This is a list of notable people who have claimed to have attained
enlightenment and become
buddhas, claimed to be manifestations of
bodhisattvas, identified themselves as
Gautama Buddha or
Maitreya Buddha, or been honored as buddhas or bodhisattvas.
Claimants
Guan Yu - a Chinese general serving under the warlord
Liu Bei in the late
Eastern Han dynasty of China. Guan was deified as early as the
Sui dynasty and is still worshipped by many Chinese people today, especially in southern China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and among many overseas Chinese communities. He is a figure in
Chinese folk religion, popular
Confucianism,
Taoism, and
Chinese Buddhism, and small shrines to Guan are almost ubiquitous in traditional Chinese shops and restaurants. Many Buddhists accept him as a bodhisattva that guards the Buddhist faith and temples.[citation needed]
Wu Zetian (Emperor Shengshen of Wu Zhou) - founder of the
Wu Zhou dynasty of China and the only legitimate empress regnant in Chinese history. Gained popular support by advocating Buddhism but ruthlessly persecuted her opponents within the royal family (by cutting off their arms and legs and inserting them in jars) and the nobility. She proclaimed herself an incarnation of
Maitreya and made
Luoyang the "holy capital".[citation needed]
Gung Ye - Korean warlord and king of the short-lived state of
Taebong during the 10th century. Claimed to be the living incarnation of Maitreya and ordered his subjects to worship him. His claim was rejected by most Buddhist monks and later he was dethroned and killed by his own servants.[citation needed]
Lu Zhongyi - the 17th patriarch of the
I-Kuan Tao. I-Kuan Tao followers believe that he is the first leader of the "White Sun" Era, the era of the apocalypse, thus he is the incarnation of Maitreya.[citation needed]
Bahá'u'lláh - prophet of Persian origin, founder of the
Baháʼí Faith stated publicly in 1863 CE that he is the promised
Manifestation of God for this age predicted in all prophetic religions of the past.[6][7] Shoghi Effendi, eldest grandson and authorized interpreter of the sacred writings of
Bahá'u'lláh and guardian of
Baháʼí Faith from 1921 to 1957, identifies
Bahá'u'lláh as "the fifth buddha" and "a Buddha named Maitreye, the Buddha of universal fellowship".[8][9]
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad - Ghulam Ahmad has claimed many titles he says were given to him by God including being a universal
prophet for all religions (including Buddhism). In 1889 he found the
Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, preaching
Islam as a universal faith which came to support the true teachings of all other religions lost over the centuries.[citation needed]
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh - also known as Acharya Rajneesh from the 1960s onwards, as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (during the 1970s and 1980s and as Osho from 1989) was an Indian
mystic,
guru, and spiritual teacher who garnered an
international following. Osho later said he became spiritually enlightened on 21 March 1953, when he was 21 years old, in a mystical experience while sitting under a tree in the Bhanvartal Garden in Jabalpur.[10][11]
Lu Sheng-yen - founder and spiritual teacher of the newly created Buddhist lineage called the
True Buddha School. Lu claims that in the late 1980s, he had reached enlightenment while training under a formless teacher and that he is an incarnation of Padmakumara, a deity in the
Western Pure Land kingdom. He has since then been called by his followers "Living Buddha Lian Sheng". Lu has publicly stated that Living Buddha is a literal translation of the Chinese honorific 活佛, Huófó. This is the Chinese equivalent of the Tibetan terms
Tulku and
Rinpoche, and the Mongolian terms Khubilghan and Khutughtu.[12][13]
Ram Bahadur Bomjon (other names Buddha Boy, Maha Sambodhi, Dharma Sangha, Maitriya Guru, Palden Dorje, Tapasvi) - a 34 year old
Nepaleseascetic whom many have hailed as a new Buddha. Naming himself publicly from 2012 as "Maitriya" Guru, he and his followers openly claim that he is the awaited
Maitreya Buddha. He is a controversial figure currently under investigation for rape, and separately for the disappearance of four of his
ashram members.[14][15]
B. R. Ambedkar is regarded as a
Bodhisattva, the
Maitreya, among the
Navayana followers.[16][17] In practice, the Navayana followers revere Ambedkar, states Jim Deitrick, as virtually on par with the Buddha.[18] He is considered as the one prophesied to appear and teach the dhamma after it was forgotten, his iconography is a part of Navayana shrines and he is shown with a halo.[17] Though Ambedkar states Navayana to be atheist, Navayana viharas and shrines features images of the Buddha and Ambedkar, and the followers bow and offer prayers before them in practice.[19] According to Junghare, for the followers of Navayana, Ambedkar has become a deity and is devotionally worshipped.[20]
L. Ron Hubbard - founder of
Scientology. Hubbard had claimed he was Maitreya during his lifetime.[21] In his 1955–1956 poem Hymn of Asia, Hubbard starts the poem by asking "Am I Metteyya?" (an alternate spelling for "Maitreya") then listing several matched traits that Hubbard claimed were predicted in the "Metteya Legend" (another alternate spelling for "Maitreya") such as coming from the West, having golden hair or red hair (Hubbard was red-haired), and showing up in a time of world peril (this poem was written during the
Cold War), with the earliest of the predicted dates for Maitreya's return being 2,500 years after
Gautama Buddha, or roughly 1950 (in 1950, Hubbard published his book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health which introduced the concept of
Dianetics, both the book and concept were incorporated into Scientology when he founded the religion).[22] The scholar
Stephen A. Kent has noted that these traits were not actually mentioned the Buddhist texts and some of there are actually contradicted by the texts. Kent notes that the Buddhist texts actually say that Maitreya will be born to royalty whose domain is very wealthy, prosperous and with a large population and will have black hair.[23]
^Momen, Moojan (1995). Buddhism And The Baha'i Faith: An Introduction to the Baha'i Faith for Theravada Buddhists. Oxford: George Ronald. pp. 50–52.
ISBN0-85398-384-4.
^Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, 1944, The Baha'i Publishing Trust, pgs 94 & 95
^McCormack, W. (2010). The Rajneesh Chronicles: The True Story of the Cult that Unleashed the First Act of Bioterrorism on U.S. Soil . Tin House Books.
ISBN098256919X. p. 34.
^York, M. (2009). The A to Z of New Age Movements. 33. Scarecrow Press.
ISBN0810863324. pp. 139-140.
^Hyer, Paul; Jagchid, Sechin (1983). A Mongolian living Buddha: biography of the Kanjurwa Khutughtu. Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press.
ISBN978-0-87395-713-7.
^I.Y. Junghare (1988),
Dr. Ambedkar: The Hero of the Mahars, Ex-Untouchables of India, Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 47, No. 1, (1988), pp. 93–121, "(...) the new literature of the
Mahars and their making of the Ambedkar deity for their new religion, Neo-Buddhism. (...) Song five is clearly representative of the Mahar community's respect and devotion for Ambedkar. He has become their God and they worship him as the singer sings: "We worship Bhima, too." (...) In the last song, Dr. Ambedkar is raised from a deity to a supreme deity. He is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient."