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So the Buddha in the Kavata Suda has a wonderful claim that at first seems unlikely about what someone who's been practicing a lot can apparently achieve and

the suitor goes with a developed mind one can become different beings appear and vanish.

You could move through mountains like moving through space.

You could dive in and out of a winged bird, you could fly through the air like a winged bird, you could touch the sun or the moon.

So that's a lot of tall claims.

And I will be the first to say that this is by no means meant to be taken literally,

as if you can literally fly or walk through mountains or swim through the earth.

The cannon constantly reminds us of the fallibility, the fragility, the impermanence of the body.

So the idea that the Buddha would be claiming that we can somehow transcend the physical body and do things that are associated with miracles

would be thematically not consistent at all with the Buddha's very clear understanding that we are in very fragile incarnations or bodies that can fall apart pretty much at any time.

Nor is the Buddha proposing an escapist

fantasy that we can simply imagine to escape from difficult experiences in life completely

check out and live in fantasy realms where we can move through space or dive and swim

through the earth or fly.

There is definitely a creative,

imaginative quality to what he's pointing towards, it's not an escapist entirely idea where we use

spiritual practice as a way to dissociate from painful emotions or difficult

interpersonal experiences. This teaching is under the listing of Winana Anadisanam and that is what's called creative, limitless, boundaryless, consciousness.

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