Wednesday, October 17, 2012

The Buddha achieved Enlightenment after leaving the palace of his father and the pleasured life he led as a child growing up.  It wasn't particularly his own fault that he liked that life of pleasure.  And to his credit, he was curious, inquiring from the first at the signs of impermanence and suffering in the world.

In keeping with cultural differences, here in the West, as major world religions give us the concept of Sin, one passes through to an awakening commonly through prodigal sinning.  It seems a pattern we like somehow.  It gives one credential.  Sin is, of course, a bad thing.  We're really supposed to avoid it in the very first place and be good little boys and girls and stay that way.

But in the same, here, we like the story of "Amazing Grace (...) that saved a wretch, like me..."  We know of addictions, bad behavior, stupidity, poor judgment.  We have the sense that perhaps one does have to fall to the low of the bottom if he truly is to be 'reborn.'  Redemption is a good story, one we like.  Preachers, and the sort, like sin, the sin that leads to, of course, grace.

For the Buddha, the emphasis is on logic and good sense.  Having that lasting sense of the unsatisfactory, as we perceive things to be, we finally realize the source of the error, that being the illusion of a solid self distinct from other things, the ego being the great problem to dispel.  There seems far less carrying on about sins, prodigal passages to hellish bottoms and then to see the light.  To the Buddha, such 'mistakes' are just a  part of life, that we have to go through, for our eventual betterment and even perfection.

Perhaps 'redemption' for the West is the same as the 'awakening' of the East.  In the West, there is more emphasis on the great forgiving.  In the East, the emphasis is on going through karma, eventually, all paths, leading to enlightenment.

Like all individuals who participate directly in such tales, the Buddha had a strong sense of story, a sense of pre-ordainment.  And so when he had finally achieved awakening, nibana, nirvana, while he could have remained in his noble state, he knew that in the same that selflessness is the same as compassion and that therefore it was appropriate for him to go and teach and share his lesson and his wisdom.  To share the peace that he had attained, this seemed to him a suitable job, a task for him to do,  and went and did it, laying down the basics first, explaining, creating, involving in dialog, and keeping the story, as it were, ongoing.  Not easy to do.  And so he was able to make sense of his entire life history.

Here in the West, I suppose, we amiably go along with the program, hang out with such n such, go to work, etc., but all the while, we too have a story, a progression of conclusions to draw from our own behavior and the corrections we might writ upon it all.

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