Past Buddhas, the Future Buddha Maitreya and His “Descents” : With Reference to the Role of Theosophy and Krishnamurti

Abstract

When the Buddha described his enlightenment, he related how he, as a phase of the process, recollected his past lives during many aeons of world-contraction and worldexpansion, but he said nothing about recollecting past buddhas. When soon afterwards the ascetic Upaka asked him who was his teacher or whose teaching he professed, the Buddha answered that he had no teacher, had no equal, was perfected and was himself the supreme teacher. The style of the description of this encounter suggests that it may indeed have happened that way. The Buddha described it later to his monks and it seems that it was faithfully remembered by them. Although awareness of past buddhas may be implicit in the ability of remembering past lives, the Buddha’s statement about details of six past buddhas was made at Sāvatthi some years later, but the wording of the passage is suspect. The names ascribed to the past buddhas were no doubt fabricated. Gombrich (1980, 64) suggested it was done to authenticate the Buddha’s status by reference to a long line of teachers. A further extension of the line of past buddhas in Buddhava sa, a late text, was influenced by Mahāyāna. However, the idea of future Buddhas was an early logical outcome of the notion of past Buddhas. But the Buddha predicted only the coming of the next Buddha Metteyya (Skrt. Maitreya). The paper then deals with the novel idea of projections or “descents” of the Bodhisattva Maitreya as utilised by some Mahāyāna movements and contemporary “new religions” and it finishes with an extensive account of the failed attempt by the Theosophical Society to present to the world Krishnamurti as the World Teacher, akin to Jesus, under the guidance of the “Lord Maitreya,” as partly witnessed by the author.