If I ever met the Buddha, himself, I'd have to say to him, 'oh, man, I kind of screwed up.  His holiness the Dalai Lama came to college, and I didn't go see him.  It would have made my father happy, and he might even have driven out to see him himself if he had known.  My friends joked, Hello, Dalai... I don't know where my head was.  I guess I thought Nirvana was beer, or chicks, or stuff like that.'  And maybe the Buddha would say, 'oh, well, no one's perfect.  I was like that once myself, and in fact, that's why I am here today.  You have to understand suffering first hand in order to begin your path.'

And I was completely foolish not to take a class with Robert Thurman.  Man, was I dumb.  And you have to admit these things if you're ever going to feel okay with your life, so I am forced to write this down, as writing is, for the brain, therapeutic.

You probably do, have to go through some living, in order to see, to understand what's important.  Then, then you can read the sutras comprehendingly.  That's just the way it is sometimes, though you really wish you hadn't been so dumb and distracted years ago.


Reading back in forth between gospels and sutras, there is sometimes a familiar ring.  Assuming Buddha came first, it seems that the Christian message, often very similar anyway, closely related, might have come from Eastern sources, life along the trade route.  The Christian gospel comes across almost as a direct translation, at times, of Buddhist thought, as was unseen before in that part of the world and in its liturgy.  Odd echoes where there are departures exist as well, to an ear attuned to them. In the Christian version of a tale from a sutra like The Lotus Sutra, Christ has come back from the dead to his disciples, miraculously;  in the Buddhist version, worlds are revealed in the heavens, and bodhisattvas come pouring out of these worlds, and even out of the ground, as Buddha gives his ultimate teaching.  And it's all, both versions I suppose, like the Pentecost, quite fabulous, okay, maybe the Buddha's being more like a hip Jimi Hendrix version, and that of Jesus, well, being a bit of a gentle 'white guy' kind of a sermony kind of a thing, one miracle at a time, no other worlds opening up.

Seriously, the desire for such enlightenment leads to a satisfaction in these tales.  They make one happy.

There is also the possibility that in some sense, that Jesus and the Buddha, and by implication, Abraham, Moses, other prophets, other arhats, other Buddhas, are the appearance, the reappearance of the same spiritual being.  As if lighting up here and there by some reason and appropriateness.  Then of course the thoughts would be shared, coming from the same repository of wisdom and deep understanding.


I've often thought, in a deeper way, that the information and the literature, the odd conversations, the thoughts that come your way, are brought to you from a deep reserve that has a guide behind it.  What you come across seemingly by random luck or happenstance, maybe by opening a TED lecture, or the book you just happened to pick up and open, is all guided, as if by an unseen teacher or force, by that which brings you the meaning of life.  It could be the lesson, ultimately, a big one that slowly grows on you, revealed here and there, of compassion, of interconnectedness, of many worlds, full of soulful wisdom, revealed to make it clear the illusion of self, of being stuck in this 'iron cage' (Thurman's words) of a self distinct and separate from others.  Stop worrying about your own happiness, think about all the other beings in the world suffering from many sufferings.