Boleh Tahan ~ THROUGH MY EYES
SOME YEARS AGO, I
was told that one of the monks in the large and very
wealthy temple in Manila where I was staying at that
time, had complained of me “never praying to
the Buddha”, as I did not join in their ceremonies
for the dead, by which they made so much money. I
pleaded guilty to the charge, readily. Pray to the
Buddha? Why on earth should I do that, to someone
who spent His entire life trying to help others understand?
There is a little verse that expresses how it is:
“No-one saves us but ourselves;
No-one
can, and no-one may.
We ourselves
must walk the Path;
Buddhas
only show the way”?
It is time I made it clear—at the risk of being
branded a heretic—how I see the Buddha, and
not how other people might expect me to see Him; I
should have done it long ago, leaving people in no
doubt as to where I stand.
I feel the centuries have distorted Him to
such an extent that He’s almost not visible
at all, and His words in the scriptures seem disconnected
and disembodied. People deify Him because—in
my opinion—they don’t understand the meaning
of His Teachings; they want Him to be a God so that
He will save them, instead of making the effort to
become enlightened; consequently, what happens is
they become enlightened.
I do not accept that he was born in any but
the normal way; nor do I accept the miraculous stories
concerning his birth; it was common, in those days—and
for many centuries after—to glorify and embellish
the stories of the founders of religion (it’s
called ‘gilding the lily’); Buddhism is
no exception. So, I do not believe that the new-born
baby could walk and talk. Neither do I believe he
was born with teeth—let alone forty teeth, which
is held to be one of the thirty two major marks of
the Mahapurisa (Great Person), according to the popular
divination. Nor do I believe that he had webs between
his fingers and toes, like a duck. Nor do I believe
that, after He left home and cut off His hair, it
never grew again, but remained as tight little curls
covering His head; although I have never seen a statue
or a picture of the Buddha with a shaved head, He
did shave it, just as He expected His monks to shave
theirs; nor do I believe His hair was blue. Nor do
I believe that He had such long ears that the lobes
touched His shoulders. Nor do I believe that he grew
to be about sixteen feet tall! Nor do I believe that
He was effeminate looking, as He is often shown in
Indian or Thai pictures; He was a man, a male, not
a hermaphrodite! Nor do I believe that He was omniscient,
knowing everything about the past, present and future;
I think that He knew and fully understood the facts
of life, not the kind of things that we know. I don’t
care what other people believe, or how many people
believed such things in the past; I do not believe
them!
I do not believe that in His previous lives,
He was an animal—sometimes a deer, an elephant,
or a monkey, and so on —who could speak human
language; we shouldn’t take everything in the
scriptures literally; much is only symbolic. If we
set out by believing a thing to be true just because
it is in the scriptures, we will find a way to explain
it, even if we have to twist it and stretch our imagination
to do so. We will see only what we want to see and
not necessarily what is there. Hope, fear, insecurity
and desire are quite capable of constructing convincing
philosophies, but a thing is still not true for us
unless and until we have experienced it directly and
by ourselves. To approach things with minds fully
made up, believing they must be true because they
are found in religious scriptures is piety without
foundation, and is wrong.
I do not believe that Prince Siddhartha had
never seen old people, sick people, dead people or
ascetics before the age of 29, and that he had been
kept as a prisoner in the palace until then; I think
that, like you and I, he had seen such people before,
but on that particular occasion, he saw them as if
for the first time, with new eyes and clear perception.
One day, this—or something similar—might
happen to us. We have never really seen; we have only
looked!
I do not regard the Buddha as a cosmic savior
or superman, with the power to help or save; praying
to Him is useless; He never asked people to do that.
We should try to apply His teachings in our lives,
instead, in order to find out if they are true or
not, and whatever success we have in this will encourage
us to go further.
There are two parts to Buddhism: the part
of the past, (this includes the life story and legends
of the Buddha), which we cannot verify, and the part
of the present—the Eternal Now —the Dharma,
which it is within our capacity to apply, test, and
realize. I respect the Buddha as a Teacher or Way-pointer,
who revealed the Dharma, but I do not pray to or worship
Him.
Although I tentatively accept the concept
of ‘rebirth’ as a hypothesis, I know nothing
about life after death, nor do I know anyone who does.
I have read what others have written about it and
heard others speak of it, but I wonder if they are
speaking from their own experience or are merely repeating
what they’ve heard others say. Anyway, without
seeming to contradict myself, I must say that, according
to Buddhism, there is really no such thing as ‘rebirth’;
it is another case of words being misleading. Seldom
is it questioned, but the word—which really
means ‘born again’ (‘re’=again)—is
not appropriate for what Buddhism maintains happens
when we die: like a stream, our consciousness, ever-changing,
flows on; there is nothing that remains the same or
is reborn. The Pali word that is unfortunately translated
as ‘rebirth’ is bhava, which means ‘becoming’—becoming
other than we are.
Likewise with the concept of ‘karma’;
I accept it, but guardedly and not in a fatalistic
way whereby each and every thing that happens to us
is attributed to ‘our karma’; there are
forces other than the law of karma working in our
lives, shaping, molding and influencing us. Personal
karma accounts for only some of the things that happen
to us, and not, by any means, all. Also, unlike the
Law of Cause-and-Effect, the Law of Karma cannot be
demonstrated and proved; it remains a hypothesis.
There, I have expressed my unbelief, and
what has happened? The earth didn’t quake and
swallow me up; lightning didn’t flash and strike
me. No doubt some people would like to see it, but
will I be excommunicated? There are no fixed and binding
dogmas—no creed—that we must accept and
profess when we take up the Buddha’s Way. Our
responsibility is not to believe but to find out.
At times, we should do a bit of stock-taking, should
cut the dead wood from the tree, and separate culture,
belief and legend from the Dharma.
Even before I became a monk, I learned how
to chant in Pali (I have some musical ability, so
it was not hard), but soon became disillusioned by
what I saw chanting being used for. I do not believe
in the miraculous power of chanting; the scriptures
are supposed to be the teachings of the Buddha, not
magic charms. If I had learned how to chant in Chinese
and perform funeral ceremonies (as I could easily
have done; it is not difficult), I would have been
very rich—in terms of money—long ago.
But I regard such ‘work’ as abhorrent
and unmanly, fit only for eunuchs! I refuse to lower
myself to such a level!
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