"You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain. But you feel it. You've felt it your entire life.
That there is something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. You do not realize your own situation. You are in prison because of the lower minds controlling this world. In bondage to the system"
NIGHTWATCHMAN
Buddha Mythology
BUDDHA
None of the Buddhist sutras, early or late, Theravadin or
Mahayana, are historical documents and they should not be considered as
such. They are spiritual works and all of them contain a certain amount
of mythology, legend, and as well, include stories and concepts that
came from sources outside of Buddhism.
The Mahayana sutras represent an evolution of the Buddha’s dharma,
while at the same time, in certain respects, they also represent an
attempt to return to the original spirit of the historical Buddha’s
teachings, for example, the sense that nirvana is actually found in the
here and now, and not some other place or unimaginable time in the
future.
It’s quite true that the Buddhist texts are primarily spiritual
scriptures, and this needs to be the main focus of understanding them.
But I think it’s going to far to say they are not historical documents.
In fact, they do purport to tell of many real world, actual events; and
while some of the texts are obviously inventions, much of what is
described may well have happened in fact.
The Sacred Story of Shin Buddhism is a saga of great love, compassion,
sacrifice and triumph. It is derived from the Larger Sutra of Immeasurable Life, which
uses mythical language and metaphor (symbols) to convey the
unexplainable
nature of nirvana, the universal enlightened
reality and its primordial activity, which is beyond conceptual thought.
That
is to say, the Sacred Story is not to
be read as literal truth but as a metaphor
Buddhism was introduced to China in the first century
CE and has been adapted by the Chinese so that the mythologies of the
indigenous faiths and the imported are intertwined. Early Buddhism consciously
created a mythology to give meaning to its practices and beliefs.
Even the advent of Buddhism is mythologized in the tale of the Emperor
Ming. His dream of a golden man who could fly led him to dispatch messengers
to Afghanistan to bring back the Buddhist scriptures.
Perhaps not
surprisingly, Buddhism has its own stubborn fundamentalists who insist
on literal belief in the twenty-five various Buddhas of Buddhist
“history.” These devout folks are fully as scandalized at scholarly
debunking of the myths of Dipankara, Amitabha, and others as the
detractors of the Jesus Seminar are. But it is safe to say that Buddhism
as a whole has a much larger place for those, say, Zen masters, who
minimize the importance, à la Bultmann, of a historical Buddha.
On
The Long Search, a BBC television series surveying world religions,
host Ronald Eyre inquired of a Zen abbot, “Does the Buddha exist?” The
answer was, “For those who need the Buddha to exist, he exists. For
those who do not need him to exist, he does not exist.”
The real and
relevant Buddha is the Buddha-nature latent in all sentient beings. Can
we imagine a Christianity willing to make the same admission about
Christ? “If you meet the Christ on the road to Emmaus — kill him.”
Satan is good and evil, love and hate. It is the gray; the totality of reality undivided into arbitrary dichotomies. Satan is not a real being,
not a living entity, not conscious, nor a physical thing that can be
interacted with. It is a symbol, something ethereal, something that
exists as an emotional attachment and personal dream. Just like Buddhists do not worship Buddha, Satanists hold up Satan as an ultimate principle rather than an object of literal worship. Satan inspires and provokes
people, so, like all (honest) religions the ultimate point is
self-help. God-believers have a different opinion on what Satan is, but
their opinion is a result of their religion, steeped in mankind's
ignorant past.
Satan, and Satan alone, best represents the harshness of reality.
*******
As an analogy, there is substantial evidence showing that the sources of some
of Christianity's most sacred beliefs, such as the Resurrection of Christ, are to be
found in the pre-Islamic Persian religions of Mithraism and Zoroastrianism. It is
believed that Mithraic and Zoroastrian doctrines were disseminated by wayfarers
and traders from Persia in the Holy Land, where they were then incorporated into
what was to become the Christian faith.
As much as the book Jesus and Buddha deals with issues that leave to
chance how Christianity and Buddhism are rendered by the individual, collective,
and historical imagination, it comes down to being a spiritual guide for those who
seek moral instruction and inner strength from the best of what both religions
have to offer. In coming together "in an encounter of the spirit in the West," as
Jack Kornfield writes, Buddha's and Jesus' words are designed to lead the
faithful on the same "path of liberation from our anxious grasping, resurrection
into a new way of being, and transformation into the compassionate life."
Buddhism
Even the advent of Buddhism is mythologized in the tale of the Emperor Ming. His dream of a golden man who could fly led him to dispatch messengers to Afghanistan to bring back the Buddhist scriptures.
On The Long Search, a BBC television series surveying world religions, host Ronald Eyre inquired of a Zen abbot, “Does the Buddha exist?” The answer was, “For those who need the Buddha to exist, he exists. For those who do not need him to exist, he does not exist.”
The real and relevant Buddha is the Buddha-nature latent in all sentient beings. Can we imagine a Christianity willing to make the same admission about Christ? “If you meet the Christ on the road to Emmaus — kill him.”
Buddha MYTH
Satan, and Satan alone, best represents the harshness of reality.
As much as the book Jesus and Buddha deals with issues that leave to chance how Christianity and Buddhism are rendered by the individual, collective, and historical imagination, it comes down to being a spiritual guide for those who seek moral instruction and inner strength from the best of what both religions have to offer. In coming together "in an encounter of the spirit in the West," as Jack Kornfield writes, Buddha's and Jesus' words are designed to lead the faithful on the same "path of liberation from our anxious grasping, resurrection into a new way of being, and transformation into the compassionate life."