After reading some books on mysticism, i noticed that the Buddhas account of awakening correlates with a lot of other religions and his definitive characteristics share almost identical similarities with other mystics. Plotinus expierenced Oness as did many hindus and christian mystics such as Augustine and St. Theresa of Avila expierenced a blissful unitive event that was regarded as eternal and no doubt is similar if not the same as the description of Nirvana. Their methods are closely aligned, with prayer is just another form of meditation. However, after reading the connections made between these traditions from books like Richard Bucke Cosmic Consciousness and Evelyn Underhill Mysticism, i questioned as to why that even though these mystics share many common anomalies, they all label the expierence as God but Buddha is the only isolated figure that rejects the notion of God pertaining to the expierence, also rejecting self as many mystics testify that they have seen their true Self.

What is your thought on this? It just seems very odd that only one figure was seen to maybe look past the fabricated illusion or interpet it differently while others give same accounts. Also i thought it would be reasonable to label these mystics expierence with God as mere illusory or better yet a jhana incident but that thought evades when the act that people like Jesus are a lot like Buddha, who in turn are permanently transformed and see the same penetrating insights he has seen.

The problem is that Buddhism is derived from the Indo-European worldview which is unique in having Being as a fundamental linguistic concept. Buddhism is a attempt to get away from Being and back to Existence. But the unfortunate problem is that once you have Being, if you try to return to existence, it does not mean you can return to the pristine state prior to the advent of Being. This is fundamental problem that once you are sullied with the illusory nature of Being you cannot return directly to a pristine state directly. This is part of the insidious nature of Maya.

In some way, it is this contradiction that has made Buddhism so deep. if it did not have this contradiction that comes from its source in Hinduism then it would not nearly be as interesting philosophically. Because Buddhism has struggled with this fundamental contradiction at its core that it takes from Hinduism its depth is much greater.

The basic problem is that Buddhism says that things are empty, especially the self, that they do not have Being (Sat). Yet the Buddha also accepted Karma which is a metaphysical kind of causality across lives through reincarnation and offers the escape from this wheel of Samsara (Birth and Death) as Nirvana (cessation). The basic contradiction is how can there be causation when everything is empty? There is no substantive basis to carry the causation, yet the struggle for freedom from Karma is the central drive that pushes Buddhists toward the realization of Nirvana...[contd]


... Saying that Being does not exist still calls attention to it, and thus does not escape its traces completely. What happens is that despite the rejection of Being, Buddhism remains with traces of Nihilism within its core despite its focus on non-duality. Once Being arises you cannot just immediately return to existence without carrying some of the infection of maya, dunya, dukkah with you back into existence. In this sense there is no direct way our of Being once you have become ensnared in its illusions. Because if this there is great doubt that many Western practitioners of Buddhism ever actually get out of this maze, but in most cases they remain in some sort of rarefied self-delusion. But on the other hand because Buddhism arises directly from the Indo-European worldview of Hinduism it is also perfectly applicable to the Western worldview and thus it is a genuine path toward non duality for Westerners who want to escape the duality of existence emphasized by Western culture throughout its history. However, because this way comes from the Indo-European worldview it is particularly suited for us as Westerners but also it does itself not escape completely the problematic of the Western worldview either particularly its nihilism. Buddhism remains fundamentally nihilistic in spite of its seeking nonduality as a state of existence. And in fact as I say in another answer it in fact uses nihilism of the worldview against itself to provide the leap to Nirvana. So Buddhism is essentially selling us our own snake oil back in different bottles believing that two wrongs do make a right, but unfortunately this is not exactly true and the slight asymmetry causes us not to actually be able to return to existence unsullied by Being...[contd]

... Another problem in early Buddhism that Mahayana solved was the fact that early Buddhists and probably the Buddha said only the Self was empty but there were about a hundred other dharmas (tattvas) had real Being. Eventually it was realized that for Buddhism to be self -consistent all dharmas had to be empty. As time went by Buddhism step by step erased the various inconsistencies in early Buddhism and in the process Buddhism became a very sophisticated philosophical approach to existence as nondual. But this nonduality was approached on the basis of a fundamental duality in the nature of truth. There are two truths, one is that of the mundane world, and the other is the world of enlightenment where nirvana is realized by the individual who then comes back into the world and lives as an enlightened being. The fact that there are these two truths, mundane and super-mundane is a fundamental belief of Buddhism. But it is no wonder that eventually a higher kind of Buddhism would come along which would challenge the two truths. And in fact there were several of these, the most interesting of which is DzogChen of Manjushrimitra and Mipham. Manjushrimitra turns Nagarjuna’s logic back against Buddhism producing a second order heresy that denies the two truths, and point out its dualism and nihilism. DzogChen is considered the highest form of Buddhism by the Tibetans. It is a kind of Buddhism that leaves Buddhism behind and is practiced by the Bon (in Tibet like the Taoist, Shinto) as well as the Buddhists. In DzogChen we come full circle finally and return to a pristine state, after carrying the infection of Being over into the Nondual on the way our of it. And this is a fundamental lesson. Getting out of Maya, Dunya, Dukkha is not so easy as just taking a nondual stance toward existence, one must get rid of the traces of nihilism that are left over from being in existence as well.

So there is actually four different states:

Taoism – Void existence prior to the introduction of Being.
Duality within a World suffused by Being created by Indo-Europeans uniquely
Non-Dual Emptiness that is still nihilistic even without Being in Buddhism
The extraction of nihilism from nondual emptiness in DzogChen’s manifestation.

The key point is that all these are different states and the fact that DzogChen negates the nihilism still endemic to Buddhism despite its claims to nonduality of emptiness does not mean that the primordial void has been returned to in the pristine way in which we departed from it when we created Being. However the sate that DzogChen proposes appears very similar to the state of Void in Taoism. One way to talk about this is to realize that Taoist Void and Buddhist Emptiness are different from each other and that they are in fact dual-nonduals. What DzogChen gets at is a deeper nonduality of manifestation prior to the distinction between emptiness and void created by the institution of Being.