, will you be my guardian” and Buddha said “architect, finally, I have met you. You will not build your house again”. Mara said, “but I am your house, and you live in me.” Buddha said, ” oh lord of my ego, you are pure illusion, You do not exist.”
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There are two things going on here:
- A Buddha is a completely enlightened being who has perfected all the virtues
- For us non-Buddhas, there are many virtues that can be cultivated by rejecting praise for oneself
- It can stop or combat the improper arising of arrogance
- It can be a practice in the perfection of truthfulness and honesty
- It can stop the arising of lust for worldly reputation
- It can stop the arising of the self-cherishing attitude
It can easily be seen that Buddha's are by definition completely perfected and have accomplished the perfection of all virtues. Therefore #2 is unnecessary and irrelevant for them.
To be really clear, the problem with accepting praise can be that it is not warranted OR that it causes improper or non-virtuous thoughts to arise. Or both. For someone who is on the path and has yet to perfect themselves, praise - even if it is truthful - can be problematic as it can act as a cause for the arising of arrogance and all the non-virtues mentioned above. That is why you see highly, highly, highly accomplished masters who reject praise for themselves. When you see HHDL and Lama Zopa Rinpoche rejecting praise ... well, how on the earth can such a lowly being as I accept it.
For lowly beings like myself, praise can be a really hard thing to skillfully handle. It causes definite arrogance to arise for me so I really don't want it. For a Buddha, there is no such problem.
Upvote:0
Remember that popular "Knights and Knaves" puzzle? The Knights can only say the truth. Otherwise he'd be a Knave. Similarly, the Buddha only said the truth and He'd be a Knave otherwise. For us worldlings who are trying to walk the path, we can't praise ourselves 'cuz we'd put ourselves on the Knaves camp if we do. Simply answer honestly those questions in Mv.I.68: are you all-knowing? ended all cravings? have no counterpart? rightly self-awakened? beat the drum of the Deathless? conquered all evil qualities?
Upvote:1
How comes that praising oneself and blame others is unskillful but the teacher of it does?
The difference is that the teacher is a fully enlightened Buddha - the only one of his kind in this Aeon.
A fully enlightened Buddha has uprooted all defilements. There are absolutely no traces left of any defilements. Its impossible for a Buddha to create Kamma.
What might seem like praise or blame from the perspective of a non-Buddha is vastly and completely different from the perspective of a Buddha.
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