GENIUS FORUMS

It is said that the Buddha sat under the boda tree until he gained enlightenment.

While standing in the check-out line at Wal-Mart, I saw a selection of music CDs, all in Spanish. One caught my eye - it said "el album de la BODA y celebtraciones." The couple in front of me looked hispanic, so I asked them if the spoke both Spanish and English. When the confirmed they did, I pointed to the CD and asked them what boda means. The man said said "wedding"


That caused a paradigm shift in me about Buddhism. What's your reaction?

Um, actually, it's BODHI tree, not "boda" tree...

Ficus religiosa in plant language :P

And I can't say a coincidental similarity between a Pali word and a modern Spanish word evokes much of a response from me. "Boda" owes far more to Latin and various Gallic dialects than it does to Sanskrit or Pali.

My reaction, such as it is, is that this is typically and painfully American.

San Bao wrote:Um, actually, it's BODHI tree, not "boda" tree...

Yeah, there's no spelling difference between languages *roll eyes*

Thank you anyway for noting that there is a similarity in the words, and type boda tree into google and see what you get.

I don't believe in coincidence nearly as much as I believe in causality, so there could be a link there.

( edit)

Before replacing it with the slur against Americans, San Bao wrote:Is English the only language you speak?

I only speak and write English fluently, but I can mangle small portions of Spanish, German, and French. Actually the English translation of what I said to one hispanic woman who was going way too fast for me sums up my ability well. I'd confused the French word for "very" with the Spanish word for "3" so I told the woman "I speak 3 short Spanish." I was trying to go for "I speak very little Spanish." Well, she got the picture...

Elizabeth Isabelle wrote: Thank you anyway for noting that there is a similarity in the words, and type boda tree into google and see what you get.

I didn't get anything related to Buddhism, or to Ficus religiosa. Type in "Boda Tree" in wikipedia, I garuntee you will not find "bodhi tree". If "Bodhi" is alternatively spelled as "Boda", I've never encountered it.

I don't believe in coincidence nearly as much as I believe in causality, so there could be a link there.

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The fact there is causality does not mean that there is not such a thing as coincidence. The fact that the Spanish word for wedding is "boda" is caused, but this does not mean there is a link with the Pali word for "awakened", bodhi.

At dawn on Vaisakha Poornima, the full moon day in April-May, the kind daughter of the village chief of Senani, Sujata, brought him a bowl of kheer (sweet thickened milk). It is said that the gods had infused the kheer with ambrosia.
He sat down under the Boddhi Tree to eat it. 'Bodhi' means 'to awaken' and 'Buddha' means 'one who is awake'. Siddhartha attained Samma Sambodhi, the Enlightenment that he had been seeking for six years. He was no more a seeker … he had become the Buddha.

After sitting under a fucking tree for days starving oneself, I'm pretty sure I'd feel enlightened after drinking something like kheer - the kheer was probably fermeting.

The Buddha spent the next seven weeks in meditation near the Bodhi Tree. Then, at the request of the god Indra, he began to speak of the great truth he had realized. His first sermon was given at Isipatana (modern Sarnath near Banaras). This first discourse, often called "Setting in Motion of the Wheel of Truth" presented the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path for which Buddhism is so famous. (The Four Noble Truths assert that human beings suffer because of the clinging nature of the mind. There is a way out of this suffering, however, and that is through the meditative practices of the Noble Eightfold Path.

Mind you, the four noble truths and the eightfold path are perhaps the greatest set of words of wisdom ever created [relative to the time, that is. It is probable that much of these words were a rephrasing and rational joining together of things said by others in prior centuries, but still Buddha "configured this knowledge into a brilliant state" by picking and choosing only the most absolute wisdom from the works of others, rather than the dross]

For the record, my reaction was ......... actually I didn't really have one.

I think we're confused here.

Rather than Boda, we may be referring to the Yoda Tree, the tree of the wise ones, from which we get the Yoda Berry, and from which came Yogi Berra, the wise one of baseball, who gave us such philosophical truths as "You can observe a lot just by watching," "This is like deja vu all over again." "When you come to a fork in the road, take it," and "Think! How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time?"

And from which also came Yogi Bear, the existential Ursidae, who from his cave in Jellystone Park, mediated on the meaning of life (which he termed "Pic-a-nic Basket), although never fully overcame his ego and so may not have actually achieved Enlightenment (Hey hey, Boo Boo, I'm smarter than the average bear!").

James,

Thank you for brining some actual history into this. Philosophy should be based on facts.

I'd made a really long post further clarifying this, but then I realized I was "writing the book" again, so I cut it out and pasted it over to the book. In summary, I said that Christianity is also a marriage of most of the other religions from that time (although it included dross or made good things drossful, like incorporating Druidism by adding a Christmas tree), and bigger problems happened when the Christian church divorced itself (starting with Episcopaianism) rather than working out its differences , and leaving all these bastardized Christian religions running around. That went the wrong way from unifying truths into what is real enlightenment.

The Truth is a marriage of all the smaller truths.