I can't say this question ever bothered me at all, but I once read of a guy who asked this question of a monk he met in a New York bookshop and the answer was what prompted him to become a Buddhist. Unfortunately, he didn't reveal the answer.

I guess this is the kind of question a non-Buddhist might well ask a Buddhist, so anyone have any good answers? I remember once reading that, "The Buddha knew all there is to know about suffering." In his excellent new book, The State of Mind Called Beautiful, Sayadaw U Pandita says, "A buddha simply knows everything that can be known."

Bhikkhu Bodhi, on the other hand, writes: "According to the exegetical Theravada tradition the Buddha is omniscient in the sense that all knowable things are potentially accessible to him. He cannot, however, know everything simultaneously and must advert to what he wishes to know."

There's a thorough discussion of this in the Western Buddhist Review.

Was the Buddha Buddhist?

There are many cases in the Tipitaka wherein the Buddha asks people (most often Ananda) factual questions -- what specific people have done, etc. This would seem to me to suggest that either he was not omnipotent in the trivial sense of the world or that "adverting" his mind involved more effort than just asking someone!

For what it's worth my personal guess (both for the Buddha and any arahant) is that an enlightened person is omnipotent in the sense of knowing the ultimate truth of things, but not in the sense of knowing all the mundane details within the field of Samsara...in other words just because someone is Enlightened would not mean they would be able to know winning lottery numbers even if they wanted to, which of course they wouldn't be likely to.

Was the Buddha Buddhist?

I would say no. He was Hindu and Buddhism came after he was gone.

Was The Buddha Omniscient?

Yes, the Buddha knew all objects of knowledge past present and future and still does, simultaneously.

“There is no recluse or brahmin who knows all, who sees all, simultaneously; that is not possible.”

But is the Buddha a recluse or a brahmin? Is what the Buddhas disciples saw before they attained Enlightenment the Buddha? How does the Buddha see himself and is that the same as we or his disciples see him?

Was the Buddha a man or was that the vehicle in which he showed us the path?

If we were to meet an Omniscient Being how would that Being appear to our minds?

Edited July 4, 200620 yr by Suthep_Steve