Richard Gere, Tina Turner, Uma Thurman, Orlando Bloom, Phil Jackson\u2026what do these celebrities have in common?\u00a0 They are all Buddhists.\u00a0 Though you may associate Buddhists with shaved-headed monks in robes, in actuality most Buddhists are not monks (or even celebrities, for that matter), but everyday people just like you and me.<\/p>\n
Who is Buddha?<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s first discuss who he\u2019s not.\u00a0 He is not a bald gold guy with a robust belly.\u00a0 He is not a God.\u00a0 And further\u2026he\u2019s not even a Buddhist!\u00a0 The jolly, rotund fellow we know as the \u201cHappy Buddha\u201d originated in China to physically symbolize inner prosperity.\u00a0 A popular depiction, though about as historically accurate as a blue-eyed, light-haired, Caucasian Jesus.\u00a0 Also, though often highly revered, traditionally Buddha is not worshipped.\u00a0 Rather, he is considered a respected teacher or a \u201cspiritual physician.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Finally, just as Jesus, a Jewish rabbi, influenced a new Jewish religious movement, later separating itself as \u201cChristianity,\u201d Buddha was a Hindu who influenced a new kind of Hindu movement, later known as Buddhism.<\/p>\n
Buddha was not always \u201cthe Buddha\u201d either, but a prince named Siddhartha Guatama. Born 2500 years ago (in a most unusual fashion according to legend), he immediately began talking of his mission to free all creatures from suffering.\u00a0 But, due to a fortune teller\u2019s foreboding, Siddhartha\u2019s Dad (the King), sheltered him from all suffering in a Finding Nemo kind of way. Lavished in riches, Siddhartha grew to be a spoiled rotten kid sheltered from all of life\u2019s miseries and in his Dad\u2019s eyes, a King in the making.<\/p>\n
Though he had everything he could ever want, around the age of thirty, Siddhartha began feeling dissatisfied.\u00a0 With the help of his assistant, he snuck out of his palace and out from under his father\u2019s watchful eye to explore the local flavor which had been forbidden to him his whole life.\u00a0 He saw four sights he had never witnessed before: the elderly, the severely sick, death (a cremation) and a holy man (renunciate).\u00a0 With no understanding of these realities, he experienced a kind of mental breakdown, crying out to his friend, \u201cWill sickness and old age and death happen to me?\u00a0 Even to a King?\u201d\u00a0 His loyal friend hesitantly nodded, \u201cYes, my Lord, even to Kings.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Buddhists, we can all relate to Siddhartha\u2019s story. At one point or another in our life, we have been sheltered, by our own doing or another\u2019s, from the realities of life. The fourth sight, the holy man, inspired Siddhartha to devote himself to this path as well. He renounced all of his worldly and princely duties, much to the dismay of his father.\u00a0 However, after six years of living as a renunciate, this extreme deprivation wasn\u2019t working. With a certain irony, he realized that while he had spent most of his life getting everything he wanted and now the past several years denying himself of everything\u2026he still had no peace.<\/p>\n
It was with this notion that he meditated under the Bodhi Tree, in Bodh Gaya, India, vowing to seek the middle path, a true enlightenment, or nirvana. Difficult to define, nirvana is described as \u201cbeing awake,\u201d a spiritual mind state of ultimate bliss, nonattachment and peace, or seeing the world through completely different eyes. Only then did Siddhartha become the \u201cBuddha,\u201d the very name which means \u201cawakened one.\u201d<\/p>\n
What did the Buddha Teach?<\/p>\n
Buddha\u2019s first sermon of the Dharma (\u201cTeachings\u201d) took place in the green sanctuary of Sarnath (known today as \u201cDeer Park,\u201d named for its peaceful, grazing deer who munch leaves next to chanting monks). Here, Buddha taught his disciples the Four Noble Truths: Life is dissatisfaction; Our craving and attachment is the cause of this suffering; There is a cure to this suffering; The cure is the Eightfold Path – a systematic holistic lifestyle of practices to follow, including Positive Speech, Behavior, Thought, Awareness and Meditation.<\/p>\n
For Buddhists, the Dharma or practice matters most, more than belief or theory. The Buddha himself does not give you salvation. Buddhists teach that you can only find inner peace within yourself (hence, why it\u2019s called \u201cinner\u201d peace). Instructing each disciple to \u201cBe a lamp onto yourself,\u201d he wanted us to light our own way.<\/p>\n
An important way to practice this is meditation, constant reflection and quieting the mind as only through an uncluttered mind will we find true peace.\u00a0 We must also accept that everything is impermanent and that nothing external provides lasting happiness\u2026a harder lesson, it seems, to learn in the western world.\u00a0 The Buddha said we cannot control, but at best, only influence our situation, and we must realize that nothing can cause or take away our happiness, only our perceptions of these factors.<\/p>\n
According to Buddhists, everything is interconnected and therefore we are all of the same essence.\u00a0 Not just as humans, but as part of the larger ecosystem, therefore our practice of compassion and nonviolence is paramount to our understanding and peace.\u00a0 Because everything is of the same energy, there is not much emphasis on a Creator (most Buddhist explain this divinity as within each of us) nor an independent, definite soul.\u00a0\u00a0 However, there is much variety among beliefs and practices within Buddhism, influenced by their cultures (as it spread from India across Japan, China, Tibet, Burma, etc.) and the hundreds of different denominations or branches, each as unique as the next.<\/p>\n
A Moment of Zen: Buddhists in Pilgrimage<\/p>\n
As you walk around the quiet sanctuary of Deer Park, filled with lit candles and burning incense, you see Buddhist pilgrims (mostly Tibetans) spinning their prayer wheels and bowing in silent prayer.\u00a0 You wander over to a Nichiren Buddhist temple and as you take off your shoes and enter the open, spacious sanctuary, you hear the chanting of Nam Myoho Renge Kyo (\u201cOh Hail the Lotus Sutra\u201d). Two dozen or so local devotees have gathered, with one monk intermittently hitting a giant gong which reverberates through the entire temple, the beams, the floors, and your bones.\u00a0 The drumming begins, softer at first, then louder and louder until you can\u2019t distinguish the external drumbeat from your own internal heartbeat.<\/p>\n
Later on, you are back in Bodh Gaya, watching Tibetan monks ritually prostrate in full body prayer, sometimes for hours at a time.\u00a0 An elderly, wrinkled Tibetan man who appears to be about 105 years old, slowly walks and kneels every few steps around the large path of the sacred Bodhi Tree. You notice he has little knee pads and hand blocks. As he lowers his aching body all the way down onto the ground, he brings his hand blocks up above his head together in a wooden \u201cclink,\u201d the sound of prayer here.\u00a0 Then, he lifts himself back up to do it all over again, his act a meditation in motion.<\/p>\n
You wander away to sit near a tranquil pond. A tiny, smiling Tibetan woman wrapped in dark shawls is feeding handfuls of pellets to the open, puckered mouths of the colorful, rainbow koi fish underneath the surface. You watch this ancient woman, mesmerized, realizing you have never seen anyone perform such a simple act with mindfulness and joy. She turns to you and gives you a wide, toothless smile, which contagiously causes you smile wide in return and be filled with a feeling of pure radiance.<\/p>\n
You end your day back under the Bodhi Tree itself, with its outstretched, thick branches and colorful prayer flags swaying in the breeze.\u00a0 The first Buddhist temple stretches its spire straight into the grayish-blue sky behind the green leaves. You sit down in the dry grass, listening to the rhythmic chanting of the monks in their brightly colored saffron robes. You watch the perfect little green bodhi leaves and multi colored prayer flags dance in the wind around the thick trunk of the tree.\u00a0 You are in sacred space, the tree so magnificent and protective, you find yourself nodding, understanding\u2026why Buddha picked this spot to reach enlightenment over 2500 years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Richard Gere, Tina Turner, Uma Thurman, Orlando Bloom, Phil Jackson\u2026what do these celebrities have in common?\u00a0 They are all Buddhists.\u00a0 Though you may associate Buddhists with shaved-headed monks in robes, in actuality most Buddhists are not monks (or even celebrities, for that matter), but everyday people just like you and me. Who is Buddha? Let\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[1037,121,1334],"class_list":["post-5993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-buddhism","tag-religion","tag-series"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1yF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5993"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5994,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5993\/revisions\/5994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}