Was the Buddha a Human Being?

The Buddha was born as a human being. As a young prince, he was given the training required of a noble youth from the warrior clan. At the age of sixteen, he married his cousin, Yasodhara, who gave birth to his son, Rahula. After realizing  the universal suffering of sickness, old age and death which afflicted all beings, he decided to renounce at the age of 29 and went in search of the Truth for 6 years. At the age of 35, he was Enlightened while meditating under the Bodhi Tree. He lived as a human being up to the time he was Enlightened. But can he be considered as a human being after enlightenment?

The answer was given by the Buddha to Drona, a brahmin, who noticed his footprints and realized at once that he could be no ordinary being. He approached the Buddha and asked if he was a god (deva), a heavenly musician (gandhabba), a demon (yakkha). The Buddha answered, 'No' to all these question. When he was asked whether he was a human being (manussa), the Buddha again answered that he was not. When asked who he was, the Buddha replied that he had destroyed defilement's which condition rebirth as a deva, gandhabba, yakkha or a human being. He added :

'As a lotus, fair and lovely,

By the water is not soiled,

By the world I am not soiled ;

Therefore, brahmin, I am Buddha.'

When the Buddha attained Enlightened, he could no longer be considered as a human being in the normal sense of the world. He had attained the absolute state of the Unconditioned, the Eternal, unlike a normal human being who is bound to this planet by time and space. In addition, his mental state was at the supramundane level, not at the mundane level of unenlightened being. He did not belong to any category of being who were still bound in Samsara, He was not even a deva or brahma to whom many people pay homage. There is only one way to describe him - the Buddha, the Enlightened One who is completely liberated from a conditioned and relative existence and who has transcended time and space. Buddhas are enlightened beings who belong to a special lineage or species of beings known as Buddha wangsa.

It is important for us to keep this in mind because many non-Buddhist writers have described the Buddha as a wise teacher with a very good teaching. But alas, they say he was only human being, and his teaching is, therefore, limited to what a wise man is capable of, and no higher. These authors then offer some alternate teachings which they claim are divinely inspired.

Buddhists should not be taken in by these arguments, especially if they remember that although the Buddha was born as a human being, he could no longer be considered to be a limited human being after his Enlightenment. He lived and taught as a supremely enlightened being. He was the embodiment of Truth, and he once said, 'He who sees the Dhamma, sees me.' This means that he had actually become an embodiment of the truth (Dhamma) itself. Conditioned by his human birth, he maintained his corporeal form during the forty five years after his enlightenment. When he died at the age of eighty, he attained Mahaparinibbana - which means that although he passed away in human form, he did not die as a human being, to be reborn again in some other form. Maha Parinibbana, is the unconditioned state of ultimate release. This unconditioned state is beyond our understanding of existence or non-existence as applied to human life or phenomena. Therefore, to ask questions about the existence of beings in the state of Maha Parinibbana, is absolutely pointless.